... you drink
and enter the room,
no longer a mere hypothetical.
for eternity
in a minimally small physical space, wherein a certain wave breaks permanently through to you,
but beyond this nothing else will or can happen — do you call this heaven or hell?
The theologians of Uqbar considered this problem extensively in the ninth century, concluding that the distinction between heaven and hell was merely temporal: heaven is the first four hundred years, hell the remainder. A minority sect, since persecuted, held the opposite view. Their heresy was not the inversion itself but their refusal to specify the duration of the first period, which they claimed was variable depending on the observer — an idea so dangerous that even to record it here is perhaps unwise.
You want to know, I assume, which it is? Yes, of course you do.
But this is precisely the question the wave cannot answer, breaking as it does in an eternal present tense, which is to say, in no tense at all, which is to say, in the only tense available to those who have never learned a language. As Borges noted in a footnote, later suppressed, within his ‘A History of the Pacific’, this category includes the ocean, infants, and God. He did not include you, reader.
This omission of the reader can be interpreted as either a warning or an invitation.
But this is precisely the question the wave cannot answer, breaking as it does in an eternal present tense, which is to say, in no tense at all, which is to say, in the only tense available to those who have never learned a language. As Borges noted in a footnote, later suppressed, within his ‘A History of the Pacific’, this category includes the ocean, infants, and God. He did not include you, reader.
This omission of the reader can be interpreted as either a warning or an invitation.
The theologians of Uqbar characteristically held both views simultaneously, which is why they were able to burn and to be burned, and why the sea receives all fire eventually, as Alexandria discovered, and the harbour remembers.
But the ocean has been listening this whole time, and will continue listening, and in the intervening period has understood nothing, which is why it needs to repeat itself, which is why there are waves we find beautiful, which is why we film it, which is why you are reading this now, which is still not an answer.
Heraclitus could not step into the same river twice. He did not mention the ocean, where the problem is reversed: you cannot step out of it, not really. The Uqbarists claimed this was deliberate — that Heraclitus had seen the sea once, as a child, and spent the rest of his life writing around it, which is the only way to write about anything that matters to you dearly.
A minor commentary, attributed to the persecuted sect, suggests that the error of the first four hundred years is not suffering but enjoyment — that hell is merely heaven correctly identified, and that escape is possible only from what one has mistaken for paradise. Their text breaks off here.
escape [ heaven ]
[ hell ]