"Still, they must have found the plane!"
"No, you know perfectly well that those islands are brought above and
below sea level at different times. After you left, the island was
brought below the water, and your plane was lost in the sea, no traces
were found."
I was confused, "Onan, does that mean that I was the cause of the war?"
"From a certain point of view, yes."
He was about to say something else to me when we saw in the distance a
group of about ten Munams coming toward us, being at that time a few
miles away. He then told me that he must leave me again for the present,
as he could not interfere directly with my mission. They bid me goodbye
and I did the same to them, and then they walked down the opposite side
of the hill that the Munams were approaching from. As they walked, they
slowly disappeared, until they were gone without a trace, for even their
footprints had faded to nothing.
During the time between Onan and Zimri's departure and the Munam's
arrival, I was left to myself for a period of inward meditation, an
activity that you have probably concluded that I am often given to,
which is entirely the case. This new revelation was very troubling to
me, that somehow I was the very cause of the destruction of humanity
during the great wars, while also the kinsman redeemer over 500 years
later, who was prophesied to be the one to bring humanity back into
balance with nature, or to thrust it forever off the edge of existence
into the damnation of the ice ages. As I told you in the beginning, I am
written in the pages of history as the destroyer of humanity, though if
it is just or not, I am not able to judge. The name of Jehu will forever
be a ripple on the surface of the waters of life, and when it is heard
or spoken, the only feeling that it will bring will be hatred and
disgust. If only mortals could see below the surface of the waters of
life, for just as the ocean can be deceiving on its surface, so can
life. Time is like an ocean, but when one looks upon it, what often
happens is that all one sees is the present reflected back in its
surface, and the eyes are shielded from what lies below, focusing
instead on the surface, which is so trivial compared to the abyss which
supports it. When one only sees the surface reflected back, then history
and its wisdom lose their meaning, and one sees not the past but only
the present. What I mean is this: if you look to the past to justify
your actions rather than to guide them, you will not see the truths
contained therein, but only what your presuppositions already were
before you looked, and your ignorance will be reinforced rather than
repudiated. Wisdom is the ability to see the past separate from the
present, but when one sees the destruction of humanity, he will see only
me, his vision being shielded from the true cause of it all, history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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