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The irresolvable has always been the impossibility of the present within the cycle of eternal recurrence. If the present were present, it would close the loop and render the entire recurring dream/nightmare complete. If there is completion, but still the return of the same, then there must be something in addition to that which has been completed and therefore no completion. It could never be resolved. Thus, eternal recurrence and that which makes eternal recurrence impossible are all part of eternal recurrence, and everything I am doing at this moment, I will have to do again… again and again.

The irresolvable has always been the (im)possibility of the random, of the accident that leads to the crisis. Systems could never be said to be complete as long as indeterminate and unpredictable eventualities were possible. The inevitability of the inevitable always made the loop an open system and therefore never a loop. The theory of the system, the system of the system, corrected this flaw in Being. The cybernetic loop coupled with the staggering computational capabilities of the computer made it possible to generate likely outcomes from all that has already occurred and create those outcomes within a closed system—a loop. The next step was to generate a system within the system whereby the randomness of the human would begin to follow the predictability of the loop. Once WE began to reproduce the loop on our own, THEY had succeeded. Thus, THEY were able to resolve the irresolvable of the eternal recurrence by eliminating recurrence altogether and by eliminating the present by rendering everything a past that appears as a present and nullifies the possibility of the present which could (and likely would) contain the accident that leads to the crisis. We are beyond the crisis now, and we never need to think about anything at all because it has all already been thought of by us again… again and again.

There above us

smiling down on us from nowhere and occupying the entirety of the mind and the imagination

le cauchemar

devouring moon

through the open window

our interior space cast out and above and circulating beyond

THEY projected the interior and erased the interior.

The music that accompanies the moving image is not at all what viewers heard long ago, and there is no reason to assume that everyone heard the same thing anyway. The theater provided its own sounds. What mattered was the fantastic image in its stunning black and white. Fantomas struck. The devil appeared out of thin air, as the devil is known to do. And the nightmare unfolds with all of it staggering terror. That thing, that unknown and unknowable abject thing appears on the body of the victim, innocent and prone in his bed. The sublime spectacle of The Feast of Belshazzar. All with the symphonic and electronic sonic accompaniment of today. Nothing could have possibly been with the sights we see when those sights were new in the world.

Asynchronic anachronisms are the release. The sterility of a chronos that is the sleep paralysis of being trapped inside ourselves endlessly reproducing this sickening dream again… again and again. Longing for a recurrence, or even just an occurrence… anything but this sickening dream and this fever thick sleep paralysis of the dead present. It was once the disaster; now we long for the crisis that can never come. It is that thing in the nightmare. That beautiful lost nightmare thing, if only it could come.

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Michael Templeton is a writer, independent scholar, guitar player, barista, and cook. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published with Erratum Press and Impossible to Believe, forthcoming from Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications and the awaiting of awaiting: a novella, forthcoming from Nut Hole Publishing. He has published articles and essays on contemporary culture and numerous works of creative non-fiction as well as experimental works and poetry. He lives in the middle of nowhere in Ohio.