Our situation is bizarre. During the blink of an eye that we call life we are given to see a spectacle fantastic and enchanting with its sky and its sun, its stars and its seas, its flowers and its critters, and then, all of a sudden, the show is over, nothing to see anymore. Why were we shown what we shall gaze upon no more?

And as magnificent as this spectacle might be, we cannot refrain from envisioning more perfect and more intelligent ones, thinking we could have done better, feeling we would have dreamt up more beautiful a production, suspecting the universe surely must hide from us other marvels. Would it not make sense to assume we had once witnessed them before we ever witnessed the views we know?

Instinctively we know we are made for a superior world and viscerally we wonder why this one lacks. These kinds of musings have been recorded throughout time and space. Just the other day I heard a sculptor conclude his speech with the same words he had used to commence it: ‘the absolute principal remains that there is so much more that does not exist than which does.’ And then applause. Cut to an announcement about how to seek the most comfortable shelter. Unclear what it’s selling. We are told many structures can offer restful refuge with a little elbow grease. Examples include an abandoned school bus, an offshore platform, an underground cave. Make sure it’s a place where you truly feel at peace. Their insides can be renovated with taste and efficiency. Their walls insulated with precision as to block any noise from outside and instead fitted with speakers that play soothing birdsong on loop.

The ease of living can be gradually increased as your shelter evolves and adapts. It’s encouraged to be ingenious when salvaging scraps from your surroundings. Use your hands to transform detritus into protection and decoration. The odds of finding real treasure, the kind that makes you wonder why it was discarded in the first place, are slim but nevertheless exist. And chances are your windows look straight onto either the wicked that roam aimlessly or some spry bugs and rodents that you would be foolish to try exterminating. Their rapid reproductive cycle and strong resilience makes hunting them a waste of time and energy. Better cover those windows with paintings that uplift your interiors. Artworks worthy of sustained solitary contemplation rather than some acquired to show off to others or for investment purposes. Of course the utmost care is needed to mitigate the stench that necessarily rises from the waste of the shelter’s occupants. We’re talking the highest possible standard of care that can be

legally required. We should take every reasonable precaution and exercise extreme diligence to prevent odors susceptible to attract pests. No congregation of flies should be tolerated, lest they draw the attention of voracious birds which in turn could be located by drones and other flying objects all the way to satellites with razor-sharp focus. The airs are full of keen-eyed vultures dead set on detecting activity.

Deep in the sea the situation is not much better. The wars waged under water are deadly for the weaponless and the soft bodied. Thus the weak build shells to protect their easily swallowable tender flesh from predators. They live to build a fortress of one. An instinct to grow a spiral just to survive. The Renaissance man Palissy studied shells and designed citadels where a swirling path was the only access to the inner sanctum. Later he died in a dungeon shaped more like a crab and his body tossed outside with those of dogs. And every Hindu hero blows a conch before battle begins as the gods look over while holding one in their hand.

Long ago in these zones abounded small shells that changed colors in reaction to sound. The higher the sound, the brighter they would shine. Their small and somewhat square shape made them an ideal mosaic component, affixed in intricate designs onto porous stone slabs adorning the palaces and mansions of the first royal to the last so-called man of importance. Watered regularly to keep the shells alive, they glimmered and marveled the audience as ensembles played music to force out more and more indescribable hues. An industry flourished. Instrument makers competed in who would blow the glass bell capable of compelling the brightest dazzle from the shell panels. Winners established lineages still reputed to this day. Alas, poorly planned overfishing forced the fashion to die, and the industry it had once given birth to perished along with it. The local library held fascinating records of the rise and fall of this fine craft, among other obscure archives, until it burned down a few years ago during arson season.

But we have no use for such olden tales. Our mission is not to collect trivia. What is crucial now is to augment our defenses. Remember Job’s lament: ‘I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.’ He also asked: ‘can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?’ Somewhere, flavors still unknown to us must patiently await discovery. Like for colors we cannot fathom that some crustaceans routinely see, we don’t possess the vocabulary to describe those novel flavors. Perhaps no language is adequate when unprecedented tastes fill our mouths: a grunt, a moan, or stunted silence as the only reaction. It could be illuminating to ask those who, in times of war, have resorted to eating insects and reptiles whose names they ignored, consuming them raw, but unfortunately I am not acquainted with anyone who qualifies.

Besides, tracking down someone like that and coaxing them to share their memories might not be enough to get them to open up without hesitation. We all have the occasional experience we’d rather forget. Awkward silence sets in. To break the suffocating tension, you flick a knife that happens to lay within arm’s reach, exerting speechless pressure all while maintaining a studious demeanor that signals total intellectual interest and zero morbid curiosity. The knife’s rusted blade bears not the slightest trace of what it once looked like new and no amount of peering into it reveals any reflection. The only scenery is its rust powder falling here and there. Should fresh ingredients suddenly be brought forth and orders given to start cooking at once, not even the world’s finest chef could achieve anything with a tool this pathetic. Try slicing wild-caught squid and cry at its translucent skin sullied with red rust dust. But thankfully you are not a chef and the knife still manages to coerce human reminiscences. Which turn out to be utterly of no value. Like how snake tastes like chicken and things of that sort. Useless chatter. Although you could say that the renewed realization that there’s practically nothing to be learned from the past is some small consolation.

For true novelty to emerge, what already exists must be retired in order to make room. Perfection requires no new added thing. Creation starts with the contraction of the divine. The divine retreats from its position so that, emptied, the unknown can move in. Unimpeded by any old guard, any gods, now gone, their light dim in the distance, a vacuum where the fresh and new has ample room to settle and gestate.

The ruins of the local library were cleared with such speed that none of the children running around on the now vacant lot knows what once stood there. Their parents being indoors somewhere, probably deep in some sort of contemplation, the children are free to spend their seemingly endless energy racing and pacing and bumping into each other. Frequent collisions ensue but instead of a worried parent’s reprimands, laughter, lubricated with fresh blood from the impacts, accelerates the kids’ frenzy. How fantastic it would be to harness their vitality into a chain reaction able to power our infrastructure unstoppable in its hunger…

Something gestates that resembles a memory. A long winding path cutting through a mountain. The school bus in low gear swaying wide, turn after turn. The rising tide of saliva in the mouth… Not a foretaste of some exotic delicacy, but caused by the ebb and flow of motion sickness, fighting the urge to throw up. Reaching the destination on the shore, the bus disgorges a gaggle of children. Not sure whose memory this is. Maybe mine, or maybe made up and beamed into my mind from a distant location. A vast complex made up of many white cubes and cylinders resembling the building blocks the children are familiar with. The visit of the nuclear plant begins. Inside, the path forward is a succession of security checks and long waits under bright lights also reflected in the highly polished floor. Workers dressed in all white come and go in silence. More than a power plant, the atmosphere suggests the headquarters of some new religious movement.

Then the memory gets fuzzy, as if the transmission is losing signal. Yet a few bits and pieces remain in focus. Switches and lights blinking like the glowing eyes of beasts motionless in their hideouts. An abundance of pumps and conduits like flora scrambling to take root in the smallest crevices. A massive and majestic turbine spinning as it drones like a whale. Above all, one static image, burned-in on the mind’s monitor: radiation-shielding glass, some yellow, some red, coloring everything beyond it, but what lies beyond, no matter how much I concentrate, is a blur.

In the junk drawer of an old desk at my childhood home, a single used fuel pellet, a souvenir of the visit, unlabeled and nondescript, is left neglected among random clutter. Everyday without a break a flood of people pass through a series of screening processes to head to their destinations and a myriad of devices controls their flow. The situation is monitored without interruption but the hurried wayfarer mustn’t let his weariness show. It’s critical to keep a steady pace as the gate is pushed en route to the journey’s end. Whether the flashbacks it causes are traumatic ancestral memories of toiling at a treadwheel or pleasant recollections of a maypole dance, the turnstile must be nudged forward in one swift movement, with no hesitation and no fear.

When night falls, in regions remote enough to never have known artificial light, clusters of hundreds of telescopes get to work. Their observations are broadcast worldwide to be enjoyed from the comfort of one’s home. Galaxies appear as exploding whirlpools. The swirl of the stars is the shape of a blossoming flower.