Angel of History

This is the part of the story where Harold is dreaming. Nothing exciting is happening. There is an argument about whether it is fair to throw Harold out the air lock going on, but they are whispering. I’m too lazy to go over there and listen. At this point I am not sure you care that Harold is about to be thrown out of air lock anyway. It might be the highlight of the story for you. .

Harold is busy though. His mind is spewing memories like a projector whose reels have run off their spindles.. The flapping celluloid flicking images into his mind.

He could see the woman standing in front of what was now Lecture Hall B. He had spent the week before not so much as reading her poetry, but absorbing it, wanting to stand as close to it’s flame as possible.

She was thin with a nice smile and she looked at the pampered middle class men and women with a sympathetic smile as she read poems about torture and the remains of tyrants and old wars.

He was young and fixated on her through her poetry. He was being taught all the names of the parts. His class had thrown her book on the table, while the professor helped the students dissect the meaning from the body, admiring the organs and the way they fit together. There was this tragic sort of beauty that he recognized. Pain sees pain, but he had yet to learn this. He just knew he was being drawn in, like a moth to the light of a distant porch.

“I named my book Angel of History,” she said smiling. “I call it that for a few reasons. We will get to that, but first let’s talk about this beautiful lecture hall.” She held up a small white hand, nails bitten down, and waved at the ballroom they were sitting in.

The room we are in wasn’t designed to be a lecture hall. This building was once a hotel. This room was meant to be a dance hall. It’s old, but not too old to hide under a thick coat of paint. You can smell it. You can feel time whistling through the old timbers and ancient plaster. You can see what it will become as the rotting gray wood shows behind where the paint has peeled away from the walls. I want you to feel that time flowing like a chill. But don’t mourn the dead too much. Learn from them in both their triumphs and their mistakes, but don’t mourn their passing. For next to every grand ball room, there is a slave quarters.

There is a painting of the same name that inspired the book. It’s like a brightly oiled scar.

She paused and looked at the kids in front of her and read from her notes.

Angelus Novus, is the art of entropy in oil paint. Imagine an angel with outstretched wings, falling as the winds from heaven blow it endlessly out towards the void. He faces an ever shrinking paradise as the angel falls. He can only look back. His arms reaching. His mouth open; silently screaming as he watches worlds form and burst like blisters in his wake. The angel tries to close his wings, but the winds force them back and he still continues.”

It wasn’t often that Harold allowed himself to truly feel anything. Feelings are prickly things. He kept them in the basement of his brain, tossing them in as soon as he caught them. Her poems made them hum in a way that felt deep and special. He wanted to make his demons write poems too.

Harold could hear a rhythmic tapping as the ballroom and everything in it faded to darkness.