The Mephistophelic Manifesto..

I've grown taller with people, the people in my age group. Together we heightened and widened and lengthened, we learned to drive and to derive, we walked. Some changed their hair colour, some changed their ideas, most altered. No one, of course, had any idea what we were doing, but somewhere along the line one of us got the impression that our parents were different than us, that the entire earth didn't exist except for a small slice that we had been born into and were presently surviving within. The USSR was a name in a book and nothing more; the eastern hemisphere itself was a conspiracy. Now that we realise, though, that we are not special or powerful or at all separate from our parents (and some have yet to come to this, even), our eyes roll back into our skulls and we it is decided for us that we shall float with no control through adulthood, creating children of our own and deploying signs and snares for them in the style of our own experiences.

We are not to this point yet, however. Now I and my fellows are in the university setting, and we know now that picturing ancient Egypt as anything more than stylised hieroglyphics is tantamount to containing the entire universe in a box within the mind. No one can be blamed, of course. It's not our fault and we had no choice in the matter.

And at this moment in space I am picturing a girl I know, knew, will know. She is growing as I am; I see her at intervals where the paths of our patterns (represented as weighted red lines) curve around each other and occasionally collide. The slivers are enough to show me her progressions and yet far enough apart to keep her transgressions hidden... no matter. All I am able to think about is our past and our future, how it is carpeted all around us and how she will grow older and more beautiful and a tad taller and how I am depressingly happy that I have the chance to decompose into adulthood with her and her shifting, static image.