Stained glass

 

Stained glass

The tiny Scribe

- Words unattainable. I cannot speak. What a joyful incapability. A loving smile overflows Stillness feeling my efforts.
- “Oh, come! Come and read! Read on, dear Reader!"

The dialogue above is the perfect example of the difficulties I am facing. Swell. I would not care for puzzles. What I always dread is anxiety.

The soft relaxing breeze lingers around the bench I sit on in the square of Roses and I feel a trembling in my stomach. Can I relax when one vision urges me to visit the urn chamber in the St. Elizabeth Cathedral basement?

Thanks to my father’s tenor, I can easily find my way to the urn chamber.
A little while after WWI, in the organ gallery of the Church, my father would sing in festive masses the 1st tenor.
As a young member of the parish, he knew all the concealed stairs of the cathedral.
His legacy helps me pass easy down to the basement. Despite this practical ease, concerns nag me when the spiral staircase chill hits my face.

- Is it not a risky plan to descend into the alleyways of the dead? To the tombs and stone angels and the loitering ghosts of those forgotten?

I make the sign of the cross and set out.

- All the dead rest. All the dead sleep for sure!

Not only the church brings ritual gestures out of me. There is what I am born with: a tendency to discover.
I never develop it but I always cultivate it and I forge ahead to enrich it. A sudden idea halts me now although.

- What if my wish ends in doubts? If the sign of cross lets me down and the urn chamber is not for resting but a haunting?

My descent begins with bumping into a ladder in the darkness. I finger along the musty cracks of the stone wall for the light switch. The naked neon bulb produces a blueish glow, lending an eerie view to the chamber.

Cables rolls climb all around the walls like gutted chicken intestines. Beams and scaffolds support the crumbling ceiling plaster. Cement bags and masonry tools scatter the flat stones here and there.

Seated on a pedestal, a painted two-door wood cabinet is opposite the door. On its top, a dusty laptop is for the masons to browse the restoration blueprints.

The keyboard with its shiny plastic squares is a dance floor. It allows the little Scribe to step from one plastic square to the next. The laptop cooler spurs the tiny legs into a tempo that fades time and space. Never leave a laptop open in the urn chamber.

Sentences appear on the screen in accord with the dancing steps.

- Writing about myself is suffering. Suffering is impossible in Stillness. That little Scribe is helping by dancing. How dear!

I stare at the screen with eyes wide open. A laptop ghost, or a laptop to have a ghost is a modern phenomenon!

- I feel Stillness overflowing with a loving smile at the Scribe’s dancing.
- Stillness smiles as well at my childhood frames roll from space-time!
- The tiny Scribe is dancing in space-time opening an imperceptible passage from one existence into the other.

My legs tremble and spin me round to skip from the urn chamber. My curiosity ducks me into its pursuit and cuts short my flee, however.

- You dear, diligent Scribe, you are transforming attainable what is unattainable.
- I am the motherless princess of old space-time centuries. How cute I was.
- I am rejoicing the 4-year-old princess, myself. How she whispered and kissed the church wall then! She had been then, and I am still whispering to the church wall kissing it for 800 space-time centuries:
- I want to feel you, Stillness. Feel me as well.

Small wonder that I feel frustrated reading the above lines on the laptop screen! I hope you agree with me! I have not expected this! And how could I? Questions paralize my thinking.

- Is the laptop cooler buzz forcing that step dancer from button to button and not to pause?
- May its warmth be invigorating and counteracting the chill of the chamber?

The walls emit ice-cold, renewing my arthritis as well. I acknowledge the diligent Scribe being unable to remain immune to it. Understandable if waltzing decreases aches in the hip joint.

The Scribe keeps dancing on with the screen displaying lines after lines like falling meteors. The screen rears information up about the Hungarian princess who lived centuries ago and whose name the Church has. Elizabeth. The Hungarian princess.

- Stillness wants me since 1207, my birthdate in space-time. A motherless princess of Hungary, rounded by bloodthirsty males. Stillness selected me. Always knew me. Timeless without immediacy undisturbed and stirless, but present. Present as a pearl snug in a golden crust, inseparable.

I must act now. Not only me, but as a Reader, you want to know also whose message the laptop screen lines convey and why.

I feel sick to my stomach. My hands tremble and lead me to unplug the laptop with a sudden pull. A shock strikes me like lightning. It is not plugged in and never been.

The Buzz falls silent at once. The Scribe sits in a motionless fix. Uncommenting the situation. Unable for self-reflection and staring with dotty how black eyes into the twilight of the chamber. Neither screen flicks nor cooler buzzes break the dead silence anymore.

As blunt as the 4000 years old Egyptian Seated Scribe, the tiny diligent one squats paralyzed. Arthritis for sure. My hunch proves our diligent Scribe to have this cold dwelling place.

- The Scribe is from space-time at least.

The sudden sullen change creates a daze in me. Unable to distinguish fact from flaw, falling as a dupe to both.
The Scribe’s step-dancing may hit a real clinker. But the topic of space-time death may be worth exploring.

- What if childhood images are misleading as they transfer from one existence into the other?
- What if the feelings of a 4-year-old motherless princess of Hungary are in vain?
- What if her memory and emotions are wrong?
- What if her zeal for togetherness is mistaken?

Neither the Scribe's exhausted look discloses any ability, nor I am willing to talk about these questions. Chamber chill forces us both to escape from the ice-cold basement. Arthritis jabs deep at our joints.

The bells in the towers of the church toll the noon.

Above all, the noon-time bell tolls for the Scribe. The poor Scribe’s stomach, remembering lunchtime, emits a deep rumble. The Scribe family lore has passed down details of the church bells anyhow.

---

The National Newsletter of Elizabethtown, Budapest on June 12, 1898, wrote:

The largest bell named after St. Elisabeth weighs of 2,823 kilograms with the following inscription:

I INVITE THE BELIEVERS TO PRAY IN HONOR OF GOD. BLESSING TO THE KING, PEACE FOR THE MILLENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN HOMELAND ANNIVERSARY.

---

On June 12, 1898, the uncle of our Scribe, Bart, imbued with patriotism, decided to go up to the 70-meter-high church tower for checking the inscription of the St. Elizabeth’s bell.

Looking down from the 70-meter-high church tower, Uncle Bart was above the ministers, the city authorities, the clerical and military dignitaries, the surroundings adorned with flags along the Drum Street.

At 11 am. when His Majesty, King Francis Joseph I. arrived at the square, the bell of St. Elizabeth clashed.

And Uncle Bart fell.

Aunt Bertha, Bart’s better part, fell a-crying for years when anybody mentioned cats returning for weeks to the spot Uncle Bart licked the dust.

The Warden and John

Yearning over Uncle Bart would not ease the Scribe’s actual hunger.
Skedaddling the spiral staircase to street level, our Scribe does not puzzle over the way to the one-story green construction in the square.

The green building functioned as a public lavatory. It was a favoured location once of the ancestors of our Scribe.

A long past vividly evoked again induces the Scribe’s limbs to run. A delayed realization slows the dash down to a halt. The lavatory has long been out of order.
The green construction serves now sightseeing purposes only, a monument of the 1920 architectural Budapest style. On the bench, a corpulent Warden sits there in a green parkkeeper suit and cap. He is an attraction himself. A thick belt surrounds his protruding belly. He is picking at his morning munch, packed by his wife’s, Grace, solicitude.

Impossible for our Scribe is to face a feeble long-term memory. Instincts help our Scribe navigate the complicated world well. A missing cobblestone formed hole by the bench invites the Scribe to hide and wait there for some sudden falling snippets of the warden's snack.

Tormented by my urn-chamber episode and to forget the spooky situation, I sit down on the bench opposite the Warden.

He opens his mouth to satisfy his hunger and has a sudden hiccup. The bite almost sticks in his throat. Sharp yelling interrupts the springlike peace of the square of Roses and spoils his appetite.

Alto rich in vulgarisms rages at someone unseen. Her curses wing to the vicinity of the square, out of the street-level window of the right corner house. Dirty words echo from square walls back and forth.

- “Sheer luck, my old Grace is not a boost like her. A she-wolf this one is, I dare say.”

While commenting, a bit of a salami slips off from the Warden’s fat fingers. Despite arthritis and as quick as lightning, the diligent Scribe snatches at it before it touches down.

- “You lousy rat!”

This observation lumps our Scribe together with the large numbers of several rodent families. Otherwise, this lack of indiscrimination would upset the Scribe, but this time, besides the tasty salami, an influence has our Scribe stop short of the insult.

Namely, as if to soften and oppose the negativity of the alto’s curses, an influence shoots along around the square. Should I call it a will?

Touching the building walls of indifferent facades, pussyfooting back and forth, the will is tempering three susceptible, unperceived. Our Scribe, John Doe, and stained glass.

At this point, I fail to feel the will affecting me as well. Although, I should have had it, expecting the unexpected. As John Doe should also.

At this point, all I can feel, how biased I am to call anyone John Doe. Even though the man stepping out the gate is in every respect a John Doe.
Middle height, thin, a pale bony face and sweating. He recoils from the Saturday noon sunshine as he steps out the house gate opposite.

Oh, how mistaken of me to describe John as sweating!

John is not a man who sweats to want to make anything, but rather a man who cannot defend himself. He votes when he perhaps would skip voting. He would always surrender and never rebel.

I am ashamed of myself!

John might be the one whom Alto cracked down on earlier. Suppose, he is just escaping the female tenor. That alto still towers over the parley sounding unstoppable through the open window.

The sweats are rather his tears. Telling his despair is how he mops his glasses, tumbling along the cobblestones, near-sighted. Even the EU flag falls out of his hand.

Despair imposes a heavy levy on John as his shoe slips. He falls flat on the ground, his glasses dropping far from his hand.

Once again, I find myself frustrated by my smatter knowledge about the characters of this story.

The Warden jumps and runs rings around John and crawls the cobblestones to find the debris of his glasses.
Like Hardy and Laurel or Vladimir and Estragon, they kneel facing each other.
The Warden has the rim, while Estragon, - pardon me - John’s left hand is bleeding.

How and why? Because of a stone? Or a glass? Or some other sharp debris? That is what I would like to know and I am not sure yet if possible or not for me to trail that.

I wish to stay clear of any fabrication. All I can say for your guidance, dear Reader, is that the EU flag is in John’s right hand and a piece of stained glass is in John’s other. His hand bleeds.

I jump up from my bench and start walking at a rapid pace.

My hologram world

Someone is playing dice with me. I remember standing there down in the urn chamber as if in a dream. A concept difficult for you to grasp. Would anyone accept that I do not know how I have gotten the laptop here on the bench next to me?

I sit back on the bench with a desperate sigh.

The EU flag and John’s bleeding hand do not promise much excitement, but rather this unexpected phenomenon.
I am out in the square again! Opposite the church entrance and the dusty laptop is in my hand!

To make believable for myself the unexpected, I press the CTRL+H keys to recall the laptop screen history. I must recall what the Monitor displayed in the urn chamber. Was it a monologue or a dialogue? I wipe my forehead.
I press the CTRL+H keys and the Monitor flashes up.

A deep mistrust controls my comprehension and prepares my determination to understand whatever I am seeing. My stomach muscles vibrate and cannot relax and I cannot decide if it is true or dream what I am reading.

Monitor: I feel how hard for you to comprehend what you see. I am with you in unity. I feel your feelings from a layer above yours.

- The laptop feels what I feel! It cannot be true! And displays what I felt?

Monitor: Your personal, subjective, and conscious experience is my experience also. You may call it empathy or love. A common unio with Stillness makes it possible for me. My Stillness is your Stillness as well.
Me: I cannot change what I feel. This is overwhelming and sudden. I feel a sensation and struggle with what you say.

- I felt it! That is what I felt! Did the laptop know it, already, and down in the urn chamber what I was feeling then?

Monitor: Your brain could perform functions that no computer or system of algorithms could.
Me: I feel it like in a dream.

- Exactly how I am feeling now as well! But how and why? You would not believe the laptop knew the answer in advance!

Monitor: Because your brain is open to quantum waves. Disturbed, however, by space-time gravity. These waves of your brain get into a struggle with gravity. Your brain keeps up the waves. Gravity ditches and collapses them instead.
Me: Would quantum gravity allow me to get around it and lead both in the far future and the far past? Or would bring me more to the present?

- How could I speak about quantum mechanics I have never understood? I failed in physics high school!

Monitor: The loss of gravity creates in you the feeling of a dream. You feel your world be a hologram.
Me: Yes, it overwhelms me. The feeling separates me from my knowledge or will. As if I were shrinking or diminishing.
Monitor: Oh no! Do not be scared! The proteins in your cells utilize cells’ energy for moving from one end to the other along your microtubules.
Me: Microtubes?
Monitor: Nanosized pipelines which provide structure and shape to your cells. Microtubules are information transferring pathways among the cells. Information finds these ways to Stillness. Cells carrying proteins in themselves and walking along these pipelines transport the quantum-based information. I share your shrinking feeling with you. I feel what you feel. Space-time gravity creates that in you.

- You, you old dusty laptop in my lap? What are you? Feelings must come from humans! How can a laptop share feelings? How can a laptop, a lifeless firmware transport feelings?

Monitor: The diligent Scribe is my transporter. The Scribe has a slighter objective reduction threshold than you. Lighter gravity affects the Scribe at microtube levels. My spaceless-timeless thoughts and intentions come from Stillness. They affect the Scribe's cells easier. The Scribe dances the info out on the plastic keys. The firmware does the rest. You have tuned also in. The diligent Scribe can now have a rest.

This discourse forces my eyes away from the laptop screen. My ordinary mind would consider quantum level explanations magic. I am getting mad!

- Had I also become a Scribe now?! I am crazy or someone is playing dice with me?! The Scribe is not dancing on their laptop keys right now! The Scribe is enjoying his chunk of salami!

I must look up at the spire. A relieving object, as a change. Help me!

However, curiosity compels me to reread this scientific discourse. I must suppose an advanced intelligence is present in the urn chamber as well as in the laptop.
I lean back on the bench with a pondering sigh. This information daunts me well enough. Never let your curiosity interfere with quantum mechanics!

- The "intelligence" alleviates the arthritic pains of the Scribe by waltzing. The rheumatic cells get caressed at a quantum level.
- Next, the Scribe makes the message readable to me.

My twenty-first century innovative and practical thinking grounded in science put further questions up, however.

- And the meta-level? How does come the information of key sequencing? What does dictate the keys following each other? Is this meta-information transferred at cell levels also?

I shrug shoulders in defence against the inexplicable. My space-time existence offers a limited perspective only. My limited human perspective collapsed.

- It is impossible to feel quantum level changes! Impossible to make them conscious!

I feel it like an act of discovery!
If I would feel quantum level changes itching in my stomach, I could indulge in doubting them! Its imperceptible nature is protecting the universe and hinders human fidgeting.

- Bolt up! The Warden would think me mad for cheering aloud!
- Luckily the quantum beasts are damn small and quick!
- I cannot be conscious of quantum properties that had existed before I could observe them at all.

I lower my eyes staring at the gravel at my feet. Would rolling these pebbles give any hope that this actual rolling does not break the symmetry of my quantum potential?

I wish I could compile these events into an understandable form. The pebbles would be more adept at doing that!

John’s bleeding hand

The pebbles would compile a better story. They would start with how the Warden is wrapping John's bleeding hand.
I see some sweet honesty behind the Warden’s act, clumsy and graceless but painstaking and eager. This wound treatment takes place on the bench opposite me.

A feeling of awe strikes me as their actuality. It compels me to quote their dialogue.

John: Nothing in me to ward off unhealthy bites.
Peter: I am starting to see! My Grace always nags me: - “you are a Warden, Peter, be smart! You must be ready for anything.” I resumed facing the music. You fell into my hands.
John: I did it by the skin of my teeth.
Peter: I am glad to see you came out. I thought you abandoned yourself to roughs. My Grace warns me to avoid them.
John: I promised to flag the church.
Peter: In my hands at last! A tight bandage will make it do.
John: I must tie myself tight up first.
Peter: To where and how?
John: The ladder. Your belt would do that if you lend.
Peter: A ladder? Hold your hand straight. Where?
John: Over there. Laid on the ground next to the fence. I am to straighten it to the church wall, go to the top and tie myself.
Peter: They do not want you to fall off the height?
John: Certainly, they do not want it.
Peter: The same alto orders it?
John: The same? I do not know. They holler it in chorus.
Peter: Indeed, their ruckus rings around the square walls, echoing. No chance not to hear it.
John: A shame is its actuality.
Peter: Yes, it hangs by a thread. What is the good of anticipating it now, that is what you say?
John: Better for the EU to wait for the end of the war.
Peter: A war?
John: The Ukrainian war.
Peter: They would not sleep the dream of peace.
John: None of them spends much time fighting their devil.
Peter: If one of them has a good gun, the other finds a better one and brings it to the one's door.
Peter: They shoot each other but never the devil.
John: Stop echoing me and finish tying the dressing.
Peter: They never fight a fair war. What are you doing?
John: The stained-glass flashes. It screens a movie.
Peter: Take care with glasses. I am telling you. Why don't you pay attention to me?

My jaw tightens and I slam the laptop lid down. Raising eyebrows, I stand up.

Me: Gentlemen!
John: Peter, I see something.
Peter: Hold your hand. Let me tighten the dressing. I warn you. The glass is sharp.
Me: Gentlemen, I do not know what comes over me. Forgive me. I do not know what it is! What if this Hungarian princess wants to warn? This actual wrapping of your hand boosts your potentials! Do I look like a man who neglects what he sees? This laptop proves what I say.
Peter: Does it hurt?
John: It is not over! Kids, women, elderly. Men rush off with bleeding heads.
Peter: I do not want to know what he wants. My Grace warns me to stay clear of wise guys.
Me: In a war, thousands of souls go into Stillness every day. Unaware of what awaits them in death and what they will be. The Hungarian princess knows how one feels when one has no longer a body and has nothing to grasp!
Peter: Your wound dressing holds tight.
John: I see endless rows of fugitives.
Me: We feel our existence in space-time.
Peter: Your turn, man. Speak when you are told, can’t you?
Me: The Hungarian princess is out of space-time.
Peter: Try to move your fingers under the dressing.
John: Does the Princess feels me through this glass?
Peter: I asked for Grace’s hand and she put her hand into mine. The way a baby does. What a baby sees equals what the baby feels. Grace always turns to the square on the right corner with my lunch.
Me: The Princess is under the glass and feels through Stillness and sees what goes on in space-time. She warns us only.
John: Information finds ways to eternity. Too and fro.
Peter: No kidding? Does it?
Me: Falls into and gets out even of a black hole.
Peter: My Grace finds everything out!

John grabs Peter's arm and nudges him in the ribs to tell him to turn around.

John: We need her like a shoulder a hunch.

The Domina stands in front of the right corner house gate.
Her black costume coat amplifies her strong shoulders and her short black hair. She looks toward us with pricky eyes from under her black eyebrows.
Her anger is building to an ominous point and she is willing to wipe the past off with a shout.

John: Let us set up the ladder! Quick!
Me: A ladder?
Peter: The ladder! Help us lift it from the ground and lean it on the church wall.

We got to work. I and the Warden grab the ladder on the same team and lean it to the church wall.

John: Steeply pitch it. We must reach the church window.
Peter: What are you insinuating? That the EU flag flies in the window?
John: The stained glass is from there. A missing piece.

John climbs with surprising strides from ledge to ledge. The ladder sways, but his bandaged left-hand helps to keep his balance and the stained-glass sparkles in his right. A golden star in the sunlight and John nails his gaze straight onto it.

Peter: Hey, what if you fall? You must tie yourself up there!
Me: She flashes a V with her arms!

Around the right corner house, I see her among a few men and flags of equally sized horizontal bands of blue and yellow with guns and tanks painted on them.
John looks down from the top of the ladder and his former determination has changed to despair.

John: Your belt.

John’s look and word bring along a terrible recognition in the Warden. He looks at me and unbuckles his belt.

Warden: Hold me.

As he pulls the belt out of his pants belt holder, I realize my task.

Me: Yes Sir.

In tandem, we climb the ladder ledge by ledge. The Warden holds the belt forward for John and I hold the back of the pants for the Warden.
Tormented by anxiety, I get a birds’ eye view of the square and the Domina and her pro-war protesters. They shake rhythmically their posters in favour of war enhancement.
The three of us, like three underdogs from the square of Roses, stay put on the ladder stiffened.
Between heaven and earth, I cannot help asking my fellow animals above me.

Me: What else must we do here?
John: Waiting for Grace.
Peter: The lunch.