Is the purpose of the fire to illuminate the dark, or is it to burn out into ash? Is the purpose of human life to find a brighter existence, or is it to decay in the toils of day to day? This world is too unknowable for any real answer. There is doubtful hope and hopeless doubt, both feelings ebbing and flowing in the chest cavity of each and every one of us. All we can do is stumble forward hoping that the depression or optimism quaking within us is true, steadfast, and full of godspeed. We are pitiful in this unknowing; dark husks bashing and bonking into each other like virgin puppets and puppeteers. But maybe that is the purpose of it all, to squander and scavenge the world. To blindly seek light in the world of the dark. It has been done before, not only by all of us still living and breathing, wherever you might be, but by the ancients as well.

In the ancient lands of Greece, where time and light seem to last eternally, something rotten is embittered at the core, as is true for all great things. This land of olives, heroes, and pillars have placed into the sky the diamond stones of Orion, the timeless giant who basks at the humiliating mortality of humanity every evening. He glimmers; he is stoic beauty, unchanging and hardly visible through our smoggy nights and overlit highways, and yet, not even he can  escape humility.

Orion stands there, above the deep dark of space, constantly being pointed at and thumbed at, the universe’s largest, most dazzling belt around his waist. Where many seem to bask in his starlight glitters, few realize the awful darkness that surrounds his celestiality. Like all great Greeks, there is one atrium in his heart that does not function as flawlessly as the rest. 

Orion was born a giant, mankind’s greatest hunter, capable of slaying any beast the gods could create. His talents led him to seek greater goals, larger feats, greater honor. Through the explosion of his reputation, he sought King Oenopion’s daughter, Merope. His glowing fame made his heart and mind move in false, phony ways that honor could not coincide with, in ways where honor could mold into black conceit and burn one’s soul into ash. Where honor is the service of one for the sake of others, it can devolve into vain arrogance, into the want of others to serve the self. 

The passionate hunter sought Merope, the king’s daughter, in a way that only those who selfishly pine for what cannot be might understand. Yet in this wanting, in this false hubris for what he deserved, his actions became that of the very grotesque beasts he hunted. He raped Merope and took what was not given, stole what would not be shared.

The gods shamed Orion. His punishment was blindness. No longer could his hands take the beasts of the earth, for the world was shadow. The gods made it so that only the sun, Helios, god of light and the new day, could lift this curse from his eyes and bring him new sight. Thus, Orion’s eternal wandering began; the blind hunter was forced, in this utter dark lostness, in unknowable darkness, to seek the sun. The earth, unseen below his feet, was no longer the genesis of his hunting prowess, but the closed tomb in which he would stumble and fall, seeking hidden light. 

Perhaps because of his gigantism, because of his fate having been mixed with the gods, the wandering, blind rapist did not burn and smolder into ash as he approached Helios, but his sight was renewed, his mythology coming to a close. Even this eternal, dark hero’s story is full of doubtful hope and hopeless doubt where one wonders at the purpose of it all.

Orion was nailed into the dark soil of space above our heads, his soft glittering an eternal reminder of our retribution of blindness. We look up and point to Orion as a symbol of escape from this darkness, a symbol that tells us that we too might escape blindness and become eternal, ethereal light. Yet, Orion’s constellation is not the escape from darkness, but his infinite attachment to it. The deep darkness of space which surrounds him is his tomb of shadow.

Orion, great giant, chaser of the flaming sun, is a lie. Myths are the doomed hope of humanity shouting into an echo chamber. Orion, slayer of wild beasts, is a banner to human delusion. For if we were to chase the sun, we would ignite into nothing. We would burn into smoldering charcoal. In our seeking of the light, we would become the dark ash of a dead flame. This is the story of all of us. This is the story of blindness and sight. Only in stumbling darkness is it possible to know humanity. Only in the tomb of shadow and the darkness of unknowable shade can the human spirit truly be seen. We are all that darkness, we are all that blindness, feeling our way forward seeking that light.

It is cold in the dark, wouldn’t you agree? Cold so far from the sun, cold not knowing what the meaning of all this world is, nor the meaning of the breath you take, nor the meaning that the gods above have in store for you. We all wander blindly, accepting our meager will of the self as an objective purpose. 

Where Helios knew his fate and sought the sun to rid his eyes of blindness, our protagonist, Raphael Niegelowski Bender, will wander the earth seeking purpose, seeking inner light. Mr. Bender will wander with hopeless doubt and doubtful hope stitched into every thought he has. 

Mr. Bender wonders exactly the same thing that we all do as we sit staring at the red traffic light, or in that split second as we are watching television between the content of our shows and the commercials, or in the silence of our headphone static: can he rid his eyes of blindness; can he find his purpose in this life? Can he touch the sun and not burn into ash?  And more importantly, should he?

Is the purpose of the fire to illuminate the dark, or is it to burn out into ash? Is the purpose of human life to find its bright purpose, or is it to decay in the toils of the day to day? Can the ghosts of our indecisions guide us to our righteous place in the universe, and is any of that worth the goddamned trouble?