Rem let his book slid down his lap as his thought dissipated. The half-opened window allowed a rectangle of light to be skewed across the blonde wood of the living room floor. Subtle at first, currents of air left shadows of themselves dancing across the stage of light, whirling and billowing in upward motions. Rem relaxed his eyes further and the shadows turn to forms. Shapes and textures of the air’s movement came into focus and a dance was revealed. Shifting, plunging eddies of heat rolled into one another, forming new ever more intricate patterns in which broke apart, each new tendril of air again forming a complex latticework of beauty. Shifting his eyes up to the creme colored far wall of the room, Rem breathed out and was delighted to see hints of his breath come flowing into the space in front of him. Releasing his lungs fully he watched the invisible movements become apparent. The room became alive with rivulets of moving air. The motes of dust drifting past no longer went of there own accord but as he could see now were sailing on rivers of dissonant temperature, on subtle surfaces no less real than the ground beneath his feet. Letting out a sharp exhalation he increased a flow of air that was curling up, sending a particular mote back towards him. Raising his hand to cup the drifting particle, he watched the small drafts of heat from his body send it upwards.
How much do we effect without knowing?
With a squeak of the front door opening, the room’s calm steams of air suddenly lurched forward. Rem jumped as he heard the front door slam shut; causing the air to shift violently back into place. Jack walked into the room to see Rem staring intently at the wall in front of him.
“What, you go stupid again?” Jack said as he glances at the blank wall and back at Rem.
“I think I can see air currents!” Rem said, eye’s still locked in space.
Jack gave Rem a dead-pan stare for a few seconds.
“Right.” He said as he turning around and walked directly out the way he came.
“Jack?….Jack i’m not kidding!…Jack?”
Eyes snap open to be greeted by a velvet darkness cloaking the small room. The boy turns his head to look at the puddle of moonlight pouring through his small window onto the floor. Awake. Suddenly awake as if he had never needed sleep in his life the boy sits up and feels electricity coursing through his body. The murky shapes of sparse furniture inhabiting his room to become crisp planes and defined angles. Sliding out of his creaking bed, the sounds of sheet’s movement against itself become a roar in the silence. His feet gently press into the cold wooden floor and his movements towards the window are mouse like. Fingers on the sill, the boy leans forward to press his nose against the frosted glass. The wood. Dark sentinels announce the end of town and the beginning of the Woods of Moore. The moon’s light creates a path from his window to the edge of the black and forbidden forest. Without thinking the boy begins pulling on his boots and patched vest; grabbing a long stocking hat and his wooden sword as he slips out his window. A cool wind caresses his exposed arms and chest as his eyes adjust to the bright reflection of moon on a newly fallen dusting of snow. Inhaling deeply through his nose, the electricity that had awoken him quickens. The winter night comes alive. Stars hang in brilliant glory, framing the dark silhouettes of the approaching tree line, the crunch of dry snow reverberates in muted procession and he can taste unfamiliarity on his tongue.
It can’t be as dangerous as they say.
His fathers voice comes drifting in from his earliest memories. Repeated so many times it is almost a mantra.
“There are only three thing you need to know in this world son. Get along with everybody. We will love you, no matter what. And most important. Never, never go into those woods boy. Got it?”
The milky white trail of reflected light now brings the boy to the cusp of the unknown.
Strange. He thinks.
The moonlight is shining in the shade of the forest.
He Looks up at the thick white ropes crisscrossing the forest boundary and the bolts of lightning shaped cloth stirring in the night breeze. The spirit barrier was made by the townsfolk to ward off the inhabitance and the supposed warping effects of the wood. Touching the rope, he looks past it, following the glowing path with his eyes as it snakes ever deeper in the depths of Moore wood.
I’ve looked at you my entire life and felt nothing but curiosity for you. What is in here that they do not want to be found? Surely it can’t hurt to follow the moon a little ways in.
Almost in response, the trail pulses and seems to move farther into the shadows. The boy’s mouth cracks open into a wide grin and he ducks under the barrier; never noticing that as he walks forward his steps are no longer make sound.
I woke on a lazy saturday next to my girlfriend, still asleep. I decided to rejoin her. Staring at a point on the far wall I let sleep wash over me but didn’t close my eyes. If felt like I was holding a door open but not quite walking through. Back and forth I pushed myself in an ebb & flow of waking and sleeping. Amidst an ebb, I was in my room but now also in dream. Without looking from the spot, I gently lowered my head into the bed. I went right in, accompanied by a curious feeling of material passing through me. In slow summersault fashion I arrived beneath. Getting up, I found myself in the yard of my family farm. I flew around and laughed and would get sucked into dream scenes and back out into lucidity. Hours of dream-time pasted and I thought,
“We’ll I guess i’ll wake up now”. Only I couldn’t.
I pinched and yelled and snapped my fingers, but yet I still dreamt. I then would slip back into normal dreaming, only to wake later in a panicked lucidity.
This process was most insidious. Imagine right now as you read this, that you are becoming suddenly and surely alert to the fact you are in a dream. You are in a dream and have been for some time. You only remember this now. Worse still, you remember that this is the third, forth, fifth time you have become aware to this fact. Your stomach drops and panic creeps into you. How long has this been going on?
I drifted this way for perhaps a day or two of dreamtime. I’d be surrounded with familiar faces, attempting to get someone’s attention. Suddenly I would jerk away, realizing that somewhere I am laying in my bed, still staring at a point in my wall with a sleeping girl beside me. In these periods of wake walking in dream, questions would come to me. Have we died? Has the tree outside my window fallen through my room and both my girlfriend and myself are crushed? Is there no body to return to? Is this what state coma patients exist in? Perhaps my life was a slow stretched dream and just now waking up to a morphing reality? Before the trains of thought go on for too long I am again with familiar faces, acting out the the play of dream that my character partakes in.
I come awake to myself riding a four wheeler down my driveway with my mother on the back. I despair. How can I exist when nothing is real and I am only in my own mind? My mom asks me whats wrong. Having nothing to lose, I tell her.
“Mom, i’m in trouble. I am trapped in a lucid dream and I don’t know what to do. Your just a dreamt extension of me and i’m afraid and alone and even the love I feel for you is not real.”
She responded immediately.
“Well no honey, that not true. There is no difference between the love you feel here and the love you feel awake, because regardless of in or out of your mind, that love is me. Dream or not, you are never alone, this love you feel is part of you forever and even here that is real.
I feel the truth of what she says. I feel tears in my eyes as I drive the ATV down the road and I feel myself think, “I can endure this forever then.”
And I wake up.
I look out my window and looked for a long time at the tree there. I felt relieved to see my girlfriend was not dead.
This experience has collected others and thoughts slowly formed:
I believe I live in a thick dream. One that can only be awaked through understanding the truth of what and I am and are. Upon that grand awakening it will be only to a larger dream, and ever larger. I do not believe there is an end, I do not believe there ever was a beginning. I believe this dream is dreamt by all and while each is alone we are connected by love. Each interaction allows us to touch our own reflection, to understand our own form, and to generate more and ever more.
I don’t really know why we persist. Perhaps to experience all that there is, one at a time, forever. My fear that we live in a forgotten, closed loop of a universe. Forever part of a god fragmenting itself so as to know more, but already knowing there is nothing more than itself. Knowing perfectly well what we are but searching through forgetfulness, finding in the end our own backs. Is knowing yourself an end to itself? A pause in the movement? Is our connections and relationships what creates the self and to what result is this occasional effort of living? What do we produce without knowing?
I believe I will soon remember. And these questions will seem foolish.
All the world has gathered to watch the traversing. Unending droves of people cover the great plain leading up to the mountain that the launching ramp has been built upon. Countless bonfires illuminate ecstatic faces as they look upward to the central launch point. The technology had finally been completed. Seated upon a mass of machinery an armored man raises his fist. The rumbling sound of billions turns to a roaring murmur. The man fingers the voice amplifier.
“Tonight, with this Mecha, we bridge the gap from men to gods!”
The swell of voices comes in cheering, crashing waves.
“Tonight I will transverse the 9th sphere and parley with the almighty Himself!!!”
A rising crescendo.
“How long have we waited!?”
My ears ring as the cacophony of a world celebrating is heard. I position my body closer to the edge. The Transverser allows his surrounding followers to give gifts and tokens of his pending release. Looking up into the night sky the nine spheres are shining radiantly. No sphere past three can be seen with the naked eye, but tonight’s alignment is known by all. The ramp curves gently down the mountain, angling up and off the edge of the world. A countdown begins. Illuminated lines appear in descending order down the ramp; causing the people crushed against to attempt retreat while more behind press in. A power station that spans half of the mountain rumbles to life; vibrating the very earth. The man atop the transversing construct bellows once more as he begins it’s launching sequence.
“Tonight I Touch The Infinite!!!”
The peals of brewing bedlam reach their height; washing away even the roaring voice of the mountain’s power station. Thick snaking tubes pulsing with sluggish indigo light fall away from the Mecha and the attendees busied themselves snapping the ports shut.
This is my only chance, my thoughts race.
This is my only chance to get back.
I push myself ever closer to the ledge overhanging the Mecha’s perch. The engine begins humming a deep tone moving upwards while a piercing note begins descending. As the noises reach towards harmonization my breath slowly is released into a midrange hum. I attuning it to the pulsing tones of the Mecha. My lungs empty. Relaxing every muscles I shove off my hiding place and the world slows to a crawl. Plummeting twenty lengths down onto the man I feel his spine snap as my weight crushes him against the handlebar. My arm is broken; I let his body fall away. Agony lances through the left side of my body even as I feel the adrenaline begin to dull it. The grasping hands of his followers reach closer, ever closer, as I pull the release lever. I gasp at the pain as my arm moves towards the grip, it gives out and the pulsating machine becomes weightless in my remaining good arm. The Mecha is dropping. Face flash by in vignettes of hope, faith, and reverence. Roaring, screaming, madness descends on all sides. The great unwashed hoi polloi took no notice of the switch, overwhelmed by apparent culmination of their culture’s need to make contact with the higher realms. The faces cease to blur and become solid lines on either side of me. The strip down the center becomes my only focal point, and it is drifting too far to the right. The broken arm attempts to raise up to the steering bar to correct the angle. Burning through the torment I wrench the limb up and out. Pressure begins increasing on my body as the Mecha reaches the valley of the runway and begins moving up. The humming Mecha reaches a perfect resonance and light begins shinning out of the diodes in amongst the whirring gears. The ramp edge approaches. The night sky opens before me and the heavens burn with the fine mist of stars and nebula. Looking down I see the guiding lights veering off to the left. The resonating pitch drowns out my wail as my arm attempts to correct the Mecha’s course. My vision morphs into muddy streaks of color and all else is vibration. With a final heave the stars jump down upon me and all is before me.
I am in a vacuum. Sound is replaced by a shimmering shell surround the Mecha. I am amongst the stars. Burning orbs of incomprehensible size bunched together pass by impossible close and still the mecha gains speed. Faster, faster the stars themselves become solid lines and a looming void reaches towards me on the horizon. The stars recede and in the utter blackness there is nothing. Feeling for the vibration around me, I lose my sense of self. Time loses meaning. I am. I am aren’t I? I am the voice that I hear. No. I am what hear’s the voice.
“and who is that?”
I jump at the sound of another’s voice and abruptly crack my head against some part of the Mecha. White gossamer fluid begins filling the vibrational sphere as the Mecha itself become illuminate. Adhering to my skin, a feeling of dissonance overtakes me. Blistering cold, a searing sensation engulfs my body and in the dead silence of the darkness I become unbearably bright. White heat washes over me and I am consumed. The is nothing but the unyielding, perpetual light and I again lose myself.
My lungs fill. I feel softness on my lips. Opening my eyelids I see a face through blurred vision, moving away and tickling my neck with small touches from the receding hair. I taste salt water on my tongue.
“Did I?”…I mumble softly, struggle to sit up…”am I?”
“You are home, my love. Shhh shh, your home”
“I know you…i’ve always known you”. I whisper before letting the gentle cooing of long forgotten familiarity take me into blissful slumber.
Rem opened his eyes. Two rectangles of light lay across the wooden floor. Taking a slow, deep breath, he let the air fill his lungs and waited for the aching of his ribcage to subside. Patterns emerged from the floor as his unfocused eyes brought shapes out of the woodgrain, giving them meaning and form.
.
He let a noiseless giggle slip out as he pulled on sneakers over bare feet. It was the kind of laugh that tightens the stomach, building up in your lungs and lodging in your throat. His head buzzed with the excitement of what he was about to do. There was no more thinking about it, if he had ever done any to begin with. This was just something Jack did every so often when drunk. Now out of the house, Jack moved with exaggerated stealth; jumping and rolling from the shadows that the moon cast over hemlocks and across the yard. Yanking open the shed door, he saw the bike leaned up against the rotting workbench. Giving out a squeal of delight, he bounded over the lawnmower to lay his hand on it. It was an 83′ Raleigh Grand Prix road bike with new tires and bad brakes. He didn’t mind the lack of quality in the brakes; he wasn’t planning on using them. Jack hauled his treasure out over the clutter of the shed and poked his head out the door. The lights of his house were still all off. This didn’t necessarily mean no one was awake, and what’s more, that they weren’t looking out of those darkened windows unseen. Stepping out, he bore the contraption on his shoulder so that no squeaking of wheels would give him away. Once safely out of sight and by the road, he threw his leg over the weathered road bike and began pedaling towards old route 157. Minutes later, Jack came to a halt atop a monstrous hill, one that snaked all the way down the mountain to the river. The moon had slid behind a blanket of clouds causing the partially paved road to sink into shadow. The road was nearly indistinguishable from the root and rocks of the forest on either side. He took a big breath and pushed off into the nothingness. The shadows stretched out and contracted. Air currents buffeted his face as the pools of darkness began flowing into rivers of half seen shapes. Locking his eyes just above the horizon, Jack used his peripheral vision to differentiate the ever so subtle difference in saturation between road and ditch. The pot holes came at random. Hands in a iron grip on the handles and toes dug into the traps, the rest of Jack’s body functioned as a fluid shock system. As he began his decent in ernest, the laughter came rising up through him. This was a laughter that nobody have ever heard him emit. Only the uncontrolled madness of eminent death could invoke it from him and it was a high pitch chatter. The breaks were never touched. Jack and his bike moved down the mountain at all the speed gravity could muster. Water streaming from his wide eyes staring into the pitch of night, laughter came of it’s own volition. Bubbling up and out he experienced what he could never quite remember after, drunk or not; the feeling of absolute loss of control. The expanding of his senses and physical ability that only happens when the bodies other alternative is ceasing to exist. The margin of error reducing down to scant fractions of inches and even smaller fractions of seconds. Hurtling through black unknown and feeling your self shout pure rapture in response. The pulse of life beats from the navigation of the void. The river came into view through eyes long blurred by the speed of rushing air. The road evened out; the bike slowed. Consciousness came pounding back to him as his ride ended by the edge of the water. Hands still locked tight to his grips, it took no small effort to coax them open. His entire body shook violently with the rush of the various chemical releases that still coursed through him. Dropping his bike and collapsing into the grass of the river bank he began laughing again, this time deep chuckles from his very core. He laughed at his own stupidity, the absurdity that he had yet again survived an ordeal of his own concoction. Quieting down, Jack let his thoughts drift where they would.
Why, why do I do this? He thought.
Is this a form of suicide?
What have I been killing then?
Why is it I’ve felt the most alive in the face of death?
As before his memory of what he had been feeling leading up to the hill and down it were dream-like, distorted and spotty. The main pothole of the road, little more than halfway down, was big enough to kill him if he hit it. He had no recollection of passing it. One sharp bend near the end towards the river was the only part clearly in his mind but his pace had slowed by half then. Jack rose, pulling his bike up with him. Taking a deep breath in he began the long walk back up the mile or two old route 157. As Jack moved past the bend into the darkness of the forest he wondered idley if this was the last mad plunge he would be taking. It was something he always thought while walking back up.
Until next time hill…
There once was a boy who loved to make wishes. He would often wish on the first night’s star, after which he would wish on them all. Every penny he threw and candle he blew would squeeze his eyes shut and wish on a want. The boy would wish on dandelion fluffs but only if he could blow all the seeds off in one puff, or two or three if there was a stubborn one. Every chicken bone, lady bug and cloud in the sky would have wishes piled high. None of these wishes came true. The boy began wishing the same thing over and over again, he wished he had a friend. On his seventh birthday he wished for more wishes, hoping that he could use them all at once to get what he wanted.
The next day the boy stood in the grass outside his house with his eyes shut, holding his breath and standing on one foot. He was so busy attempting to invent a new way to make wishes he didn’t noticed a young girl walk up and begin to stare. She supposed he was ignoring her so she took a step closer to him, than another. Soon she was right beside him.
“What are you doing?” the girl whispered.
“AHHhh!” The boy yelped falling on his rear.
The boy looked up in mute surprise, finally muttering “I was trying to make a wish”.
“What were you wishing?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you, otherwise is won’t come true!”
“Have your other wishes come true?” The girl leaned down and helped him off the ground.
“Of course they have!” the boy said as he brushed off his pants. “Just not recently”
“Well who have you been wishing for?” She said, peering into his face.
The boy eyed her suspiciously, “Myself, why?”
“Well of course they haven’t come true, wishes only work when you wish for someone else!”
“What?! How come i’ve never heard of that? and why do you keep staring at my face?”
“Hold on, don’t move” the girl reached out and plucked an eyelash off his cheek.
“Here, try making a wish for someone else”
The boy stood for a long time staring at his eyelash on the tip of her finger. He thought of his family and people he knew. He realized that this girl was the only person he really knew, and for all of a minute. Closing his eyes, he wished his biggest wish for her, letting all of his saved wishes out in one whoosh of breath. Opening his eyes, he saw the girl let out a big grin.
“What are you smiling about?” the boy said, again suspicious.
“It just occurred to me that you might want a friend”
“What! How did you kno-I mean maybe I-ummmmm” The boy looked down at his feet.
“Well i just moved down the street and don’t know anybody. What do you say, friends?”
The boy looked at her outstretched hand and punched her right in the face.
“I don’t need nobody” he said like a boss.
Afterwards he walked away without looking back, wishing he’d never met her.
THE END
Our existence is a result of the construction & destruction of matter and energetic patterns. Many levels of complexity emerge from this but in essence: To maintain our own construction we must kill/destruct something. At no point can we continue living without the destruction of another entity be it plant or animal. Even the eating of seeds is to take the potential of that plant into yourself. Life must consume life to remain living; the things we consume become part of us. Our acceptance of this produces respect. Respect for all life that is killed so that it may pass into us. As part of of this living ebb & flow, we must respect what we kill, and we must respect that in which consumes us. All is one. The cycle of life is the all and you are the one in it. Death becomes life and it is endless. Respect whatever it is you consume at mealtimes. You are consuming potential to maintain the possibility of reaching yours.
Thoughts are birds in the room. They are not our own. They are animals. We prey upon some and are hunted by others. An original thought is precious. It is the most precious thing of all. It can only be held for a moment; leaping, flying, slithering away towards the next carrier of muse. Then only memory of it remains. A weak thing. Kept close; a faded glory that spawns mediocrity. Seek new flora and fauna. Seek the illusive, the dangerous and the rare. Know they are wild. Our minds are a potential habitat of thought and they seek fertile ground. Observe these creatures as they grace us with their beauty, their horror. Do not cage them, for that will be but the memory of a wild life. The fading glory. The mediocre. In your final observation, know yourself to be an animal. A thought. And live as they do.
As I lay me down to sleep
My mind dives down into the deep
So as I falling, enter in
I take with me my vigor vim
for guts are needed to proceed
or perhaps the opposite I concede
With no up or down, left or right
guide by my heart’s own light
for mind alone goes back and forth
spitting forever spiral froth
Bridge the gap and let it go
Dive on in until you know
what we are in truth and truth in full
We exist on every channel
We are the ever evolving mammal
Moss 