Mind: the Gap
by E. F. Jacob
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
— Albert Einstein
Prologue:
We often start out hopeful, curious.
Thirsty to understand -
Hungry to be understood.
A spark behind the eyes
that many declare dangerous, deranged.
Should we embrace the moniker?
What does he become
When that spark is snuffed out
Or fades over time?
Does he become anything?
Does he become nothing?
Would you rather be perceived as the mad man or the empty beast?
A lonely seat at the table – a solemn final feast.
As the first rays of light dragged their way through the dreary morning sky, Queensway Station remained indifferent to the emerging daylight, ensconced in the impenetrable London Underground. Basking in this indifference, Donald Mansfield sat in his white collared shirt, knowing not who he was or who he was meant to be.
He had been stuck, caught in the same ebb and flow for months, lingering on the days as they repeated. He had been separated from himself, becoming an observer in his own life rather than an active participant - sustained only by small but treasured interruptions of unconscious relief; anaesthetic on an insufferably quiet mind.
The man's eyes rested mechanically on the cement tiling of the platform floor, the fluorescent lights above calling unwanted attention to the grime caked underfoot: a symbol of the thousands of people who had made their daily journeys here in this perpetual hub of motion. In which, Donald Mansfield sat, waiting, all too aware of his crippling immobility. The platform was teeming with its usual flock of early birds and was possessed by the chill that held England in its perpetual choke-hold. Donald's eyes, absconding from his previous train of thought, clung to the figures around him. But the figures, Donald noticed, had ceased being people, they lacked something. Dimension? Authenticity? They felt fabricated. Merely bodies occupying space, caricatures; among them was a young woman on the phone, a soldier reading the paper, a man eating his breakfast and an oblivious fourth - himself. Not Donald Mansfield, merely the man on the bench in the white collared shirt.
A sound resonated in the black cavity where the tube was due to enter the platform: a washing tide at first which madly escalated to a blaring torrent as the 6:56am tube came barrelling through the platform. Incapable of remaining afloat in his flooding introspection, his thoughts latched on and pulled him under, further and further down, drowning at the bottom of the vast and raging ocean. He had forgotten Queensway station, uncomprehending of the movement of those around him, for he could see nothing but the tempestuous and uncertain waters, could feel nothing but the violent waves chilling him to the bone as the liquid began to fill his lungs. He searched hysterically for guidance, a lifeline, a lighthouse, an answer but felt nothing more than his own devastating insignificance, a mere grain of sand. But when the boundless waves had once more thrashed and thrown him, he was confronted with a clear black sky and met not with an answer, but with a looming question. Suddenly, the ocean became perfectly still, dying with the same instantaneous ferocity with which it started, and amidst the few present stars he could discern but three little words above him. ‘Who. Are. You.’ These radiant words, illuminating some spiritual crater, some intangible gap, reverberated through his mind and tumbled faintly down and out through his mouth again and again like a lost man's litany.
‘Who. Are. You.’
But as Donald Mansfield sat at Queensway Station in his white collared shirt, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to answer.
Perhaps he was his body. The physical part of himself that others could see, could know, could judge. The part of himself that stares curiously back in the mirror each morning with perplexing vacancy and disconnect. Though he supposed, in the same slight way that the
elements corrode a cliff face, his body did tell a story. His constant use of a pen in the calluses on his fingers, his penchant for coffee in the yellow stain of his teeth, his advancing age in the twinge in his knee when he walked and in the gradual receding of his dark hair. But surely he was more than just this.
Perhaps he was his heart. His dreams, his memories, the few people he loved and the few who loved him back. The emotive part of himself that rejoiced when he returned home in the evenings and bled a little each time he entered his office, surrounded by his colleagues; many stuffed into lab coats, many in their suits and ties, their tweed straight jackets, their satin nooses. They emanated professionalism. Heart and head working in perfect synchrony to accomplish and to succeed. All of them full of youth and sustained by the mysteries they sought to unfold. All of them able to stand rapt in awe at the universe. Donald found that his heart and his head liked to argue, always hard logic versus inexplicable emotion. More often than not the former would prevail but the latter never fully submitted. It was his heart that longed to be free of the white collared shirt. But Donald still felt there was something more, that perhaps his answer was less tangible.
Perhaps he was his spirit. That unearthly part of himself that dwelled everywhere and nowhere. The immortal and restless apparition that lacked but craved a purpose, a feeling of necessity or importance amongst eight billion other souls with the same affliction. Donald wanted to believe that a person's spirit walked a predetermined path. That nothing was random. That somewhere along the line you fulfilled your one true purpose and suddenly, like the strike of a match, everything made sense. This he believed because it gave him a sense of comfort, because it kept him sane, not because he had any certainty it was true.
After all, here he was, completely and utterly defeated.
Burdened by the jarring, disquieting idea that there was no such thing as ‘reason’ or ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’. That his existence, and as a matter of fact the existence of everyone else around him, of the woman on the phone, the soldier reading the paper and the man eating his breakfast, was sheer chance and purely accidental. The divine path before him lay shattered by the boundless and entropic nature of the universe as he grappled with the possibility that he was just a caricature. Just a body and a heart and a spirit on a rock, just a grain of sand floating in the vast and raging ocean that drowned him.
Just a man on a bench in a white collared shirt.
So as the tube came barrelling through the platform, Donald Mansfield remained unmoving on the bench, the only sign of his being alive: the subtle tightening and loosening of his shirt with each constricted intake of breath.
The announcer's warning echoed coarsely through Queensway station…
“Mind the gap.”
… and washed over the man on the bench…
‘Mind. The. Gap.’
… as the tube came, and stopped, and went.
‘Mind: The Gap.’
And the following morning, Donald Mansfield sat at Queensway Station in his white collared shirt, knowing not who he was and fearing that he wasn't meant to be anything at all.