Secrets

The Holder of Secrets is dead.

It was no secret that he died, for at the moment of his death, no more secrets can be kept. The knowledge entered everybody's mind and floated among the debris of their life experiences. The reason for his death was no secret either, for the with the knowledge of his passing came with the knowledge of its cause: the weight of carrying all the secrets in the universe has crushed even the holder's insanity. And in afterthought, as if the Object is paying its last respects to its Holder, the name of Father Brian O'Shea dropped and rippled in the din of the babel of thoughts and memories that can no longer be kept out.

You find yourself in a familiar churchyard looking at the weathered edifice of a tiny cathedral. You remember the many times you entered the church, seeking solace or to attend mass or to witness a baptismal or marriage or to pay your last respects to the departed. You often remember seeing Father O'Shea enter the confessional, to assume his post. Very apt indeed, a priest receiving confessions as the Holder of Secrets.

In your mind, and in the communal mind that the death of the Holder created, you start realizing and understanding things that were open secrets, things that everybody knew but never acknowledged. Things like why bread was sold at half price at closing time (freshly baked every day!) or what certain nursery rhymes really meant (Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall....)

You start walking towards the forest at the edge of town.

Other secrets start skittering in, personal, public, and even secrets of things that have no life in itself, like governments and institutions:

Mr. Smith had an affair with Ms. Johnson and your mind is filled the memories of their trysts and alibi.

Your body aches under the pain of the beatings while your soul is weighed down with the despair Mrs. Chan carried as a battered wife.

The creature sighting at the lake was a hoax, its photographs were fabricated. Your/his heart beats with elation as you/he realize the success of your/his actions.

Beep, beep, beep, beep .... said the machine. The dictator of a Latin-American country had been brain dead for months but the machine keeps the body alive. Beep, beep, beep, beep ....

In the dying bank where you keep your money, many hands are feverishly feeding the shredder, trying to wash themselves of guilt in this modern Pilate's basin. Shredded paper, shredded lives, point an accusing finger still.

Your shopping list include salt, black pepper, garlic, rosemary, onion, flour and vinegar. The seven secret herbs and spices are ordinary household spices easily available from your local supermarket.

As you enter the forest, the babble of secrets begin unraveling the weaker minds, strangely leaving the minds of the insane intact or at least untouched. You start losing your own sense of identity as you lose track of which of the secrets are yours and which came from somewhere else.

You become rooted in the middle of the forest as the last and deeply hidden secrets start to emerge, the secrets everybody hides from their own selves:

Rosalinda, the socialite and life of the party, does not want to be left alone to face her own demons. They torment her with her fading beauty. They torment her with futility of her wealth. They torment her with her constant loneliness.

In his dreams, a little boy is always lost, trying to find his way. In his mind, a giant is walking the earth, crushing everything. In truth, George, the black sheep, wants his absent father to take notice of him, as he looks for the source of missing comfort, as he looks to destroy that source of unending pain.

Then you turn and look at yourself.

And realize.

The awful truth.

The secret that you have kept from yourself: YOU ARE THE OBJECT ITSELF. You look deep into your "memories" and realize they weren't your own but borrowed from and pasted together from the secrets of those who were nearby. You yourself, you have nothing, you are tabula rasa.

A black cloud swirls in your vision, accompanied by the sound of a million flapping wings. Secrets, like crows, are coming home to roost. You raise your arms to ward them but your arms freeze as bark and leaves start growing on them.

In desperation or defiance of your fate, you shout, "Where do secrets draw their power?"

Instead of echoing back your words, your voice comes back, "From fear, secrets draw their power from fear."

Fear sprouts with every leaf, fear of losing this short life of borrowed memories and thoughts, fear of the empty, the nothingness beyond death or rebirth, in truth, back into an Object of no memories, no identity, no self.

As the bark closes over your mouth, as darkness or nothingness close over your eyes, you scream out one last time, "Where does fear draw its power?"

Your own voice replies, before silence reclaims its place, "From secrets, fear draws its power from secrets."

Secrets at theHolders.org