"The kite became a small splotch in the sky, it's tail rippling silver behind it, a red slice cutting into the great big blue."

The boy ran out into the field with a kite trailing bright colors behind him.  It was a precious kite, he had built it himself.  Made of paper his favorite colors, it boasted a tail of silver steamers ten feet long.  Fastened to the kite was a few hundred feet of bright red ribbon, coiled onto a large spool.

Today is the day!  the boy thought.

Today i’m going to fly my kite higher than ever.

After a great distance he came to the top of a hill in a corner of his field.  Looking up into the sky, the boy threw his kite into the air and watched as a gust of wind embraced it. The boy let out his breath as it rose effortlessly away from the ground.

Higher than his house now, the boy let more of the ribbon out.  The brilliant red ribbon streaked the sky, growing thinner and thinner the higher it went.  The kite passed a bird, squawking at the sight of it.  As it became a small splotch in the sky, it’s tail rippling silver behind it, a red slice cutting into the great big blue.  The cloudless blue above was streaked with orange and yellow as the kite soared.

The boy smiled so hard his face began to hurt.  The kite went up, and up, and up, until it reached air currents the blew harder and faster than those below.  He looked down and saw he was about to reach the end of his spool.   Raising his eyes to the colors in the sky,  he smiled harder still.  Just as the boy thought his record was set, the ribbon snapped and away his kite flew.

“Come back!!!” he screamed and jerked his body into motion.

The boy ran, and ran, and ran, following the pinprick of color through the field and over the hills.  Lungs burning, he ran into a dark woods after his creation.  He lost sight of his kite while he ran recklessly through the trees, keeping the vision of orange and yellow and silver in his mind.  Growing tired, he slowed down and looked around himself.  Dark and green, he was now deep in the wood.  The boy no longer recognized the forest around him, he had never been so far from home.

Oh no... he thought to himself, I’m lost!

The boy ran in the direction he had come from.  He soon realized he didn’t know where he was going.  For what seemed hours the boy walked through the endless wood.  Not knowing what else to do, he kept the image of the kite and kept moving forward.

I flew it too high he thought.  If only i hadn’t flown it so high.

The boy wandered on through the dim light of the forest.  Finally, when he had about given up hope, a break in the tree line appeared in the distance.  Sprinting towards home he let a laugh of relief wash over him; only to stop at the edge of the field.  Dread flooded him.

This isn’t my field.  I’m further from home than ever and i’ll never see my kite again.

The boy walked over to a rock and sat upon it.   Breaking into tears, he wept piteously  into his arms.  The kite, myself, we’re lost.

“Hello?”

A voice wavered over the sobs and caused the boy to jump.  Wiping his face with his sleeve he answered back.

“H-hello?”

A girl stood a little ways away.  She was holding a red ribbon in her hand.

“Is this your ribbon?  I’ve been following it for a little while now.” she said softly

“My kite!” said the boy, sadness forgotten.

“Oh I love kites!  She said, come with me and we’ll follow this ribbon to your kite!”

The boy and girl followed the red ribbon in it’s opposite direction.  The two ran over fields and hills, watching the bright red color snake through the green of the ground.  The land rose and the two children neared the end of their journey.  Atop a great hill sat a tree that raked the sky.  The ribbon rose into the air and into the branches.  High above, in the very top of the tree, the orange and yellow kite waved down to them.

“There it is!” The boy yelled with relief as the girl ran laughing behind him.

Running to the ribbon in the air, the boy pulled down on it. It did not give.  He yanked and strained, but no amount of his strength would dislodge the kite from it’s lofty perch.  The boy sat down with a thud.

“It’s no use, I flew my kite too high.” he despaired.

“No, your ribbon just wasn’t strong enough”  she said, taking it from him.

The girl walked over to the giant tree and gently tugged on the ribbon, giving it slack and tugging again.  The boy watched as his kite jostled around on it’s branch.  Sliding over, the kite began lowering through the branches, one by one, until it rested on the ground.  Biting off the ribbon, she handed the lost kite back to the boy.

“This kite is very beautiful.  If you show me how to make one I will give you ribbon strong enough so that we can fly them as high as we want.”

“Yes I will show you!” the boy said. “Thank you for everything”.

The two walked down the hill hand in hand, dragging the bright red ribbon behind them.

“What are your favorite colors?” the boy asked.

“Blue and purple” She replied.

Looking back at his kite she added “And red and silver”.

“Good.  Lets go make your kite together.” said the boy.

The two of them came back to the great hill with their newly made kites.  Larger and stronger, they flew their kites high enough so that people could see them from far, far away.  Inspired by the colors in the sky, the people began building their own kites. Soon the summer fields and skies miles around filled up with beautiful specks of colors; each kite trailed shimmering silver tails behind them.

Old Man

There goes the old man of the sea

Already armored for under the ocean

Down to the knobs of his knees

A breeze bellows in from the buoy of tin

That pumps the air down to the deep

He skips with a grin as he steps on a fin

Of a shark, in the sand, asleep

The shark shot up and sank his incisors

Into the arm of the man

Who upon looking down at the sea floor

Thought of his frying pan

The old man of the sea, as mean as can be

Looked underneath, and broke all the teeth

When he punched that fish in the chin

He dragged its tail back and made a fine snack

Of fish fingers, fries, and fillet

Looking around his shack he saw his fishing sack

“Perhaps I’ll go for a second today”

1st “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself”

2nd “Man is in anguish over human responsibility”

3rd “Man is in anguish over abandonment”

4th “Man is no other than a series of undertakings”

5th “The absolute truth is found in one’s immediate sense of one’s self

6th “The human condition is that we define ourselves through other’s self.

7th “Freedom”

Addressing a few quotes taken from “existentialism as a humanism”.

1 – As rivers converge we discover that each individual river we thought stood alone or opposing is indeed one thing at it’s end. In the viewpoint of essencevs.existence I find a need to shift the working perspective to a 4th dimensional or “timeless” point. In the idea that time exists only as a base concept for the human mind to move linearly though the infinite, we find that “before” and “after” are the worst kinds of crutches when attempting the digestion of ultimate realities.

2 – In this state of culminating dualities we can see that we not only create all that we are, but also simultaneously create the mold in which we follow. In a process of self-digestion we exist as all things and one at a time. Therefore the responsibility for all of mankind does not rest on your shoulders, but does so only in a holographic way. Each part containing the whole has only to maintain his part for all to exist as it already does. All we must be is our individual selves, whatever it is that we choose to be. With false responsibility lifted the supposed anguish has no hold. Although that is not to say that being oneself doesn’t carry many footholds for anguish.

34 – On the idea that there lies no hope, only action, i respond with another framework to move out of frustration. A man is a sum of his actions and this is true. Man however is more than material stuffs for the very fact your reading implies. Actions are more than material things. I would borrow from many theologies in saying that three spheres may exist. Material, astral, causal. This is an assumption that men trade energy and ideas like one would trade a good book. Or bad one for that matter. Each dream, expectation and hope is an undertaking in itself. One shouldn’t disregard lightnings other qualities because they haven’t been struck by it. “You are nothing more than what you have lived” implies that living is some small thing. Living allows us to closely inspect every possible perspective we can attain while slowly moving the whole of existence around like an apple in our hand. It is therefor beneficial for a man to think up something original, be it passionate, hopeful, desperate or boring;so as for it to sponged up by the mass of eternal oneness. If there was a God, i would like to think this is how it eats.

5 – Awesome. Spot on.

6 – It seems it is widely accepted that people are reflections of one another to some degree. The people most hated, feared and otherwise looked down upon are part of ourselves we wish not to have in ourselves. Unfortunately, in the grand act of pulling ourselves out of our own assholes, we must understand that they are only physical manifestations of what is already inside us and accept them. This will stop the emotional dissonance that perpetuates the fear and hate and allow them to reflect you and your blatant acceptance. The qualities of trust faith and hope are wired into this idea and gives them validation. It is not just people. Everything reflect itself so that it my know itself on every level, micro-macro and otherwise. Each person, rock, ecosystem, cell, galaxy, atom and universe are a single infinitely divided amalgamation making itself known to itself by a process of reflection. Only a martyr would keep placing “Human” in front of condition.

7 – “Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of” “Nothing can save man from himself” – except himself i would tack on. The case of the student leaving his mother could be looked at as such; Student has two choices, go or stay. To go is to fulfill his own wish, to stay to fulfill his mother’s wish. The mother’s task is to allow her son to achieve the knowing of his self and the freedom that come with each mote of understanding. To stay would be, in effect, his mother imposing her will on him, asking to accept guilt for peace of mind. The son of course has the freedom to do as he will. To be true to himself we would see by his choice if he values the neediness of the mother or the vengeance of his brother. The son needs to find himself through vengeance before he can take on his mother neediness. However, by making the world black and white Sartre had taken away this man’s true freedom.

His advice should have been to move out of france altogether and start learning the violin or how to whittle. Or something to that effect.

Is there progress in the infinite? With no beginning and no end, it is hard to stay. Tom Robbins had a wonderful answer to all this. What is something that doesn’t progress yet contains a source of identity that serves your every being? “Style”

Live with style people. Everyone will be better for it.

I arrive at the camp/mansion,

( never knew this was so close to my house)

all this seems familiar

host greets us

old friends i haven’t seen in ages

I can’t believe how much fun we’re going to have here!!!

dinner.

this seems familiar

the host comes down.

after much talk, time has moved without knowing. i’ve rationalized where and what i have been looking at by my desires and expectations.  I look at the host and for a second he is a sphere of swirling madness, rolling backwards in infinite forms.

I then remember i have been here before.

I leave all of the closest friends and fun of this classy whore house.  Each person looks at me and says, “where are you going john?”  I ignore the illusions and run out into the yard.  A man begins to follow me and i continue running.  I know that if i let fear overtake me he will have me and bring me back to the house.  I let him chase me and cement my own reality of him staying just out of reach.  I hold this in my mind as i run over a painted line that marks the boundary of the mansions property.  I am now at my parents house.   I walk in and my mom already knows.  Do you have it?  my mom asks.  I reach into my pocket and pull out a tiny blue orb set in a silver gold clip.  You must have gotten it the last time you were here.  Flashes of memory came to me battling the demon of the mansion forever and never ago.  I had overpowered the demon with frigid logic and an iron grasp on my own reality.  This is what i’d gained.

more

I gathered my will power and headed back past the boundary.  Distractions caught me.  I find myself sitting with friends talking loudly, i remember and am back in an empty room.  As i walk into the kitchen, Rosemary spoons some homemade dip into my mouth.

more

“Rosemary i have to ask you to listen to me right now”  She stops writing out the recipe

“Where is the host of this house?”

“He’s upstairs of course, getting ready”

I concentrate and bring her into my reality

“where is the host of the house Rosemary?”

He’s off living in the countryside and has been for years, i think he was dealing with a deep depression.”

My hold on her wavers

“Wait, why did i say that?”

“You must feel what is here, reason can be played with, desires are it’s plaything.”

“Listen, i need you to write a letter to him…

more

I realize violently that rosemary is a final distraction.  A dream within a dream within a dream.  What can be a safe harbor, where can i pause these never-ending scenarios that claim me?  I wander the empty house.  I walk into a bathroom with a ceiling from floor mirror.  I look at my reflection and know the answer.  Of course.  I am my own safe harbor.  This is but a dream set against me.  How does one battle a dream?  The same way one battles anything.  I looked deep into my own reflection and became lucid.  This place can effect me only if I give it consent.  I am in complete control.  Looking into my own eyes i raise slowly into the air and glide down the grand staircase.

The host is waiting for me.  Well hello John i trust you’ve been enjoying yourself?

“I’ve just begun too, thank you.”

The room shifts and shudders.  Old friends and face walk in and out of existence around us.  Each a portion of distraction and desire.  I focus on myself and him to the exclusion of all else.

I remember this battle, forever and never, i’ve always battled this.

more

I talk with him.  What is your desire?  i say

a vision is presented to me of a space without definition.  A space that contains all spaces.

This small reality does not wish to be denied it’s existence.  It wants to continue forever.  Skulls opening and the infinite stuff of a new reality pours out with a snap of the jaws and it’s copy move forward into space.  It begets itself forward in the direction of forever.  This is the reality’s dream.

more

I realize now.

I am my own safe horror.

I am no different.  This is my fate as well.  This demon is me.

I say goodbye to my creator and step over the boundary. I remake myself.  I take the beautiful and terrible truth with me and transform my forever and never into all that i am and spew forth into the infinite.

There is no progress in the infinite, for there is no destination to be reached.  The meaning of the self can never be seen more clearly than this:

The style in which we go about existing.

 the trees beset me comfort true

Moon dims stars but cast on fields

 to which playful shadows yield

Walking towards this grand show

I chuckle loudly as I know

 Its all so perfect to ever miss

 this ever elated inner bliss

]]> http://certainwandering.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/home/feed/ 0 upwardsmotion bliss http://certainwandering.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/one-red-ball/ http://certainwandering.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/one-red-ball/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:46:11 +0000 upwardsmotion http://certainwandering.wordpress.com/?p=28 ]]>

One red ball does bounce and fall

Through hills and valleys and the world throughout

As ball does bounce and begin to roll

It picks up the perceptions of the towns about

Each person ball passes it ponders what they know

Each bounce belays the belief of folk down below

Life and death and the meaning of it all

Like soft breath, come the thoughts of said ball

And when ball loses its momentum and stops with a grind

Ball realizes different realities resides in each persons mind

That people in this land see what they will

Whether it’s love or loss or the desire to kill

It’s a meeting of worlds with each passing gaze

And right & wrong like black & white are just varying grays

So ball enjoys its recent rest; its insides are full

And muses to its self, like everything else

It is in truth, but a circle.

“Were going to die Jack.  And we’re never going to come back.”

“Woah, were did that just come from?”

“Nothing suicidal or anything, i’m just thinking about it.  No one talks about it and I think about it because it’s something that is defiantly going to happen.  It’s like that saying the only thing thats sure in life is death and taxes, right?”

“I guess…you know that expression is just a joke right Rem?”

“Really?”  Well anyway, think about.  The one thing that has always happened, and always will happen, NOBODY knows about it, because nobody can come back.  Doesn’t that seem silly?

“Sure, but whats the point of thinking about something we can’t do anything about?  It’s just mental masturbation”

“The point is that we can think about it!

“We might be the only animals on the planet that can!  Doesn’t that count for something, isn’t it our duty to?”

Jack paused his steps to look at Rem in a serious manner.

“Yeah well speaking of death I could kill you right now for talking in circles, is that my duty too?  Keep going on like this and I might start agreeing with you”

“See this is what i’m talking about.  Really stop and consider it for a moment, your going to die and you have no idea whats going to happen”

“Yeah it’s sort of scary I guess” jack trailed off as he looked down the path.

“But doesn’t it seem exciting?  Humans can touch and eventually ruin or at least ruffle up about anything we set our eyes on, but not death, it’s so…it’s so…pristine.”

The two Brothers walked along the trail to the river in silence.  Rem looked up at his older sibling and tried to guess what he was feeling.  Jack put one foot in front of the other, staring the ground down beneath him like it was going to change on him.

Rem wasn’t sure it wasn’t.

“I guess Rem.  but then thats it.  Your just dead, dirt in the ground.  I get what your saying about it being pristine and all, we can’t touch it, but thats because there’s nothing to touch.”

“You really think thats it Jack?  Don’t you think the whole no energy can be created or destroyed thing applies to us as well?  I think something dies, but i don’t think it’s anything important, whatever that is…”

“Nothing important?  It’s everything that makes you YOU!  What are you going to be without yourself huh?  Tell me that and you can go ahead and start your own religion!”

Rem took a turn to stare at the ground.  Exposed roots reached out of the steep winding path up the mountain, uncovered by the recent bout of rain.  The small bushes lining the trail gave way to open forest that had long choked out it’s competition, giving the surrounding area a sherwood forest feel, spacious yet inclosed.

“Well i guess i don’t know Jack.”

“Damn straight you don’t”

The two walked up the rest of the way in the silence of the wood.

[Rem]

Rem walked out into the field letting the darkness wash over him.  The wind stirred the long grass around his legs as he allowed his eyes to adjust to the starlight.  Wandering shapes formed the landscape into scene alive with movement.  Inky forms crept and receded, the field of alfalfa became an ocean of crisp shadow washing over him.  Closing his eyes, Rem inhaled deeply.  The openness of this world reached deep inside him.  The field revealed to him that he was here, present and awake.  He stood not on a plot of land but in a bubble of intent hurtling through the cosmos.  The vastness of all existence spread out in front of him and he laughed harshly and hysterically.

“I AM YOU!!!”  his voice ripped though the veil of soft noises the field was producing, punctuated with each burst of laughter.

“I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN YOU!!!”  came his next bellow.

Rem let himself lean backwards into a free fall.  The night sky whirled violently forward as his back met the grass beneath.  Rems breath was forced out of his body in an abrupt wheezing sound and all was quite again.  The trickle of star light washed over him as if welcoming him home.

“thank you” he whispered, trying to remember who he was thanking.  Rem then knew that it was himself that he was thanking.  He echoed the words to himself.

“thank you.. thank you… thank you”

A small cricket seemed to respond next to him.  *crick chirp, crick chirp*  He laid and listened to the crickets song for a few rifts.  Rem looked out from his patch of earth and marveled at the endless.

“I must be looking at myself from the inside”  he whispered.  The cricket chirped in agreement.

Focusing on three stars that made up Orion’s belt he looked at the surrounding stairs.  Thinking back to the shapes he found in woodgrains, Rem applied the same technique and found himself seeing the stars for the first time.  Shifting and weaving about, the seemingly 2 dimensional canvas in the sky became alive with a living depth.  The mythological hunter orion stepped into focus.  His bow was pulled back and an arrow was notched.  Tracing it across the sky he saw the arrow’s trajectory, leading to another constilation.  A bull moved into focus.

“Of course, taurus!” Rem chuckled to himself.  As he did so, a shooting star lanced out of Orion bow and streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of blue green etched into the be-speckled night.  It reached taurus and lanced right through, disintegrating in a small burst.

“This is what is is to be lucid while waking” Rem thought in awe.

He smiled at the thought of it, relaxed, and drifted off to sleep right there in the field.

[Dream of Rems]

It went like this; He was falling through nothingness, or was it everythingness?  As he fell he saw that it was an orbital shape that we was moving towards.  The boy could not tell if he were looking into the cosmos or an atom, both seemed more accurate.  It was a large grotesque object resembling a pumpkin.  It’s sides flowed up towards it’s center in which then fell into itself like a drain in a bathtub.  Pouring off this object were yet smaller versions of itself, spinning in little pinwheel fashion ever smaller and ever smaller into the nothing/everything space about it.  As approached this ball of matter, he began picking up momentum.  He was certainly moving towards the center and felt nothing of it until he noticed the presence of a woman wearing robes of a monk towards his right.  At the very same moment did he notice a man adorned in a warrior’s garb to his left.  What could these two have to do with me he wondered?  The boy became aware of his situation as he continued on his track to the opening atop the gigantic ever-shifting object.  The monk began talking to him with a voice full of  emotion and care.  Again, seemingly at the very same moment did the warrior start talking powerfully and matter of fact to him.  He first attempted to listen to the warrior, but was unable to understand him.  The more he shut out the monk to listen closer to the warrior, the more loud and furious the warrior got.  The boy began thinking faster as he listened and sensed action was needed help him stop this decent into the whirling madness of the shapes below.  The boy listened to the warrior as hard as he could and shuttered with rage and frustration at his inability to change his situation.  He turned to the monk, shutting the warrior out.  He immediately felt intensely emotional about his soon to be fate.  A base insecurity filled him.  Panic and depression seized him.  The muddy kaleidoscope of mass had reached planetary size and he was rushing ever closer to it gaping maw.  He curled up in a fetal position with the monk standing above him.  Again he strained to listen to what the monk was saying, ignoring the warriors now distant orders, the words seemed to drift away from him, as if every word held every meaning and therefor none could be made sense of.  Unlike the word of the warrior, one after another but couldn’t be pieced together, the monks words seemed to be about everything at once.  Each individual word slipped away from him.  Despair set in as he looked from one to the other again and again to help him understand what to do.  The void of all was stretching now to swallow him up and he fell down, down, down into the terror before him.  As he plunged into the amalgamation of changing colors that didn’t exist, he listened to the two voices at the same time, forcing them to meld into one voice.  The babble began to coalesce.  Rem began to pull meaning out of the words.  The voices rose in harmony pouring hot liquid ecstasy through him as his understanding of the voices grew.  “Of course” he thought, “how could I have forgotten this?”  He joined in their rapturous chant and felt his very being erode into a wash of white white light.

Rem opened his eyes.  Two rectangles of light lay across the wooden floor.  Slowly taking a deep breath, he let the air fill his lungs and waited for the aching of a long night on his ribcage to subside.  For the life of him he couldn’t remember the words he had been speaking.

“Woah” Rem muttered to himself looking at his bedside table.  Next to him was his vitamin supplements; Fish oil, B6, B12 and Meletonin.  Next to that was a plate of extra hot spicy chilly that he’d fallen asleep eating.

“Thats the last time i try that dream cocktail” he spoke, trailing off.

“Jack, I’m pretty sure that when I think a thought it stays there”  Rem spoke as he watched his brother strain at the old oak oars.

Wind brushed across the water, making it visible for the two boys plodding through a stretch of water.  A Cicada’s siren echoed lazily through the heavy summer air and wet rock and aluminum clung to the insides of their noses.

“Absolutely,  I was thinking the same thing right here in this bit of river the other day, you must have just rowed through it” answered his brother, squinting over Rem’s head in an attempt to see it.

“Really!?” Rem squawked.

“No, not really”

“Ha!…dick… well anyway, three or four years ago, right here on this spot, I was thinking about how my favorite color sky is that special dark blue at sundown when those little fluffy clouds are still about, pink like cotton candy and underlined with yellow”

“I knew you liked pink”

“Shut up, your missing the point”

“get on with it”  Jack said, looking back to the spot Rem left his thought.

“And here it is today with the sun pouring out those huge storm clouds like a giant god commercial”

“Ahem…the only constant…” Jack appropriated an intellectual drawl “is change”

“Will you let me finish?”

“Have at it”

Rem took a deep breath and let out a long exhale as the oarlocks groaned in protest to Jack’s latest stroke.

“Well I decided on that sky color a few years ago and even with this totally different and wild sky, that is the thought that pops into my mind…every…time…i’m…here.”

“Rem” Jack sighed, pausing his effort to finger a tussle of matte brown hair, “Let me tell you that once again you have no basis in reality for any of these thoughts that are squishing out of your head like a tube of toothpaste.  First of all you are remembering a thought based on the environment you were in, not finding one floating in the ether.  Second of all, as you just so happened to remember that thought over there you re-enforced it within the same environment so that now you will surely remember your obsession with pink for all time on that little spot, and hopefully this conversation as well.”

Rem paused and looked at his brother with a furrowed brow.

“How’s it feel to be  raging pragmatist?” Rem said as his gaze lingered on the now distant thought-spot

“Refreshingly logical, thank you” Jack retorted, looking behind him to eye the oncoming bank of river.

The rippling of the water rushing to meet the bow echoed Jack last sentence.  The boys sat in silence for the time.  It took the cloud Rem was looking at to change from a running shoe to a bear for him to remember were they were going.

“What do you think ole man Henry is up to today?” Rem spoke as Jack heaved the last stroke, sending the little dingy sliding up the narrow beach .

“Probably something crazy.  Remember what happened last time we had to deliver Grampy’s package to him?”

“Yeah, half his chair spontaneously combusted while he was sitting on it and he blamed his sub-conscious”

“You think he really did it?” rem asked with raised eybrows

“Defiantly, but with all that super moonshine he makes, not with miracle mind magic.  I’ve never seen him without that banged up hip flask of his and you know he smokes like a fiend ” Jack said as he tied up the weathered rowboat to an outstretched root.

“Actually, I take it back.”  Jack said interrupting himself.  “Henry is straight loony toons, he probably could set shit on fire with that brain of his.

“Why did Grampy ever make him our god-father?”

“Probably for the same reason he makes us bring these packages to him every few months, Grampy practically worships the man”

“Well mister logic, there must be a reason for it then, hmmm?

“Yeah, Gramps is in awe of someone weirder than he is”  Jack muttered as they stepped onto a faint path into a yawing canopy of red cedar and sugar maple.

The leaves were a welcome relief from the summer heat but not the un-abateing humidity as the brothers stepped into the woods of Henry’s mountain.  Deep green engulfed the two as the sun fell to filter freckles of evening light, causing it to play across their faces.  Rem looked over at his brother and studied him.  Four years his senior and approaching seventeen, Jack was built like a lumber jack. It was just as well seeing as that is how he spent his spring and fall months.  Jack worked the transitional seasons as did Rem, leaving summer for play and winter for study.  Rem watched his brother skip over the rocks in a stream with a feminine flourish.

“You look like a ballerina when you do that” Rem called out

“Yeah right, more like a ninja!” He yelled back as he performed a two step back flip off the nearest tree.  “Now i own that tree!”

Rem ignored Jack’s antics and looked above his brothers head while they continued down the trail.  He thought he could see a flicker of something above his head.

“Hey Jack, are you thinking of anything right now?”

“Nope, not a thing”

Rem continued staring for a moment, then decided to believe him.

“Damn”

LEAH

Leah woke up from her dream with a start.  A black cat greeted her with a friendly head-butt and extended itself by half with a stretch.

She closed her eyes again and attempted to call forth the imagery;   A bus filled with strangers drives through an endless lake an inch deep.  She watches the tire’s wake expand forever behind her from a birdseed view. The vehicle drives without time.  It stops and she finds herself at an edge of a grey and filthy city.  Leah lets her clothes fall from her body and begins running through the streets leaving people stopped in their places,  watching her skin drink in the air and light around her.  Free.  

Leah opened he eyes again with the fragile memory lying softly in her mind. She amassed enough effort to raise herself out of the warmth of her nest with the sound of static prickling her skin.   She brought the last part of her dream to bear while attempting to mimic her cats stretch.  Putting feet to floor, she knew she had slept too long by the way her heels felt on the hardwood floor.  “Marshmallows.  My heels feel like Styrofoam marshmallows getting permanently pressed” she thought to herself.

Her pain was quickly forgotten as she recalled her favorite dreams always come to her in the moments of sunday morning slothfulness.

“Looks like i’m still naked” she thought as she padded up to her mirror.

Leah looked onto a string bean of a girl with black shinny hair that swept down her back in every direction.  Her small breasts fit perfectly into her hands as she considered the placement of her belly button.  She decided that it was a bit high and would have done well to be an inch or two lower.  Leah’s eye were as dark as her hair and they gave her a wild nature when she forgot not to stare at people.  Bringing her arm up she looked down the line of it to her finger, pointing to herself in the mirror.

“Who are you?  Where did you come? where are you going?”  she asked herself.

Leah thought back to the day her AP art history class had focused on Paul Gauguin’s most famous painting.  Apparently it had drove him mad.  She mulled over this idea as she stared down her lithe frame in the mirror.  Her features grew intense as the daydreaming face took over her thoughts.

“perhaps it would do me good to go a little mad”

Leah suddenly crouched into a feral position on the floor with her arms out in front acting as claws

“grgrgrgrgrARGRG!!!”  She growled into the mirror, her back arching and ass swaying above the mass of tangled hair

“I’m a TIGER!”  She screamed and rose explosively into an attempted back handspring that rocketed her into the bookshelf that stood adjacent to the mirror.

The four year old ikea particle boards didn’t stand a chance; books, a lamp, and her stick collection flew into the air and skittered across her bedroom with a resounding crash that brought her whole family running upstairs to see what had just happened.  The cat bolted from the room causing the family to delay on the stairs long enough for leah to realize what she had brought about.  She got a good look of her reflection as she untangled her naked body from a beautiful specimen of birch bark, now ruined.

“or perhaps it wouldn’t do me good” she mused as her younger brother burst onto the scene followed closely by her mother and father.

OLE HENRY

The two brothers climbed around a last crop of rocks and saw a clearing open up onto a large area of level land.

The clearing of Henry’s cabin was a perfect circle in which his cabin sat in the middle of.   Other clearings of note around Henry’s were his gardens, each crop getting there own clearing, one for his ethanol distillery which provided his fuel for his home and his hip flask, and the largest being on a little knot of a hill in which he used exclusively for stargazing.  When asked why he built circles around everything he would respond;  “because it makes perfect sense”.  His explanation was good enough, being as most people agreed that Henry had lost all of his and every bit of sense helped.The cabin was built around a gigantic sugar maple and was so organically structured that it look more like the tree had grow the house around it.  The massive branches that had stretched out provided the supports for three separate halls, each in turn ending in a room.  The trunk grew up smack-dab in the middle of the kitchen/dinning room equipt with a nozzle to draw the sticky blood of the tree out when it was taping season.

“Boys boys boys!”  Henry exclaimed tottering out of his mossy house.

“How are my little star children this fine moment?!”

(add in looking at there backs w. constellations)

“Fine Henry” Jack said, giving him a wary look.  “How are you doing today?”

“Oh!  You know very well that i’m doing the same as ever in this never-ending now!  How could anything be different if there is but only this infinite moment you addle brained child, hasn’t your Grandfather taught you anything!?”

Jack let out a heavy sigh and put his head in his hand.

“Well if theres only this moment then whats the difference from two minutes ago to right now?” rem asked

“Your 3rd dimensional perception of entropy as you twist and turn unknowingly in the 4th dimension!” He exclaimed with spittle flying from his mouth “But as far as we’re concerned the only difference is that your here now so come, come inside and have a mug of tea!”

      During the years of working his way through various apprenticeships he would always ask “How do I attain perfection?”.  The answers varied from person to person but he would be able to recognize his next teacher by the subtle mystery in the answer.  ”You’re already there, you just need to realize it”, “No need to rush, the real joy is getting there” or “Perfection is a heavy weight on those who try and understand it, will you be strong enough is the real question”  The boy grew into a man, taking up each craft he came across wether it be painting, sculpting or business.  With each endeavor he worked tirelessly until he learned all he could from them.  He began to understand that true masters had an effortlessness about them.  They could produce the most profound of objects or ideas with seemingly no concern for them afterward.  Each object he made he thought on meticulously.  Each design he built was researched, opinions were collected until the majority agreed that is was very good indeed.  No matter what he did, he could not attain that effortless perfection.  ”I must meditate on this” he thought.  With the resolve he brought to any facet of his life, he began.

       For three days he wrestled with the ideas of who he was and why he wanted to create.  ”For what purpose have i come to be and what is the nature of this perfection i seek?” At long last he came to the conclusion that the masters he had so longed to emulate had a secret.  They did not find and learn new things to produce, the real masters made it all up.  The truth that he found was the people who lead their fields are not great observers and meticulous craftsmen, it is the men and women with the greatest imagination who manifest the world.  From that day on he began his effortless creation.  The boy became a man who became a master like no other before him.  People would come around him asking “How can you do what you do so easily?” or “Everything you create is beautiful, why can’t i do the same?”  To them he would reply, “Don’t you see?!  I am making it all up, it doesn’t even matter what I do, nothing really matters!”  He would say this proudly as he went on making a fortune from his works.  He had achieved his dream.

      Over the years the man began creating less and less.  The joy had left him and now when asked of his perfection of craft he only muttered “nothing matters“.  The fact that nothing mattered began growing in him.  It hardening him so that each work, while perfect, meant nothing to him.   He soon gave up his hobby of creation.  His fame dwindled and the once boy turned master, grew old.  The old man would spend his days wander through parks and pondering his motto that nothing mattered.  His admirers and family alike began avoiding him as he became more and more embittered.  ”What mad genius” they would say.  ”He crossed that thin line” they would whisper.

      The old man would make only one creation a year and that one thing was a gift to his grand niece.  She was a quite girl who said strange things and whom most adults would avoid eye contact with. Her transparent pale blue eyes unnerved them.  The old man respected her fearlessness and her ability to question.  When the girl was seven they held a christmas party and the old man came to visit his sisters family.  The old man was let alone in the living room while the holiday festivities swirled around him.  He noticed the little girl staring at him from the doorway.  She had been watching him for a long while.  He motion to her and she came over and sat on the arm of his chair.  She looked at him with her piercing transparent blue eyes and asked him, “Whats wrong?”  The old man had long stopped answering such things.  Looking into her eyes however, he saw that she asked with full understanding of her question.  She was asking in complete honesty.  Her two words asked only the deepest of answers of him.  “Nothing matters in this…existence of ours.  Once realized you can do anything you want and people will think it the most perfect thing in the world.  But i have no joy in the things i create any longer.”  The young girl met the gaze of a man held by a forty year conviction.  She looked down at his feet, “But” she spoke,  glancing back into the center of him.  “If nothing matters… doesn’t everything?  Her question reached into him and brought out the first moment of his realization, where he had dropped to his knees in awe at the source of his power.  At that moment he had failed the last test of his understanding, he had let himself be tricked by that final and most terrible paradox.  “My dear, you have the right of it” he spoke slowly and quietly to her, with tears welling up in his eyes.  “I guess if nothing matters, than that very fact certainly doesn’t matter!”  The old man burst out laughing, laughing away his long years of silent torment, laughing out his self inflicted folly, the simple and obviousness of the answer, and laughing out the pain that had poisoned his ability to create.  ”I’ve never had to take any of this seriously did I?” he wheezed.  ”I’ve never known why adults do!”  She burst out.  The young girl had joined him in his hysterics, laughing only as a child does, when knowing nothing is still close enough to knowing everything; a laugh of the purest bells brushed by breeze.  Having slid off the chair, the two laughed until there sides hurt and they could move no more.

      The rest of the family had gathered around to see what the commotion was about.  They had never heard either one of them ever laugh before and stood in shock of how natural and jubial it seemed coming out of them.  The family asked “What is the matter with you two?!”  The two responded in unison “NOTHING!” and fell back in peals of laughter.