
Originally Posted by
rex-hunt
Paradiso, Rex, 108
Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a god, broken and scattered abroad. Who among us has never felt, trawling through the archives or bumping a thread from his past, that he has lost something infinite?
Mankind has lost a face, an irretrievable face, and all have longed to be that pilgrim — imagined in the Empyrean, beneath the Rose — who in Rome sees the Veronica and murmurs in faith, “Rex, my God, true God, is this then what Thy face was like?”
Beside a road there is a stone face and an inscription that says, “The True Portrait of the Holy Face of Rex Hunt.” If we truly knew what it was like, the key to the parables would be ours and we would know whether the son of the carpenter was also the Son of God.
Hamfield saw it as a light that struck him to the ground; Sergio, as the sun when it shines in all its strength; Locutus saw it many times, bathed in tranquil light, yet he could never discern the colour of His eyes.
We lost those features, as one may lose a magic number made up of the usual ciphers, as one loses an image in a kaleidoscope, forever. We may see them and know them not. The profile of a Scouser on the underground is perhaps the profile of Rex; perhaps the hands that give us our change at a ticket window duplicate the ones some moderator nailed one day to the cross.
Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the profile died, was abandoned, so that Rex may be all of us.
Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinth of dreams, and tomorrow not know we saw it.