The Decipherment

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  Isabelle Aimery was not a very philosophical person; she liked things simple and to the point. Life is a big puzzle itself. Why complicate it more by mere mortal thoughts and perspectives? Sure, deep thinking is necessary, because in a sense, it is what the mind thrives upon. But sometimes, that deep thinking becomes deeper and deeper – until it forms a large pit, from which it gets hard to find a way out. The power of thought is like soil; if one digs deeper into it, it will get deeper and finally form an unfathomable pit. What is being searched for will not get close; it will just keep getting further and further away from reach.

  Answers to some things are right at the top of the questions themselves. Digging deeper into the questions and adding more doubts into it will just hinder their surface, hence plunging the answers deeper as they are dug into.

  Same is the case with a mind’s thoughts and ideas. Plunging deeper into their mesmerizing world will not bring us close to the end; it will just open more doors for us. Discovering what lies behind those doors may make us trapped into that world of thoughts – and we may possibly never get out.

  Now, after discovering each and every realm of her mind – her thoughts, memories, dreams and ideas, Isabelle realized what a foolish mistake she had made. She had no need whatsoever to see all that she had so far. There had been no need for her to open all the doors or look into every portal. It had been her want, not her need, to discover every nook and cranny of her subconscious. She could be stuck in it till eternity. Who knew? There was no one to save her. Her only companion was her own mind.

  But then again, it was her mind. She could make it do whatever she wanted it to do. Besides, every mortal is a master of its own mind. If there is one thing no one can take away from a mortal are the jewels of his mind – his thoughts, ideas, memories, dreams and feelings.

  It is said that the human mind has access to only some of its powers, and that it uses only half of those powers when they are called upon. But to Isabelle Aimery, who had her thoughts and ideas as her sole companions from a long time now, knew that to be the most bizarre thing ever said in the history of time. She had many times heard people say that when we think, we are actually using less than half of our brain. Some even go as far as to say that Albert Einstein used only 10% of his brain. But it is just out of their naïve and ignorant natures that they say such things. They are ignorant of the profound power of the human mind.

  Even while thinking and remembering something simple, like dates or names, the mind is correlating its powers from different dimensions and it is the combined result of these powers: memory, cognition, dreaming and ideas, that we perform the specific task at hand.

  Sometimes, we have a certain memory buried deep in the chambers of our mind, or a specific type of feeling we might have experienced in the past that may also be stored in our memory, but we might not be aware that we possess that memory. However, the mind is not so ignorant of what it possesses. From somewhere deep down, where that memory is buried, the mind has the ability to bring it up to consciousness – and hence we realize. We remember.

  As a child, when Isabelle’s father had showed her The Persistence of Memory for the first time, he had interpreted to her some tiny details, but after seeing the confused look on her face, he had given up. He had saved the explanation for future time. Unfortunately, life had different plans for him. He passed away that same year, and hence Isabelle could never really understand what her father had been trying to tell her.

  Now, the faintest flickers of the memories of that time returned to her. Those memories were in the phase when something from the mind’s subconscious state is being rehashed to its consciousness.

  After a while, the whole ground beneath her feet started to shake violently. The images of the code that she had broken earlier dissipated and fell away all of a sudden, looking like falling grains of sand. The black and green illumination that surrounded her also faded into thin air, giving way to a light orange glow of light all around. The sound of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata, that had still been playing, stopped abruptly and a dead silence fell all around. The darkness that covered the whole space also faded. It looked like the time when the morning sun slowly replaces the darkness of the night.And then a single image flashed before Isabelle . . . that of her father showing her the painting for the first time.