Deon

he is the spirit of old order and demonic goodness
he is trying to discover or to invent a modern ethic
as a creature of words he is in his element here




his rebirth was of importance



31 August 2001

Today, the first of his new existence, Deon is reading what he can of the digital diary and is attempting to make old-fashioned sense of it - as well as beginning his re-education in modernity and all things new...

After scanning the titles of the entries so far, and after looking briefly at some of them, Deon writes his first impressions:



9 April 2001 visiting cave art by internet

I remember those caves long ago but I am not going to reveal all I know of them. Yet I feel some affinity between that world and this writing.

There are new things happening here that remind me of what we did in those caves and in those times.

For instance, each small thing or small action is seen as equally important - and all the contents of everybody's dreams and memories were accepted as signs of a greater reality than can be spoken of. Signs of 'the supernatural' modern people might call it, but to us it was all, it was everything, and beyond reason or thought on their own.

Only when the words and the deeds came together in dancing and drawing and singing and poetry, as you call your separated 'arts', could the greater reality exist and be felt in our lives... I guess you would call that 'integration of the arts' or 'comprehensive design' or even 'global consciousness' - but to us it was magic, the comprehension of life as a unity, not as separate things without connection or meaning.

Yes, there are indeed many similarities between our old world that is past and your new one that might seem still unborn, or born prematurely - so far it's just a vast disconnectedness, your 'modern life', but I know that it's changing in ways never seen...

At this there was a sudden crack of thunder quite close at which Deon vanished and the text ceased...

but Deon seemed still to be present, invisibly, like the memory of someone remembered, or as a character in a story... and then he took the visual-electrical form of a link - back to 1st July 2001 - the point in the digital diary where Deon had left off reading it...

On 1st July Deon is introducing himself to Uncle Evan - with whom he has much in common. 'Are we perhaps the same person?', Deon asks, at which Uncle Evan excuses himself with a wink and a bottle of whiskey as the modern age draws nearer.

'Sounds of merriment come from the next room...'

and Deon is smiling somewhere in spacetime with his hands on the keys and the mouse.