Month: September 2015

It’s strange, because I know if there is one time, in my entire life, where it is appropriate to cry, it is right now. This instant. Yet I feel nothing. I simply calmly meet they eyes of the man who has given me a sentence, the man who has taken everything with a solitary sentence, and thank-him for doing all he can. I can tell he’s sorry, but he must do this five times a day. Thank god I won’t live long enough to have the potential to be like this doctor. Sickness is a bitch, but it, like everything has its benefits.

I walk out to the waiting room, and wish that I hadn’t brought my mother with me. She said she wanted to support me, but one look from her overly sensitive eyes and she’s roiling with all that which I keep dead in side. Somehow I feel embarrassed, some subliminal part of me is wishing she wouldn’t make such a big deal about this. But it is a big deal. My life’s just been cut down to a quarter. I should be happy to have someone weep for me.

With all the grace I can muster, I go down on my knees, as if to pray. I meet my mothers eyes, and hold my arms open. She falls into me, me who fell from her, her who made me, me who will leave first. I hold her and don’t think and carry her and don’t think and call a taxi and don’t think beyond what an appropriate tip for the cabbie should be.

 

He was trying to be brave. My heart broke. When you’re trying to be brave, there must be something that you need to be brave about.

I knew something was terribly wrong, headaches don’t last for days. I told him to go to the doctor. They say better late then never, and this is certainly not the case.

As the door opens, I collapse. His eyes are full of unshed tears, his back is straight, and I’ll never be happy again.

He comforts me, or tries to. How can he know my sorrow? I am so bitter, so caustic, but he will never have kids, never have to lose kids. I would take his pain away from him but it is not mine to take. I would die for him but it would do no good. I get to watch him decay. Ash to ash, dust to dust, with my eyes watching the entire time.

 

By the time we get home, after a long car ride without a word outside of politeness, I can tell that he is at peace with himself. Before, he had a solid forty years left. Now he has under one. All he has done is restructure his goals, take out the fat, and he is resigned to living a full life in a fraction of the time.

I still have twenty good years left. That will be nine-teen without him. Does he think of that? Does he thick of all the things I’ve thought to do with him, to see him do, that I will not get to do now.

I’m sitting at what might be the end of my life, and the only thing I can clearly remember is the back of a button. It was from my favourite pair of jeans; the button was pulled out, and on the piece that was imbedded in the nylon, was an imprint of the letter b. I like things like that, things that aren’t necessary, but they still exist. Even if you never notice them, they’re still there.

There’s a lady down the hall screaming. Just “help me, help me,” over and over again, I’d help her, but I have nothing to offer her. Will I end up like that. My life is so close to being over, its been so long, and all I can hear is screaming. She has been here longer then me, she has been trapped in frailty longer then me. All I can think of is if I last much longer, will I be screaming?

What a way to end up. I remember being warned to try hard, or I might end up on the street, or addicted to drugs, or any number of horrible things. I tried hard at my life. I really did. In some ways I did OK. I might never have made my name known to the world, but I wasn’t a bad man. I don’t deserve to be here. Nurses with fake smiles. Doctors who know that I know that they can do nothing for the myriad of little malignacies that plague me. I’m alone, and that isn’t as horrible as you might think, but it might be nice to have someone to talk to.

I was close to having a family a few times. I lived in Africa for awhile, and a girl told me all she wanted was to have a white baby, she wanted nothing to do with me, just to have my child. What would that be like? Knowing that on the other side of the world is an entire person who wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. I regret not letting that young girl have her wish. If my life was average, at least I could have allowed for the possibility of some future wonderful life.

Maybe I believe in destiny. Some people are the pinnacles, but they are only there because endless people casually and unconsciously altered the world to set the stage; otherwise, without some unknown bumkin whose horse got in the way of a whiff of grapeshot, there would have been no Napoleon. Napoleon is nothing, just a strike of luck. Thats the way I see the world, and as I see the last days, I go I just never had a strike of luck. Nothing to do with me, impartial fates, in another universe, I’m living in all the ways I never could here.

This is what old men do. Ponder on the things that have happened, or should have happened. Muse and wonder if the lives that we’ve lived were the correct ones. If the forks were chosen correctly. It’s rather depressing, having a room full of silent people, all wondering how they ended up here.

 

When I was a young man, or an old boy, my family put my grandmother in a home. We were eating dinner at her house, and I was talking about how horrible a place a home is, and was completely ignorant that she was going to be  put in one by my parents. The talk went on, and she could tell I had no idea, and when I asked a question, she would have a big smile, and say that I shouldn’t disparage the future one day I was destined for. It was incomprehensible to me that I would ever end up in a home. Looking back, there was that same incomprehension on my grandmothers face. These are not the futures assigned, these are not the futures that we dream of. I wish we did not put my grandmother in a home. Selfishly, I wish this I suppose.

 

Your email just got through to me. Written three days ago, I still haven’t opened it. I know what it will say. My mouse flutters over it, wanting to open, but I want a few more minutes without guilt. Such a shame. You wanted to see me. I mean a lot to you. And I intentionally avoid you. Don’t let me meet your unjudging eyes: stop worshiping me, I am not worth it.

The pressure of meaning something. To know that you aren’t that flawed figure that stares back at you in the mirror, but rather a figment of anothers imagination. Against all the odds, I lived up to what you wanted of me. And we had some amazing times. Is it weakness that I want out, or strength. No matter what, I am unhappy, and you are unhappy, but still my path goes unaltered.

People change. You’re older then you were. I’m less then I was. How can I remember what we were to each other, when if we meet, I can see my emancipation reflecting from your eyes. I’ve tried hard to live well, and not everyone is meant for happiness. Maybe I spent my best hours making your best hours. Maybe the well is dry. Please, don’t judge me, please, do judge me, please, just make everything not exist. Why, of all the dreams, must this be reality.

Likely you think nothing. Regret in the simplist form, just wondering if I’ve become to good for you. Like perhaps somehow this is your fault. I can feel the lashes that should strike me. My mind is flailed. It is all me. It is all me. It is all me. So please. I cannot tell you, but I can wish it: be happy, and live on, and keep the time when I was most alive, alive in your memories. May the despot I slink towards, never, never, touch those memories.

So I won’t open your email. I so want to. Test myself, maybe I haven’t become what I fear. But take the step forward, and there is no back. I lived. Nobody can say otherwise. You watched me. You are the proof. Life happened here. That is more then some say. I will try to be fortunate.

I’m pretty sure I can see her eyes looking at me. The corner of her eyes meeting the corner of my eyes. We both look away without knowing the other saw.

I carefully move. I’m on a show. Add a little grace to the move of pinkie, a swirl as I open the zipper. Does she notice? I’ll try to look interesting. Look down the road past the front of the bus. Is there any interesting traffic? Probably not, I don’t remember. I was just trying to make sure I made a suitable post card. For sure she has noticed me.

I take out my ipod. Rummaging through my playlist, my hand at an awkward angle, that I hope looks somewhat natural. With her visibly watching, thnking I’m engrossed, I can see I captivate her. I go through my entire artist list, trying to appear both artistically selective, and non chalant. I wonder if she’s impressed by my music taste? I choose a song, and begin to study the scene around me. The bus driver trying so hard to get his sandwich out of his bag while we’re moving. Some girl clearly wearing to tight underwear talking about where the best place for ice cream after Christmas is. A man of maybe 40 I offend by offering him my seat. Sirens reflecting luminously off the glass next to the drivers head; I nearly leap out of my seat to see some sad spectacle; trying hard to look like the type of person who thinks he might be of some help, scouts the scene, then sits back and looks away, clearly not interested in watching the private scene of someone suffering.

I feel so romantic.

The girl asks if I know where Georgia is. I tell her where it is, and ask her where she’s going. She tells me she’s going home. The conversation starts, and she instigated. I guess this was backwards, me preening, her going for the cheesy line, but the conversation started.

We chit chat and bear our souls in the way that only the supremely confused are. She tells me she’s in economics and wants out. I tell her I’m in university and want out maybe. We don’t make eye contact. We both feel that maybe we’re telling to much. Change of topic to where she’s from (Iran), how miserable the weather is (horrible), and how long buses take (really long).

We’re on safe ground but not really sure we want to be. Her stop comes. We exchange names. We meet each others eyes almost, then her friend taps her on the shoulder, they walk off togethor, and I keep riding on the bus, and I don’t look back.

I open my eyes, forgetful, nothing, spinning my drives, trying to boot up. What is the what is the what is the what is the. My mind functions perfectly, I know everything, just, I haven`t remembered it all yet. It`s there somewhere. And its flooding in, and here I am, becoming me. Yes, yes, yes. I was asleep; that is where I was, and here I am now, here again. Awoken. Alive. Again. A lovely phenomena. I wonder what it will be like to not wake up again? If it will feel any different.

Ahhh, it feels good to stretch my brain, to become myself. I gaze around my room, staring at nothing particular, I just don`t particularly feel like shutting my eyes or staring at nothing; else I have to think of something, and at this particular moment of my consciousness that just doesn`t feel necessary.

Now, why am I up again? Is there a reason? What woke me up? There’s no alarm, but I have a sense of urgency. Do I work today? Could I go back to sleep? I don’t know, but I’m uncurious right now, time is slow and I’m sure whatever in the what it is that I’m going to do for this particular burst of consciousness can wait these few sparse minutes that contains an infinite of blissful moments while I rediscover after the death of sleep the solemn pleasure of being a human being.

I feel myself remembering my past lives. Not in some pseudo-religious way, it’s still too early for that, but rather, my atoms and cells recall to my mind their endless lives as a part of the universe. I was a tree, and I will be a star; right now I am a human being and all the parts of my body are singing praises for they, unlike a tree or a star, it is they that get the privilege of being a part of me at the right now, at the this moment. Here. Cus, well, while a tree might rise to the height of a cloud and gaze solemnly at generations of life built in its shadow, or a star might live for a billion passion filled years, it is only the human, only the human in all the universe, perhaps, who gets this privilege of consciousness. To actually have that gift of not just being an actor in the universe but a spectator also; the only spectator; the spectator who has the inexplicable privilege of seeing the perfection that prevails everywhere.

Ahh, the quite musings of my fresh mind make me smile uncontrollably for a lifetime or a minute. I forget. I, for a moment or a lifetime, feel at peace. Is this death? Is this life? Is this the idea of infinite or nirvana? Perhaps, I will just slip into one infitismile moment and that will be it. Never age, never die, just exist forever right here and right now in this isolated lonely morning. This single second.

The fuck. The fuck. I am standing. I was lying, but I am standing, and I did not tell me body to stand but I am standing and why what the fuck how how. Ok. Cool. Shit. My body is telling my brain. Just chill and let what the fuck just happened register. Why am I standing? Ok. It was because I felt something move on my head, and then the something walked over my face, and the something, some great dark mother fucking thing eclipsed my eye. My home body reacted, thank you very much body: shaking convulsing wrenching, and here I am standing. OK. That’s logical. I guess. But what the fuck was on my head. And more important. Or at least more critical in my deconstruction of events, where is the dark creature now.

I am on guard. The animal in me pushes my brain down and all I do is hunt. Where. Where. Fucker. Where are you. You can’t hide. Where. Where. THERE. I see you. I corner you. Cock sucker you are mine. I will tear you apart. I am big, you are small, and you have bothered a colossus you stupid stupid stupid

But now that I have caught my prey, I wrench the controls away from the animal within me. The danger is passed, and I need to be in control. I always need to be in control. It was a mistake to give up control for that last moment. I was weak. I am always weak. But that doesn’t mean I will always be weak.

I see my darkness. A spider crawling with ponderous slowness across my bare cement floor. I watch him. For the moment, with danger at a safe distance, I am enthralled. Another living beast. You, yes you the spider, you have motives don’t you. But lo, he is horrible, a nightmare beast. Big and bulbous, with that fur that doesn’t belong to the realm of nature but rather to most surreal fantasy. The fucker had been on my head. The fucker had been on my head. The fucker had been on my head. The fucker had been on my head oh god oh god the fucker had been on my head. I feel the primal me attempt to wrench control, to deal with this situation in the right here and the right now and I feel close to letting him but NO I will not be defined by the actions of an animal and NO  I will not give up control of this situation. BACK DOWN SELF. Now. Now. Good. This is me again. Ok. Ok. I want the spider out of here. Now. Where is a cup and a paper towel; loathsome as the beast might be, I don’t want to kill it. I feel that if some great force like me goes around annihilating smaller forces solely because it has the capability then why should whatever god it is we eventually discover not deal with vermin such as myself in the exact same manner. A meaningless gesture on my part, but still a gesture, and it is not the impact of the gesture on the world whose impact I worry about but rather the impact on my personal perception of my own soul.

Bam. The spider is dead. The animal inside me leaves as suddenly as it came and I am left with my desolation. Had the spider ran towards me all of a sudden? I don’t know. But poor pitiful creature. My sincerest apologies are moot, death has caught you, but I still offer them to the universe as condolence. I have affected the pattern of the universe. I have made a change to the organic structure of life. Me. Any causality resulting from this is the fault of me. I add this though to the mountain weighing down the back of my soul, and regard the situation that I have wrought.

Like after bad sex, after the passion is ended, there is this hollowness of the aftermath. Every necessary motion a reminder of the vileness of the deed. I grab a dust pan and sweep. Sorry little fellow. Did you have children? Did you have a wife? Do spiders have wives? I attempt to feel nothing but pure sympathy for the spider, but, underneath my façade in a manner that even my most external emotions recognize my conscious is brimming with rage. Yes, I acted wrong. But the mother fucker was on me. He walked over my eye. He destroyed my nirvana. The world for me is darker for both the entrance and the exit if this little giant monster.

I have to go to work. Oh yeah, that’s it, that’s why I’m up. I’m pretty sure. Or at least I’m pretty sure I said I’d go. I guess I’m obliged. I don’t believe any force in the universe that says it’s going to do something should back down from its requirements. I have said I would do, therefore, I should go. If I am to be a force of entropy, then I shouldn’t say I would do something. Unless that is a part of my entropy. But at the moment, I don’t want to decide whether I am, or am not, a force of chaos, and  therefore or however or maybe or perhaps, I should do those things I said. Even though I don’t have to. Besides, why not. Why not accelerate my engines to full speed and see where my conscious mind takes me unconsciously.

With the grace of unwasted motion I glide to the washroom. I stare myself in the mirror, realizing I’m naked. This makes getting into the shower a bit easier. Perfect. Does this even out my experience with the spider? No. But it is the first step in making amends, paltry though it is. It will be many moments before I am at peace again.

Well, anywise, I shower and brush my teeth and say my prayers and think about many things which for me are very interesting, but I have forgotten them, or at least forgotten to remember them. Life is not so terrible, I did have the pleasure of their thought running through my mind, but I do apologize for not sharing them with you, though truthfully I don’t care that much. However, I do feel that it is necessary for you to know that now, I am standing just inside the door of my apartment (yes I live in an apartment) and have just finished putting on my shoes. I am ready to go outside, to go to work, to be alive; to go about that activity of squandering my infinite with the drudgery of waiting for death to take me away again or again or again. I am smiling, I think.

Now, I could be recounting all of this to you for just the sheer pleasure of communicating what it is to be alive as a me. Perhaps I will do this for you one of these days. But my god, that process is slow or endless and by the time I fully explain to you life as it is for my living we’ll have both realized that we never really lived a life: myself, because I spent consciousness trying to pin down with accurateness the atomic workings of a single moment; and yourself because you fell through the hole of my mind and I greedily will not let you out. You are mine. And why would you want to quit something you have started?

Another digression. Apologies. I was thinking this conscious recollection could go somewhere specific, but, instead  it will go here. I’m not going to tell you the pleasure of my ride on the bus, or the casual interactions I undergo in my environment with its various interesting object and denizens. Rather, I want to tell you about this new door, not my front door (that was further up that page and now we’re down here), that I find myself in front of. A door that I don’t know if it is real or fake, if it is dream or consciousness, if I have walked through the door a thousand times or if it is just my fear of walking through the door which makes its other side seem so familiar. What I do know, or what I claim to know right now but please don’t hold me to that, is that here, in front of me is the door. And I have just knocked.

If you’re curious why I am here, at this door, it is because of my work. And I do have the time while I wait for the door to be answered to explain to you what my job is, but really, even if you do care, I don’t care to explain it. Not, because of laziness but because it is my life and I would rather think about the freedom of clouds or the specific blue of the ocean then to recount my job. I like my job. It gives me a reason to not stop existing. But what it is is simply a job, and really, it is like any job. The door hasn’t opened yet, but that thought is finished. Is it so wrong? Are you curious? The person who would describe to you what their job is, is not who I am, and if that is what you want I would not just ask but implore you to look elsewhere in your reading. You can stay here, I love our communication. But if I am having pleasure and you are displeased them I am greedy, I am robbing you, and while I love you and what you have given me I ask that you leave. Even if you leave me alone. Loneliness is a fear for me, but it is a horror that I can accept.

The door opens and a young Chinese woman opens the door. Without thinking I give her the pleasantries of my work, go through the motions with my body while my mind curiously runs its tentacles over the ladies body and possessions. Ahh the color pink is everywhere, it hurts my vision but I hear that woman and men see colours differently, so perhaps it is beautiful inside her eyes. Oh, there are pictures of a tiniest baby, yet no pictures of an older child. Could it be she has a baby? I accept and absorb everything, my consciousness reveling in the novelty of the surroundings, and I am content that for the moment my moments are full.

But, wait, what was that? My autopilot of conversation is operating smoothly, and I can tell I am talking with her both professionally and with friendliness, but there is something strange in her responses. I don’t understand why, but the penetrating eye every person has in the center of their mind for me suddenly turns to the woman like a spot light. What’s going on? There is a causal alarm going off somewhere, I can’t tell if it is in the house or in my mind. If there is a fire or if my sixth or seventh sense is telling me to be on guard. But my silent confusion is ended, the lady tells me she has something that has finished in the oven she has to deal with. While usually with people in my sort of work this is a less then subtle excuse to get rid of me, this woman, with whatever strangeness it is she possesses right now, it seems more like an invitation. A welcome excuse to bring me into her home, deeper into her life, if only for right now. If only for the fantasy that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Something. Neither of us knows quite yet.

She is talking to me, but I haven’t really been listening. I now turn my attention to whatever it is she feels is necessary for my knowledge. Ahh. She is a mother, I was right. Ahhh, she is a new immigrant. I guess her language is very foreign, now that I listen to it, I just hadn’t noticed. Ahhh, her husband hasn’t emigrated yet but soon soon soon. And then she, her darling husband, and their beautiful son, they can be all be together. Life, for this strange little woman, will be complete again; it will be as in her dreams.

I think that’s what she’s saying to me but it’s hard to be sure. And besides, just because she’s saying it  doesn’t mean it has any truth or resonance to it. What I do know is she is lonely. Impossibly lonely. Perhaps I constructed unconsciously the story of her husband being away. Perhaps there is no husband. Perhaps I’m just unthinkingly formalizing the painting which my perceptions have painted, but have interpreted to strokes wrong. What is important is that I am aware or the colors. And this woman is lonely; looking at me with eyes too big for her head, expectantly quivering while I speak, then torrenting out words, mostly nonsensical when I stop speaking: the dam of her mind has been breached and out flows all that emotion which had been blocked. I wonder idly, perchance arrogantly, when the last time a person had knocked on this lady’s door.

Blah blah blah blah blah. I feel moderate guilt, this is not the way I promised to perform my job. But I killed that spider this morning, and perhaps if I give a little goodness to this fragile little flower the universe will find some form of equilibrium in how it deals with me. I dunno. I’m bantering though, and I feel good because I’m pretty sure I’m making this little lady feel pretty good. I’m patting myself on the back.

But she freezes for a minute. Stares at me with a mixture of confusion and anger. Why? What had I said? I had asked her where her son was, since the house was so quiet. She is under control again now. But the façade has crumbled. I saw the devil in her soul, and even if this woman herself doesn’t know it, her body knows the malevolence that percolates it’s fiber. And for a minute, this beast revealed itself to me.

The woman is under control. She goes back to bantering. Her son is a wee bit sick with fever and napping. She is a good mother, so at the first sign of any sort of sickness she took him to the doctor, and the local doctor has told her that her baby has a bit of a fever, nothing serious, just to give him some mild off the shelf medicine and to keep him from getting too hot. She is bursting with pride when she tells me that with hard work she has performed the doctor’s orders perfectly. I am feeling strange though. I don’t know why, but I have stopped patting myself on my back. The light is still joyous, the scene still jolly but something in this woman is a vacuum for sucking up my pleasure and I want to get away from her. Fuck whatever it is that has twisted her soul into that devil below the surface. It is my business, as another human being, to care. To give her my empathy and my support. But I am weak. I am weak and I want away from this tattered little beast. From whatever it is that I’m sure I will discover if I stay much longer.

However, horribly, I find myself walking with the woman through her house. Her endless nonsensical sentences have not stopped, but now, they seem to have accelerated. I know her life story. Word for word. Worse yet, I can recount it. She is burning what she says into me. And she is accelerating  Her momentum is pushing me and my levianthic self is being pushed off of my calculated route. Stop! Woman. Free me! But. It is too late. For what, I don’t know; though my body is free this lady has dug her claws into my spirit and it would be murder or suicide to extract myself now.

We are walking, not quicker in speed but quicker and quicker and quicker in mental momentum. I find myself talking freely with her. Telling her my waking dreams, about how my job is and why I do it, about my artistic ambitions and my fear that I am too weak to meet them. Her hand out of nowhere is in my hand I have no idea how it got there. If it was always there. If I took hers, or she took mine, or if just in passing they met sporadically and perfectly. Here they are.

And again, for the third time in this recollection or reconstruction or fabrication or reverie or what have you, I have come to a door. Now, the momentum of my mind, which had been asymptotically accelerating comes to a seismic halt. The supernova is over and what is left is blackness and bleakness and I have not the ambition or capability to walk through the door. To see what it is that this bizarre little woman has brought to show me. I don’t know. I am finished. I am spent. But! That dyadic relationship between the momentum of my mind and the momentum of my body for the first time in the story but the legion time in my life separate, and I continue stumbling forward, trapping my mind as an imprisoned traveller.

My physical momentum causes me to walk through the door with the little lady without missing a step. I remark on how strange it is that I’m here. A piece of me wonders if perhaps I should sleep with the woman, lonely as she is. Another part of me reviles at the notion. But the majority of me is centered on the crib in the center of the room. Not touching any wall, strangely in the dead center; almost a shrine; maybe, indeed it is a shrine. In the perfect middle of the crib is a baby, perfect looking, of no more than a very short life. A new creature. His features fill my vision and I notice that even as young as he is, even with those misshapen features of childhood, he looks like his mother, and for the first time I realize that his mother is beautiful. Impossibly so. And she is standing next to me. Making quiet cooing noises and telling me with compassion to not wake her little god.

I don’t want to acknowledge the death of the little creature in front of me, and for the moment, or for at least this sentence, I will avoid it. I would perhaps tell you my own love of children, my own dream to one day have some of the little guys myself. But my god. My god. This poor woman. This poor woman. This benevolent murderer. I know the words patricide and matricide and fratricide, but what do you call it when you kill your own son? What do you call killing when it’s not murder? An accident? True, accidents may happen, but if the causality is death the word seems too weak.

The crib is in the center of the room. The baby is in the center of the crib. The baby is lying on sack, after sack, after sack of ice. He is using a bag of ice as a pillow. He has a thin bag of ice as a blanket. He is dead. Frozen. Blue. Perhaps this way for weeks. Oh, the poor mother. Oh, the hope that there is no father to have to suffer such desolation. Oh, a dead cub of humanity, the worst sin. Why couldn’t I have protected it. Oh, my mind is spinning, repulsing and crying. I weep, and I weep and I weep. Oh this poor woman. And, this woman. This woman right now is still whispering to me to be quiet. That her baby is sleeping. That he has a fever and needs sleep and to not be warm. And he isn’t warm, she has been a good mother and made sure, just as the doctor ordered, that he doesn’t become warm. Therefore, what he has need of is sleep. And I must let the little baby get some sleep. The little precious baby.

I slowly twist my brain and my head toward the woman, my brain a blank canvas not knowing how to paint this scene. I stare at the woman. Could she not know? How could she not know. But our eyes meet. For an instance, but in that instance we recognize. I fall inside her and am her and touch the inside of her brain and see that she is empty. She is sleeping. She too is dead. Or if not dead hanging from a rope, waiting for the emptiness to find her. But! That is but a part of her. Some other part has grabbed the wheel. Is driving with fury and absurdity; has built a fortress of irrationality that everything is ok, everything is perfect, and this crazed demon met my eye, and wanted confirmation and acknowledgement that indeed the world was correct. That she was a foreigner in a new country, a country where a person is to trust the authorities. She has done as those authorities had instructed her. Therefore, by the logic of the land she now called home she had performed the proper actions; even if things seemed foreign and strange, perhaps uncomfortable, everything was foreign and strange for her in this new country. Ahh! The poor little creature.

I collect myself. I know my actions, but I don’t analyze them. The animal that killed the spider fills me again, works to protect me, to save me from harm. It is telling the little woman, perhaps even jollily, how precious the little baby is. How he looks very strong, and if he looks so strong at so young he will grow up to be a very strong man. A great man. Yes, he is beautiful. Yes, that is the perfect name for him. Oh inside I revile the universe; this is not the reality that the sunny day promised. But either was the spider. Oh little woman, can’t you be free? Can’t you be happy.

Back on the street, here I am, but how? It is over. I feel my mind drifting away from the last scene. Reconstructing it into a paradigm that my memory can accept as the true series of events which just passed. Perhaps I overreacted. Perhaps I saw the baby quiver just a little bit. Of course the baby was alive and sleeping, just as the mother said. I have an imaginative mind and I subconsciously thought the worst just to give my mind some dark entertainment for the day; just to construct a flight of fancy for the sake of curiosity: for the what ifs. I can feel myself accepting this. At least accepting the possibility, and this is good.

I am back home now. Gazing idly at a wall content. Not really thinking about anything important, or at least nothing that would be classified by others as important though I am finding tremendous pleasure in my idle thoughts. Here I am on a white horse, king of somethingorother, somebody to look up to, somebody to dream to be and here I am dreaming it. The woman is out of my head. Forgotten with so many other random entropotic forces that hammer at the walls of my sanity. Those forces who I have to decide whether I am for or against. Again, today, you are my enemy, and my walls have held. If only barely. I am still myself. I will still go to work at a job which is meaningless, even on time because I said I would. I still live in a world which makes sense. I am still one of the denizens of normalcy, still a progenitor in a justified belief in the logical.

A spider, again, comes out of nowhere. With thought, I repulse my animalistic nature, and step on the spider. He is dead instantly. Guilt hits me again, yes, but it is less than before. More manageable. Why take the chance that maybe this spider will walk over my sleeping eyes also. Why take unnecessary risks in a world that wants to be chaotic. I go outside and rub my feet on the soft grass of a neighbor’s lawn. I think superficially that the night is a lovely temperature, that it is the perfect sort of weather for a walk with a friend; I think in tertiary way that it was right for me to kill both spiders, but the second was more correct because I felt less guilt for it: that is how the equation works; I think subliminally, in those voids of my soul whose existence I acknowledge but whose location I’ve never been able to map out, of the lady. The mother of the baby. Of the look, just as she was shutting the door on me and had already said goodbye. The look that perhaps was her letting her guard down for a minute, the look of acknowledgement mind body and soul of the sin that she has committed. The self knowledge of her dissonance. And the refusal to deal with it at the moment. To put it off for a little while longer, just a little. Perhaps the baby had been frozen there for years. Perhaps the world was more crazy then I cared to acknowledge. Perhaps this entire gift of consciousness that earlier this morning I has so reveled in is no gift at all, but the greatest curse bestowed on any character in the universe. The ability to see beauty does in no way negate the virulent despair of interacting with what we used to call the devil. Perhaps the devil is the norm, entropy is the norm, chaos is the norm: these are the true laws of the physical world, and us bastions of rationality, us believers in a world that makes sense, we are the irrational.

Perhaps.

Here I am, somewhere new. A river to cross. I need to get to the other side. Why? Adventure, maybe. I forget the initial why, it has left me, there is only the knowledge of truth that on the other side is the place where I need to go. That this is the way forward.

How will I go? If I had wings I would fly, so easily, I would not even notice the river: it would be nothing but a beautiful sight to appreciate, a break in formless terrain, an addition to the infinite equation of beauty. As a man, there are no wings to fly, just feet to walk on, and while I know beauty is here, even I am absorbing it, yet, what my mind sees is a dilemma. There has to be a solution. There is not always a solution but this is the way forward and I will find a way.

This river, the river, it is not going to be crossed with ease. It is fast, torturous, wide, cold, nasty, dangerous, evil. Lovely yes, but it is a feat. It is dangerous. It is deadly. One slip and the raging river will carry me away. It will kill me. How will I cross it? How will I cross it. My eyes stumble on the massive husk of a long dead tree, degrading back to nature, a behemoth of lives past. Elegantly splayed across a narrow portion of the river I see it as a solution, the only solution that enters my mind. The way forward.

I analyze the tree. I see it as it must have stood in another century, majestic, the king of the forest. Fallen. What was, was, and what is, is, and this tree is now nothing but a bridge, the majesty of yester year not lost but reduced to a residue, an emotion of wonderment at what  was rather then sublime awe at what is. Pity. Lucky, for here is a way forward.

Yes, it is the way forward, yet, this new optimism gives me reflection. While striving to reach the end of my endless path, to finally see the true light of my hidden dream goals, I see the corpses of the past greats, those entities greater then I will ever be whose corpses now litter my path. One day, before I reach my goal, I know I will be something just like this tree. Another fallen. Perhaps I can hope to at least provide the way forward for another adventurer, another seeker of the honest equation. Perhaps all these littered corpses mean something. Perhaps the dream of achievement for oneself is a myth, perhaps the meaning of what we do is simply to be another bridge forward; perhaps, instead of many getting to the end, the point is to work in one great sequence to try simply get one small entity to the end. Perhaps that one will be me.

Staring upon the massive roots of this fallen goliath, I begin to climb to the trunk which will be my plank. I begin to see the arduous danger of my path. A length that seems endless but microscopic in diameter. A walking surface slippery, splattered with the foam of the raging river. What else? Wind. Fear in my heart. The stars have been aligned for me so far, but here, as in every fresh new challenge, I feel the potential that my time is due. That this will be the end.

Should I stop? Could I stop? So far forward from where I began. Would this be a demerit to myself? I try to rationalize. I try to compromise the evil of compromising my ideals with the evil of compromising my mortality with the danger ahead. Life on the river, this could be it, this could be what I have waited for, the tree just a tease at the possibility of a wrong way forward. Life here. The spot is lush. This could be it, this could be it. My brain has rationalized, and indeed it may even be right, but, that unfathomable beast living in my heart screams different. The way forward is not to stop. The way forward is farther ahead. Across the river. Across this tree. Dangerous, yes, but such is the way of ambition, such is the danger of exploration, to fly: to see vistas never seen, perils never thought of. To touch the sun and be burned by its ravenous brilliance. I will cross the river. I don’t have to. Life could be here, this could be it. But I will cross the river.

Climbing with a casual grace from hand hold to hand hold, I reach the top of the trunk that will be my bridge. I stand tall at the top. I feel strength and fear in equal measures locked in a battle for my waking mind. My unconscious mind ignores such petty squabbles and forces my right foot forward. That first step towards oblivion, my route already charted, there is nothing to do now but maintain momentum. My brain is screaming with fear, giving me endless reasons why this danger is not necessary with that very same logic I know will eat me alive if I were to turn back. Death or coward, are those my choices? I could walk away and still be a man. I could walk away and live a meaningful life, even a perfect life. But I will not turn back, I have chosen the direction forward, and for better or worse I will not compromise the logic which led me so deeply already through many endless choices. Forward. Forward. Forever forward.

My left foot climbs, moves forward and falls. My second step landed, just a hair in front of my first step. I am moving forward. My mind is calming. Finding peace. Knowing no longer is it profitable to blanch endless banalities; now, it is only about moving forever forward. Another step. Another step. Another step. It is as slippery as I feared. It is as windy as I dreaded. But. Another step. Another step. No thought on anything larger than the individual motion. No thought at all but: another step. Another step.

A universe of steps successfully planted, I have no idea if I am a step away from the far end or if my mind is simply playing tricks, making those endless steps I am sure I have stepped through nothing more than a figment of my hyperactive imagination. At this point, no different then so many moments before it, and what could have been so many steps after, my landing food touches an especially gleaming bit of bark and throws off my semblance of balance. The slow motion of my life is reduced even more. I can feel my foot searching millisecond by millisecond for a new, safer landing; I can feel my arms wildly trying regain my balance. My brain is clear. This will be the end of me. My brain is at peace. This will be the end of me. Should I have not attempted to climb this log over the river? I feel the time to think. I feel time so compressed that perhaps I have all the time of the world to think over this one point. Maybe, even, this is the afterlife, just endlessly replaying that movement that ends you, questioning for all eternity where it was that you went wrong. I do not need infinite time to come to peace. I am at peace. I made the only choice I could make so that at the end of my life, even though it is right now, I can feel this sense of serenity. To hell with what could have been, to hell with the safe life on the riverside where I could have had a peaceful perfect life, only breaking from the reverie of my own happiness during cold sweat nightmares of knowing that this is not the life I should be living. To hell with living life between nightmares, to hell with a long life lying on a framework of lies. My brain and heart are curiously in agreement, this lack of fear a novel emotion in me. Well, then, death, I knew one day you would come, and truthfully I am bitter with you, taking away this game of life before I managed to move all the way around the board, but, then, so be it. At least I was playing on a board that was a reality I believed in. I am falling into the river. This is death. I am not smiling, but I am not sad. I am simply at peace.

Lying on the bed next to the girl that I love, I think of the transience of life. This lovely girl, a flower just blooming, the treasure of the garden of my soul, is going to die. Soon. She lies next to me, seeming fine, yet we both know wasting on the inside. We don’t talk, some languages are more powerful then speech, and death requires the most perfect communication. Yet, she is scared, and I am scared for her, and she looks me in the eye, lying next to her, counting each finite minute. She wants to talk, and I am foreboding what she will say but I am ready.

The Dying: Do you believe in god?

The Living: Yes, I believe in god, I pray every night.

The Dying: Do you believe in an afterlife?

                Ahhh, those gentle lies we want to caress the world with, to give false promises that the world will be perfect, that things will get better. That life will be that dream we all fantasize about. That there is no reason for fear, since there is nothing to fear. Oh, ghouls, you eat my soul.

The Living: Yes, I believe in an afterlife. I believe that this world is just a test, a dream, for the perfect life that will come after.

The Dying: Please. Please. I don’t want you to say what I want to hear. I want in my last days of life to live honestly. To deal with the realities of life while it is still my reality. You’ve told me many times when I wasn’t…sick…that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You’ve said you don’t believe in god. Me, yes, of course, I want to believe in an afterlife, I want to think that my mind isn’t about to disappear, that all my memories will just cease to mean anything and the universes of my consciousness will cease. I am so scared, so scared. But, to be scared is honest, death is something to be feared. What is worse is a lie, to accept the sweet nothing you’re whispering to me while that last bastion of my soul, my heart, knows the secret fallacies of the reality you have constructed for me. So please, please, be honest. Do you believe in god, do you believe in an afterlife. And why, why, why?

The Living: I don’t believe in God, the god who lives on a cloud or the god who will one day talk to you or shake your hand. I don’t believe in an afterlife, I don’t believe in reincarnation. I don’t want to hurt you, my beliefs have made me choke with fear at the thought of death and I am not dying. Please, please, lovely love, just appreciate the beauty of the universe and trust whatever it is your heart says. Belief is belief, and the hollowness of my holiness is something whose contagion need not blanket you.

The Dying: No, please, please, in my heart I feel that there is no god. That worms will eat the last remnants of my spirit. But I know you to hold little fear in those things you have just said. Please, explain life to me. Share your vision and maybe there will be something that will fill this void, this abyss, in the plains of my peaceless dissonance.

The Living: …..Well……I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to tell you. You are right, I am at peace. If I was to die with you, so soon, I would be afraid, I would be sad, because I have enjoyed this plain of existence enormously, but I think I would be at peace. I think that there is no god, but I believe in holiness, I believe in the pleasure of existence. I think rather than dwell on what could be, no matter how bitter a topic that might be, it is better to confront what has been. We have existed with consciousness. Of all the things in the universe, from trees to stars to electrons to deer to grains of sand, these things may be great of small, live for a few seconds or live for billions of generations of the lives of men, yet, out of all this wonder, it is only us, these little fragile human beings, who have had the pleasure of consciousness. We have not just been alive, but appreciated the fact we have been alive. I think this is a wonderful privilege. I think it is like winning the lottery of the entire universe, and it is selfish enough to demand this existence, to demand it perpetually would be demanding more than is fair from the universe. When I die, I will not stop existing, I will continue on as before, as some molecule of dust, some flower that will never make it past the seed form, perhaps even make up the parts of another human being, but my consciousness will be over, this fantastic chapter of the eternal building blocks that make me, me, will be finished. But that does not mean it did not happen. Much like someone lives a life where he can only do certain things at certain times: graduate once, make love for the first time, be born, hear music for the first time, we get only one life; yet, much like with the things in life that we do for the first time, after losing the virgin encounter with the complexities of life the action does not disappear but rather lives in memory forever. True, when you die, you don’t have your memories anymore, your consciousness does not exist, but in the memory of the world you were real. Every molecule you shed changed the entire course of the universe, its slightness in no way affecting the causality since truly everything is about perspective. To the atoms that make up your body you are a dying god, a burning out universe whose death will forever alter the future of trillions of individual entities. To a star, it will never know you lived or died, yet, one day, our sun will supernova, eat the Earth, absorb all the molecules that were once a part of you, and use you as fuel to generate light that will be transmitted across the entire universe. Death is horrifying, it is taboo, but we will all die. I beg you, truly, to not fear death, or, perhaps, yes, fear death, but in that same way a man fears a wedding or a child fears that first day at school: be apprehensive about the unknown, since truly everything is going to change, but do not think that the book of your existence is ending, rather, it is just the evolution of a new chapter, one written by the same author that created you, just, maybe, the new chapter is from a different perspective, a different point of view.

The Dying: I know what you are saying, and thank-you for your honesty. But this does not quell the qualms of my heart. You are right, I am just one facet of my infinite life. Yet, what does this mean to my waking mind. Perhaps it is nice to know that some faint residue of my resonance will remain, but what makes my mind mournful is my loss of memories, that disappearance of mind, that eternal shutting of the radiant sun in my mind. I will disappear. I am going to disappear. That sunshine which you say I have the privilege to appreciate, I do appreciate, I’m crying with its sublime beauty and I want to spent a thousand more days, a thousand more lives just staring in rapture at such perfection. Why do we have to die? Why can’t we appreciate that infinite which you claim is all around us. What a cruel temptress nature is, to provide such a perfect paradise and we get no more than the faint light of candle to illuminate nothing but a few dismal shadows. To truly appreciate life! Yes, I know, this is nonsensical, that if I was to live for another fifty years I would still have these same intangible fears, haunting the full extent of my transitory mind. But most people can hide this fear, stare at the ground because they know the sun of the truth will destroy their mental sanguine; but, I have no luxury. I don’t want you to feel the horror of my mind. You can stay asleep. But I ask you to just lie here next to me, to hold me, to touch me, to let me feel the full pleasure of existence in this dwindling twilight of my mind. Death is coming for me like a freight train, and I am not ready, but, I am going to shut my eyes, pray to a god I don’t believe in, and ignore death as she wraps me in her embrace. If I want to enjoy these last few moments, I am going to have to be ignorant. I am just not going to think of an afterlife. I am just going to try to exist, for just a few more moments.

Lucifer Christ is sitting quietly on the center of his couch, staring dreamily contemplating the nature of his neighbors sins. Yes, he thinks, she must be all those terrible things. Yes, undoubtedly I must do something about that wretched woman. And, firmly coming to this conclusion, Lucifer returned to pulsating with fear waiting for some dread nightmare to awaken into his life.

A little background to this scene is sure to illuminate the reason for Lucifer’s fear. The story is like this. Lucifer, who is by trade a cashier at a major box store, returned to his large apartment block one night after a particularly onerous shift. He hazily punched in his floor number, walked off at the generic landing, went to his door, twisted the knob, and walked into what was supposed to be his apartment but was in fact the one directly below his: he had clicked the wrong floor accidentally. Now, Lucifer only opened the door for a split second, immediately realized he was staring into the wrong apartment, quickly shut the door, then went up a flight of stairs to his own apartment where we find him in the paragraph above pulsating with fear. You see, unfortunately, the apartment that Lucifer walked into  by shear accident was some form of murder den. For the split second the door was open Lucifer could see a plastic lined apartment, a few stray body parts littered around the plastic, an enormous quantity of blood, and his cute neighbor Tilda standing in the center of all this with a welders apron around her waist and a hacksaw in her hand. She looked up in surprise when Lucifer entered, probably had time to question why on earth she didn’t lock the door, made direct eye contact with Lucifer, then Lucifer shut the door and scampered off.

Now, of course the rational thing for Lucifer to do in a scene like this would be to run away, run quickly, never come back. Of course alerting the authorities goes without saying a point number one on Lucifer’s action plan. Yet, the human mind is not a perfect organ and one must remember that this is all happening rather quickly and for whatever reason neither alerting the authorities of escaping the premises even enters Lucifer’s mind. No, all he thinks is that what serendipity: the entire city is looking for the infamous murderer and here he finds her by sheer! It’s too bad, Lucifer thinks, since she was rather cute. He giggles to himself that make it is a good thing he never pushed harder for a date; his cowardice pays off. Lucifer is giggling. And, of course, pulsating with fear.

There is no plan in Lucifer’s mind what he should do, resulting in that he just continues to sit in the middle of his couch. There are not room mates coming and going to break his reverie, there is no beep of the telephone to remind Lucifer that he is part of a world external to the last few minutes. Nope, all Lucifer does is sit and shake.

Eventually a certain amount of time passes, say a quarter of an hour. Perhaps if an hour had passed Lucifer would have woken up, but that amount of time does not pass. After this certain amount of time Lucifer hears someone twist his apartments door know. He, unlike the murderer remembered to lock his door, and Lucifer giggles to himself before retching with horror as he hears a mechanical cutting noise and watches his door swing open.

In walks Tilda, carrying a small mechanical power saw in her left hand which must have been used to break through his lock. She is looking very calm and collected, and even has a bit of a jovial look in her eye, as if she is quietly tittering at what an absurd situation this has evolved to.

She walks confidently into Lucifer’s apartment, shutting the door behind her. Really, she is a rather cute girl, round face designed for smiling and a lithe figure that’s perfect for dancing. She is smiling now, as she asks Lucifer “Well, have you ever put me in a tight spot! Do you know what a tight spot you have put me in?” She gives Lucifer no time to answer, which is good since Lucifer’s mouth was agape and the chances that he might have piped in an answer were remote to nil. Tilda carried on, “Here I go and play my little games, and take all the precautions, and a forgettable detail like locking the door completely slips my mind! What are the chances! You really didn’t mean to come into my apartment did you? I saw your face, it was priceless, you certainly didn’t expect to see me playing my games did you? Well?” She suddenly loses her smile, pierces Lucifer with a dontfuckwithme look and waits a solid fifteen seconds for Lucifer to stammer “I…….I……..I was on the wrong floor…….it was an accident……..I was so tired……”.  Giggling Tilda claps her hands, “Oh, an accident! Well, isn’t that just my luck, oh ho ho ho, an accident! What are the chances, what are the chances…” Clapping her hands with enthusiasm Tilda seems to be actually enjoying this rather odd situation when she suddenly stops and begins quickly moving toward Lucifer with the saw revving at a high RPM. With the squeal of a stepped on puppy Lucifer leaps behind his couch yelping “You can’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please of please of fuck, please please don’t kill me. I won’t tell anybody. I didn’t see anything. There was nothing to see. What is it you are talking about? Oh please. I won’t tell anyone anything, oh god oh god oh god please please.” In the face of this barrage of excuses Tilda seems incognizant until Lucifer weepingly mumbles “If you kill me I will go missing and and and then people will find you because you can’t hide from all the attention that me disappearing would happen on the building.” Suddenly, the saw goes off, the killer leaves Tilda’s eyes, and again she seems jovial; a laugh is living just inside her lips. “You know! I think you’ve got a point,” she ponders with enthusiasm, if I do kill you, you will be a head ache! I would have to move from here for sure and I’m so happy here, the land lords are so nice and I’m so fond of my view. Yet, if I don’t kill you then you will go to the police and I’ll be an even bigger mess! No, I think I’m going to have to kill you, unless, hmmm, do you have any ideas? I’m open to suggestions!” Gasping for air Lucifer is crying, “Suggestions, suggestions…of course I have some suggestions…..” Tilda is tapping her foot, looks at her watch and begins to fidget while she waits for Lucifer to respond. “How about,” suggest Lucifer, “If you find something that you could make me do so that if I was to tell anyone that thing which I may or may not have seen I would be in just as much trouble as you?” Tilda lights up like a sun beam, and yelps joyfully “Of course Lucifer, that’s a fantastic idea! Here, you wait here, I’ll be right back! Two seconds. Don’t do anything foolish though, I wouldn’t want to have to eat your mother or anything!” And with that hopefully sarcastic statement Tilda is bounding out the door.

Now, with Tilda gone, Lucifer collapses back into his comfortable spot on the couch and manners of conducting an escape suddenly flood his mind. “Yes,” he thinks, “I could simply run out of this building, go to the police department, and turn Tilda in. Yes, that’s what I will do. Yet…..what if she does do something terrible to my family? She certainly seems crazy, and for her to have not gotten caught yet must mean she is somewhat successful at staying ahead of the law….no, I think the proper thing for me to do is stay here. Maybe I will get a weapon and if the chance arises I’ll kill her! Yes, that’s a good solution! That’s exactly what I’ll do.” Rising from the sofa going towards the kitchen, Lucifer is looking through his drawers when Tilda stumbles back into Lucifer’s apartment with a large bag the size of a human body being dragged behind her. She looks at Lucifer, sees him with the knife in his hand and sweetly asks him “to please put that fucking knife down or I’ll use it to cut you so terribly that your only mode of communication will be breathing patterns!” Lucifer puts the knife down, and stares at Tilda quixotically.

“Well,” Tilda says, “Here’s what’s going to happen. In the bag I have my next toy, and while I was going to have fun playing with him I thought if you were to maybe murder him that would be the sort of action that would keep you from going to the authorities. So if you could do me a favor, and take that knife you just put down, and come over here and just stab the bag a few times? Don’t worry about blood, the bad has a self repairing meniscus so everything should stay in the bag. Just stab it a couple times and I’ll be off and everything will be exactly like it was before! Just let me get out of the way so you don’t stab ME by mistake, ohohohohohohoh!” And with that Tilda shies away, and is staring at the agape Lucifer.

Lucifer is just standing there, very still. His brain is working faster than his heart. He cannot be a murderer! That is a thing so vile, so vile. Yet, then, he will die if he does not kill this man. And this man will die one way or the other. Oh, how tricky. he can’t kill a man, he can’t. Then, then the man is going to die anyway. Oh, fuck it. And without anymore thought then that just listed above Lucifer takes the kitchen knife he’d hoped to pluck between two of Tilda’s ribs and instead plants it solidly into the writhing black bag. The bag shudders viciously, and Lucifer surprises himself by instinctually stabbing the knife a dozen more times until the movement stops.

Springing from the other end of the room with a great big grin on her face Tilda comes and grabs the bag that used to contain a man. “Fantastic work Lucifer,” she gushes, “Everything should be good now! You can’t tell anybody about my games because then it would come out you were a murderer. Here just let me take that knife from you for fingerprints, thanks, and I’ll store the body in such a manner that I’ll be sure to be able to pin it back onto you, so you don’t got telling anybody you hear? Okay. Good, anyway, have a pleasant evening and I’ll see you around the building. Maybe I can borrow your laundry soap, mines almost out. But I’ll talk to you about that later.” Then pulling the corners of the heavy bag with all her strength Tilda takes the great bag out of Lucifer’s apartment.

Looking at the ruined lock in his door Lucifer sighs. “That’s going to be a pretty penny to fix,” he thinks morosely. Then without allowing himself a second thought for all of the events, he stretches out on his couch, turn the TV on, and lets his brain turn off.

Where am I, where am I? A dream I just had, or is it even over, not nightmarish, barely remembered, but infiltrating my soul. Where am I? Is this a dream? How can I know, truly know. I hear a baby screeching, not the cries of normal youth but the retching of pain. I shake my head, wake a little more, and the screech is gone.

I am still not awake, or at least not entirely, but I have the aptitude to unconsciously check my clock, know the time, know it is not time yet for the necessity of full wakefulness, and allow myself to revel in this tertiary environment of awake but still dreaming. I am in control, fantastically constructing cities of l’amour that set Paris to shame with one half of my mind, while with the other half solving the problems of government for the next several decades. I should write all these things down, though I distrust my mind at all times and especially now. Who know what cleverness the universe is radiating on me at this exact moment, what hidden capabilities my mind squirrels away in these recesses of sleep.

But these ideas are lost now, ethereal as they were; it is like atoms: by trying to capture their speed I lost their position, and now, I am left with my hands empty of all that I vainly tried to capture. Just a few grains left, enough to make me feel some real remorse of what I have lost. Even those are casually slipping. May they all leave, I don’t want any haunting of the past, never.

Now, here I am, awake. I have forgotten what beauties I thought, and now, instead, all I feel is a casual apprehension of fear, likely the remnants of my nightmare, if that’s indeed what is was. I shake my head, trying to dispel, but I don’t have the will to lose it entirely. What was it? What was it to shake me so, what winds are there that leaf through my soul, lifting and revealing the crevices that I would wish to never acknowledge? What edible thoughts do I not even know I have eaten, do not even know were in my capabilities to fabricate?

Now, sadly, it is the time to make things happen, to wake up, to drag myself to whatever it is that must happen today. It is not a day of that unfortunate paradigm of work that sucks at us all, stealing our lives to construct unbeautiful things. Rather, it is that mealy day of rest that men absorbed with efficiency have calculated that I need if I want to retain the dismal sense of efficiency they assign to me.

It is the day of rest though, and why spoil a lovely morning, light filtering in attractive patterns from the sun through space, diffracted by the atmosphere and my window into a fantastical pattern on my bed sheet. Beautiful. What will I do today? What will I do with this life? Why is it, that I am alive. I am hungry also.  I want to be more alive then I truly am; I fear death. I fear the absence of existence. Who am I. Where am I going. Why, why, why, why, why, why.

Cluster fuck shit, I don’t want to go there, forget! New things. I propel myself from bed, and the momentum carries not just my body but my thoughts to a new place, a different place, and I decide that of all the ethereal images flying through my mind, the most manageable, the most real, is my hunger, and on this here, this day where it is given that I have time at my beck and call I decide to make breakfast. The breakfast I dream about on those long drives to work with nothing but a coffee. I go to the kitchen and become lost in my task, thinking about nothing substantial but using all my processing power, every megabyte of ram I have, to make the most virtuoso breakfast I can with those supplies given at my hand: things are imperfect, I appreciate the fact I do not have ideal circumstances: there are not the right food stuffs, and indeed my ability to shape them into something remarkable is vaporous at best; but I will try, and even if what I create is imperfect at least it is something, something to put my name too, something to say YES, I created this: even, if after all this, perhaps to eat it, digest it, then to learn from it, to perhaps make something more perfect next time. While my thoughts devolve unconsciously into streams of colors (or are they flowers?) I begin my breakfast, and decide that yes, it is something to be proud of, it is something that I am pleased with.

Astonishingly quickly I gorge; devouring my construct, eliminating its beauty, turning it into a pulp in my stomach indecipherable from any other edible substance: its beauty is lost, forever, the cleverness of my hands will never be known. With remorse I wish that someone had seen me in action creating something of substance, to share in what is now lost, to reaffirm my abilities of creation. Banal, these thoughts, I know my truth, but what is truth without benchmark, without people to compare to, to sit on someone’s shoulders and feel tall?

What now? Do I have any responsibilities today? Of course. But fuck them, can I escape? Will I suffer if I do the nothing that I want? I should write something beautiful, something to give me fame, fortune and respect. But not today, I am not in the mood. Conditions are un-ideal and I appreciate the constancy of this reality. I should visit my mother but I am simply inert; she can wait till a time where I am not where I am now. I should go for a run, maybe around the lush lake just a few minutes from my apartment, but no, no, I can escape that too. This is the day of rest prescribed to me, and I will munch on my antidote in the vein that it was given. I will do nothing. Utterly nothing. I will continue sitting here, on this couch (when did I cycle from the table to this couch?) and revel in revelation, enjoying the solitary thoughts that flit through my mind, the casual entertainment of life passing outside my windows, the joy of being in my pajamas and not having anyone watching.

Thoughts percolate through my mind. Dissolving in that barrier between substance and nothing. This is OK. I can feel the war in my subconscious, attempting to create; always, every thought a battle with the nothing; every subtle flicker of light in the back of my mind a victory against the emptiness of the universe. Why do I squander such virtuous gifts? Why is it I do not use the light of my mind to shine brightness on the darkness of the soul. To construct magical spells of vision to help enchant a disenchanted reality. I could. Yes. But, when, why, and why is it every time I try, tease that my brain is, every time I try to document the beauty of my thoughts, the cleverness of my mind, they dissipate: hide, or become the nothing themselves; to realize that they were never there in the first place, to realize that all I was doing was giving myself illusions of brilliance to hide from the truth: my lack of genius.

No, much better to continue hiding in the revolutions of my brain. To continue resting here, doing nothing, but endlessly imagining. To simply be alive, and appreciative that the vast majority of the universe does not have the benefit of life, and the vast majority of those things experiencing life do not appreciate consciousness. And here I am. Winner of the genetic lottery: the sum total of infinite. And I casually wish for more. Shame on me: to not appreciate what I have: to take it for granted. Life is here, happening, in me. Yes, perhaps, perhaps there is more to life than simply existing, perhaps I could create universes different than this one presented to me, but for today, on this day of rest, on this day where I can do anything, doing nothing is enough.

I come back from being alone, by myself, where I was. I have left there. Where am I now, the place I used to be, the place I am supposed to be. My home. Yes. Here I am. And what now? To make a life, to be the man I am supposed to be; yes, life has been postponed long enough. Yes. Here we are, at the start, a normal start, a fantastic start, lets fly together, let’s see reality, let’s be that subtle voice that I hope, pray and know is somewhere in all of us.

We go somewhere, to the place that I am. Here we are. Are we ready?

Start.

Screaming.

Screaming.

Shrieking.

Screaming.

Is that my own voice I hear?

Is that anyone I know?

I casually touch my lips to mouth. Feel their faint glue and know that it is not me screaming. When was the last time I have talked? It has been long, maybe.

Screaming.

Where is it. Is this a vague sense of adrenaline striking my frigid system? I see a girl, young, lying, screaming, with a man on top of her. We are in the middle of a busy street. If the street was alone and this man was on a screaming girl it would be rape. But, all these others. She must be on drugs. Poor angel. Can that be true? Could this sin be capitulating before my vision, before the aghast averted sights of all this multitude? Better to think not. Drugs. Sinner. She deserves her terror. Or so I tell myself; tell myself while secretly reveling; tell myself while I feel a wind in the listless fields of my shadowed mind: this is life happening, something to differentiate today from all other days. Or so I tell myself.

Screaming, screaming, it’s still here, I can hear it! But the women, that screaming nymphet, she has passed long gone, that was days ago, was it even real or even a dream, is this nothing but a color on my subconscious, but I feel it! I feel it! I feel it! Like a slot machine in my mind endlessly looping but never lining up this fucking shriek! Leave here!

What am I supposed to be doing. What am I supposed to be doing. Maybe. I’m trying to start a car but it’s not getting there. All these cars around me and I can’t get mine to start. Are they looking at me! Stop looking at me! Stop it, I’m better then all of you! Look at me, look at me, mortals, losers, I fly, you drive in your stupid little cars but I have wings and I’m flying all over you and you are nothing, little ants in my quickly rescinding vision, ignored as I stare to the heavens, but in my heart, yes, my true heart, all I feel is fear of falling and the enormous work it is to stay aloft. To stay flying. And now, that I am here at heaven, horribly, what would a fall feel like. This height has given me momentum in a direction dangerous. Horrible. Where am I. Screaming. Where is it.