Only You Will Ever Know

By Christopher Powell

A search for understanding within the universe entire and the breadth and depth of her love...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365092565

Book preview

Only You Will Ever Know

Only You Will Ever Know

By

Christopher Powell

To Beth,

As it was meant to be…

‘I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination - What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not.’

– John Keats (1795-1821)

L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle.

(The Love which moves the sun and other stars) 

– Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

‘Companions whom I loved, and still do love ... tell them, my song."

– Richard I (1157-1199)

Legacies

The path we walk is one lined with the voices of the distant past, our own past, the present, and a future concealed until it merges with the now. Those voices are the words of time itself. They are the rocks we stop, pick up and examine along the way, a seashell that might be more enduring than another, a glint of starlight dancing upon calm waters, or the gentle calling of the wind from a distant, verdant shore. As we walk, we choose to leave our own words for time to hear, for the posterity of those that might decide to pick you up one day and see how extraordinary you were to generations hence. Our legacy is not the visceral monuments of our arrogance and perceived greatness, but in what we carry with us... what is unique in all of us.

Prologue

‘Only You Will Ever Know’

Will you be happier now?

Our love the price I paid

In silence… In agony

Our love the cost of failure

To what future? Sorrow?

Will you be stronger because?

Our joy made incomplete

For reasons so tormenting

Maybe never understood

But in the end?

Will you feel again?

Perhaps hope shall awaken

In the dreams of other days

Wondering… waiting

In the shadows of memory.

Can you be happier now?

Our love swept clean

In the fires of rebirth

Our life forgotten to laments

Lost in the wake of time.

Would you care to know?

Who I am…

Is because of you.

I think only you can ever know.

A Return to Starlight

Only You Will Ever Know can be considered an inheritor of my previous books, Notes on the Reformation and Patterns of the Soul, though not truly a sequel.  Many of the premises and ideas forged in the previous works had a direct influence upon this one, but this refines and revises a number of concepts, stories and poems as well as interjects a wide range of newer material and materiel not previously published. So much has changed over the past eight or so years. I never thought I would actually reach into the hearts of stars and witness the birth of starlight within another.  But it happened. I hoped and dreamed for an answer to certain questions and those answers were revealed. The intervening time between books has been enlightening and sublime, wondrous and surreal. I shared a complete understanding of the universe entire yet the tumult of life had other plans for a time. Thankfully, when looking at the universe as a whole, time melts into a collective memory, one that completely loves, understands and forgives. Maybe this book is a reflection of that conjecture: perhaps even something more. Hope tells me this is so.

In returning to a place borne of idealism, a part of me does not want to let go and embrace what I professed. Fear in the form of pragmatism and realism distorts hope, disrupts love and creates self-doubt. I long to feel the warmth of the divine in all of us, the continued search from all my beginnings. I know by pushing forward in this, I can reclaim the beauty of love forged in the hearts of stars. I can… and I hope. This may, in its own way, seem unrealistic, and to that end I am glad. The core of my writing, the core of my search, the core of my love has always been idealistic and hopeful. Reaching into a realistic, pragmatic form of love, compromised the higher truths in myself, those I loved and in all of us. We are all connected. We all want to feel the wonder of the universe entire in whatever form we need it to be. That knowledge is borne from such hope and what I wish to engender to you, the reader, and what I seek to reclaim.

Thus hope has allowed for a return to the starlight, toward a search that began years ago.  I thought it had culminated in the joy of true love. I do not think I was wrong. I know now life can intervene and impose its will upon us when least expected. Ultimately, I learned a great deal about the warmth of a perfect love; however, I failed to face my fears. To that end, I failed my perfect love. All I ever wanted was the contentment an enduring partnership can create. I failed because I loved another so completely but could not love myself in ways that I should have.  How then could I even think of reaching into the love of the universe entire if I was flawed?  A flaw, I found, that was far more common than I thought, but enough of one to have left me troubled… one that forced an intense re-examination of all my hopes, my dreams, my loves and my fears. In many ways, this book is a culmination of that examination.  In other ways, I am still yearning for her perfect love.

We are all still works in progress, but I now understand with a sense of purpose I lacked in the past, and certainly sometimes the present.  Returning to the welcoming embrace of starlight helped me see the re-birth of starlight in my own soul, the souls of others and the soul of creation.  The divine, in whatever form we seek, calls to us from within, from without, and beyond all existence. I have stated this before and will continue to do so. It is a higher truth I cannot deny. Regardless, this journey is unique to every one of us… I can, again, only write about what I have experienced in order for you, dear reader, to find your own path for the most important person of all: you.

As always, I feel this discourse deserves the one thing I always desire in my friends:  a good conversation.  To that end, I hope in all things we can be friends.  I hope… and thus, I understand. Let us sit, dear reader, and talk for a while about hearts of stars yet to be born and why the universe attempts to understand itself in us.  It is the least we can do for each other.

One: Alternate Lives

The following story was inspired by a poem I wrote called, at first, ‘Alternate Lives’, and then later, ‘Celestial Indigestion’ after I had written this story.  The poem will follow the story and is much more tongue in cheek than what it inspired me to write.  ‘Alternate Lives’ is a personal favorite and it has taken a number of forms. It started as a short-short story with a cliffhanger ending and then evolved into a more complex tale. Even this incarnation has been revised to some degree, which is well.  The very nature of the story, and the poem for that matter, encourages a little revision now and then. The story was one of my first attempts at understanding the uniqueness of our lives and how we can reach into the truth of the universe entire to understand ourselves.

‘Alternate Lives’

Prologue: Entropy

Do you finally understand?

Such a scene overwhelmed my senses, even in their present state. So vibrant, so electric. Words, even if they could, did not escape my lips. Transcendent, the only way to begin to describe this event, an event I knew would come to be, just a sure as everyone else who came before me knew. Of course, no one could ever believe there would be a witness. Honestly, I was amazed at that fact. I drifted within the mesmerizing show around me. It called amid the silence just as I called to it. I did not know how, only that it sought something primal within, as if it knew as well I would be in this moment. Could a consciousness exist, even now? Perhaps not a true consciousness, but more of a collective understanding, a knowledge of what was, is, and, well… would be was something of a problem that needed sorting. Unfortunately, no time remained, or seemed to exist for that matter. I laughed internally and realized that matter itself was about to cease. Fine time for me to think of the ironies of the universe. And the universe, it lay before me, collapsing into entropy. I had read many books, articles and papers on this subject thousands upon thousands of times. Still, the event could not prepare anyone for the inspiring wonder of it all. I guess if I could conjure an audience I might have written about the event. Since no audience existed, I let the inspiration pass and waited… waited for the last seconds of existence to spectacularly slip away.

Only one thing plagued me in this rather calm (really not near as violent as I thought) end to all that was/is…

How did I get here?

snap

I knew that sound, should I have even heard one.

I think it is a convention you created.

That thought. I knew it as well. I let what was left of my consciousness drift to the sound. I could feel an image form in my mind, and though the universe collapsed around me, I managed to be shocked one more time.

Don’t worry… I’m not so much who you think I am.

I thought I was the only one left, the only one who could be here at this point.

Left? Perhaps you have forgotten… or you still don’t understand.

I tried to contemplate a response, but none would come. Wait. I came here of my own accord. But why? She… yes, she… how? How, anything, really? No. I do not understand, I replied.

You will.

Part I: Awareness

You have to remember or be damned.

snap

I awoke with a start. Voices… so many voices, occluded in the world of dreams. All a dream. Getting more intense though. Felt horribly real. Still dark. I looked over to the pale light of my alarm clock. Four AM. Typical. About when I have been waking up recently. I would not be able to get back to sleep, that much was certain. No rest for the sleep deprived. I noticed the book next to me. I must have been reading it, trying to take my mind off school and the paper I had to write. No wonder I was having crazy dreams. 12th Planet. Great read, certainly a little dated, but a bit out in left field… somewhere near Jupiter.

I sighed, vowing not to read any of Sitchin's books late at night, at least until the next time I did. Disgusted, I tossed the paperback aside, and got out of bed. Even though it was still early, I turned on my computer and stared for a moment fruitlessly. I wondered if I would ever finish this latest research paper. Finish? Sure. Would it be any good? I glanced at the biography of Richard I sitting by the computer. Interesting enough, but I needed more than a biography to support my conclusions. Something seemed odd about the title. I had not remembered seeing that phrase…

Memories of distant stars, lost in the chaos of time.  You see them, feel them, and almost breathe, if you could.  The sensation builds, pulsates... invigorates you.  I cannot stop it, nor can you contain it...

But you have a choice. You always have a choice. Remember.

snap

Was I nodding off? My face felt like it hit the keyboard.  Again? Damn. Never going to finish this paper. Thirty-five pages on the criticism of methods of historiography in Medieval History and resulting trends