In the city of Baltimore in a cemetery, inside a tomb, on a board of oak wood six feet high by one wide, which still gave off the scent of the essence of autumn, and in it had drawn the silhouette of a crow flying and preparing for the attack, was being held a ritual resurrection of a dead man in the hands of an unlikely duo: a scientist graduated with honors at a prestigious university, and an alchemist, both brothers, and twin brothers actually, who in spite of being like two drops of water, were as dissimilar in their ideas as Thanatos and Hypnos, but within that same discrepancy that had led them to separate one day, there was something in common that made them to unite: the idea of being able to resuscitate a person combining traditional science with alchemy. There was also another reason for this: they both loved literature, especially poetry, and during their lives, everyone had felt lonely and melancholy during their lives. So, they decided to join one day to bring back to life a single person whom both had admired equally, a poet who had died centuries ago, corresponded to the name of Jack Von Ludowin. Myself.
Inside the tomb, the scientist brother brought all the measuring devices he could get as a modern stethoscope; a device that he redesigned and that emitted a sound according to the beating of the heart; a thermometer to measure my body temperature when I went back to life again, and a few syringes to then check the state of my blood and my physical health if everything went well. I think he also thought that through his knowledge in the area of psychology, he could check my mental health and even my psychological deterioration. The alchemist brother on his part, brought a cauldron and a very thick and old book which he was reading as if verifying some instructions for the next ritual. In his backpack other things of my before personal possessions. He closed the thick tome, pulled out a thin, modern book from his backpack and exclaimed, "All prepared, dear brother, all prepared."
"Then we can start, brother?" the scientist asked.
"Yes. Everything is doned, except for one thing" replied the alchemist.
"And what will that be"?*
"Well... A small detail is missing. My alchemy book suggests a couple of essential ingredients when it comes to reviving anyone who has left this world no matter how long ago. Fortunately, we could make several, as the blood of a relative of the poet, one of his most valuable possessions and even skin of those who wants to bring him back to this world, but still something important, something that fortunately is within us.
"How difficult it is to bring back the dead, brother. As in life they were unfortunately people who clung to material things, in death they cling to others and to bring them back to this world. It seems that you have to cheat them or encourage them to defend what in their earthly lives they could not to let escape. But tell me, dear brother, what do we need?"
"I could not have said it better, to think that you are the scientist skeptical of the magic and spirituality of man. But finally, we need a bone of Jack Von Ludowin, fortunately we can find them here in his grave" and saying that, the alchemist desecrated my grave by removing one of my bones, placing it inside the cauldron with boiling water, he mixed it with blood whoever my relative was, their skin and one of my possessions. While the alchemist mixed all that, the scientist recited a part of one of my poems
"The gears of all the stars,
lights that burn and die in a vacuum,
they make the universe work like a machine
creator of beauty that is death and destruction;
there is chaos in my head,
a loneliness that invades every corner of my heart,
I become one with the universe when like him
I got darker than the black abyss…
Hello, void of mine".
When the scientific brother finished reciting my poem, the alchemy had already result. The tomb enclosure filled with fatuous fire as if they were stars giving color to the black mantle of the night sky, first there were as many of them as there are stars in the winter sky, then, it seemed the summer sky chipped from perseides like a black covered blackboard by chalk powder of various colors in all directions. And how did this feel my spirit that little by little was acquiring flesh? At first I felt like I was a liquid, and that liquid that was myself went in all directions and was clenched in several corners at once; I felt pain and heat in dozens of parts of me that was myself at the same time, then I understood that this was my new blood running through my new veins, and when my soul reached the brain, I recovered my fears, my nightmares, my dreams, my loves, my hatreds and my passions... All returned to me. The fire and the impetus of my spirit which died naturally with my body centuries ago. The hands and the hair of the angels that kept me in the other life released me, and I felt how their celestial tears fell on my cheeks, as if they regretted that I had lost all the finality of death to face again all the possibilities offered by the lifetime.
The brothers looked at me with triumph in their face and took me out of the cemetery to their home, a huge house where the scientist found that everything in me, as my organs, my blood, my brain and my psyche were functioning normally… It was surprising.
"This is the greatest achievement of science!" Exclaimed the scientist.
"Or rather, of alchemy, you've only been in charge of checking his vital signs, dear brother," corrected the other.
"Good… brother. You will remember that sometimes our experiments had worked half-way..." the scientist brother replied in a quiet voice and continued: "Do you remember our mother? She did not remain like Mr. Von Ludowin, She… Her body…well, she became ashes after being returned to life in the form of a deformed beast".
"Certainly brother" replied the alchemist with a melancholy touch, "at least now we do have the philosopher's stone on our side".
The two brothers admitted to being admirers of my writings, and they also confessed that these had endured through the passage of time, and that my name was iconic, not only in a small town in the United States, but also that my name had traveled to various countries through different languages in different societies, that what I had written in my short life span of barely forty years had transpired to the present and that, therefore, an uncountable number of people like these two had inspired by me. Their souls had found a kind of reciprocal crystal in my own. My soul had become a kind of watermark on paper, which was palpable by all my readers over the decades. It seems as if the human soul was actually part of the same thing that millennia ago was first divided into two to tens, hundreds, thousands, millions... all at the whims of God. And that thing created an infinity of souls that feel and experience different feelings and sensations at the same time all around the world, and when one wants to feel the pleasure or pain of another, it seeks to become the other side of the same coin as that one. soul from which you can observe that your happiness, or pain, perversity, melancholy or death wishes are superior to your own.
Myself, a writer whose death came early after having seen the death of each and every one of the few human beings I had loved in my first life. Death played a trick on me sending me back to life. The brothers then told me about their loneliness, and I told them about mine. The world in that house turned into a turkish sea where everything was swallowed up by the foam of the waves that reached the shore sneaking out of the mouths of the three when telling our pathetic anecdotes.
Loneliness and misery are timid cherubs that tinkle in the pupil of each of us, barely visible, but that evoke the deepest and most regrettable of ourselves. Solitude and sadness hit the beach like waves and return to the sea, like two sexes, like us when we dare to say something that shows.
I spent ten years in the new modern society, I meet the technology which the scientist brother gave me and explained with patience: televisions, cars, cell phones, computers, internet, GP's; entire libraries that fit in a plastic or fiberglass tablet or what the devil would have manufactured according to their perverse intentions so that we would lose the familiarity and romanticism of going to a large library or having one's own at home. The postmodern world was more full of facilities and comforts than artifacts that supported needs. Although the telescope was an extension of the eye of the human being, what I saw in this society was the extension of the need for ease of which the human being was getting more and more engrossed in sin.
Almost nobody in this time in which I have been revived seems that they pray in the temple of their minds, un fact the body is the only temple that remains, but in some cases, it is turned into a house of lust, or a temple where if something were to enter, it would be profane and the temple would be cursed or at least corrupt. No one climbs the ladder to heaven, all stumble and fall unknowingly into Hades. Wine is still very sweet, but vices are no longer sweet, they are sins where they are reflected more and more and more deficiencies. All suffer from the heaviest and thickest individual loneliness to be trampled by the loneliness of the most pathetic individuals.
The brothers wanted me to know this world, because my loneliness of yesteryear seemed extremely sweet and pleasant to the eyes and to the "touch" when they or one of my "fans" perceived my poems and my stories more with their hearts and souls than with their eyes. But I have not found any sweet solitude in these times. It seems that all loneliness are now conditioned by some means. It is impossible to be alone in this world, there is no time for oneself, and if you take time for yourself, you will be called once and for all as "an egoist". Nobody is truly alone most because everyone is connected, there is no way to feel better with oneself and with our own demons that through reflection or catharsis of the soul through art, at a time when the rain and the sounds of the the whole world seems as if they had been swallowed by the torrential waters that fall on our faces making up our tears but washing our pains in turn, as does the autumn with the summer before the winter mantle falls on the world . No one is alone because everyone can talk to whoever they want at the time they feel like it, and likewise, they can be contacted by anyone at the time when more with oneself we need to be. I hate this time, but at the same time I like it because there are those who now deal with it and with themselves, those are destined in a big way: to triumph or to have a serene death in a worldly glory that will not exist but whose lives someone will remember and that is To Be immortal.
I notified the brothers through a letter that we would meet again in my grave. I will take with me a couple of bottles of wine and letters and thoughts from my readers of this time.
The brothers closed the tomb after a couple of hours of conversation and acceptance of my decision. I asked them not to revive anyone else anymore because the dead mans do not want to die again because we have reached a definitive state, while the living must face all the beautiful or horrible vicissitudes that life will bring them or will shamelessly take them out on their faces .
I'll keep a couple of candles, a few bottles of wine and some letters that I'll read and another that I'll write until my old friend takes me one more time with her to the eternal dream.
Jack Von Ludowin, poet who saw the horribleness of life, death and again life.