EC 518

Upon Whom the Ends

of the Ages Have Come…

^{A fantasy for an Apocalypse}

© Ludis Cuckold (2015)

27 Meeting Again 76 Years On

The dream takes me to a public park in Rīga. It is dusk. Given what I wrote in the previous post, I find myself in a half real, half virtual optical environment.

At the southern end of the park, I see an old man and a woman escort walk on a path. They walk slowly and at diagonal, from my right to left. The diagonal recedes into a darkening corner. The man is my paternal grandfather. The woman is (I thnin) my godmother, Emiliya, his second wife.

Grandfather has come to meet me. No one has arranged this meeting except the dream I am dreaming.

I cross the park and find grandfather sitting on a park  bench and waiting for me. He sits slumped and looks to be asleep. If true that his response in his younger days to concerns over his health was: “Do not be concerned over me, be concerned over my Devil”, it appears as if now the Devil has been beat out of him. Emiliya, has disappeared.

The scene is reminiscent of the movie “Wild Strawberries” (Ingmar Bergman director, 1957), where the wheel of a horse drawn hearse, after hitting a lamp post, comes off the hearse, rolls a short distance, falls flat and breaks up beside the dreamer.

Sitting in a chair in front of grandfather is a musician who sings him a religious hymn. In the dream, I seem to recognize the melody and the song, but when awake, I no longer recognize it. After searching the Internet for religious songs, I eventually select “Rock of Ages” (a hymn composed by Augustus M. Toplady, an American, in 1775) as one that most closely resembles the melody that I heard in the dream.

I sit down on the bench next to and to the left of grandfather. Somewhat awkwardly, I embrace him, and say: “It has been a long time since we have seen each other. I am Anton, the keeper of your name.” Then somewhat apologetically I add: “Alas, I have only 100 euros left to my name.”

Grandfather makes no response. I notice in his right hand a slip of paper. He raises the hand and I see that it holds two theatre tickets*.

*As a result of winning the 3^rd prize for “In a Fog”, a play against the use of alcohol which he wrote in 1895, grandfather was introduced to the world of theatre in Rīga, specifically the “Rīga New Theatre”. In fact, that is where he met Emiliya, who had volunteered to work in the gardrobe and as a cashier at the theatre.

Having passed the theatre tickets, grandfather leans toward me, and slumps into my lap until the bald back of his head was just below my chin. Because of its closeness the head appeared unnaturally large and made me uncomfortable. It was as if I was given to smell his skin.

What is so remarkable about the dream to me is that grandfather died May, 1939. A few days before his death my sister and I brought him a small bouquet of forget-me-nots, which our nanny had advised us to pick. When we went to deliver the flowers, we found grandfather sequestered in a small room at the back of his villa. We were not told that the bed we saw him lying in was his death bed. This is the first time since that time that I see him other than in a photograph.

A few moments later the dream transports me to the opposite and north end of the park, which is bordered by a city street, across of which there are a row of buildings featuring shops. As is a dream’s wont, I am brought to stand before what looks like an empty store front. As I approach its window, I see that behind the window is a platform that is projecting deep into the inner space of the store. On the platform stands a table. A man is sitting at the table. His back is turned toward me. He sits alone.

Because the man’s back is turned toward me, I cannot see whether he wais reading a book or eating a meal. He is dressed in a dark suit. Over the top of the curtain, which stretches across the inside portion of the niche, I see that the store is not a boutique, but a restaurant. The dining room appears rather cozy. Each of the tables has lit candles on it. I can see number of diners.

As I retreat from the window, I notice close by, a dark skinned nanny and a group of children. I do not see either the woman or the children clearly. The woman—in retrospect I feel that she may be have been Daisy—stands at the door of the restaurant and sings to the diners inside. Is she begging food for the children?

The nanny sings to the melody of “Plasir d’mour” (a classical French love song written in 1784 by Jean-Paul Martini).

After I awake, I reflect that—what with the appearance of grandfather—the dream may be a premonition of death. True, the candles on the dining tables by turning into grave sites is rather surreal. It was only after I recalled that the window behind which sat the man had written across it “Restorāns Valentīns” that I rejected the idea of a cemetery. But what was Daisy doing singing the song? Did not the words of the song have a double meaning for her?

The joys of love last but for a mo-mAnt, its sorrows keepers keep it a life-time long.

Everyone, I suppose, has his-her own translation of what the words mean. To me, the words suggest lasting loyalty or, better, a long lasting need of love. If a black hole is the result to gravity so strong that it swallows all light, the mo-mAnt of love—not quite as strong—is the residue of regret that stays as a pain nothing but God may cure.

Einstein, the physicist, whose prediction of the existence of gravitational waves was proved to be correct a hundred years later, also said: “God does not play dice”. Yet in the ‘developed world’ there is an army of Enlightened men and women who ridicule Einstein for the statement and roll insouciant dice on the surface of a mirror that has been taken off the wall and placed on the floor.

The rolling of dice by the Enlightened, however, has shattered the mirror into shards beyond counting and no lesser number of lives ruined, not to mention the millions upon millions killed.

It is rather amazing—though not at all surprising—that the great fascists* of the 20^th century, Germany’s Hitler and Russia’s Stalin (each in his own way), have been replaced by the United States of America, a country that not so long ago was almost universally believed to be the great purveyor of peace, freedom and liberty.

*Fascism, as I have already pointed out a number of times, is but socialism for one’s self and one’s own. Fascism has also appeared under the guise of other names. For example, historian R.I. Moore calls it “Persecuting Society”, the title of his book (2007, Blackwell, PB); David Nirenberg calls it “Communities of Violence’’,  also the name of a book (Princeton, 1996). Moore claims that the Persecuting Society arose in the 11^th century. As we see, thay society has not come to an end yet. So, yes, fascism has a very long history indeed.

How did such a reversal come to be?

Well, you see, there is this big theatre called “1054-2016” on the corner of yonder block, which for all of this time has been playing one and the same play called “The Eschaton”. I first learned of the play after I encountered historian Fomenko’s observations and crashed the ticket booth. Now I have two tickets from my grandfather. It’s called approval by ‘secondment’.

In any case, the current Act of “The Eschaton’’ has arrived to the point where the governments of the world, following the example of the government of America (delivered into the hands of a Kenya born politician), are doing all they can to eliminate the Republics of their own in order to replace same with fascist governments of elites only. Sing: Joy to The World!