The Mission (A True Story)

The mission that the angels had been sent on seemed clear enough. They were to settle in and give guidance to the material world in all its forms.

A difficulty however soon presented itself. Having knowledge of things as they are in themselves and not as they exist in relation to each other, the angelic swarm lacked the ability to distinguish relative differences of size and of distance.

They colonised arbitrarily. Some would inhabit a city, an island, or a mountain range while others might settle for the internal organs of some animal or human, or a cobweb, or small plant, an old man or a horsefly. Their innate inability to make comparisons meant that each was satisfied with its new home. So there were not only guardian angels of mountains and rivers, but also angels of the oesophagus, lower gut, of certain mushrooms, of leaf mould, of clouds, dogs, and daffodils.

For many years this system of direct guidance worked satisfactorily. But angels, originating as they do in the transcendental world, are essentially contemplative by nature. The material world held little interest for them, and the work was repetitive.

So in time, and so as to minimise the need for their continual intervention, these angelic guides developed an ingenious method of safeguarding order and continuity in the world. They implanted memory into their hosts. There was memory appropriate to rocks, to water, to air, to plants and to creatures. All these implants initiated and governed the ways of behaviour in all things, and found expression in the patterns and rhythms of everyday life.

However, over time unforeseen consequences of this delegation of authority began to take shape. The original, internal system of angelic guidance became, little by little, replaced by the worldly interactions themselves.

And so the angels and all their labours ceased to be of use. The implants they had worked so hard to develop, now redundant, were dismantled, and the memories, names and laws so carefully bestowed on their wards dissolved as so much mist.

Everything changed and yet nothing changed. Emptied out, the world danced to a new tune and didn’t miss a beat.

PB.

Published on the occasion of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral at The Broadway Bookshop, 22 Sept - 1 Dec 2022.

HHBHB

He had been here before, maybe even many times…. He had seen this very spot before... over on the other side of the city, near the long avenue where he knew the apartment stood... Where he believed his parents lived.

Quite recently, he had decided on a course of action. He would walk to the apartment and make the visit. But the phone call from the corner of the street had been answered in a confusing way and so he had had to walk back… and now this… here… once again.

At least there was a familiarity about what was taking place… the phone call could be made again and the journey undertaken again. The route could be retraced… although he had found that each time he set out there seemed to be aspects to it that led him off course, down streets and into neighbourhoods that were unfamiliar to him… and it was always only in the distance, through a gap in the buildings say, or on a distant hillside, that he would catch sight of his destination. Perhaps he should postpone the visit, the walk across the city… wait until a reliable path was found.

Or perhaps... just call off the whole plan right now... for here, in what he was seeing again and recognising again, lay perhaps a solution to the frustrating cycle of attempt and failure. Here before his eyes was something… a stable spot, that had the potential to carry him back to where he belonged… if only he could hold it steady, now, in his mind, not moving one inch…. still there... still there...
Now he’s gone.

Now he’s here.

PB, 2013.

Published in Impossible Documents ed. by Terrence Smith, 53 Beck Road.