Knowledge

A genius stands at the center of his nation's largest library, nine storied stories, a glorious rotunda, the ceiling waxing on about the feats and failures of Prometheus.  Off this wheel, the spokes of human endeavor--art and science--spin out from the inlaid marble compass.  

On each floor, the poorly anticipated promiscuity of words has demanded the space be divided again and again.  With thick glass, a soda pop green, suspended on black wrought iron frames and connected by narrow spiral staircases, the stacks are a claustrophobic maze.  He has spent the better part of three days spelunking these meandering mysteries.   The genius is exhausted.  The clashing contradictions of a million voices compete in his head.  And here, beneath the vaulted eternity of this great room, he stands as if in prayer.  He empties his mind into the cavernous space, this cathedral to human intelligence.  His thoughts are like incense, intoxicating but only vapor, rising up like smoke from a campfire escaping the primordial cave. 

Looking up--lifting his gaze, as they say--he catches the agonizing stare of Prometheus on the rock.  What arrogance steals fire, builds libraries, writes books?  Is creativity the antecedent to boredom?  Is action necessarily progress?  

As a young man--intoxicated by vocabulary, seduced by meaning--he thought of himself (shyly) as a writer.  Somewhere there are notebooks and folders overflowing with his words, his ideas, his wisdom.  But there is nothing contained in those skeins of self-indulgent verbiage that he has not seen replicated here...a thousand times.  Defined by our capacities, human experience can be stated and restated a hundred times today, but in the end there is just one person wrestling with the blasphemous gift of an intelligence that exceeds need and borders on neurosis (psychosis, for some).

The genius has three stick matches in his pocket.  He closes his eyes and the light from the windows in the dome glows orange on the underside of the lid.  He imagines striking the match, igniting it with cool endeavor on his thumb nail, a rogue's trick.  The snap and the hiss echo off the marble columns.  Briefly startled, animals at the watering hole, the patrons of the library look up, scan, before retuning thirstily to their books.  A second match, a  third, each is cast with deft precision into the archival references that explain who we are.  The genius can see the flames consuming everything.  He remembers Alexandria.  "This is profound loss," he says to himself.  But when he opens his eyes and observes the conflagration, he changes his mind.  "This is opportunity."