I first saw the Obsidian Knife on a plane flying homeward from
A Place Covered In Snow. It had been cold like never before in that city, and
the return trip had promised something soft to me. As we curved over the
bay, the Knife illuminated itself to me for the first time. A large,
pale moon, hovered above it, the soft white light swallowed on the
blade’s edge. It seemingly bisected the land in half, tearing it
asunder. The Obsidian Knife had made itself known as a force of mystery
and destruction and rage. It was dark concealed and concentrated, into a
fine edge.
As I saw it stretch it below me, dread filled me. Was this the end? Was
this the curse I would find myself trapped in? I needed to figure this
out. I remember the gears in my brain churning, alive for the first time
since I’d left the snow. As we neared closer and closer to the blade,
however, I began to see that this wasn’t the only Knife.
Empty streets unfolded like a vascular system. Nerves, capillaries,
bones, all formed the groundwork of the mystery. Ambery lights were
pinpricks of a softer truth to me. The moon, as harsh as it was, laid
down its veil across the island. In the vacant spaces, I realized there
was no vacancy. The Invisible Knife was the second reality, inhabiting
the spaces in which the Obsidian Knife carved out. It was natural to me,
it still is. It is determination and courage, it’s structure is vacuous
and ancient.
The two knives did not fight, they did not clash. They simply slid
against each other, the infinitely smooth mirror like finish creating
friction between the two subnatural realities. That friction made
sparks, sparks that illuminated the marbled halls of the airport once I
landed. The friction is hope, it is heat and light and life and love. It
is the negotiation of realities, the conversation between mass and
emptiness. The Obsidian Knife is strong and full of form, but the
Invisible Knife is clear and made of silver string spun. The Obsidian
Knife strikes only the psychic, but the Invisible Knife is only psychic.
The knives are not of religion, they are not gods or deities or
that-which-can-be-exalted. The knives are simply tools. They are the
results of years and years of grinding metal at the whetstone of thought
and force. They are not the only knives, the two I believe are present
now. As they slide against against each other like tectonic plates, I
recorded and memorized the sound, the noise of the metal against metal.
I listened to the hope, in the face of psychic destruction, worldwide
rejection of the rational and the meaningful as a surrogate for the
sludge of submission. The Obsidian Knife is not evil, it is passion and
emotion and is in the hands of a series of curses, who are reshaping
the landscape of the Other World. The world of dreams, the world of the
latent psyche, drips it's silvery ichor down our open throats as we try
to catch it. The liquid has gone rancid, it is covered in bile.
The Invisible Knife, on the other hand, is our weapon of choice. We must
create that friction, we must use that courage and will, and fight back.
The strength of the Invisible Knife lies not in it's size, but it's
emptiness. It is there and not there. It is both things and all things.
It's nature as an undefined weapon is our response to the forced
reshaping of the grand psychic drama, to become unshapeable. There is
not vessel to conform to, at least not one yet.