become
i am become death, destroyer of worlds.
there is something a bit ironic about a white man quoting Hindu scripture after creating a weapon that will be used to kill and oppress millions of people of color, and forever change the nature of global sociopolitics. even more so when you consider the strange phrasing used, 'i am become', as if to accentuate the exotic nature of this quotation.
nevertheless, it is still a fitting quote.
i am become me, but this me does not exist. it doesn't exist inside of my body. it doesn't exist in the world. perhaps it exists just inside of my mind, but who is to say that the mind exists at all? i am become me, as a consequence of countless collisions with the environment throughout the duration of my life. i have been told about who i am, i have been encouraged to develop certain ideas about my identity. and ultimately, i have arrived a semi-consistent view of this 'i', and now fight to maintain this idea. and such is the process of identity formation in all people, fundamentally.
encounter in condon hall
"look into my eyes," he said. they had no whites; it was pitch dark in that well. fear, a natural conscious or unconscious aversion reaction. it crept up into my throat.
he was like the living manifestation of the brutalist spirit which had been imbued into the building. i was not staring into the eyes of death, no. i would much rather have been confronted by the reaper. this, which stared back at me, was not death. rather, it was something that was incomprehensibly linked to my being, some fragment of my ego which had detached and rebelled against a cruel master. vengeance exacted as torment of the very soul. the birth of a vampire, a demon which could only subsist off my own self-hatred.
"solve the problem," it rasped, gesturing at the sheet of paper on the desk i was sitting at. it was a calculus test from many years ago, when i had not yet set foot in the country. one question, at the bottom of the page, remained unsolved. it was a classic integration problem; the volume of a construct rotated around the y-axis. and yet, in that moment, i could not recall a single formula or algorithm. math itself seemed to have left my mind, and all i could hear inside of my skull was the deafening static of a world devouring itself again and again.
i felt the clammy touch of its claws wrap around my throat, and my rapid breath slowed into a whisper to accomodate the lack of air.