Winters’ Paradox
“Such were these Giants, men of high renown;
For in those dayes
Might onely shall be admir'd,
And Valour and
Heroic Vertu call'd;
To overcome in
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human Glorie, and for Glorie done
Of triumph, to be styl'd great Conquerours,
Patrons of Mankind, Gods, and Sons of Gods,
Destroyers rightlier call'd and Plagues of men.
Thus Fame shall be atchiev'd,
renown on Earth,
And what most merits fame in silence hid.”
— Milton Paradise
Lost, Book IX ll. 688-99
“The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing…”
– Shelley “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” ll. 1-3
“Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The tree of knowledge is not that of life.”
– Byron Manfred
ll. 10-2
Winters moved absently, the unconscious step of its feet echoed silently with unconscious genius. About its form, a blurring divine mist held back the judging of its character; only the subtle inclinations of perception formed any decisive opinion of its whole. As to its nature, only the definition of its name and physical manifestations spoke to its existence. Winters existences could be compared to a refracting sensation or perceived misperception, a thing that could neither be quantified nor reified. To say the being was singular was to ignore its existential depth; to say it was polymorphic was to ignore its individual desires.
Winters—the being which enjoyed the name—limited its omniscient vision to the cultural now, a given moment within a given existence. In doing so, it found itself roving an unmolested, natural landscape. The wild roots which felt its elemental movements seemed to stiffen and shiver; those animals that perceived its step gazed catatonic, as if perceiving the wind’s encirclement of an obscured object. Winters’ course passed withi inches of grazing animals. The haphazard deer stood affright, their fearful nature struck stupefied. The beasts cautiously went back to eating, happily ignorant of the dreadful brilliance which passed them by. Instead, the vacant gaze protected the viewer, limited the pragmatic nature of the subjective as it perceived the manifested objective.
In a moment of personal curiosity, Winters stooped to slide its avatar’s fingers into the dirt. Gazing, it felt itself see the cataclysmic nature of its perception: the dirt, the worms, the grass, the oxygen, the radioactive containers buried within, the scorched earth campaigns, the salted fields, and the blood-dimmed tides cascading on the shorelines, Caesar’s matter recycled into worm’s food. It’s fingers jostled the dirt, which fall apathetically away. Winters felt itself torn for it had no perception of death; yet, it viewed in abstraction what it was logically observed: how the macro intertwined with the micro, how all threads wove existence, even its own immortal nature. It dumped the dirt from its hand and, in a single step, wandered to a battle within a similar yet different field.
It saw before it legions of dying men. Blood ran cold in the presents of its divine gaze. Winter stirred, feeling its own invisible matter rendered. Its omniscient perception observed the horrors of the mortals. In an unconscious empathy, it felt the bloodgroove run full, pierced to the root by a twin-bladed sword. The arterial rapids cascaded onto the frozen fields. Mortals in aesthetic armor slew mortals in piecemealed armor; in the resulting conflict, Winters watched the heart beat of human life cut short. Suddenly, it felt a warm sensation at its Avatar’s leg. A young woman grasped at its calf, her fingers pulling at the insubstantial nature of its being. “Please,” she murmured. He saw the bladed weapon in her hand go slack; war bled quietly from her mouth. Winters, if it was capable of such feelings, felt pain. “Empathy?” it questioned on the winds. Winters could feel nothing more, for mortal empathy was outside its conceptualized reality. It had no words to perceive death and termination; yet, it felt the sorrowful fear of oblivion, saw the social reality of death. The shocking realization stirred the immortal soul as the sun’s core erupts in creation and destruction. Winters felt sorrow for inevitability of human destruction for it has seen all things, knew that all things were born to fade. It could not acknowledge its own faltering step. In the resulting empathy, it saw the paradox of its perceptions. It felt what it could not call fear and, in the fleeting moment its consciousness took to repress the fear, Winters shook violently; its bound existence flickered.
Winters thought to remove itself from the paradoxical moment. The celestial winds stirred beneath its form, and it felt itself begin to lift from the cultural reality; yet, before it could move, it saw another celestial form. The creature that stood on the snowcapped hills was no man, but bore a man’s image. It was a form that was not divinely crafted but, to the humans which perceived it, appeared divine. Standing upright, Winters saw that worthless form of War as it gazed in insatiable salivation. Had Winters bore human emotions, it might have been enraged. Instead, within the lifting of its incorporeal form, Winters felt only a passing pity for humans and their self-mooted agency.