Atlas and the Magician
Once upon a time, though time was meaningless—before anything: there was nothing. In the course of unrecorded history, things are preceded by things, except things were paved by people, and still then prefaced by impossible maths. And they are the mesial, middling points by which our story pirouettes: is and resolves—or rather, can be understood. Among them, only three, were a Gardener, a Magician, and a Manichean; and though they took great pleasure in it, their truthful nonexistence could have no way of knowing; led in train, there being no one else, by number meager and justly spare. Said each worldly claim, none quite alike, though uniform as lay some desire to succeed his glib and flip, backward acquaintance(s). And one should be no more than right, to suggest they had want of compeer,—there was little else gone on, nay, abreast in sooth—but one thing was theirs, all “theirs” being shared. And it began six o’clock, without fail, in their evening.
Abroad
As I walk along this sobering ground
And cringe at those who creepeth,
Intruding on their solace
However timeless, contradicting the way;
Having broken them upon our whims—
And stealing away what remains
I adore: who am I, to be part?
To join in this ever incompleteness,
Though the void is without disappointments?—
Who am I, to belong in-image—
Being understood?
What’s worse than esse, I say
Without a body proper?
George Ernest Gogel wants to be a librarian; for now, he’s an ever-curious undergraduate at Appalachian State University (ASU). Originally pursuing the field of paleontology, his high school instructors excited—or perhaps, reinvigorated—a passion for writing and reading unrivaled even by his young life.