drmstream[writing]

Cuth­bert the appren­tice cus­to­dian looks around the vast room in despair. Boxes, con­tain­ers, books and glass­ware are strewn across the thick oak shelves, the heavy glass cab­i­nets that had been mitered and glazed by long for­got­ten appren­tices like him, the end­lessly long wooden tables. Every­thing in this stor­age room is man­dated to be made of nat­ural, organic mat­ter — even the cat­a­log, which had been main­tained on paper cards with quills made of goose feath­ers and ink made from min­er­als from the earth pits out­side the monastery bor­der. The nature of organic mat­ter is to decay, Cuth­bert thinks, and this law of nature led to the present cir­cum­stances; the cat­a­log was crum­bled and wasted, and the arti­facts that were strewn about the room were the vis­i­ble rem­nants of the exten­sive dis­ar­ray of a col­lec­tion that had no orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple, no cen­tral intel­li­gence, to direct where an object could be placed and where it couldn’t, and over the decades, as the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the cards accel­er­ated, the absence of order had defeated all care on the part of the cus­to­di­ans. They had con­sid­ered the stor­age room a curios­ity after all, a nec­es­sary part of the monastery’s pur­pose, to accu­mu­late and main­tain a com­plete col­lec­tion of the dis­crete aspects of the human state, but unnec­es­sary as a research tool, or as a con­ser­va­tion focus, for, they would admon­ish each other, what was a more endur­ing aspect of the human expe­ri­ence than Love?

“Let no mat­ter of human arti­fice inter­fere with the cre­ation and main­te­nance of the col­lec­tion and preser­va­tion of the arti­facts rep­re­sent­ing the expres­sion of our sen­ti­ments of Love,” read the man­date in the Ars Con­ser­va­tio­nis Human­i­tatis. Before descend­ing from the tower, after depart­ing from his audi­ence with Abbot Matthew, Cuth­bert had searched the text for con­tin­gent pro­to­cols regard­ing the recla­ma­tion of an aban­doned col­lec­tion. The main­frame returned scores of doc­u­ments: the index scrolled down his tablet face and dig­i­tal copies of the rel­e­vant exam­ples were illu­mi­nated along the inter­ac­tive sur­face of the research table, shift­ing and grow­ing at his touch, phrases and con­cepts high­lighted, linked imme­di­ately to inter­pre­tive texts and guides; but within the ter­abytes of data there were no excep­tions for the Bib­liotecha Adfec­tio. There was only one ref­er­ence: “No con­tin­gent pro­to­col exists for the recov­ery of the col­lec­tion,” accom­pa­nied by dozens of lengthy doc­u­ments rein­forc­ing the orig­i­nal practicuum.

The audi­ence with the Abbott: Matthew stood look­ing out the wide win­dow of his pri­vate sanc­tu­ary, the thick glass seal­ing out the foul air that streamed in rangy ropes, writhing and toss­ing like prim­i­tive demons, the thick span of his shoul­ders stooped as if with a unre­lent­ing weight, the line of his ton­sure neatly trimmed against the unearthly pale­ness of his skull, the inex­orable puls­ing of his brain indi­cated by the tremors of his natal cap, his voice low and uncer­tain, like the rat­tle of the great chains that cycled the rev­o­lu­tion wheel that spun their haven around in pur­suit of the mea­ger sun. Cuth­bert had never been in his quar­ters. He did not know another monk who had been. He stood expec­tant and patient.

“The essence of the human soul has been buried under the weight of the Rule, we have lost the power to Love and with­out that power, we are absent the power to Cre­ate, and our will to live will crum­ble,” Abbott Matthew said. “You must go to the Bib­liotecha Adfec­tio and find the essence of Love.”

“Why me?” Cuth­bert asked.

“I have watched you gaze at your broth­ers dur­ing hours,” the Abbott said, turn­ing from the win­dow and star­ing at Cuth­bert with hooded eyes. “There is some­thing dif­fer­ent than lust and appraisal in your gaze, some­thing like the look in the old paint­ings. You har­bor something.”

Cuth­bert blushed as his pulse quick­ened. He remem­bered his stolen glances, the imag­ined touches, chaste and dry, his cheek brushed along the soft skin at the back of the arm, his calf pressed against a hair­less thigh, his hip laid length­wise along the pale expanse of back and but­tocks: a meld­ing that lifted him beyond himself.

They prayed then, for­mally, before the unadorned onyx cross, the sem­i­nal prayer of their faith, ask­ing for­give­ness for their sins of intent and transgression.

Cuth­bert is work­ing now, open­ing each con­tainer and exam­in­ing the arti­fact within. He is not cer­tain what he is look­ing for. Cuth­bert is over­whelmed with the expres­sions of desire that course through his being, unruly and insis­tent. The arti­facts are vir­tu­ally unno­ticed in his hand as he drops them to the side: a sled imbued with the mem­ory of its open­ing on a Christ­mas morn­ing; an eques­trian tro­phy; a mar­riage photo; a plume of vapor cap­tur­ing a moment of glee­ful sur­prise; the instant of first sight of a moun­tain range.

It will be a long search and we can only hope that the young monk will have the for­ti­tude to con­tinue. It is there, I believe, for my sake and yours. It is a small golden box, I imag­ine, crafted by hand with care, sealed tightly, cov­ered with the dust of thou­sands of years. Inside is the min­gled breaths of a mother and a child on the first day, the breath of what was and what is to come, the breath of nur­ture and nature, the mol­e­cules com­bined to form a new ele­ment: the Essence of Love.