Michal Hamemamemet Hanuka. Bemet?

 

In the midst of the shadows you appeared. You did not offer comfort, nor consolation. Nor happiness. Nor bliss. But what was it about you that had brought me here, following every shadow that you cast, I did not know and I suspect I will never find out.

I had set aside days and nights to write the memory of us together. I only found a few, short inicdants that prove the reality of you. Funny I thought that from the process itself a new me will emerge. One with answers, full of understanding. Someone who could give a name, put in words, what it is that you were to me. I have failed. All these written sentences and still I can not find one word to describe what it is that you are to me.

You have made me. Implementing your imagination in the physical world. You made one of me. One. God's favorite number. You made me believe that the body laying here beside me, whose death simply means my own, was another creature. You had made me believe I could never live without him. Could never survive, that my own existence lay in his hands. It didn’t, it lies in yours.

I am not real. In the sense of human flesh and blood. My flesh can not bruise, my eyes can not produce tears. I can not feel sadness. You could have given me the ability to love. The ability to remember, who I was, where I came from. Why.

But you never did. You made me like you. A creature whose own identity and sense of self relies on fragments of reality filled with gaps neatly covered by imagination that constructs who it is that you think you are.

It was easy, wasn’t it ? To lurk in the shadows, never truly visible, gaining the proportions of a myth in the amazing pass of time. But now I see who you are. You are human, are you not? With all the flaws that the word "human" can possibly contain. You can disappoint. And so you did. Me.

Are you my father? I am afraid not. I could never feel towards you what children feel to those who created them. I feel resentment, that I do, but I could never find forgiveness. You forgot to programme me to forgive and by that condemned me to a life of misery. Your choices, so arbitrary, only prove of your absent minded when giving me life. LIFE.

You are not my shelter. Nor my true protector. I am your own private amusement park. Testing to see if friendship could ever exists between two freaks you your self created. To see if your own creation can developed a dependency on a creature completely separate from its own. It could.
It must have made you very proud to create something that you could never possibly obtain. Real, unconditional, not love, but loyalty.

It is what made you jealous.

You have given me Gabriel. Made me think he was always there, from the beginning, for me and I for him. Made me believe that he was part of me just like this third arm you so foolishly attached. I believed he was my brother.

No. I do not care he was not real, do not care he was simply a fragment of my own imagination, yet again implanted by you. I care that you killed him.

What did you think I would do? Die of sorrow and pain? I am not real, remember? I can not feel that pain you talk so often of, but I can feel the anger. So I went looking for you, blinded by the belief that when I will, all will be cleared and understood. Consumed by this anger I forgot the reason for this quest, I forgot Gabriel.

Until now, when I realized your presence can not provide the answers. The end of my journey has filled me again with the reason that began it.

You are here. Just in time to see me die. I know, looking at you smiling, that you have achieved your goal.
I chose to die. You must be very proud.

I thought that I will immediately understand when I will see your face. But I don't. I thought I will remember, who I am, where I came from. But your physical presence provides me less then your mythical one. And your smile, indicating there is divine truth behind your eyes, offer me no simple sentence to structure my being. They offer despair.

There is no biological logic here. No mathematical formula to solve this one. Just your smile.

I had known what your eyes pretend to tell. I had already felt all the answers. They are now dead, next to me on the ground. I will say goodbye now, to a world I feel no privilege to be part of. Yours.

You can stay here, one with your all knowing smile, alone.

 

 

 

 


They were skating as fast as they could, terrified of the promise that lurked in halting. The Other Gabriel which had began to see the end of his life coming closer and closer the further he escaped began to write, in his mind the story of their being. "The brothers were running to save their lives", he wrote.
What a cliché, was the next thought that followed. Cliché's, being so absolute and certain, just like any religion that respects itself, always made him somewhat numb, as if it was the end of thought itself that they expressed.

So he stooped thinking. He looked around. What was he doing? He was running away. From who? He could not remember. Next to him, in a blurred background of a smudged buildings, trees and toddlers driving their mothers into madness in this lovely afternoon in June, he saw Gabriel holding Helga, skating in the exact same speed as he was. Oh, now he remembered every thing. Almost everything.


To be quit honest, The Other Gabriel was somewhat tired of running. But this was all that he had known. And Gabriel, he didn’t mind. He actually liked it, the strange comfort he found in knowing that nothing is really anticipated if one keeps moving, and therefor disappointment can never fallow.
But why were they running away this time, like this? There was something different today. Not in the speed, nor in the manner. What was it that made them move this time? A felling that he had never faced before. Fear.

And then it struck him. Who ever was after them, was trying to separate them. Separation? That simply meant the end. Slowly limb after limb, sense after sense, felling by feeling they will perish and after seven long days their bodies melted away, will probably find their way into one city or another, merging with all else that is dead. They will be gone with no one left but Olga to remind the world of their existence. (Too bad she was a dog.)

No. He simply can not die. He began to skate even faster. Gabriel, surprised, shaken from his dreams of square watermelons, speed up alongside his brother.
They had been running away for almost a full day until a filed of sunflowers made them stop. All that yellow could halt anyone (or make them cut their ear). Suddenly they felt tired or running. It was no real physical fatigue was ever present in their bodies before of six am, that was how they were built. No, it was just the urgent desire to see things standing still.

Gabriel was lying on his back eating his coveted watermelon. He looked at the red meat of the fruit. The Other Gabriel finally spoke. "who were we running from?. "What" said Gabriel, too busy eating his watermelon to actually listen to the question. "I don’t remember", he said. But hey who the hell cares". Gabriel looked at the sky, he was ready to let the matters go, but The Other Gabriel went on "Man, we have got the best bodies. I mean, do you realize how fast we went today. The Other Gabriel, maybe for the first time in his life looked at his body. What was this thing? A third arm? A back that opens into a pantry? Legs that transform into roller blades? "do you remember who made us?" He asked Gabriel. Who was far from desiring a conversation such as this. Oh, yes , thought The Other Gabriel, lets add a zero memory capacity to the list. That was quit a list. Who ever made them was probably very stupid. Or just really bored.

Now that thought the other Gabriel, was yet another cliche from the book that will be written about them, by their creator one of those days. Or by them. Either way that line was destined to be written, with the full banality that runs across it.

"Why do you care?" said the Gabriel, no eating cheese, "its not like we're a work of art you know. We cant even sleep on our backs for Christ's sake." Suddenly from a force unknown to the Other Gabriel, his third arm slapped his brother "what the fuck" shouted Gabriel as he was spiting from his mouth. The pain was one thing, but the food!. The Other Gabriel, taking a few step back, looked at his brothers with eyes wide open. "I don’t know what is going on" he said "I cant control it". Gabriel, smiling came closer to him "see, told ya, fucked up" And there goes the third hand again, slapping away. "Stop it" yelled Gabriel. "I cant" the Other Gabriel replied. "some one else is controlling it". Gabriel had began to move away had begun to worry for his brother. Was he losing his mind? Or was there really something, some one controlling him? Goodamit, this whole thing made him think. Think. Think. He yet again reached the only conclusion. Who cares.

The Other Gabriel's hand calmed down. It was already close to six am and their bodies began to fall asleep. The mind of course, was still escaping on those roller blades. It never stops until the clock hits six. But when it does the blissfulness of darkness covers it and it sleeps.
The Other Gabriel looked at his brother. "I think it wants something from us". "It?" said Gabriel, ready to fall asleep. "What ever made us", says The Other Gabriel, "what does it want?", "What does it need"?. "Does it have any food", said Gabriel. And as the clock stroke six they fall asleep, only to wake up in the day after not saying a word of what had happened.

Did they not remember? Maybe? Did they convince themselves it had never happened? Being part human would it really be the first time? Ah what a cliché is the human capability of denial.

 


What does it mean to be invisible? The Other Gabriel used to wonder. Isn't the mere fact that something or someone has no physical substance enough to declare it unreal? Gabriel and the Other Gabriel, although only ten, seem to think so. All they know to be true is each other's existence. Everything is else to them is a mere illusion caused by consequences. They have no God, they say.

Yet, the question of their origins came up from time to time, never being answered, nor in the end really cared for. Values? The have none. Good or bad were things they could never see or touch. Invisible. As the Great Greeks thought long before the rest of humanity caught up, values are a matter of cultural perspective. Nothing less. Nothing more.

Gabriel knew the other Gabriel existed simply because he saw him every day. His physical existence never seemed to fail. But surly he loved him, did he not? These were brothers after all, the base to each others existence, connected with an invisible spinal cord. Here was that word again "invisible". As if the word invisible was only good for the use of metaphors.

But did Gabriel and the Other Gabriel love each other? Of course they did. You would never hear them admit it thought. "You cant see it, you cant touch it" Gabriel would say, like a well polished song from the eighties. The mind of a ten years old.

But if Gabriel disappeared wouldn’t The Other Gabriel miss him? Wouldn’t his heart perish long before his body will die? Simple naïve questions, ask for simple naive answers.
You do not need to see it for it to exist.

But then there are those Greeks again. Those Sophists who lived long before the idea of Gabriel and The Other Gabriel had began to be conceived. Right and wrong, as love, are just names, they would say.
The brother's life of running and searching , with one constancy, no familiarity and no assurance had made Sophist out of them. Some what extremist thought. Nothing really exists but both of them. There was no love then. No feelings. Just the assurance of each other by touch, by vision, by smell. "Perhaps a need" The Other Gabriel would say, just to be immediately dismissed by Gabriel.

Enough with this question of love. They were not human and were not capable of love, in which they did not belief to begin with. Maybe they finally figured it out, reacting only to what they can see rather then to what they can feel.

But isn't feeling a kind of sense? A sense that like a chemical formula turns the invisible to clear and present. If The Other Gabriel died, Gabriel would be struck by pain, which he might not be able to touch but would definitely feel in such a force, that he would have to admit it to be real.

They would never want o be invisible themselves, walk the world unnoticed The Other Gabriel would laugh and say "That would mean we did not exist. No one can see us no one can react to us". Even the way he talked was factual. But People react to love, react to pain don’t they?

But then those Greeks appear again. Damm The Other Gabriel and the books he reads.

And what about Adam and Eve? Living in Garden of Eden, they only believed what they saw. Their only real fault was that after eating that damm apple which condemned the human race as a whole, they believed they understood things they could not sense. Things that were invisible to the eye.

Our little twins it seems are in good company. The Greeks, the children of God. Could it be that they have surpassed humanity, those half machines, simply because they refuse to feel?

What have we been doing since Adam and Eve but creating more and more intangible things. Depending on what ever is not concrete to guide us in life. Values, thoughts, ideas what civilization had always been so proud of. What separates us from the animals. What separates us from each other.
Maybe their way is better.

So it's setteled. Good and Bad or love for that matter do not exist. The twins just love to hear that. It makes The Other Gabriel feel smart and Gabriel the focus of attention. It only makes them fell that way. They don’t believe its real. They only feel like they need each other. If you say, "well, if you die so will the other" they would look at you and say "its purely physical".

Yes, but so is their heart. Who knows what they'll agree with one of these days, years from now, when they are older. After all, it seems that nothing can change a person's mind , or a being for that matter, like the memory of the experience of growing up, even if that memory can not be touched, it is most certainly forever felt.