The Secret Joy

I take this album with me on walks. I walk from my apartment to the center of town and take a different route back. This way, I pass by a few different sites. None of them are particularly remarkable. The first is a small creek with a sprinkling of garbage, from a discarded cooler to a derelict appliance whose function I can only guess. When it's dark out, I come here to stare at its black waters. I stand there and wonder how long the creek's been there, if it's natural or not. I let it teach me by imagining my body decomposing in its waters, letting its little waves lap at my corpse as maggots and tadpoles swim through me.

The second place I like to pass on the way home is a small Catholic church. On the corner of the street it sits on they've erected a memorial to all aborted fetuses with a small garden and a statue of the Virgin Mary. When it's cold enough to freeze, they cover the plants with white plastic and the sight transforms to one of alien rocks. At Christmas time, they adorn the wooden shrine housing the Virgin Mary with Christmas lights, her stone skin transfigured by rainbow lights of copper wire and cheap plastic. Maybe it's just enough luminance to ward off the crowds of demons that creep towards her and her unborn children.

The final place I always end up is a small prayer garden. It's nothing more than a circular fountain. I bow before walking up its short steps. A couple of months ago I tried to count all of its bricks. A circle of around 580 individually placed bricks forms the edge of the fountain. Before I sit I like to stare at the water. It's completely still. The fountain is almost completely overgrown, plants are always shooting out of it and it's always full of leaves. In the daylight, the water is a sickly green. I'm sure there's something swimming in it but I've never seen the slightest movement. I sit there to meditate, if closing my eyes and being still counts as meditating.

To begin my meditation, through the darkness of my eyelids I envisage nine drawings from the Sinister Tarot of Christos Beest, the pseudonym of Richard Moult. They're nine different drawings that I've chosen to represent the Dark Gods of Dr. Jonathan Hubbur. Atazoth, who stands in white behind his opfer. Diabolus, holding her red book alongside her accomplice with his pyramid head. Shugara, in all of her abhorrent beauty. Naos, working diligently at his manuscript. Budsturga, who gazes from his painting with the eyes of an owl. Binan Ath, who sees nothing through the bloody holes of her eyes, clutching her octahderon. Velpecula, beckoning me to join her in her paradise of pleasures. Noctulius, holding their dagger at my chest. Azanigin, dancing wildly before the arrival of his Final Harvest.

I cycle my imagination through all nine of these drawings until they start to move on their own, as if they were escaping from the colors which depict them. I think of my past, my future, and the coldness of the stones I'm sitting on. Slowly, a diagram starts to form. Is it the Numogram with its arithmetic zones and channels or the Tree of Wyrd with its seven gates and bleak corridors? Is it something completely new? The Dark Gods have yet to allow me to see it completely, but it's beginning to emerge from out of me with their assistance. In the endless spaces between them I begin to see it, the Backwards Dark, the Body Without Organs, the Acausal, the Eternal Return, its gleaming black infinitude. And just as quickly it's all gone.

What remains when I open my eyes are the words of Mary Webb rendered beautifully through my earbuds. They are as secret as the black cloud-shadows sliding along the midsummer grass; with a breathtaking majesty they pass.

661 words.

Listen to the album here