peter hesselbach

PLATE 55: PETER HESSELBACH. That night I dream: the sacred lake is a field of stars and comets, of auroral lights, swirling and dancing, the night sky is merely a reflection of the contents of the sacred lake, we are the stars floating in the inky black terror of the sacred light in the burning pool. Out of the blackness, the twirling lights begin to coalesce into the form of a man, a blazing man of light, built from the plasma of the stars themselves. The sacred pond is a vast, burning city, we walk down its streets, we are twin stars.
When I awake up the sky is grey, the ground hard and cold. In front of me is a rather ordinary looking lake; Bindon and Valtur are already up. They look dreadful - Bindon’s face is swollen and red, and Valtur looks atrophied; Bindon is helping him take some faltering steps around the pond. Both look half starved. Seeing I’m awake, Bindon calls over to me, “We have to get out of here, Ian. Valtur says the marshes may start to freeze over any day now.”
I stagger to my feet and start to walking around to stretch myself out. A thin sunlight breaks out; somehow this only makes the dirty pond look even more dreary. Then a reflection in the grasses catches my eye - curious, I walk over to see what it is. A large crystalline object, half submerged in the mud, looks up at me; it has a strange, dazzling glow, the light seems to reveal an infinitely complex inner structure of interlocking fractals. I reach down and attempt to pull it out of the mud - it seems very well embedded, perhaps it is merely the tip of a larger whole. As I pull, part of it shears off in my hands: holding it up I realize it is a mask. Looking back down, I see a charred, blackened face, a single milky blue glass-eye, staring up at me and beyond, into the sky. I stare up at myself, at the sky, I am drawn inwards, a dizzying series of images begin to pass before me . . . a floating island in the marshes . . . . a flock of birds . . . . buttered spirals of hair, on a pillow of straw . . . . a pit of medicinal leaves . . . . . a buff homburg hat . . . . an antlered man speaking in a forgotten tongue . . . . a burning aeroplane descending into a city of flames . . . . golden rivers winding into the blue distance beyond the chimney pots . . . . buttress peaks, water shelves, divides . . . . a glider, floating over alpine peaks . . . . late evening sun raking the facades on the edge of a park . . . . and then, once more I am looking down at the face, at the milky eye staring up from the dark deep as the muddy pond-water starts to trickle over it: Peter.

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