Title: Meditation
on Space-Time
Author: Leonard
Seet
Genre: Philosophy
Synopsis:
Even as Father Lawrence was hearing the stranger’s confession,
he dreamed of probability waves, black holes and temporal loops. He came to
Gilead to search for his friend Camellia, not to hear about this penitent’s
vices: seducing women, framing rivals and laundering church-funds. After he had
chased the penitent through the sanctuary into the church graveyard and lost
the man, he found a note that revealed a connection to Camellia.
When he learned that Camellia was pregnant with this man’s
child, he knew the time to play ostrich was over. But ever since the girl whom
he had counseled, committed suicide, he preferred distancing himself from
others than engaging their struggles. And ever since falling out with his best
friend, he preferred contemplating the duality of space-time to sorting out his
own joy and grief and love and hatred. If only he could free himself from his
emotional scum… if only he could marshal the courage to polish off his search
for enlightenment…
He would discover the hidden identities behind each face and
Camellia’s helping the villain to bring him down. When faced with betrayal, he
would lock himself in his cabin and struggled between retreating to his
meditation on space-time and confronting the villain. He would renounce his vow
and learn to equate a dollar with a cheeseburger. He would buy a gun without
knowing how to load the magazine. He would search for his enemy. But when faced
with the gun barrel, Father Lawrence would have to contemplate death… only to
hear the three shots that saluted the dark night…
Either mercy or justice; either salvation or friendship. Either
choice: a flawed solution for a fallen man in a broken world.
Meditation on
Space-Time portrays a man’s struggle to discover his identity in
contemporary society, to sacrifice for his friends and to take the road less
traveled. For readers who would eat up the hero’s every morsel of laughter and
tear as if each were bittersweet chocolate. While sifting through clues to the
characters’ true identities and hidden agendas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 1
WHEN
THE STRANGER STEPPED INTO THE CONFESSIONAL to narrate his crimes, which my vow
had forbidden me from disclosing, I was meditating on space-time to recuperate
from the ten-hour drive to Gilead, Tennessee.
Dark
night the boundary between reality and dream somewhere at a memory’s frontier
fading near a singularity’s ledge surfing upon a probability wave across the
space-time fabric through a neutrino sea skirting the edges of black holes
searching for dark matter searching for the Higgs Boson. Photon gluon graviton
clusters crisscrossing tangling and weaving a unified fabric symmetric
space-time hydrogen atoms merging and emerging a helium atom along with
neutrinos and photons annihilation and creation interaction and transformation
the brightest night the loudest silence the fullest void the darkest knowledge…
“Father,
I sinned.”
The
confessor’s rasp stirred me from my meditation, my dream, and I yawned and
inhaled the stale air in the confessional. A strip of light slid through the
door crack and cut across my left hand as I turned my head and my hair dusted
the screen separating me from the stranger. I wiped the sweat from my forehead
and shifted to a more comfortable position on the hardwood seat. I stretched my
left leg and kicked the confessional’s wall. The newspaper flew from my knee
and rattled toward the floor as the article about genocide in Rwanda flickered
between light and shade.
“Father,
I sinned.”
The
sound of sandpaper against steel sounded again beyond the screen. I twisted my
body and my elbow knocked against the wall. I squinted but only saw a shadow
distorted under the slanting light beyond the partition. Probably an insomniac
who couldn’t afford to go to the bar.
Two
days ago, I was chopping wood in the forest beside the monastery, and had
looked forward to enjoying The
Four Seasons in Boston’s
Symphony Hall with my friends Camellia and Ichiro. I didn’t plan on visiting
St. Barnabas Church in Gilead but this stranger, from some hallucination, had
foreseen my arrival and booked me for therapy.
The
penitent knocked twice on the other side of the partition. “Hey, dude, wake up
from your wet dream, you’re supposed to say ‘when was your last confession’ or
some crap like that. You hear me?” His breath was contaminating the air.
Perhaps
I should grunt a mantra. But I was only a monk contemplating the meaning of
death, the mystery of alternative universes and other such nonsense. What could
I know about confessions? When a man in a Mission Hill soup kitchen confessed
to using heroin and stealing his mother’s funeral dollars to keep the habit, I
listened like a Buddha, not because my wisdom had transcended words and even
sounds but because all replies, no matter how concise, how insightful, how
articulate, appeared as frivolous as a gilded coffin. In the end, my friend
Ichiro bailed me out by impersonating a priest.
Now,
this insomniac beyond the partition, from some itch or pang, insisted on harassing
a confession-phobic monk, who had evaded the parish, a.k.a. purgatory, by
pretending to suffer from attention-deficit disorder. Had I wanted to hear
about adultery, thievery, murder, or insider trading, I would’ve become a
bartender or, unable to concoct spirituous potions, a pseudo-Freudian
psychotherapist. Even now, twenty-three years later, after having one too many
drinks, I would still dream of my former high school classmate Daphne, as she
sobbed out her pain in a March evening. Her blue eyes, her blond hair, her
smiles fleeing into the mist. In those dreams, unlike this reality, I actually
pulled her out of the abyss.
“You
should talk to Father Jones.” I offered my wisdom. “He’d be glad to hear your
confession. Why don’t I ask him to come over? I’m sure he’s not yet asleep. And
even if he is, he’d delay his dreams and hear your confession in his pajamas.”
Father Jones, the tongue-flapping priest who had begun substituting for this
church’s parish priest five days ago, would savor this soul’s secrets as a
thief would Queen Victoria’s crown. After delivering this stranger’s message
but before allowing me to read it, the priest had already complained about not
having heard any confessions in a week. He probably envied me for hearing one
the first night here. Amid babbles about apple pie recipes, all-meat diets,
school shootings and movie-star divorces, his eyes betrayed the lust for
confessions—pyramid schemes, clandestine liaisons, corporate double-dealings or
plain old government conspiracies. I wouldn’t be surprised if at this moment
his ear was kissing the other side of the confessional’s door and itching for
some tale, some yarn, some anecdote of unadulterated sin. I wouldn’t be
surprised if he was a reformed con man who had sold aphrodisiacs or perpetual
motion machines. Or a repentant banker who had bundled junk bonds, sub-prime
mortgages and high-risk insurance policies into kosher derivatives. But he
better not be taping with a recorder.
“You
know, buddy, never confessed before so you can imagine I got lots to say, but
of course ain’t got much time. So here we go if you don’t mind. Well, of
course, even if you do, what can you do about it? To start with something
simple, I’ve embezzled money. Oh, not from a bank or a high-tech company, no sir.
That’d be dull and cliched as heck, not worth your time. Nope, I stole from a
church and a nice one at that too. Well, ain’t nothing new, but the amount is
something, you know?”
“You
should return the money.”
“Hey,
what’s this bullshit? You’re supposed to say ‘I absolve you in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ or some crap like that. If I
wanted to return the money, what the hell am I doing here confessing? Right?
What kind of a priest are you anyway? Don’t you know your only job’s to listen
and to absolve sins? What else are you good for? Anyway, why’d I return the
money? Ha, ha, we’re not talking about chicken feed, if you know what I mean.
You have any stinking idea how much I took? Take a stupid guess. Oh forget it, with
your petty allowances, you’d never seen that much money in your life. What’d
priests know about money anyway? Hell, man, I bought a mansion with a marble
hall, a wine cellar, an outdoor pool and complete automation, you know, with
the latest hi-tech gizmos. I also bought a Lamborghini Gallardo even though I
ain’t into racing. But hey, makes me look macho. Well, you know, helps to pick
up chicks, I mean nice ones. Hell, I enjoyed every penny of it, as I’m sure
you’d if you got the money. Not that you’ll ever see so much money, you poor
pitiful man. But you probably understand indulgence, right?”
“If
you’re trying to make me jealous, you’ve failed. Come, face me and we’ll talk,
man to man. I want to know why you chose me for your hide-and-seek.” I peeked through
the screen but the shadow doubled over with laughter and began choking before
calming down.
“Father,
I sinned. I got two mistresses and enjoy every minute with them. I made love to
a minor—”
I
opened the confessional’s half-hinged door and slipped out of the seat. I
stepped on an insect and tiptoed into the hallway, where the statuettes of
Peter, Paul and John guarded the Creation fresco in which a chip on the wall
removed the serpent’s head. I wanted to open the confessional’s other door, mark
out the fangs and two-prong tongue and squeeze the serpent-neck.
A door
slammed, then footsteps echoed throughout the sanctuary. I scared away a rat
and dashed down the hallway, past frescos of the Passover, the Passion, the
Resurrection, and the Pentecost. I stepped into the sanctuary, where on the
left wall a crucified-Jesus statuette stared down at the altar. I bypassed the
altar and skipped down the marble steps. I sprinted down the aisle between
cherry-wooded pews, while beyond the benches, under candlelight, the mosaic
windows flaunted Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension scenes. Claw-like
shadows darkened the multicolored windowpanes to overlay a second scene and
cast phantoms onto the aisle and pews.
A draft
wafted through the aisle. A screech, a thump and several clangs echoed through
the sanctuary.
“Damn
it,” Father Jones said. “Someone poked your eyes out, you clumsy fool? Get a
new pair of eyes, man. Don’t you know it’s against the law to walk without
eyes? Ouch, oh my poor and innocent back.”
When I
reached the entrance, Father Jones was moaning on the floor beside a golden
chalice while, near the door, holy water dripped from the baptized donation
box. The priest rubbed his back and took out a flask of whiskey. He gulped down
a mouthful and winked as if a mosquito had stung his eyelid. “Didn’t like your
advice, did he? Well, don’t worry, the important thing is you heard his story.
Oh, by the way, just between you and me, one priest to another, was it
interesting? Visiting a prostitute? Cheating the IRS? Stealing intellectual
property? Oh, come on, you can tell me.”
I
helped Father Jones get up and sidestepped his whiskey breath. I ran through
the candlelit foyer past the Madonna’s icons and exited the main entrance. The
humid night air slammed into my face while a fly landed on the back of my hand.
I flung it away, stepped out of the archway, and skipped down the steps into
the graveyard. No footsteps, no shadows, only a raven cawing on a headstone.
I took
out the flashlight and highlighted several headstones. The raven shrieked and
flew into the fog. I stepped onto the earth searching for life among the dead,
but only found the stench of rotten eggs mingling with the epitaphs.
The
most generous person… Worked the hardest in the office… An inspiration for
others… A pious man… Beloved son… Born April 1, 1979… September 2, 2007…
I felt
I had awakened into the wrong city, the wrong year, the wrong dream. If I
hadn’t heard the confession, I would’ve been more peaceful, ignorant of theft,
fraud and statutory rape. Blessed be the ignorant.
Past
the headstones, a fence stood at the ledge. Beyond the fence, below the hill,
Gilead’s houses slumbered in the evening, while the town hall’s Tower of Babel
pierced heavenward through the fog.
I came
to Gilead only wishing to find Camellia, to know that she was safe, that she
was well. I wanted her to break free from her nameless lover’s pull but would
rather she orbit around the married man than enter the black hole of her father
Donald Larsen, that fugitive on the run from one Ponzi scheme to another. Under
her father, Camellia had tasted enough pain and shouldn’t have to help him
escape to Mexico or some Caribbean island, where on his beachfront mansion’s
porch he would enjoy coladas and massages while his victims must dine in soup
kitchens.
In the
distance, above Memphis, neon lights against the fog hinted at the
bankruptcies, the foreclosures, the layoffs, and the Pyramid schemes powering
the land. But in front of me, a piece of paper taped to a cracked headstone was
fluttering in the wind as if thumbing its nose at the heavenly shimmer. I
stepped over a decomposing squirrel and scattered the flies. I grabbed the
note, on which a smiley face was drawn above Camellia’s name.
While I
glanced beyond the graveyard and pondered on the connection between the penitent and Camilla, Father Jones called from
the entrance, “Don’t forget about this memory thingy. Seems like it might
reveal something about Pastor Whitfield’s disappearance.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About
the Author:
Leonard Seet is the author of the novel Meditation On Space-Time and the
non-fiction The Spiritual
Life. Through his writings, he probes the dynamics of existence,
including human consciousness, good and evil, and rationality and spirituality.
His articles appear on Blogging Authors.
While working overseas as Project Director for a consumer
electronics company, Leonard came upon a parchment, which he had drafted in
college after booing a novel’s ending. The chicken-scratches had begun to fade,
but he succeeded in deciphering the text. The writing was amateurish, but the
plot had potential. So, to relieve work stress, he began rewriting the story,
along the way learning the art of the trade. Several years later, he resigned
from the company to write short stories and literary novels.
His favorite novels include The
Brothers Karamozov, War and Peace, 1984, The Stranger, and The Road. And his favorite
non-fictions include New Seeds of
Contemplation, Moral Man and
Immoral Society, The Creative
Mind, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, and The
Competitive Advantages of Nations.
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