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The Woman had left Marcos, but he had not left her. Her mind felt stained with his cold reason. As she moved about the complex, she passed many a child At Peace, running about in a disorderly fashion, in lure of being caught. One child playing The Collector and; adorned in a torn grey sheet and with a filthy brown bag in hand, ran about trying to collect the other children, enticing them into his snare; fouling rhyme and melody with deception and treason.
She sat in still wonder for a moment and balanced her conscious thought. A feeling in her stomach was rife with ill-being. She had, since the inception of this city, accepted how her lover had thought and in many a time once past; sensualised over the outcome of his mind, stupefied at first by his mania, then lustful at the force at which it tore many an idea to shreds and reduced many a man to an argumentative end; ungrateful shamed losers. She had, through the course of their relationship, supported and endured the decisions they had brought upon themselves, but of a great many had been directed solely by him. One decision, though, of which, was of her own accord, and of her own will, gave him reason to question no more, the wilful acquiescence of his partner and suggested gravely upon her, abidance to his every word.
The Woman pulled a plastic crate from beside her and sat herself comfortably in front of the children At Peace. What a splendorous thing to do, to sit and watch a child simply being. That idea on its own, for an adult, would never suffice. Some description, some adjective, some state, would need to be attached to this simple idea, of being; a label or an imaginary figment of desire, the delusion of intellectual and or spiritual complexity.
“In being!” she exclaimed in her mind, “a child simply is. There is no doubt, no mal-perception. The child simply is.”
It can be of many things and many temporal states, but as long as the child is being, it has not the burden of conscious buggering; or what Marcos described as, At Distraction, to firstly interrupt its play and secondly to brand this play with an illusionary third person state, a state that is outside of being, one that is transitory, brailed in collective conscious; the state of absence from self; the state of adherence to individualised collectivism; the state of being different whilst being of equality; the state of marginalised being; the state of unbeing.
“All things are, when they are being,” she said out loud.
Some children turned, pulled from their play; smiling wildly, then returned in under a breath to their focus; mind speaking to muscle and tendon, to shift and turn on a whim, the energy directed from the sub-state, flowing from their mind’s eye to their toes, collecting in their knees and spiring to their fingertips as they dodged and wove from the chaotic flux of bodies and pressing off of obstacles that maligned their path.
It had, in an instant, become abundantly clear; or relative to her, the science of one. That being, the teachings and thoughts that were commanded by Marcos; what, in fact, she had been cloudlessly practicing in her class and disguising her misunderstanding as, in the moments alone with her lover. When a child is At Peace, a child is At One.
“What irony,” she thought, “that we put such great effort into something that in its essence is the absence of effort and that we lose ourselves in the intellectualisation of the absence of thought.”
A wave of dopamine released by this revelation brought her to an image of her lover, his physique; chiselled, his eyes; veneered, her state; wilful submittal. She felt lust; she was lust and she and her lover were one.
She smiled a grace upon herself, an imaginary weight shedding from her shoulders and the gravity of au courant burden lifting her out of and away from her conscious trappings. She watched; distant from herself, as one of The Children; masked as The Collector, pulled from his filthy bag a tiny thing.
What he did next was not what had been done before. He laid the tiny thing in the centre of the group and walked away into the cold shadows that lined the walls. The Woman saw the drama unfold, watching enticingly as the play unravelled into something more unsettling.
As the figure vanished, a sharp cold breath became her and a shiver ran her spine as some dark and vile spectre crept on her soul. The sensation was unconscious and it swept over her and seemed to brush over her like a Cimmerian breeze.
The sound of metal clanging made The Children conscious to the figure’s absence. Each Child looked at one another in naive assumption that the game had ended. They gathered around the toy in a large circle; The Children locking arms and peering over in wondrous curiosity. The circumference of the circle held nine Children and behind them and through their feet, the remainder of the group scuttled, battled, tugged, and even climbed to get a closer look.
The older larger Children took the front ring, their greater strength holding the younger more agile Children at bay. One of the youngest Children; a small boy named Donal, crawled beneath the legs of one the larger meaner boys and broke rank. He moved about in the centre of the group like a grain of sand circling about a sink in the flow of water, moving into the drain. Here, the flow of water was the Children’s curiosity. He, in the middle, was swept up and now conditioned by their conscious desire to fall upon the object and bring it to the surface.
The bigger Children took to a new state; At Group. Their unconscious states feasted on one primal action; consume. Logic and reason gave out to the madness of a bloodthirsty pack primed to lynch a weakened vulnerable prey. They pulled at his tiny body, thrusting him this way and that; putting out their legs so he tripped and scraped his hands on the gravel as he protected his face from the impact on the ground.
They taunted and jeered as he lay foetal, being brushed about like a wet cloth by the kicking of their heels. Donal picked himself up, dusted off the dry cement that painted his fine black hair, moved about the inner circle, limping on a twisted ankle and finally stopped an inch from the object, the chanting of The Children deafening now his inner contemplation.
A cheeky smile became him and then he was gone, through The Children’s legs, out into the open courtyard and off through the complex.
“Stupid baby,” said one of the larger boys as he leaned forward to collect the object in one sweep of his hand. As he leaned forward, the circle of Children held tighter to one another.
“It’s just a stupid mirror,” said the boy as he leaned in for closer inspection.
As he did, a gasp escaped from his mouth and a fear stifled the circle of Children. The older boy closed his eyes and released his grip of the other Children coming to a ball on the floor, covering the back of his head.
A large net fell from the centre of the roof and enveloped the whole circle. The Children all came crashing to the floor, kicking and screaming as a grey figure came out of the darkness with a white cord in his hand; pulling tightly so The Children; ensnared in the net, could move neither hand nor foot.
“Live as you love and love as you live, my child all you need is the love that I give. I am The Collector, the keeper of meaning, your link to the past, I free you from being. I am the Collector, the doubt in your mind, the desire in your heart, the peace you can’t find. I am the Collector, your only true friend; never without me, you´re mine till the end” sang the figure in grey, dancing about the circle of weeping children.
“Get this stupid thing off me” shouted the older boy.
The more he struggled, the tighter the net pulled on his body.
The figure in grey limped over to The Woman and sat down beside her; his tiny size sardonic against the backdrop of chaotic and tumultuous screaming that came from the centre of the courtyard. The tiny figure pulled off the grey sheet and dropped the white cord. He smiled at The Woman and walked off into the distance, past the clump of kicking and screaming children.
“Donal,” said The Woman.
He looked over his shoulder, his tiny frame trumped by the grandness of his stare; he nodded and waved to The Woman.
“Yes?” he said wolfishly.
“Will you not let The Children free?” she asked.
“
It is not I who keeps them in a bind my Mother. It is their fear that makes a prisoner of them. And I cannot release them from that” the young boy responded.
Donal skipped off into the complex and thought nothing of what had been. At One; At Being, he simply was, and moved to prepare for his next lesson of the day, where he would be At War.
The Woman lifted herself and went to the aid of The Children entangled in the netting. She freed the group and sent them on their way to their next activities. The Children partitioned into groups of three, some moving to the states of At Work, others At War and the smallest children, At Love.
On her way back to her classroom she tailed a group of three girls, holding hands and skipping along the cobblestone path. Her instinct urged to give caution, warning The Children of their immediate danger playing in such absent mindedness on a slippery oddly shaped path.
A wave of fear erupted to the sensors in her mind and the urge moved her forward in stance, lifting her arm upwards; her index finger pointed in directive straightness.
As she was about to utter a reference of caution, vocalising the word ‘girls’, gravity overcame her, her foot slipped into a crevice and she lost all balance, careening forward and landing on her straightened finger, bending it painfully; not breaking it, just bruising and straining enough to leave a lasting impression.
The girls; having turned upon The Woman’s initial call, went rushing to her aid; in deep concern for their fallen Mother. The Woman cursed wildly, words unbeknownst to The Children, but whose heinous display of emotional dis-governance left them overwhelmed; their senses rattled, their state of being, undone.
The Woman composed herself, the pain from her twisted finger coursing through every fibre of her being; she was now, At Healing.
“Be At Caution Mother, the path without focus is unsure and unsound,” said The Children helping to lift The Woman to her feet.
“Thank you, Children, Mother is welcome to your love and akin to your reason. She was without focus; neither zero nor one. Mother fell into the trappings of distraction. Always At Focus Children, always At One. Now run along, your classes will be commencing any second” she said pulling focus away from the throbbing pain in her hand.
The Children made pace and skipped out of distance and out of sight. The Woman’s finger throbbed horribly, the pain bearable though the irony somewhat tiresome on her sanity. She wouldn’t admit it to herself, but he was right; or at least maybe she could accept that he was part right, after-all one must maintain their victim state in every scene. Every pulse from her finger was a siren sounding to the obvious; when one loses focus, they in turn lose command.
When one starts being in what do has been done then the did one should do is the do left undone.
The Woman entered the class and made her way to the front, seating on a tiny wooden stool too small for her frame. The stool wobbled under her weight but, in fact, she enjoyed this absence from complacency.
Upon Marcos’ teachings was the simple truth that no idea stands without its opposition. That being, when one attains focus in the absence of distraction then how can one know if they have focus, or are; in fact, distracted?
In the ages of past, Marcos would ask how a man could preach of his loyalty if in fact this trait had not come into question; that a man is not loyal as a state of permanence but is in fact; whilst in a state of being, portraying the act of loyalty in a moment. The man could not define himself as being loyal unless maybe he made his bed in a bordello and upon every moment of his being, temptation beckoned his distraction, but he remained hesitant and headstrong with his direction. In this light, he would not be being loyal as much as he would be being At Focus; or At One. All things were zero or one; At Distraction or At Focus.
The same could be said for all adjectives, all colourful post-event descriptive states of being. One could only be At Bravery when it was at that moment that he divorced from At Cowardice and only in that infinitesimal moment would he be At Bravery for the moment his focus shifted and defined new direction, he would be At War; and in the age of conscious splendour where self-introspection was deemed the vice of the intellectually superior, he would no doubt be At Contemplation and from there, either At Expectation or At Disappointment. But whilst attending any or all of these states, one will always be At Focus and to not be such would mean being At Distraction; zero or one.
For The Woman, being At Focus meant she tested her resolve consistently; the wobbling chair helping her to maintain her stability; for as long as the chair wobbled, it hadn’t fallen, therefore she was still on the chair.
The Children started their lesson again with the Collective Creed. As they stood with their faces directed in reflection, connecting with the image and their outward selves, The Woman; casting upon her own eye in the shard of grimy glass in her hand, vanished into dream, At Distraction.
When she peeled away the mirror she was greeted by an old friend, several in fact, but one in particular who made her smile. She hugged the other girl, squeezing her senseless and screeching sharply.
“Whatchya doin’ weirdo, god!!” she exclaimed.
The Woman let go of her friend and the two ran out of the bathroom and burst into the classroom laughing.
“You two are late; again. Sit down. I’ll deal with you after the class” shouted the burly bearded man at the front of the room.
As he turned to face the children, his elephantine stomach swung unattended and knocked over a cup of steaming coffee that sat upon a pile of papers on his desk.
“Oh, now look what you’ve gone and done. Stop sniggering! These tests are going to have to be taken again now. The two of you, come to the front right now” he said, miserably shaking the soaking papers, coffee spilling onto the desk below and then onto the floor.
The Woman and her friend slid their chairs in and made their way to the front of the room. The fat teacher held in his hand a long wooden stick.
“Face the front,” he said in rising fashion.
The girls looked straight ahead, into the sea of children, their eyes unfearful, their hands outstretched. The fat teacher threw his heaving self to the side lifting his right arm high into the air and came down with a thunderous crack onto the girl’s hands.
The sound of sniggering and contemptuous laughter filled The Woman’s ears as she opened her eyes to see The Children circled about her as she lay on her back, the stool’s legs; broken under her weight, and the stool itself, flung to the other side of the room.
For the fourth time in one day, she had lost herself, her focus, her state of one. It was the second time she had succumbed to absence in front of her Children.
She was aware that there was something scratching at her inside, and by all reason, it wanted out. She sat in momentary worry that her mind was slipping to famine.