We are the Idols

I Come forth and bear witness to my great stone funnel! So said the goddess when I passed through the gates. Each building before me was an amalgamation of rocks and concrete. All were lone and separate and yet I could not help but recognize the insular field that connected them all. I was not trapped here, quite the contrary. I had been invited, the term they used was accepted. So as to not dwell on vernacular and risk understating the power of double meanings, this institution was indeed insular but it was far from warm. Its strength lay in its power of separation. I was in, they were out and it was time to sift. On my first day, I strutted the streets and launched into embrace with all those who had joined me. Kinetic energy flowed through our erratic movements and one word occupied our every thought – accepted. On my tenth day, I walked the path alone amidst a sea of faces. It was on this day that an implicit epiphany struck, a tug on my body that meant to drag me out the way I had come, screaming with all the wind: please leave this place. I pushed through it, this force that would never dissipate. II I sat in the great chamber, shielded from the chaotic exterior. The thousands of us who had made it in were positioned to form an inverted cone and at the bottom center was one of the goddesses’ disciples. We didn’t know any better and revered him as a divine being, we clung to his every word and when we ran out of papers on which to transcribe his teachings, we carved them into our flesh and bones. Some could withstand the pain; we were chosen to remain. We knew to mock those dregs who could not, those who got sucked out through the exits and flapped about like flakes in the wind. This was one of the disciple’s teachings. And then we leaned forward, we created blinders so as to focus on the great being who promised immortality. It’s just you and me and now, we thought. In this respect, we were a synchronous beast. We had shed our horizontal connections in favour of a false personal relationship with Him in the center. Those who lost balance and fell forward were swept up by the wind before their face could ever hit the ground. Where every penalty was absolute we became hypersensitive to every weakness, both our own and those of others. When that evil and frigid wind wasn’t powerful enough to send a weakling off of their feet, we were eager to give them a push and send them tumbling out of the warmth afforded to those who deserved it. The divine one appreciated our efforts and we salivated at his every acknowledgement. III By my second year I was hardened, made of the same stone that surrounded me. My skin was both smooth and heavy, I had become aerodynamic and solid as I now effortlessly navigated my way through the belligerent wind. The divine ones had shaped me into a being without pores, impenetrable and foreign to all those who stood with me. We were the few. Those whose skin eroded or fractured were lost to the wind, much like those flakes of earlier days. As fewer of us remained, pillars began to grow along the paths I routinely climbed. The divine ones encouraged us to examine them. I approached one and brushed its surface. Engraved into the marble was a collection of names. And they made me furious. Even in their impermanence, the fallen had somehow found a way to infect the purity of our institution by immortalizing themselves in these ugly protrusions. They were weeds to be uprooted. My fingers scraped against each other as I clenched my hand into a fist. One blow was enough to shatter the pillar, the brittle structure created by the collaboration of inferiors was no match for my singular strength. Those who shared my disdain followed in my footsteps. The broken pillars blanketed us in crystalline snow but they were not the sole objects to crumble. We were sure to notice the marble that covered us but also the stone. And so we became the last. At the top of the hill, the divine ones grouped together. Come forth and journey to the end of the funnel, idols of the goddess. IV My limbs are heavy now and my joints are stiff. The floor beneath me, as stone as my heart and lungs, shakes and shudders under the cantankerous energy of the goddess. She dances in front of me, she is the epitome of fluid motion. Her every movement creates the concussive wind against which we have had to prosper in order to witness this pristine sight. Millions of us surround her, we have all been sculpted in her image and yet we are immobile. She will never grow stiff and so we shall watch her for all of eternity. We shall stand when the oceans dry. We shall stand when the sun decays. And all the while, we shall translate her dance into speech, calling out to those worthy of acceptance: Come forth and bear witness to my great stone funnel! — Jonathan Giammaria is a U2 B.SC. Psychology student. The inspiration for this story came from some of Jonathan’s frustrations with academic competition at Mcgill (or academia in general).