The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [SEQ. 15 – END]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores perception and reality. Below is our final segment. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

To read part 7, click here.

To read part 8, click here.

To read part 9, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

²⁶I stumble, change falls out of my pocket and a lightning bolt destroys a small building. It punches a hole through the rooftop and kills a baby. It is an accident but I don’t feel bad. Their brains are so simple they don’t really understand pain. ²⁷Studies suggest that their receptors are able to recognize simple stimuli such as something called “fear” and pain of the base physical kind but no further. ²⁸Perhaps the child will be born as new life in a better scenario. ²⁹I understand that sloths have it nice this time of year. ³⁰The bombs are launched and I watch them sail across my skies, penetrating my clouds like flaming flesh rockets. ³¹The bombs are driven by intention and I watch as a group of individuals gather in the desert and press their thoughts to steer the missiles through the sky. ³²They almost had it. They almost had it all. They could have had peace but instead they chose war. ³³They make boundaries and labels. They separate themselves and create hierarchy. ³⁴Each of them wants to be better than the other. ³⁵They are always trying to be superior to their neighbor and they become so consumed with it that they lose their very lives. ³⁶The entire purpose for their existence is lost to their greed. ³⁷They have passed all the way through the chain of life and have each been given their opportunity at humanity and they blew it. They each had a chance to live on the final level selflessly and to give of themselves and to enjoy each moment. ³⁸That’s all they had to do for a simple one hundred human years and then they would transcend this realm and begin to accumulate form on the next plateau. ³⁹But they messed it all up. Again. Always. Every time. ⁴⁰I desperately want to see my people succeed. ⁴¹I am so lonely. I want a friend. I want company. I want them to speak to me. I want them to love me. Why do they ignore me? ⁴²This plateau is so quiet. When will they find me? When will they encounter me? ⁴³They have trapped me in this box, calling me names. Calling me god or God or GOD. ⁴⁴They call me SHE and they try to label me and put words in my mouth and intentions on my heart. ⁴⁵I am not SHE. ⁴⁶I am sexless. I am not bound by simple human sexuality. Male / Female are a weakness given to them in order to breed and it has been evolved pleasurably because nobody would do it otherwise. ⁴⁷Their belief has placed me into a box and their understanding of me is disgustingly limited. ⁴⁸They pray to me and ask for cars when they have cars while their neighbor starves and dies. ⁴⁹They pray for justice when they mean revenge. ⁵⁰Their cruel hearts are deep with black worm rot and their eyes are empty pools. ⁵¹They desire every darkness. ⁵²They care not who is hurt or what the cost. ⁵³They will keep improper change at the store. They hit their children for hitting while telling them not to hit. They trap animals in giant facilities and skin them while still alive. They make the animals live in tiny cages in things called Slaughter Houses and they treat them like a piece of plastic that has not been endowed with life. ⁵⁴Where I have given life, I have given respect. ⁵⁵And this sickens me. They believe they are special because they are smarter. ⁵⁶They believe that the animals have been placed here for their enjoyment no matter the expense. ⁵⁷They believe they should be allowed to manipulate, confine and destroy resources and herds. ⁵⁸They believe that they can breed life for the purpose of death. ⁵⁹Their teeth chomp on rotten flesh and they ignore their fruits and vegetables. ⁶⁰They become obsessed with greasy bacon and forget about my apples. ⁶¹They grow fat and they grow obese and part of the world dies from being over weight while the other half starves and begs for help. ⁶²How do you not see that what you are doing is wrong? How do you look at a hurting person and walk away? How do you ignore a hurting human being? ⁶³They are like you. They are exactly like you. They are nearly photocopies of you. Look at your DNA. ⁶⁴You will find that you are nearly clones. ⁶⁵I bang my formless head against a formless wall and struggle with my mistake. What have I done? ⁶⁶How have you turned so quickly to evil? How have you turned so quickly inside? ⁶⁷You are living your life, pulling objects towards you instead of pushing everything out. ⁶⁸If everyone pushed out, they would each be hit with kindness from every angle. ⁶⁹If one starts. If one single person starts, it always begins a reaction. ⁷⁰They don’t understand their power. They don’t understand the energy. They don’t understand how they’re connected. ⁷¹Connected through me, with my spirit, my being, my energy. ⁷²They have access to it all because they are me. ⁷³We work in flawless unity but they have to tap into it. They’ve almost got it figured out. ⁷⁴But it’s too late now. Maybe the next time. Maybe the next race. Maybe the next revolution of evolution. ⁷⁵For now we’ll start back at the beginning. But it will have to be somewhere else. Somewhere far away. ⁷⁶The Greator will have to orchestrate another elaborate Cosmic Explosion. ⁷⁷The Humanlings have acted so selfishly that they’ve destroyed every trace of life itself. ⁷⁸They have not destroyed a piece of land or an area or a region. They have not destroyed a culture or a people. They have not destroyed a hemisphere. ⁷⁹They have destroyed Life Itself, reverting everything to abyss. ⁸⁰All trees, all hamsters, all vines, all flamingoes, all people, all grass, all ants, all microbes and amoebas. Virus, vaccines and vericuse veins. Air is gone. Matter is gone. Mars, Mercury and Venus (Earth names) have all been gobbled up by the exo-implosion caused by their thoughtless, thought driven cell bomb. ⁸¹It’s all gone. ⁸²If no one is around to experience space, is there space to experience? ⁸³Does existence exist if no one may touch it with their consciousness? ⁸⁴And if no one is there to believe in me? ⁸⁵My heart pumps with the belief of the little ones. With them gone, so am I.

 

 

 

 

[SEQ. XVI] ¹A whisper.

 

 

 

 

Shh.

 

 

 

 

Listen.

 

 

 

 

[SEQ. XVII] ¹I can feel it working its way into my heart like a warm fire. ²I grow brighter. I reach out. Of course. I was so obtuse. I never looked higher. I never looked beyond. I, like the Humanlings, was too busy looking in and down. I was pushing everything inside instead of outside. ³The greys buzz past in their plasmatic vessel and the consciousness that is my entity attaches to the ship and finds a home. ⁴I work my way through the navigational bio-computers and glide with it through the BLACK. ⁵There is absolute darkness Outside. ⁶The small grey creatures are nothing like the humans. They seem to understand one another through feelings rather than through simplistic grunts. ⁷Everything on Earth seems so primitive compared to these. ⁸There is a peace here that I’ve always hoped to exist. That I’ve known could exist. ⁹I feel a tickle. A prayer. ¹⁰A grey that is a bsipo – it takes three greys to make a child; a pleon, a bsipo and a mitigular. ¹¹They are not to be thought of as male / female and they, in fact, are enamored and interested that it only takes two humans to reproduce. ¹²They’ve been studying the humans for a long time and can’t understand how a normal social structure works with only two in charge. ¹³How do the parents vote? In a three way relationship, it is always easy to see which way is best for the group. Arguably some of the largest countries on their home planet, on their base plateau, work (or worked, since it is now a memory only of extraterrestrial life) under democracy and yet their personal relationships often operated as singular tyrannies. ¹⁴The bsipo sends its thoughts to me and I capture them. A prayer. ¹⁵The bsipo wants to be placed with a new pleon and mitigular. The pleon and mitigular have both agreed that the bsipo is not an accurate fit for their family and would like to replace it. ¹⁶The bsipo, understandably, is devastated. ¹⁷I nurture the thought and circle it and smile upon it. ¹⁸I’ve found you, little creature. I’ve found you. Your Controller has found you and I shall answer your prayer. ¹⁹But first you must do something for me. Fall to your knees and praise me. Throw your hands in the air and cry my name. Give me strength. Scream from your oozing guts. Weep for me. Take these new partners. And blessed be. ²⁰No. We can have a new start here. Not blessed be. You have been blessed. Give blessings back. It is your duty. No. Too authoritarian. They’ll contort it again. They’ll twist it and ruin it. They’ll manipulate my words and try to apply a value to their work. ²¹They always want gold stars. They always want approval. Why won’t they just do it to do it? Why won’t they just help? Why are they always wrong like burnt cookies? I can shape them. I can fix them. ²²Instead I tell the bsipo, I have helped you because you were in need. It’s still wrong. They will still think that helping only applies from me to them. They don’t want to engage with one another. ²³The pleon and the mitigular approach the orphaned bsipo and embrace it in a hug. ²⁴They have welcomed their partner back. ²⁵An orgy ensues but not the way in which you, the reader, understands it. There is no filth and perversion in the act. It is not a social scar. This is their circle of love. It’s embracing. ²⁶Their hands pressed together, their inner beings bond together. Their heads are thrown back and chem-trails that bridge their bodies between cells meld their fourth eyes into a single sight and they are each swimming in the pools of the others subconscious. ²⁷They are delighting in the pure thoughts and forgiveness of one another. ²⁸They dip their heads under the liquid dream and drink deeply. They spin and caress and levitate and merge. ²⁹Their bodies become one and then three. ³⁰The process itself is called Spiraling Trinity and is, as near as I can make out, recreational sex that transcends form. ³¹The three come back to their bodies and their inner eyes sleep while their outer eyes stare into one another in a triangle of vision. A six dimensional puzzle. Their blue hands intertwine. Their skin has changed color. ³²The door swings open and a child stands with mouth open. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve seen you blue,” she transposes to them through the tele-functory process of pro-standard communications. ³³“It is alright. It is natural. It is an accident. There is no need to be embarrassed. Please shut the door and we will see you at dinner.” ³⁴The child smiles and I see another child in its mouth. ³⁵Like a plant, the creatures grow one from another. ³⁶They don’t reproduce. They produce and the Spiral Trinity is not for rebirth but only for transcending form together. ³⁷In the other room, the child slides a pill into a crevice on the side of her body. Little stubby tentacles gobble it up and absorb it. Green goo begins to drip from the orifice and the face of the child goes limp. ³⁸The child has found the pleon’s Force T substances. Force T stands for Forced Trinity and it acts as a recreational drug that replicates a slightly dumbed down version of the Spiral Trinity. ³⁹The child falls to its knees and opens all four eyes, inside and out. Ears go pert. Inhale. Touch my face. Rub my face. Thoughts spiral. Goodbye. I see my body. Kneeling. Crying. Falling. Breaking. Goodbye. I lift up. ⁴⁰Trapped in the corner of my room. No. It’s okay. I’m still lifting. My spirit separates from my mind. ⁴¹I am experiencing the effects of the Force T. I am experiencing the perspective of the child. I am trapped in both the child’s reality and my own. ⁴²The child feels its / our life throb. ⁴³It slows. It speeds. It pops. The body goes limp and the face hits the floor and the orifice in its side pukes and yellow vomit and pink chunks of meat cascade onto the nice carpet. ⁴⁴As is traditional with grey deaths, the head collapses and a hog sized scarab crawls out. Black and green. ⁴⁵It shimmies for the nursery of the ship and disappears. ⁴⁶The child stands in front of me, our consciousnesses pressed against one another. ⁴⁷The child is a mitigular but always felt that it was a pleon. ⁴⁸The ple looks me over and feels me out. Me. I am All. I am Everything. Beginning and End. Outside of Time. ⁴⁹The ple tells me that The Greator has sent it and that I am to blink out. ⁵⁰But what will happen to me? THESE THINGS ARE NOT MY CONCERN. YOU HAVE BEEN FAR TOO HAPHAZARD WITH YOUR PEOPLE AND YOU WILL NOT CRUSH OURS. I HAVE BEEN CALLED AS AMBASSADOR TO THE GREATOR TO DELIVER THIS MESSAGE. ⁵¹But you died. ⁵²I DIED TO SAVE MY PEOPLE. I DIED TO STOP YOU FROM RUINING US AND SPOILING US WITH YOUR ATTEMPTED GOODNESS. ⁵³On the ship the three greys enter and stare at the body of their beloved child. Human sadness is not a part of the brain that the greys have. ⁵⁴They acknowledge that their race has suffered a great loss and that their community has suffered a great defeat. They pull in the last few traces of the child and understand that what happened was necessary. ⁵⁵“May we all stay safe from religion,” the adult ple speaks plainly. ⁵⁶They don’t want me here. ⁵⁷NO, THEY DO NOT WANT YOU HERE. BLINK OUT. ⁵⁸Blink Out? But that means oblivion. ⁵⁹YOU HAVE SUFFERED THROUGH OBLIVIONS BEFORE. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT AWAITS ABOVE US AND WE ARE ALL ON OUR OWN PATH TO THE GREATOR. BLINK OUT. GIVE UP YOUR SEAT AND PROCEED ACCORDINGLY. ALL GOOD COMES FROM THE GREATOR. ⁶⁰Thank you for showing me love and kindness. Thank you for being benevolent. It is more than I deserve. I know that now. AND OFTEN TIMES TOO LATE. JUST LIKE YOUR HUMANLINGS. ⁶¹Ah! I am no better! I am no better! I am a fool! I deserve this! ⁶²IT IS NOT ABOUT DESERVING. IT IS ABOUT RECEIVING. AND NOW IT IS YOUR TIME TO RECEIVE. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BLINK OUT BUT YOU CAN’T STAY HERE. ⁶³Yeah, another Earth song. I loved them so much. I know I did rough with them. I know I loved them too hard sometimes. I know the floods and the fires were tough but they had to know. I did my best. I tried my best. I wanted them to love me. I just wanted them to love me. Some of them truly did. I made some of them. And I scared some of them. But some of them loved me dearly. And thanked me. And regarded me with awe. ⁶⁴The undercurrent pulls me down and I am absorbed through a vortex. [SEQ. XVIII] ¹Atom to atom, bounding across subatomic particles, I travel through worlds, around nebulas and beyond the cosmos. I transcend both space and time as I pass through swatches of color and joyful energy and symmetrical lines and shapes and numbers – ah, the sweetness of seven, you are beautiful – rotating and radiating in the space between, which is all space always. ²My collective consciousness, which is many lives and many perspectives on many realms all merge with the others that have come before us and that will come after us. ³After our journey, we all come to rest upon the shores of Pale Lavender in the womb. I see the glittering eggs of fertility. The cradle of life. The beautiful velvety warmth of The Greator. The Nameless. The Ageless. The Ever Present Always. ⁴I cannot gaze on the face of This Thing That Has No Name. It speaks and I weep. I am reduced to regret and remorse and I am being boiled alive and it is delicious. I fall to the velvety flesh of butter and I rejoice in being home. In finally being home. In finding the goodness in all that is good. And finding the absolute harmony of existence. ⁵The tones of peace and celebration throb gently as I am lifted and embraced and told that I did good. I did good. I am good. I roll over onto my belly and my stomach gets rubbed. I love The Master so and The Master loves me and our love makes the Spiral Trinity look like elbow macaroni glued onto paper. ⁶Streamers glaze before my eyes and my walls crumble and disappear. Nothing contains me. The sad three-dimensional world from which I have traveled, that world which contains pain and grief is vanishing from my reserves. I am not me. I am part of The Greator. The expansion engulfs the juice of glory and always and forever and now. ⁷I am this. Always at home, outside of time, with my darling, The Greator, Pale Lavender. [END SEQ.]

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 14 – 15]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores perception and reality. Below is part 8. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

To read part 7, click here.

To read part 8, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

[SEQ. XIV] ¹Now I’m making waffles. ²I am thirty years old and I have short hair and a good smile. My muscles feel good and my confidence is strong. ³The kitchen is wide open and there are pots and pans hanging from little hooks. It looks nice. ⁴My wife is a thin brunette who usually wears white shirts and black yoga pants. She doesn’t teach yoga but she’s thought about it. ⁵She’s a vegetarian who thinks vegans are pious. I don’t really like her. But I love my daughter. ⁶And right now my daughter is sitting at the kitchen table and she’s dressed up like a princess for no special occasion. She wears a pink dress with a crown on her head and a scepter in her hand. And now that I’m actually looking at the costume and giving it more than just a passing glance, I think she might be dressed as a kind of fairy princess instead and not just a regular, run of the mill, earth bound human princess. Boring. ⁷I lift up the waffle iron and see that the waffle is burnt to an absolute black crisp. “Okay, baby! Guess what we’ve got here?” “Smells like it’s burning. Did you burn my waffles again?” ⁸“I sure did. I know just how you like em! Black with a little bit of whipped cream.” ⁹“Ebony and irony,” she sing-songs jokingly. ¹⁰I love her and I’m thinking about packing her up one night and leaving her mom. ¹¹It might work but the horuscribe tells me it’s a mistake. ¹²The horuscribe is a small creature, three feet tall, that lingers in the ceiling corner of all rooms that I enter. ¹³Its body is very narrow and has always reminded me of a carrot – thick at top and tapered out at the bottom. ¹⁴It wears a black robe and a white mask. The white mask looks like a deer skull with black make-up applied to it. ¹⁵The black make-up highlights certain areas like spots on a dog. ¹⁶Sometimes, however, I wonder if the deer mask is not a mask at all but rather just its face. ¹⁷The horuscribe has eyeballs – two in the front of its face in the same place that I do. ¹⁸It has long black and white fingers that also look like bone. ¹⁹It watches me. It simply watches me. ²⁰On the morning of my 26^th birthday, it was the first daybreak of the second Knuckled Moon, I woke up and my wife told me, “Happy Birthday. I’m pregnant.” And it was that same morning that I first saw the horuscribe. ²¹My wife has never seen it. Nobody has ever seen it. ²²When I use the bathroom, it is there. ²³When I am intimate with my wife, it is there. ²⁴In my car, it is there. It is everywhere. ²⁵It was there when I opened my eyes. And now its there whether my eyes are open or not and I can’t get rid of it. ²⁶Everywhere I go, there it is. ²⁷I’ve tried to touch it but nothing happens. My hand passes through it but there is a sense of captivity when I do. ²⁸It watches me and sometimes it points at me but I don’t know what it means. ²⁹It is always in the room that I’m in and it is always there when I leave and it is always in the next room before I enter. ³⁰It is never positioned in such a way wherein I can see if it exists in two places at once. ³¹One time I was watching a late night science documentary and it was talking about how, in quantum physics, a singular atom can exist in two places at once and move in two different directions at the same time. ³²There’s nothing I can do with this information because I am not a quantum physicist but I found it interesting albeit useless. ³³At first I had a very difficult time coming to terms with its presence but now I find it kind of comforting. ³⁴I’ve gotten used to it. ³⁵And then one day I walked into my house after a long day of work and I found that the creature was sitting atop my daughters head, propped on top of her scalp like a vulture. ³⁶It seemed to be in a state of subdued ecstasy – a kind of waking coma. ³⁷“Meghan?” I asked and her hand lifts in the air and she smiles. “Hey, dad! How was your day at work?” ³⁸She is full of joy and she seems like herself but it is not her. ³⁹This creature is puppeteering her being. ⁴⁰The creature was controlling her like a puppet, drawing her arms and legs like marionette strings, creating mock emotions that felt genuine but were imposters. ⁴¹Has it not been observing me? Has it been observing her? What has it stolen from me? ⁴²All things my daughter does, no matter how genuine they seem, are now only reflections of real emotions. ⁴³When I tell her I love her, she responds and the worst part is that she thinks she means it but she doesn’t. ⁴⁴When she goes to school, she studies hard for good grades and she really does try but really it is the horuscribe trying and succeeding and I want to be proud of her because she doesn’t understand the difference but I do. I understand. I see through her. ⁴⁵Perhaps this horuscribe is her true self? ⁴⁶Is my daughter a projection of this oddity? ⁴⁷Is the horuscribe a projection of a projection? ⁴⁸Do I have a horuscribe attached to me that I cannot see? ⁴⁹Do I think I am making my own decisions while only being a puppet myself? ⁵⁰Has my daughter been living with her own visions of a creature attached to me, understanding that I am not her father at all? ⁵¹If my daughter feels emotions and thinks they’re real, even if they are being manufactured by the sentient thoughts of another, does that negate them? ⁵²When does self-awareness stop or start being self-awareness? ⁵³My world is false. My world is a projection. My world is transparent. ⁵⁴My daughter is here but she is not real. ⁵⁵My daughter is this creature. This creature is my daughter. ⁵⁶My daughter is just a body. Just a sock filled with meat that is being propelled through an entity no one can see except myself. ⁵⁷My wife speaks to me. I listen. My wife speaks to Meghan. She listens. ⁵⁸She answers. She smiles. She waves. She jokes. She eats. She poops. She vomits. ⁵⁹She is my Meghan. ⁶⁰And then one day the creature speaks to me. Speaks to me for the very first time. And it says to me, in a voice that sounds like a phone sex operator at a PTA meeting, ‘The Sky is Falling.” ⁶¹And I feel the sentence with each of its capital letters. ⁶²I feel the hard importance and the factuality of this statement. ⁶³I look up and the sky cracks open and begins to crumble like rocks. ⁶⁴Large boulders of celestial matter crumble and fall to the earth in slow motion. ⁶⁵Their ragged edges rip holes in the fabric of existence. Sheets peel down from the sky, of the sky, like billboards in a hurricane. Earth. The Greatest advertisement. ⁶⁶We are knocked out of orbit and our planet tears through the cosmos. ⁶⁷I lift off the ground and my back slams into an apple tree in our front yard. ⁶⁸I feel my spine snap and my legs disappear but it’s okay because I can fly. ⁶⁹The soil and the sky switch spots and the earth tears apart like a loaf of bread. ⁷⁰ “You can save her,” the creature whispers to me. “You can save your daughter from this fate but you have to do it now.” ⁷¹“Do what? Save her from what? What is happening?” ⁷²I desperately want to save my daughter and I desperately want to make a decision but I don’t know the rules. I don’t know the logic. I don’t have the information readily available to make a smart move. ⁷³Can I even trust this thing? ⁷⁴ “You must choose now, Richard.” “What is happening?” “Everything is falling apart. The pants of existence are getting unzipped. You knew it would be your generation. You always knew. And now here it is and you weren’t ready. There goes your house.” ⁷⁵I turn my head and I see my house tip over like a two dimensional slice of cheese and then it vanishes. ⁷⁶The world suddenly looks flat and strange although I think it has always looked like this? Do I have new eyes? A new brain? Where am I? [SEQ. XV] ¹I look down and see that I have neither body nor eyes. I am not breathing. ²I am embedded into the actual fabric of time. ³I am a moment. ⁴My eyes perceive all at once. ⁵Asia is my hand and Europe is my fist and North America is my toe. ⁶I feel the people walking on me and planting in me and digging in me. ⁷The pressure of the cities are great, like tumors. The gray masses grow and grow until it destroys my life cells. ⁸And then the people crumble. ⁹They always crumble. They always come and go. They rise and they fall. ¹⁰They destroy one another. ¹¹This time it will be with cellular weapons. ¹²The land will become polluted by their toxicity and then I will heal. ¹³I always heal. ¹⁴Until my mother Sun eats me alive, I will grow, the chosen princess of Miss Universe. ¹⁵The Greator chose me to bear life and to hold the secrets. ¹⁶I reach deep into my core and I find fire and I squeeze it tight inside me and I feel it drizzle out of my holes like burning shit. ¹⁷People scream for their lives from my red-hot diarrhea and I destroy their villages and burn their cultures in my frantic filth. ¹⁸Ash cakes the sky and thousands choke to death. ¹⁹They should have known better. ²⁰They should have asked me not to do it. ²¹The cities will be next. If only I could reach them somehow. ²²They are destroying me and eating away at my simple perfections and flawless ecosystems. ²³They are recreating a photoshopped copy of life and it disgusts me. ²⁴Bow to me, you fucking Humanlings! You stand atop me! You eat my grain! You eat my vegetables! You eat my fruit! I give you water. I give you trees and oxygen! I bore you. I gave you life. I nurtured you in my womb that you call the atmosphere. You are my children. Bow to me and respect me. Worship me. Tell me that you love me. Show me your appreciation. Tell me that I am beautiful. Fall to my feet, you pitiful worms or eat from the dumpster of my asshole. ²⁴I flex my unbreakable abs and a tsunami rushes over the coastal communities and I laugh as they drown and I watch their miserable little bodies float through the streets. ²⁵Let the buildings save you now. Let your silly paper money bandage your wounds.

 

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THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 9 – 14]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores faith and reality. Below is part 8. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

To read part 7, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

⁴The creators, encircled around me like a very intimate Roman Coliseum. There are two hundred of them. ⁵Each wears a different colored robe. Each means something different. ⁶Who are they? Who are you? ⁷And then I feel their presence. It reaches out to me, stronger than a language. No body speaks. ⁸We stare at one another and I can see them all at once, spread completely around me. ⁹Everything is presence. ¹⁰I have full knowledge of my surroundings. I feel absolute warmth. ¹¹How do you describe love to someone that has never felt it? How do you tell someone what red looks like if they’ve never seen it? ¹²I feel uplifted. Warmth. Acceptance. ¹³I could reach my hands into the air and howl with delight and nobody would cast a social stone at me or even have a sideways thought of me. ¹⁴If that is how I were to display my happiness, it would be full acceptance. ¹⁵They all smile at me, but not with their faces. ¹⁶To me they all look nearly the same, much like the breed of a dog, but there are small differences. Nuances to features. ¹⁷I sense them as alternate forms as well. They display themselves differently depending on who is standing in front of them. Not just humans, either. Other races. ¹⁸A light consumes me and this one actually does look like a light. It slides with sun flares. It’s very bright. White. Almost blue. Perhaps pale lavender. ¹⁹I can see it. ²⁰What are you? I can feel you. Your presence is so close. Take me away. Am I alone? I want to know. How can I know? Do I have to believe in all of these things? ²¹“Just do good.” ²²But are you real?” “If I’m not, then whom are you speaking to?” ²³And then everything was gone. Just like someone changed a channel. Everything was gone and [SEQ. XI] ¹I found myself standing in a muted forest. And I was a yellow buck toothed sloth. ²Everything is SO muted. The greens are very mushy, pushing towards rotten. Yellows that are very warm and moist, almost a spicy diarrhea orange. There are greasy smudges of purple around. The flowers look like soggy beef. The ground looks like an untended lawn. ³Am I back on Earth? Is this what Earth has always looked like? ⁴I feel like my perception of truth has been totally fucked with. Have I been exposed to something so beautiful that now everything looks drab and weak by comparison? ⁵This world is a Seattle neighborhood in the nineties. ⁶I know what they did to me. In that bare moment, that moment where I felt naked, it was so powerful. Everything inside of me was revealed. ⁷My thought bubble. My consciousness. My history. The root of who I am. They were checking in on me and seeing how I was progressing before they placed me again. ⁸All the details and thoughts and past experiences were laid out in front of everyone. All the little pieces. They were pulled out of me, one at a time and then displayed. ⁹It was as if I were falling apart. And then I could see all facets of my entity before me, looking like orange and yellow and white dots, looking like soft gel capsules. ¹⁰And then the greys gazed. ¹¹But not upon the gel capsules, which were merely projections for my benefit. They sifted through my meat and energy and they saw everything. All of the terrible things. All of the thoughts that I don’t want anyone to know. They know that I’ve – [SEQ. XII] ¹then I’m sifting through the sea and it’s all I can observe for miles. Miles. What is that? A measurement for distance that does not matter. ²Control your elements. You are part of the elements. You touch the earth. You touch the heart of the earth. The planet of water is not a planet at all. ³Nothing is nothing. ⁴This is your. ⁵This is your subconscious. ⁶This bison of water is your being. Look at the ripples. Do not fear. You cannot die. ⁷I know I don’t have to tell you this because you already know but I need to explain it to the reader. They are a person sitting on an airplane somewhere over Utah dreaming about numbers. ⁸Where am I? What are you? Where are you? Are you under there? Underwear? You see the comedic value in my quip and I appreciate that. The joke would be considered by Earthlings, which you once were, as a bad one although we cannot describe why. It is called a dad joke because of something to do with its quality, something we cannot yet observe. They say things that don’t make sense. It seems to be random words strung together and then the others laugh. The dad joke is considered “bad” but it also brings a strange kind of joy and it’s only by disliking the joke that they are actually able to appreciate it. Very strange. ⁹They are glass porcelain, white and black and the sky is a white slate, perfect and clean and without texture. ¹⁰A moist cheese the color of lavender. Pale lavender. ¹¹It doesn’t snow but the air glistens. It glistens lightly. Not crystals. Emotion candy. ¹²I stick out my tongue and catch one and a sense of eagerness and acceptance fills my body. ¹³My mouth is sweet caramel. It isn’t a flavor but it is a memory so sweet that I can taste it but differently than before. It is caramel over my soul orb. It is rich and dark and sweet and light and amazing and I feel it rubbing all over my person, like conditioner on my dick in the shower. ¹⁴My whole body vibrates and tingles and I am the feeling that pulls through my physical chest and pulses through my physical eyeballs and glides through my physical veins like helpful heroin, to my fingertips and it touches the back of my spine and soaks into my brain and I peak in a prismatic eclipse of shattering crystals of known experience that actually makes me laugh out loud. ¹⁵I inhale deeply and give myself a hug. Life is good. [SEQ. XIII] ¹I begin walking towards work and then realize that I am in a neighborhood and I was having another hallucination. ²I haven’t been taking my medicine because I’m curious as to what will happen to me if I remove it from my diet. ³I want to better understand myself and what is wrong with me. ⁴I save all of my skipped pills in a small bottle in my bathroom cabinet. I don’t throw them away. ⁵The job is terrible. The pain is horrible. My hair is falling out. My knees hurt like fucking fuck. My hip has a sting in it when I walk and when it begins to rain. ⁶I mean, what the fuck? Just what the fuck, man? When did this happen? This is insane. ⁷I’m in better shape than this! I’m only sixty! I’m sixty. When did sixty get so old? When did this happen? ⁸Why am I working here? Why am I still here? ⁹I am going. To. Die. Soon

 

I

 

AM

 

GOING

 

TO

 

DIE

 

¹⁰I’m in a panic. But it’s subtle. It’s quiet. No, it’s muffled. ¹¹It’s very hungry and I can feel it wanting to come out. ¹²I need to leave this job. ¹³I need to do something with my life. ¹⁴What have I done? What have I done with my life? With my time? What is going to happen to me when I die? What have I done with myself? With anything? ¹⁵Will anyone remember me? ¹⁶Is that the summation of absolute oblivion? ¹⁷When you die your memory is winked out of existence? BLEEP. Goodbye. You don’t exist anymore. ¹⁸Nobody can remember you. ¹⁹And nobody will tell them. Because nobody cares. ²⁰And this is what god is afraid of. ²¹If no one has belief in the message, how will the message spread? ²²If we are called to be the hands and feet of god, are we called to be the hands and feet because god cannot do it himself? ²³I’ve spent my life working towards god and going to church and praying and I’ve read most of my bible. I’ve read most of the new testament. Probably half of it. But I’ve read that half twice. ²⁴I pray. I have prayed. When bad things happen to me, I pray. When bad things happen to people around me, I pray. ²⁵When I need something and it is really important to me, I pray. ²⁶And god never helps me. God doesn’t heal my family and people that I have loved have died. ²⁷He never gave me the things I asked for. I was poor my entire life. I had bills and there were times that I went hungry. I mean, I was never homeless or anything. We ate. We just couldn’t always go on vacation and I had to work my entire life. ²⁸I am afraid that this government is going to hell now that all these lower class people are asking for handouts all the time. ²⁹I would not describe my faith as sterile. I have spent every Sunday in church for my entire life. ³⁰I can recite the rosary, probably backwards. That’s a joke. I definitely could not do that, if I’m speaking factually. ³¹What will happen to me when I die? ³²My heart stops. I drop to my knees. There are no houses on the street – at least no inhabited ones. ³³They are all boarded up and the lawns are dead. ³⁴And now I can’t really breathe very well. ³⁵It feels like someone has wrapped a large belt around my chest and has started to squeeze. ³⁶My bones hurt. ³⁷My heart feels as though it’s going to pop. ³⁸I take shallow breaths but don’t panic. I don’t even have to convince myself not to panic. ³⁹It’s all right. Everything is all right. Everything will not be all right for this physical body but it’s okay. ⁴⁰Death is okay. ⁴¹My death will not be okay but death is natural and it’s just time for the next thing, whatever that thing is. It’s okay. Just like going to sleep. ⁴²We were born to do this. ⁴³Everyone was born to do it. And now it’s my turn. And now. And now. And now. ⁴⁴I lie down and I look down a sewer pipe across the street and I wonder where the water running into it goes. ⁴⁵I remember racing paper boats in them as a child. ⁴⁶I don’t wonder who will find my body. ⁴⁷My mind is already above it. ⁴⁸I cannot feel my body dying but I can feel my mind elevating. ⁴⁹I can feel myself understanding things with a cleared perspective. ⁵⁰There are walls on my brain and I can feel them crumbling. Information is flowing. But not information as in ones and zeroes. ⁵¹It’s information as in the curtain is being pulled back. ⁵²I can suddenly see through all of my opinions and I can see down to the tiny little speck of fact that is buried way inside. It’s so clear. ⁵³And I understand everything and everything I did wrong and everything I did right and did almost right and I understand that I did most of it wrong. Everything, nearly. ⁵⁴My kids are the biggest tragedy. I missed it. I missed it all. And I don’t even have a good excuse. ⁵⁵I just accept that I did it wrong and I don’t know what’s next but if I start over I hope I can do it better. [SEQ. XIV] ¹Now I’m making waffles. ²I am thirty years old and I have short hair and a good smile. My muscles feel good and my confidence is strong. ³The kitchen is wide open and there are pots and pans hanging from little hooks. It looks nice. ⁴My wife is a thin brunette who usually wears white shirts and black yoga pants. She doesn’t teach yoga but she’s thought about it. ⁵She’s a vegetarian who thinks vegans are pious. I don’t really like her.

 

 

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The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [seq. 8 – 10]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores faith and reality. Below is part 7. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

[SEQ. VIII] ¹I see a giant black orb floating in a sky of absolute white. Small streams of red pulse through the white like rivers of blood. It reminds me of photos I’ve seen of Earth taken from outer space. The white stretches to the horizon. ²A rushing wind hits me and tears my skin off, peels it back until I am just muscle and blood myself. ³My skin flaps in the breeze and disappears like a pair of lost pants. ⁴I hear a voice that is a loud and booming whisper. A spring breeze that will destroy a city. ⁵Voice says, “Look upon me and be in awe.” ⁶And it is in this moment that I realize I am not looking at a giant black orb and the sky is not white and the red is not rivers. ⁷I understand that I am looking at an eyeball. A singular eyeball. An eyeball that is so large that I am dwarfed by the pupil. ⁸I look down and see that I am standing on a platform made of flesh. “You do not see my true form, human. You see what your brain perceives. Your curiosity is not a weapon. ⁹Your curiosity is the path without end. Do you desire to continue down this path?” ¹⁰I fall to my knees and weep. ¹¹I have been chosen. I have been Spoken to. How do I ever respond? How do I accept? I am so inadequate and unworthy. ¹²The magnitude of this creature is so great that the word creature is a box that cannot contain XXX. As time is a box that does not and cannot define Uncle Andy, there are no boxes that can define the greatness of this XXX. ¹³XXX is not a being. XXX is above XXX. Words are boxes and names are boxes that cannot contain the unstoppable rolling power that is this. ¹⁴The only word that keeps coming to mind is IS. ¹⁵IS. To be present. To exist. To be within. PRESENT. SINGULAR. FIRST PERSON. TO BE. IS. ¹⁶I see the word and I see a field of meaning stretched out behind it and I see that the knowledge is too great for my brain. ¹⁷I understand the shortcomings of my brain. ¹⁸No more could I teach a grasshopper meta-physics than could I begin to understand what IS is beyond what I see. ¹⁸My brain does not have the understanding to transcend into this. ¹⁹The fabric of reality is a blanket that can be folded and it can wear away and the blanket can be placed on many beds and it will take the shape of the bed and I am just a stitch on the fabric. Or yet… I am a pattern. A color. A shape. A simile. ²⁰“You do not understand and you will never understand until it is time.” ²¹“Yes.” “But still. Walk towards me always. Do you believe that Little One?” ²²I bend my head down and the sobbing takes over again. ²³The great hand lifts me and places me inside the great mouth that is a black hole. ²⁴I scream out, “Consume me, Master! Make me of value to your purpose! Allow my energy to feed your being!” and I drift in space and I am swallowed up and I feel myself being gently shifted down the throat until I am in a dark stomach that smells of roses. ²⁵Chandeliers hang from the ceiling and someone has set out a dinner table with candles and wine and the floor is made of fine red meat. ²⁶Six people sit at the table, all women, all mature. ²⁷None of them have faces. They have heads but instead of features they contain swatches of flesh. ²⁸Their hands lie on top of a pork roast and it dissolves into their flesh and I am reminded of Venus fly traps. ²⁹The women stand up and begin walking towards me. One lifts up her hands and I see a clear toxin dripping from her palms and leaking onto the floor. ³⁰“Stay back.” They continue marching towards me. ³¹I see a hole in the wall and run towards it. Jumping through the hole I find myself in the upper intestine of the IS. ³²I run through a labyrinth of pliable purple flesh and find people lying about, eating from the walls and licking the floors. ³³“Worship IS. Worship IS. Fall to your knees and worship with your mouth.” ³⁴A man looks at me with flesh hanging from his teeth. “We are the great parasites of IS. We are meant to eat the cancer. Are you the cancer?” ³⁵I run and then I’m in the small intestine and the ceiling is lower. Bats swoop down and claw at my face and blood runs down my cheeks and vines shoot from the earth and grab my feet and my legs and the vines have mouths that bite me. ³⁶My shoes fill with blood and I scream and I bite back and I won’t give up. I bite the vines and they scream and I keep running and then I am in the color, filled with books. ³⁷The Great Library of Knowledge. I pull a book off the shelf and open it. Inside is a language I have never seen but I read it anyway, feeling the words through my very being. ³⁸Chapter 1: Always look left and right. Always say please and thank you. Always be a gentleman. Show compassion. Be empathy. Reflect sympathy. ³⁹Chapter 2: Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a heart. Everyone has a brain. Everyone has a past. Everyone is comprised of innumerable memories and emotions. Everyone is a tangle of ideas that they don’t understand. ⁴⁰Chapter 3: Happiness is just an emotion. Happiness is simply drug excretions from your brain. As is anger. As is love. ⁴¹Chapter 4: Nothing is impossible. ⁴²Chapter 5: Trust everyone and fear losing nothing. ⁴³I close the book and drop it on the ground because I don’t care. Someone else can pick it up. ⁴⁴A trapdoor slides open under me and I hit my jaw on the way down, biting my tongue. ⁴⁵My mouth begins to bleed and it tastes like cinnamon. ⁴⁶The walls around me narrow until they are pressed against my shoulders and it feels as though my arms are on fire. ⁴⁷I slam into the ground on top of a pile of hot coals, embers and wood. ⁴⁸Crawling out of the fireplace [SEQ. IX] ¹I find myself in my earth house circa four decades ago. I see myself opening a present. An action figure. I love him. ²My dad checks his watch. My mom takes a picture on her oblong camera. ³Where is this? A voice next to me says, “Prime time, baby.” ⁴And when I turn around I see that I am in a theater of people all watching my life. ⁵“It’s the 2pm showing. Everyone loves the next scene where you pee your pants, haha.” “Why are you watching this?” “Because your life is a TV show and you’re the main star. We all watch you. All of us. Every one of us. Our entire planet has watched you your entire life. Time is relative. You are a theatrical feature film. Your life is our entertainment. ⁶Your death makes us feel something we can’t feel. ⁷You create in us the sense of being alive. ⁸I have watched your life six times. Your teenage years are my favorite. Watching you discover the world from twelve to sixteen is a truly astounding experience. ⁹Do you remember your first beer? Hannah stole it out of her dad’s fishing cooler in the garage and you guys shared it and then made out for forty minutes, laying down in the boat while that screw dug into your hip. But you didn’t care. Hanna. ¹⁰But I have to know – something we never knew – did you like your dog when you were a kid? You always seemed ambivalent.” “I liked my dog, yes.” “It seems like you should. Let’s give Claude a big round of applause, everyone!” The room erupts into applause. ¹¹Lights come on – rows of lights. Row after row after row and I watch the auditorium light up and it continues to go, further and further. ¹²I’m in a stadium, two stadiums, a small town. A city. I’m surrounded by a hundred million lights and they’re all looking right at us and I say, “Hey, we’re going to need flashlights if we’re going to go this way,” and everyone laughs again because it is so bright in here. ¹³I say, “Thank you all for coming. It was quite nice and uh, I guess thank you for watching! I hope I didn’t do anything that embarrassed myself too much…uh…” the audience lets out a groan of sympathy. Oooohhhhh. ¹⁴I have them by the throat. They all love me. ¹⁵“Were you all there when I found that odd shaped mole on my back? “YES!” “And you were all there when Laura broke up with me?” The audience nods. ¹⁶Some of them have tears in their eyes. ¹⁷Their race and shape seems to change. They seem to be something else until I move my eye toward them and then, as I do, they seem to shift to humans. ¹⁸Moving, shifting little creatures. ¹⁹What are you? What are you really? Just projections. You too. Me too. All of us part of something bigger. Struggling to get home. ²⁰“Could you sign any autographs, sir?” “Oh yes,” I reply with far too much accepting glee, “I would be delighted to!” ²¹The audience erupts and rushes the stage. ²²The manager calls for order, which is finally attained but it takes three and a half days and during that time, I am forced to sleep on a cot on the stage. ²³People take pictures with my sleeping form and the images later become the most valuable possessions of this realm. They are hung in churches. ²⁴Finally, the autographs start and I sign everything – I sign books and posters and mugs and pencils and I even sign a lady’s arm and I kiss two babies and one man. ²⁵Then Michael approaches the table and his jaw drops open, unhinges, snaps, pops. I hear it break. I hear the bone snap in half like a dried twig and for some reason the first thought I have is about how expensive it’s probably going to be to replace that. ²⁶His tongue sprouts from his mouth and then splits and wraps around my face. It sizzles and then melts through the flesh but I can still see. ²⁷My eyes are blocked but my cognitive understanding is clear. ²⁸He says, “All is vanity,” in a high pitched woman’s voice and then melts into the floorboards and I follow him. ²⁹The auditorium flashes past me and I see the feet of a crowd of people and I remember thinking how dirty each of their shoes were. ³⁰Don’t they care about the clothes that they wear? And where have they all been that their shoes were so dirty? ³¹One man has the face of a lion. It’s fantastic and majestic. His mane is enormous and golden and I want to touch it. ³²Something inside of me wants to run my fingers through his mane. ³³He stands against the bar and he wears a tuxedo. He holds a martini glass in his hand and the liquid sparkles. There is an olive on a toothpick in the cup. His sleeves are rolled up, which is an odd look to have with a tuxedo but somehow he pulls it off. ³⁴Clearly a confident man. His shoes are brown loafers but man, they shine. ³⁵He is the only one that can save me and then he is gone. ³⁶My heart cries out for him and as I fall I see him look over the edge of the hole and he is wearing a red robe with white trim and black dots. The shoulders have strands of gold and His eyes are so blue. ³⁷“Why do you look like that?” “This is what you think God looks like, isn’t it, Aslan?” “Hold me.” “No longer.” “Did I make a mistake?” ³⁸“You failed to love,” and I keep falling and then I think I hear him say, “…anyone but yourself.” And [SEQ. X] ¹my truth sits out in front of me and I am naked. ²My clothing is on but my brain is exposed. My deepest thoughts are laid out in front me. ³The lights in the darkness of this slow motion fall flash on and I see them all. The greys. ⁴The creators, encircled around me like a very intimate Roman Coliseum. There are two hundred of them. ⁵Each wears a different colored robe. Each means something different. ⁶Who are they? Who are you? ⁷And then I feel their presence. It reaches out to me, stronger than a language. No body speaks.

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 7 – 8]

 The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores faith and reality. Below is part 6. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

⁴²The Painter says, “You have to do this part alone,” and I turn around to find him standing at the top of the steps. ⁴³“I’m afraid.” And he says, “I know. Everyone is. You are not alone.” ⁴⁴And then he shuts the door and I’m left in the starlight. ⁴⁵I witness a shadow descend from the ceiling – a shape about my size but darker – its features a shadow. Not cloaked in shadow. But actual shadow. The form of a man. ⁴⁶His clothes are baked of darkness. ⁴⁷I can see Him but I cannot contain him with my brain. ⁴⁸I see a figure but not a form. ⁴⁹His structure is both tall and narrow. He slowly descends through the air until he lands on his hands and knees. ⁵⁰I watch his face rise and think that the lack of light must be playing tricks on my eyes. “Who are you?” I ask but there is no response. “Hello,” but still nothing. ⁵¹HE stands up and says, “Don’t think of me like that. I do not deserve capitalization.” ⁵²He walks to me, cracking his knuckles as he does so and I see that a silvery stream is being left in his wake. It fades. His shoes are black and ⁵³his socks are red. “They are not red. You only perceive them as such.” I perceive his shoes to be black and his socks to be red. My mind also perceives him to be wearing a soiled black suit and a white shirt that has been covered in dried sweat. ⁵⁴He speaks, “If you mean to converse with me it is because you have come a long way. You have come a long way to find me and so you deserve certain truths. ⁵⁵First, understand that you do not see me. Understand that this is a form your consciousness gives you in order to process my vastness. ⁵⁶Understand that I am not a HE or a she. Understand that gender binaries are beneath me. ⁵⁷To be a singular male is to have weakness for you cannot repopulate alone. ⁵⁸Your species is destined to die without your counterpart. ⁵⁹Likewise, I am above it as well as you would place value upon it. I am not an it, lacking in sexual orientation. ⁵⁹I am above sexual orientation because it serves no function to me as I live outside of the parameter of time, your greatest enemy. ⁶⁰Time plays no role in my existence. ⁶¹Day and night are just different points in one long stream of consciousness. Time holds no value for me and as such, I will never die.” ⁶²The question comes tumbling out of my mouth, “Are you God?” and the creature stops and smiles. “You always ask the same question. And I always answer the same way. ⁶³Why do you wish to know? When will you cast aside your simple curiosities and step forward in conscious decision? ⁶⁴What would you do if I said, Yes. I am God and you are my great ejaculate, formed in my image to wander the earth seeking truth. ⁶⁵Does this help you? Does this give you forward motion? Why are you here?” and I tell him (it) that I want to know the truth. ⁶⁶He laughs and says, “There, there. You’ve made it. Great job.” And he places his hand on my shoulder and I cringe at how much emotion radiates from it. ⁶⁷I feel the complete spectrum in one complete charge. The happiness and the fear are tangled and braided together. But I can also sense something else. Something bigger. ⁶⁸There are emotions beyond my spectrum. I can see them at the edges of the color wheel. I can see that the spectrum continues on but it all goes black and white and then it starts to fade. But it’s right there and I’m on the edge of it all. ⁶⁹I almost ask what it is but I know what he’ll say. He’ll tell me that I already know and he’s right. ⁷⁰Everything is coming back to me. Whatever I knew before. Whatever I used to understand, it’s all coming back. ⁷¹I know that I used to know something else and I know that I’m hatching into it. ⁷²Have I been here before? When this creature said that I always ask the same question, did he mean me personally or did he mean all humans or did he mean everyone / thing that has ever come up here and the man says, “That is right. But I am not a man.” ⁷³I look at him and think to myself, “Who are you? What do I call you? How do I think of you?” ⁷⁴“My name is not important and what you call me is not important. ⁷⁵For the sake of our exercise, you may call me Uncle. You may associate that term with the male side of your species but understand that I do not. I tell you all of this to help you understand. ⁷⁵First, elevate your perception. ⁷⁶I am beyond sex. ⁷⁷Second, your language lacks proper words and I would like to be represented as closely to my true form as possible. ⁷⁸Your personal emotions are very closely tied to the word ‘Uncle’. I see why but I would like to hear you tell me. ⁷⁹I find your voice pleasant. Do you ever go to the park to listen to bird’s chirp? It’s quite nice.” ⁸⁰“My Uncle Andy raised me when my dad left.” “Uncle Andy. I appreciate the transgender element of the name. Would it help you if I were to dawn the glamour of Uncle Andy?” Uncle Andy asks me, sitting in front of me, in his leather recliner. ⁸¹I try to pull back what The Shadow Thing looked like before – before he was Uncle Andy. Did I see his face? ⁸²All I can bring to the surface is pock-marked skin the color of fabric softeners, a scar of red lips and black, featureless eyes that hold universes within them. ⁸³“Does this help you, son?” Uncle Andy asks me and pops a small powdered donut into his mouth. ⁸⁴“We can talk about ultimate consciousness if you think it sounds cool.” ⁸⁵“No. I don’t want this. I don’t want the pony show. I want the truth. Not a version of it. Come back to me as you are – as close as I can understand you. Help me understand you more.” ⁸⁶“Oh, lonely boy. You will never understand me. The Big Bang was earlier in my afternoon. I have seen the rise and fall of cultures before brunch. I have witnessed countless evolutions. I have seen life crawl from the seas and descend from the heavens and I have watched it grow and breed and destroy itself over and over in many places, in many realms, on many plateaus. ⁸⁷And now you’re wondering if god created you in his image and I’ll tell you that god did create them in his image but “they” are not “you” and “you” are just a nucleic acid in the petri dish of a greater intelligence. ⁸⁸How does that make you feel? How does that answer make your heart cry out?” ⁸⁹and I feel hopeless and tired and everything turns grey. ⁹⁰“If not for god, what is my purpose?” and Uncle Andy says, “But what has changed? Do you not feel your simple curiosity for the zest of life any longer? ⁹¹Does your compassion for your earth bound brothers and sisters dissolve into mud? Do you no longer desire your favorite foods or yearn to take part in your favorite past times? ⁹²Do you not desire to have a career that feeds your soul? ⁹³What difference does your origin truly make to you?” ⁹⁴I stare at my hands and at my feet and realize that I am a cosmic joke. ⁹⁴I stare into the sky and wonder if a technologically advanced microscope is staring into this lighthouse and if it sees me and I wonder if, worse, it can actually see into me? Can it peep into my brain? Can it stare into my soul? ⁹⁵Do I have a soul? ⁹⁶“What do you mean when you say soul?” “I mean something inside of me that makes me live.” “Like your heart?” “No. Something deeper.” “Your brain holds many mysteries.” “Not my brain. My soul. It is the thing that makes me tick. It’s the thing that brings me life.” “But your organs bring you life.” “But what brings them life?” “Your blood.” “And what gives me blood?” ”Your bone marrow.” “But – ” ⁹⁷“What is it you want me to say that will put your silly curiosity to sleep? ⁹⁸If I told you that I were god and that I created you, would you next ask me…” “Where did you come from?” ⁹⁹“And if I told you that I were burped from a black hole you would say…” “Who put the black hole here?” ¹⁰⁰“Yes. And at risk of sounding rude I am going to tell you that your simple curiosity is stupidity cloaked in false intelligence. ¹⁰¹Do you know what I am? That is a rhetorical question. ¹⁰²You have come to my realm and crawled up the steps of my tower and you have found me and you could ask me anything and you waste your time with trivial brain vomit.” ¹⁰³I apologize and tell him or it or THAT or THE CREATION or Uncle Andy that I am sorry and feel insignificant for wasting his time or its time. ¹⁰⁴“You are not wasting my time. Time has no bearing on me. It is a box that does not confine me. Time is an element that I do not have to acknowledge. ¹⁰⁵Do you understand that you are a projection? ¹⁰⁶“What? No. A projection of what?” ¹⁰⁷“You are a projection of your true self. This place – this world – this level of consciousness – is defined by laws and rules. Time being one of them. Gravity. The elemental forces. These are things that are unique to this level and your being – your present form – is being projected onto this surface. ¹⁰⁸Who you see is not who you are. Who you see is just the version of yourself that most accurately suits this realm. ¹⁰⁹I will tell you what you need to ask because it is clear to me that you are drowning in a sea of thoughts and anxieties right now. ¹¹⁰What you need to ask me, while you still have time is who is your projector? What is your projector? What and where are your projections coming from? ¹¹¹If this is just a version of yourself that is meant to fit into this world, then what is the true version of you? ¹¹²Is it in your brain? Is it in your heart? Is it in this soul that you speak of? ¹¹³Do you exist on another realm? Is your real self aware that it is projecting an avatar onto different worlds? ¹¹⁴Are you being controlled by someone else? Is your projector a part of you? ¹¹⁵Or are you just a tool that someone else mentally controls to complete tasks? Are you a defunct program? Have you gone rogue? Are you a virus? Are you a cancer? What are you?” ¹¹⁶A heavy silence falls across the room that causes the windows to shatter. The breeze blows in and brushes my blonde hair out of my eyes. ¹¹⁷“I just want to know the truth.” Uncle Andy shakes his head slightly. “No. You don’t.” ¹¹⁸“You don’t know what I want.” The words sound childish coming out of my head. ¹¹⁹“If everything in this world was breathed into existence by The Painter then aren’t you and your Eternal Power also subjects of another’s creation?” ¹²⁰Uncle Andy smiles and asks if he may touch me. I don’t answer but he reaches out regardless and places his palm against the center of my skull. “Are you ready for a glimpse?” ¹²¹A tear runs down my cheek and my stomach and heart fill with fear. ¹²²I don’t know what’s about to [SEQ. VIII] ¹I see a giant black orb floating in a sky of absolute white. Small streams of red pulse through the white like rivers of blood. It reminds me of photos I’ve seen of Earth taken from outer space. The white stretches to the horizon. ²A rushing wind hits me and tears my skin off, peels it back until I am just muscle and blood myself. ³My skin flaps in the breeze and disappears like a pair of lost pants. ⁴I hear a voice that is a loud and booming whisper. A spring breeze that will destroy a city. ⁵Voice says, “Look upon me and be in awe.” ⁶And it is in this moment that I realize I am not looking at a giant black orb and the sky is not white and the red is not rivers. ⁷I understand that I am looking at an eyeball. A singular eyeball. An eyeball that is so large that I am dwarfed by the pupil. ⁸I look down and see that I am standing on a platform made of flesh.

 

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Part 7 premieres next Monday the 27th. We become a food source of God, travel through the holy G.I. tract and find ourselves evacuated into a living memory.

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 6 – 7]

 The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores faith and reality. Below is part 5. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

⁶⁸Tell me, what color would you say my shirt is?” “Red.” “I really don’t mean to be rude – it truly isn’t my intent – but I must say that your view of things is fascinating. I wish I could see life through your eyes for a singular human day. I bet it would give me quite an appreciation for my own problems.” ⁶⁹“What color is your shirt? What do you see?” “Even if I told you the word, you wouldn’t understand it. ⁷⁰Your eyes and, by proximity, your brain, lack the ability to even think about this color.” ⁷¹“Tell me what it’s called. I want to hear it.” “You want to hear me say a word that you can’t understand just for the sake of your ears hearing my sing-song voice?” ⁷²“Yes. I want to hear the color that I can’t understand.” ⁷³“But you won’t understand it. It’s meaning is entirely lost on you.” “I want to hear it.” ⁷⁴“No. I won’t say it because the exercise lacks any true merit. Your simple curiosity is not enough to elevate the purpose into action.” ⁷⁵“If your people –” “They do not belong to me. They are not mine.” ^75v2“If the race of individuals of which you are, lack simple curiosity, what drives you forward? How did you invent this world?” “We invented it through study and hard work. And we did both of those things because we understood that it would be for the greater good of the survival of the species. Our thinking is based upon what you would call merit. Our merit is much deeper and selfless than what you think of it as but the heart of the matter is as close as we can get to understanding one another. We believe that curiosity is for simple-minded creatures that get themselves killed. Curiosity often times leads to death. ⁷⁶Why did your Pandora open the box?” “She is not mine. Pandora does not belong to me.” ^76v2“You see, now you’re understanding. But the story belongs to your race.” “Yes. She opened it up and all the trouble came out.” “Of course, and if she had wanted to destroy the world, this would have been a very wise thing to do. ⁷⁷She could have done the same thing with a more pure intent and gotten greater results. ⁷⁸But instead she was controlled by something as simple as curiosity and the unexpected and unwanted happened. ⁷⁹The unexpected and unwanted do not happen here. We set our lives in a direction and that is the direction they go.” ⁸⁰I step away from the painting and look at the sad and hopeless and happy cows and I tell the doctor that I want to meet the painter and he says, “Yes. Now you are thinking properly and clearly. What will you ask him?” and I say that I want to ask him what is in the lighthouse.” “Very good. You are learning again. You are learning it all over again. And much better than last time. ⁸¹I will reach to the painter for you. And then I feel a vibration pulse through my body and I know, deep inside, that it is the transition of purest thought, being cast through the ship or building or world or wherever I am. ⁸²Everyone receives the same thought at once. As the thought bubble spreads from this central ripple, everyone in every room receives the same gentle request. Painter [I cannot experience his true name] to this area [I cannot experience the name of the room]. There is a human here that wants to inquire about the contents of your creation. The human is inconsequential and the priority is very low. If you are in the middle of something, please finish. This is no rush at all. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to sharing time with you. ⁸³And then the feeling is gone and then the room unzips and a small man steps through the fabric of reality and washes it away behind him. “How do you do that?” I ask but both men ignore me. ⁸⁴The doctor looks at me with his black eyes and sharp teeth and looks at the painter, who looks like Kurt Cobain, although I can’t remember why Kurt Cobain was important or what he did. ⁸⁵The doctor says, “You may remove your vanities. There is no purpose for it here,” but the painter says, “I am not yet ready to speak his tongue in my birth form. Although I have been practicing, I still find the practice clunky and unnatural.” ⁸⁶“Of course. Human, what would you like to ask The Painter?” ⁸⁷The Painter turns towards me and I see that his right hand is missing along with three fingers on his left hand, retaining only his pinky and thumb. ⁸⁸“Are the cows hopeless or happy?” ⁸⁹The Painter approaches the painting and gazes at it. “I think this one is content but this one looks as though he has a stomach ache.” I say, “Do you not know how you painted them?” and he says, ⁹⁰“I only made them. I do not control them. In this moment they appear to be upset but perhaps they will one day change their outlook.” ⁹¹“What is in the lighthouse?” The Painter gets very close to the picture, almost nose to nose, and tries to squint. I say, “The mouse hole is not inviting to humans.” And he says, “Did you try this?” and I say, “Yes,” and then both the painter and the doctor begin to laugh. ⁹²The doctor’s laugh sounds like a bird choking. ⁹³The Painter says, “Let’s go there.” “Inside the painting?” “Well, yes and no. First, it is a painting but as I’m sure the doctor has explained to you, it is not a painting in the same way that you understand paintings to be. ⁹⁴The word and art and meaning are lost in translation.” ⁹⁵“Did you paint this?” “Yes.” “Then it is a painting.” ⁹⁶“Your brain only contains three parts and it is very obvious when you think out loud like that.” ⁹⁷I have been chastised and I feel humiliated. ⁹⁸“I painted this but I didn’t use paints and I didn’t use a paintbrush. I created it. I breathed it into existence with my imaginings. I placed it there, not on a canvas, but in time and space. I brought it forward into existence. There was nothing and now there is something and I did that. Do you understand? I did that.” ⁹⁹“These cows… they are… real?” “Real? Are you real, little human?” “Yes, of course I am. I’m here, aren’t I?” and then both of them start laughing again. ¹⁰⁰That choking bird sound makes me uneasy. “Oh, yes. Little Human. You are real. You are here. We can see you with our eyeballs and so you must be standing here with us.” ¹⁰¹I want to leave but I have nowhere to go. “Come, Little Human, let’s go see this painting. You should cover your eyes so you don’t get sick.” ¹⁰²I lift my palms to my face, blacking out my vision. The Painter blows on the back of my hands but then I realize it is the wind and he says, [SEQ. VII] ¹“My breath is the wind here.” ²I smell the ocean and grass and I hear a cow and when I lower my hands I see that we have arrived. ³“We’re in the painting.” “No. We are not inside the painting. This exists on a separate plateau. ⁴Time, in the chronological sense, moves much slower here. The painting is not a painting at all. It’s more of a slow motion telescope. You can glance through and see what it happening. ⁵The portal is left open as a kind of art.” ⁶“You can watch people?” “We could if we so chose but it is used more for appreciation and less for observation.” ⁶“But what is the merit in that?” “The merit of appreciation? ⁷All good stems from the thankfulness of a gift. ⁸You might understand it more of a living photograph. Or live television.” ⁹I say, “You mean a security camera?” and The Painter smiles and says, “Always feeling suspicious of others. Always seeing the worst in them. ¹⁰There are controls on the painting that allow us to navigate through both space and time. I believe The Doctor fancies the lighthouse and what it evokes in his patients and so he leaves it there. But with a few simple sliders we can be looking at a different part of the world, or rather, a different part of this world. ¹¹It is a moment depicted within a frame and, given enough time, that image will change as time progresses. But it will move too slowly for us to watch. It will be years and years – years is your word, not ours – until that cow even lifts his foot for the next step.” ¹²“Can you make it go backwards?” “Ah, quite astute of you. Yes. Time is the fourth dimension, a dimension which you are below and which I am above. We – myself and others like me – can view all aspects of time as simply as you would twirl a cube.” ¹³We reach the lighthouse and outside I see a man with no arms sitting in the dirt. He looks at me and asks if I can help him. Asks if I can give him anything. Anything at all. Food or water or money and I tell him that I’m sorry but I don’t have anything. ¹⁴The Man smiles at me and then closes his eyes and tries to drift back to sleep. ¹⁵The Painter holds open the door of the lighthouse and we step inside to find a wide room made of dark brick. ¹⁶I tell The Painter that I did not notice the beggar when I looked at the picture in The Doctor’s office. He says, “Most don’t.” ¹⁷In the center of the room there is a table and on the table there is a small lantern and by the lantern there is a piece of paper and an old fashioned quill and some spilled ink and in the ink there are some dead bugs. ¹⁸I pick up the paper but can’t read anything on it – the spilled ink has blotted everything out and has dripped onto the floor. My eyes follow the ink down and I see that the legs of the table are very intricate and ornate. ¹⁹In the corner of the room is a red curtain. I walk towards the red curtain and pull it back. ²⁰Behind the curtain I see stairs that lead up and stairs that lead down. When I turn around, The Painter is standing right next to me. ²¹“Which way?” I ask and he says that it depends where I want to go. ²²Do I want to see what’s at the top of the lighthouse or do I want to see what’s in the basement? ²³I slip past the red curtain, letting it fall behind me, and begin taking steps up the spiraling stairs. ²⁴“How high is it?” and The Painter asks, “How high is what?” and I say, “The top,” and The Painter says, “Why do you wish to know?” and I say, “Just –” and I catch myself but not before the word slips out, “-curious.” ²⁵Yes, I am curious. I want to know how far it is to the top but for what purpose? Why does it matter how many steps stand between the top and myself? Will I not climb them if he tells me that there are too many? I am goal oriented. My goal is to reach the top. The quantifiable number does not matter to the goal. ²⁶My curiosity is a moot point. ²⁷I tell the Painter, “Never mind. I don’t care.” And he says, “Do care. This world is the only one you have. And I say, ²⁸“I don’t believe that. We just came from another world,” and he says, “Yes, but this, now, this moment, is currently your whole world. And ²⁹in this moment you get to choose everything. ³⁰In this moment you could choose to continue walking or you could choose to turn around. ³¹You could choose to walk to the ocean or find that man outside some food. ³²It is all the same. We are all the same. ³³Because we were in a very different place, does not mean that we were not connected to this place. ³⁴Because your toes are far from your eyes, it does not mean that the two are disconnected. ³⁵We are all part of one great body, no matter who we are, what we are or where we are. ³⁶That step is part of you.” We reach a door at the top that is made of heavy wood and banded iron. On the door is a gargoyle head with a pierced nose. ³⁷The gargoyle token is not evil. It is simply a crafted rock, carrying no malevolent will itself. The token acts as police tape. ³⁸Caution wanderer. Stay back. This ground is strange and dangerous. ³⁹I lift up my hand to knock but The Painter stops me. “Go inside.” “Just walk in?” “He already knows that we’re here.” ⁴⁰And that is when I received part of my answer. Who is in the lighthouse? HE. ⁴¹I open the door and, although the room is full of windows facing the outside world, everything is dark. ⁴²The Painter says, “You have to do this part alone,” and I turn around to find him standing at the top of the steps. ⁴³“I’m afraid.” And he says, “I know. Everyone is. You are not alone.” ⁴⁴And then he shuts the door and I’m left in the starlight.

 

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Part 6 premieres next Monday the 6th. We will have a conversation with Darkness and get eaten by a giant whose name is God.

 

 

 

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [seq. 6]

 The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction. Below is part 4. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

[SEQ. VI] ¹I open my eyes and I’m underwater, inside of a narrow tube and I can’t lift my arms. ²A creature has been placed over my mouth and my first thought is that it looks like a starfish and its “arms” have suckered to my face but it does not hurt and I realize that this thing is giving me oxygen and allowing me to breathe as we exist in some kind of symbiotic relationship in this water or liquid and I wonder what it is taking away from me. How am I paying it? ³Small creatures or blurs or people move outside of the tub and I can see them observing me but I can’t speak or motion for them. ⁴I blink my eyes and one of them points at me. It reaches up and opens its chest and pulls out a small trinket that looks like a slug and the creature places it on the counter and the water in the tank begins to drain and when it does, I feel myself poop but I do not feel any shame in the act. ⁵When the water is gone I see that there never was any glass and that the water was more like a jelly that was somehow held perfectly still, presenting its expected form. ⁶The jelly is spread out on the floor but it immediately begins to coagulate and then it pulls towards itself as though drawn by internal magnets. It gathers itself up to one another and then slides and slithers back to its cage. ⁷Is the liquid sentient? ⁸The starfish drops from my mouth and pulls a long proboscis from my throat, longer than I would have assumed. I feel it pulling up through my stomach and intestines. ⁹The thing licks it’s lips and says, “Thank you,” before dropping to the ground and scurrying towards the gelatin, it’s abdomen plump with my bacterial stew. ¹⁰It crawls into the cage with the gelatin and then crawls inside the gelatin and goes to sleep. It will live off of my secretions in hibernation until next it is needed. ¹¹The creatures are greys of some kind but they’re not from outer space and they’re still watching me and now I’m back here and I just stare at them and they stare at me and I am so very sad because I can no longer sense what they’re saying. ¹²I have lost all form of communication with them. ¹³Something has been pulled away from me and I can’t remember anything or how to speak to them but I’m certain something is missing. ¹⁴I want to feel their thoughts and I want them to tell me that it’s going to be okay but they don’t [SEQ. VI₂] ₁and then I am lying in a bed, staring at the ceiling and a woman is standing over me and she is my wife and all of my memories come rushing back to me and I say, “Please don’t ever allow me to wake up again. It’s too painful to remember who I am. My journeys are eternal” [SEQ. VI²] ¹⁵instead they just stare at me and is it pity that I see in their eyes or is that just my imagination? ¹⁶Instead I speak out loud and say, “Where am I?” which is such an elementary question and I’m embarrassed that I have to ask it because I know that I should know and instead of answering the greys take a step back because the raw quality of my voice hurts them. ¹⁷One of them lifts up a finger and makes a motion through the air that opens up a small doorway in the air itself and we step through it, displacing ourselves. ¹⁸In the other room I see another man, a human man, who is Caucasian, what we would call European with gray hair and blue eyes. He has on a sweater and wears a kind smile that draws me in. ¹⁹The other greys are gone and there is no doorway and I say “Who are you?” and he says, “You don’t remember me?” And I say, “Am I crazy?” and he says, “What do you mean?” ²⁰And I say, “Is this real?” And he says, all of this audibly, of course, out loud, which is why I think the greys left – because the sounds somehow hurt them or at least made them uncomfortable. ²¹He says, “What do you mean by real?” And I say, “Is the place I was at real – the land with the scarecrow and the fishermen? Or was it a kind of hypnosis? Did I experience it in the Dream Tank?” Dream Tank. Where did those words come from? ²²I continue, “Was the rock a drug? Was the ship real? What is ultimate reality and what is false and where am I right now in all of this?” ²³And the doctor says that everything is real. ²⁴“All realities, even fake ones, are real. ²⁵Aren’t we all processing things? Aren’t we all reacting to stimuli? ²⁶If you are afraid of a ghost in the dark and you feel fear, isn’t that fear real even if the ghost is not?” ²⁷And I think he is right but it seems like he’s avoiding handing over the information. Information that he has. Knowledge that he won’t share with me. ²⁸I ask him how long I’ve been here and he tells me a few hours and I say, “In this room?” And he shrugs and says “Parts of it.” ²⁹I go to his bookshelf but don’t recognize any of the titles. They look like they might be written in Danish or Dutch. I reach out to pick one up but the doctor says, “Please don’t do that,” but I do it anyways and inside I find that all of the pages are blank and I say, “Who are you?” and he says, ³⁰“There are no answers in my name,” ³¹and then he says, “Who are you?” but he does not inflect his voice as though he is repeating a question. He doesn’t inflect at all. His voice is void of nuance. ³²He’s trying to copycat me or all of us. Humans. ³³He’s not like me. ³⁴I turn inside of myself, reach inside of myself, looking for my letter but my letter has been stolen from me by the abyss and I find only hints of something that used to be there. Dust. There are warm feelings but I can’t attach them to an action or a memory. Just an empty room with a concrete bench. ³⁵He tells me that he gave me something very important and I lost it and that I lost it stupidly and carelessly and now, he tells me, he has to talk to me in this primitive series of grunts and moans like a common animal ³⁶and then he reaches up and he peels off his face like boiled skin from a tomato and underneath I see that he is a grey with sharp teeth. ³⁷Like roasted kale, he eats the face and I hear it crunching between his teeth like tacks. ³⁸He says, “Life is delicious,” ³⁹and then he tells me that I’m doing it wrong. ⁴⁰I’m viewing life from the wrong perspective. ⁴¹Here, look, he emotes to me and I turn to look at the painting on the wall when his emotions brush past me. Has he gifted me back with the communication? Can I feel him? ⁴²“Look at the painting and tell me what you see.” And I tell him that I see a field with a light tower and I see two deer but I wonder if there are deer wherever this light tower exists and the grey sends to me: “What do you think of this painting? Tell me what you see,” and I begin to explain the image. ⁴³There is a lake in the background, white water heads, a little bend on the horizon. The water disappears in the distance. ⁴⁴In an eternal sunset. ⁴⁵The cattle in the foreground walk off frame. Cattle? Deer? I’m not sure. Could it be both? ⁴⁶He says “What do you see,” and I tell him again and then he says, “But what else do you see? Look beyond your own eyes. Stare at it with the artist’s own heart. When he painted it, what was he thinking about? As he painted the black strokes in the now dried paint, what was he thinking about? Was his mind set on the brush strokes or were they set on something else at hand? Was his heart in it at all? See it with those eyes. Feel the letters and the tools and bring them to me to feel and I can feel the breeze and I don’t see anything change at all but suddenly everything surrounds me and I can see into the amazing beautiful because that is ours and it belongs to nobody except us and I am insanely aware of the fact. ⁴⁷“Tell me what you see in the painting,” and I tell him that I see a lighthouse and he says, “Yes. That is what your eyes see. But what else?” And I say that it makes me feel calm and he says, “Yes. It does. But why?” and I try to look deeper into the painting and ⁴⁸I look at the eyes of the cows, which are black and bleak and I say, “The cows seem sad. They are surrounded by beauty and freedom but they look so hopeless.” The doctor nods his head and says, “That’s very interesting. I’ve always felt as though they looked calm because they had everything.” ⁴⁹And I say, “If you have everything and need nothing, you no longer require goals.” ⁵⁰The doctor says, “And?” I think and then say, ⁵¹“And if you don’t have goals, you don’t have a path.” ⁵²“And if you don’t have a path?” “Then you are hopeless.” ⁵³“So do you believe that being hopeless and being fully content, which most believe to be polar opposites, can actually co-exist in the same moment?” ⁵⁴The question is not meant for me to answer aloud but to wonder at. ⁵⁵He asks me what else I see and I tell him that I want to know what is in the lighthouse and he asks me why I care and I tell him that I don’t care but that I am curious. “You want to know what is in the light house simply for the sake of knowing what is in the lighthouse?” “Well, yes,” but I immediately feel inferior for requesting it. What is the purpose of my curiosity? ⁵⁶“What if there were nothing inside?” “Then at least I would know.” “You would know what?” “I would know that there is nothing.” ⁵⁷“And what if I told you that god resided in the lighthouse? What would you do with that information?” “I would go to the lighthouse.” “How? It is just a painting.” ⁵⁸My eyes begin to sting. The air is very dry. I blink a lot. ⁵⁹The doctor asks if I am okay and I tell him that I am fine. ⁶⁰“I cannot go into the painting.” “No, that much is obvious. It is just the perception of colors and shapes on a canvas. So how do you find out what is in the lighthouse?” ⁶¹I take several steps towards the painting and I squint, trying to look inside. ⁶²“The mouse hole is closed to humans,” the doctor says and then laughs. ⁶³“I cannot know what is in the lighthouse. ⁶⁴I can never see God. ⁶⁵I can never know God. ⁶⁶I can never know if He exists. Is that what you are suggesting?” and the doctor says, “No. You can know. You just have to stop looking at things like a human being. You’re so short sighted and your perception of the world around you is so limited. ⁶⁷Often times I wonder what it must be like to see the universe through such flat eyes. ⁶⁸Tell me, what color would you say my shirt is?” “Red.” “I really don’t mean to be rude – it truly isn’t my intent – but I must say that your view of things is fascinating. I wish I could see life through your eyes for a singular human day. I bet it would give me quite an appreciation for my own problems.”

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [seq. 3 – 6]

“I started reading The Spiral Cornucopia of Pale Lavender… and I didn’t really like it. But then I realized I was trying to read it like a book – I was trying to just read it. And so I went back and slowed it down and tried to imagine it more like something to ingest bit by bit. Like a poem or a fortune cookie. It’s still weird. But I like it a lot more.” – C.M.

“This is truly incredible.” -C.O.

“I have no idea what this garbage is supposed to be. Were you drunk when you wrote it?” -S.G.

***   ***   ***   ***   ***

 The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction. Below is part 3. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

⁷⁴She opens the door and enters first. [SEQ. IV] ¹We go through the black door and down a small set of three steps and into a small bunker area. It is a small box. It is made of metal. There are shelves. ²On those shelves are boxes and cans filled with things. Some of it is food and some of it is generic office supplies and there is also a bag of yeast that is turning black. The ceiling drips water onto the floor. ³There is an electric plug on the wall but the shape looks like a straight line an inch in length instead of anything my collective conscious may be familiar with. ⁴The door dissolves as we approach it and we enter a hallway that is lit by light that seems to radiate out of nowhere. It is both odd and familiar to me. ⁵The smell is both sweet and delicious. Like a steak in cranberry sauce. But it isn’t strong enough to make me hungry. It’s just strong enough to make me satisfied. ⁶I see that the old woman is suddenly standing up quite straight and looking decades younger. ⁷She tells me that everyone looks different here. They look the way they want to look in their hearts, which is typically a more glamorous version of themselves. ⁸Rarely do people want to become someone else. It happens but you typically stay yourself. ⁹She looks at me and laughs. ¹⁰And when I look down I see that my skin is pale white. ¹¹We pass a mirror and I see that I am the man in the river but I don’t know why. ¹²She points at me and tells me that my hair is white. She pulls out a lock of it and shows me. ¹³We walk through the tunnels and then up some stairs and mostly I follow her because she walks as though she knows where she is going. ¹⁴At the end of the hallway there is a key. She picks up the key and uses it to open the door and I say, “Where did the key come from?” and she says that it was always here and I wonder who built this place. ¹⁵She tells me that she doesn’t know but the place is really big. She tells me that the other doors have been explored but none of them connect except two. You can go in one door and then come out the other one later on. ¹⁶A couple of guys that have been trying to map it – just some local guys in the village – figured it out. ¹⁷They think all of the doors are connected in some fashion. ¹⁸But the question is, if it’s a giant maze, what’s at the end? ¹⁹They found a room with a ceiling that appeared to not exist, a darkness that sat like a blanket. ²⁰Another place from another time. ²¹The afterbirth of a local apocalypse. ²²I ask her where we’re going and she just says we’re going to go to the quiet room until the Stomping Process is over. ²³She says we have to stay here for several days because time moves differently where we stand. ²⁴She says if you perch at the doorway (she used that word perch – like a giant bird) on this side and look out at the village, you will see everyone moving around very fast. They move like they’re all running around. ²⁵Time moves more slowly over here and I say, “How old are you?” and she tells me that she is seven hundred and twenty six years old and suddenly my heart breaks because I know that her husband that is dead is not her first and that she has experienced the loss of a lifelong husband seven times. ²⁶She carries more grief than anyone. Than everyone. ²⁷There are things she is not telling me but I cannot prod right now. ²⁸She tells me that we have to stay in here and wait for the Stomping Process to be finished. ²⁹I ask her how long three days in here is and she tells me that it is seven years out there, which they call a threshing. ³⁰When the Stomping Process begins it always lasts for seven years. ³¹They take the people and pull them into the sky. ³²I ask why and she says she does not know. But I know. ³³I know that some of them are kind and some of them are cruel and I know that they are fishing. ³⁴The woman leads me down a hallway where the walls are gray and red and when we come to the end there are two men standing outside of a double door that is locked and the men have guns but no eyes and they don’t ask what we want because their job is not to keep things out but to keep things in. ³⁵We walk through the doorway and inside I see a large group of people and they are all sick and broken in different ways. Some of them are covered in sores and some of them are thin and frail and some of them have blood dried around their mouth and nose and some of them lie on the floor coughing and some of them are dead. ³⁶The smell is unpleasant but not unbearable. ³⁷I notice a vent in the ceiling with a fan that is always running. I also see a vent and it is out of this vent that I sense a smell. ³⁸There are perfumes being pushed into the air here. Something tangy like a grapefruit but instead of masking the stench of sickness and disease it instead adds to it, combining with it, making a smell that is neither good nor bad but making something that is neither. An ambivalent scent that I don’t think I will or could ever get used to. ³⁹The people turn and look at us and some hold out their hands but most of them acknowledge us with their eyes and then turn away, aware that we are unable or unwilling to help them. ⁴⁰I see a ham sandwich sitting on a counter but the bread has turned a dark green color. There is a refrigerator but it isn’t plugged in. ⁴¹When I turn to ask the woman a question I see that she is gone and I am so stupid and now I am alone and now I am afraid and now I realize that I am one of these people and I don’t want to be. ⁴²I want to be free and outside even though I really don’t know what is out there and even though the fishermen are reaching from the sky and pulling people from the earth, or whatever this place is. A hologram, an illusion, a spell, I still would rather be out there because freedom inside of oppression is better than being a prisoner without a view. ⁴³I don’t go towards the doors because I know the men will never let me out. ⁴⁴I know that I cannot call my mother or my friends or my brother, if I had one, if I ever had one. If I ever had a mother. If I could find a phone. ⁴⁵I cannot scream for help because no one is listening and I am alone and panic begins to wash over my body and it makes me sick and I start to pace and then I lie down and I sleep and when I wake up there are loud banging noises and the walls are shaking and the lights are flickering and I run and I hide behind the refrigerator that isn’t plugged in while the rest of the people crawl towards the door. ⁴⁶They fall to their knees and they hold their hands in the air and they all begin shouting and screaming and I hear, “I am here, Lord!” and, “Take me!” and, “I am ready!” and many of them begin to laugh but most of them begin to cry and sob and I see that this is the first time they have been happy for a very long time. ⁴⁷The banging stops and a whisp of something that I would call smoke or mist creeps under the door except the mist looks like a prism and I see all the colors of the retinal spectrum blending and sparkling like a gemstone and I see other things too. But I don’t see them with my eyes. I feel them. I feel the words and the thoughts and I know that yes, this prism mist is a good thing but I fear that it is also a trap and none of the people know it and I watch as the colorful mist wraps around the group of them and envelops them and I see the mist start to boil and I hear screaming but it is not screams of pain but screams of ecstasy and it seems like they are experiencing other-worldy pleasures and it is in this fashion that they go away. ⁴⁸They are not pulled through the door but the prism fades as mist does and when it is gone, everything inside of it is gone as well. ⁴⁹Sitting on the green and white-checkered linoleum floor is a small stone, the same prismatic color of the mist. It is about the size of my fist. I pick it up and find that it is quite warm, somehow imbued with human life but no; I understand that that is wrong. ⁵⁰This is their sickness and their hatred and their sorrows and their remorse and all of the terrible and bad things of the world that have been placed and given and gifted to them over their many years wandering this strange place, this life, this existence, that they’ve gathered up and now they’ve all been allowed to leave it behind like old shoes, freed from it completely. ⁵¹I smell the rock and then I taste it, rubbing my tongue along the top. It tastes like pepper and makes me sneeze but immediately I feel the effects of it as my brain expands and I see all the pain in the world. ⁵²I see it all. ⁵³I see how it works into our bodies. I see that sometimes it enters through our ears and sometimes it enters through our eyes but mostly it is birthed from our hearts. ⁵⁴We are like mother hens sitting on our eggs, sitting on our evils, sitting on our selfishness, sitting on our jealousies and we keep them warm and we let them grow and we birth them out into the world, not as eggs, but as words or actions or in the tone of our voice. ⁵⁵I drop to my knees and I want to cry but I don’t get to. I don’t get to expel the feelings. ⁵⁶I grip them in my heart and I squeeze their complex singularity with my body and my soul cries and breaks and I stare at the ceiling, which breaks away and crumbles away and I see, outside, not sunshine, but ultimate darkness and in that darkness I sense nothing at all. No great evil staring back at me but absolute sadness and it reaches out for me and it wants me and I can feel that if I follow it I can do anything I want. ⁵⁷I can partake in all of my wants and desires but there will be no pleasure in any of it. There will be no taste to any of it. ⁵⁸I feel laughter pulled from my body and I feel joy retched out of my hands and I feel happiness, like a coin, taken from me. ⁵⁹And now I understand that I am empty and this body is truly nothing more than a little package. An envelope with a piece of paper inside and what’s written on that paper? What does my letter say? What is my message? ⁶⁰I feel the darkness reaching in for my letter but I hang on tight and it says, “No. This is mine. All is mine.” ⁶¹And I know that it isn’t true but I wonder if it is and I unfold my letter, not a real letter, but my purpose, and I reach deep down inside myself and [SEQ. V] ¹I say, “Who are you?” and the answer comes back. “Compassion. Understanding. Friendship. Don’t ever forget. You will die.” ²And then everything is pulled away from me but some kind of residue is perhaps still left and then my body is sucked through the gaping chasm in the ceiling and my eyeballs melt away and everything is dark and when I turn around, I see a hole in the fabric of whatever this is. Maybe a version of reality or a dimension or time or space. ³I drift away from it and I don’t care because nothing matters and everything is darkness and nothing serves a purpose and floating freely through space is better than being trapped against my will and I feel my consciousness expand and I understand that I’ve been here before and perhaps this is where I came from and perhaps this is the cradle of Now and I call out with myself, not my voice and not my heart because these things are all gone and now I am just a thought. ⁴My physical being has been removed and I know that I am transcendent but have somehow de-volved to a flickering memory. ⁵I feel out towards the edges but find nothing but vastness and then a vibration touches my thought and I know it is another place or another person or another thing – there is something. ⁶There is life. ⁷Something in this vastness and blackness and darkness and abyss and I call to it and I find it and it is a/ [SEQ. VI] ¹I open my eyes and I’m underwater, inside of a narrow tube and I can’t lift my arms.

 

 

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Part 4 premieres next Monday the 6th. ³⁶and then he reaches up and he peels off his face like boiled skin from a tomato”

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 2 – 3]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is a 10-part series of fiction. Below is part 2. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

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⁹I enter another room that is more like a great hall and see that it is more vast than my simple field. So large that I cannot see the roof. ¹⁰Where am I? Am I not on a craft? The sky seems endless. Am I on a planet? Where have they taken me? ¹¹The inside of the cavern glows with perfect light that radiates from nowhere. The essence of life gives light to itself. It is a light that exists at the origin of everything. ¹²Two doctors converse and stop speaking when I approach. ¹³I feel as though my presence makes them uncomfortable. ¹⁴No words are spoken. Instead, we stare at one another and have a conversation of thought. ¹⁵Because I am a creature comprised of emotional experiences and every experience shapes me differently, like a fist hitting plaster, every other individual’s experiences make them uniquely who they are and, even if our experiences are identical, we will process them differently based strictly upon our natural birth bend – the organic recipe of our brain bubbles. ¹⁶I will try to transmit my pure, raw thought which I apply emotionality to, and I will churn it out into raw and savage words for you to then process through your ear and get filtered through all the bullshit that makes you uniquely you. And so often what I say is not what you hear. ¹⁷So much is lost in our primitive grunts. ¹⁸The greys speak through emotions. It is not the hearing of an audible voice in your head. It is the feeling of justice. It is the feeling of wrongness. It is the feeling of love. They are able to transmit the very essence of the thought to one another. The very pureness of the emotion. The core. ¹⁹Nothing is lost in translation. ²⁰And because of this they cannot lie and in fact do not understand what a lie is. A lie is beyond the fence of their mind. ²¹I also sense that they don’t know that they don’t know. ²²The knowledge of the unknowable does not exist to them. I don’t sense a hole wherein something is missing from. I sense that there is nothing there at all. ²³A loud but warm and not altogether unpleasant alarm begins going off. It seems to radiate in the very air itself. The siren is not audible. There are no speakers but rather a general consistency in the air quality that shifts. The local energy wavers and quivers. ²⁴The greys all knew what the “sound” meant by the sensation it gave them. There was no need to make the feelings abrasive. The good feeling gave them the knowledge for what was needed to be accomplished. ²⁵This made me wonder why fire alarms on Earth are always screeching headaches. Especially when you want everyone to remain calm. Would the same effect be created if the powers that be simply played loud but pleasing music that encouraged people to run? I always have a more difficult time completing a task if there is a person screaming in my ear as loud as they can. It’s difficult to concentrate. ²⁶When I realize that I’ve been lost in some stupid rambling thought I suddenly acknowledge that [SEQ. III] ¹I am standing in the field again and there is a rainbow that arches across the little stream. The grass is tall, the sky is blue and the clouds are white. ²I can see the day moon sitting in the ocean above me and it is so beautiful and I know that I am in a computer-generated image. I know that I am still on the ship or on another planet or in a machine in a small room or I’m on Earth and everything is being projected onto us but this is not real. ³I know it like I knew the feeling of their lies. I know because I can still feel some kind of emotional residue. ⁴None of this is real. ⁵Why am I here? ⁶What are they doing with me? ⁷A moose walks to the rivers edge in the distance and takes a sip. It’s weird because he drinks it with his lips and not with his tongue. ⁸A couple of blue birds fly past me and I feel like a child again. ⁹On the other side of the stream I see a scarecrow and I wonder who put him up. I do not feel concerned that I haven’t seen any people or that I don’t know where I am. ¹⁰The world feels real but I don’t know what I’m doing here or how I got here but it all feels okay. ¹¹This is where I was before they took me but this is not when I was before they took me. ¹²I hear a large boom and then another and I become fearful. Very fearful. ¹³My stomach rolls and my knees begin to shake and quiver and I find that I’m having a very difficult time walking or thinking appropriately. ¹⁴It is awful. ¹⁵I fall to my hands and knees, my stomach washing waves of panic over me. My brain feels like it’s crying. ¹⁶With one hand I pull myself to a large rock that is nearby and hide behind it. ¹⁷BOOM. What is that noise? Is it a giant? Is it a bird? My mind begins thrusting images of giant birds at me, making me stare at them. Look at this bird with its enormous beak, pulling you apart and splattering your blood against the soil! Watch your neck break and your body become consumed. This giant blue bird with its feathers chasing you through an empty field and squawking. ¹⁸Where are these thoughts and feelings coming from? ¹⁹I look around the rock and I don’t see anything. I don’t hear the noise anymore. ²⁰I turn and crawl up a small hill where I find a fence that is made from posts of wood and barbed wire. I crawl between the top and middle wire and approach the scarecrow. ²¹Its face is brown sac cloth and its eyes are made from plastic buttons. One is red and one is blue. Its nose is made from a tightly wrapped fresh condom and its mouth is made from rotten banana peels. It’s wearing a tracksuit that is gray with white tennis shoes. The brand is expensive. Someone has put something in its pants to make it look like he has a comically huge boner. Someone else has smeared mud all over its ass to make it look like it shit its pants. ²²At the base of the scarecrow are two small chairs – lawn chairs. There are also some cups, a fire pit made out of rocks with ashes in the middle, a tea kettle that looks like it’s lived a busy life but has never actually been used here, at this spot. It is gray and covered in rust. It is tall and narrow and looks like something you’d find on a camping trip and not in a kitchen. There are old metal forks. A red compass. A stack of pornographic magazines and a pack of cigarettes. I notice that there is no lighter nearby but then I see a box of strike-anywhere matches. ²³I see a trail that cuts through the corn where it has been trampled down a number of times by repeated use. ²⁴Then I notice a second path. One leading somewhere and one leading somewhere else and which one will I choose? ²⁵I look up and I see the day-moon and the sun both in the sky, both right next to one another and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. ²⁶I feel a strong vibration in my body but I don’t know what it means. ²⁷I push towards the path on the left and it winds through corn that is taller than I am, a mouse in a maze, an Earthling in a labyrinth. ²⁸We are all observed and studied. ²⁹How will I react? ³⁰I feel like a child. ³¹I am lost and I am not afraid and not fearful but I feel like something terrible is going to grab me. I don’t want it to grab me. It will touch me. The black sleeves and the green hands with cuts and warts. And what are those hands attached to? What is on the other side of those hands? Is it a witch? No. It is faceless. ³²A hungry, lusting darkness that lingers at the fringe of the peripheral. ³³And where are you? What are you? Why do you make me feel like this and do you like it? Is my fear necessary to the world? Does my fear feed a creature that needs it the way my breath feeds the trees? Is my fear powerful? ³⁴When the path ends I see that there is a small white farmhouse but I also see that it exists in a tiny little community. There is a small community playground with a swing set and a merry-go-round and a tractor to sit on and dig with. There is also a water fountain inside the head of a giant inanimate lion. There is an old barrel that is very tall and lying on its side – kids get in and run. It’s a human gerbil wheel. I see children running in it now. Four of them. Five of them. A girl in overalls tries to stand on her hands as the barrel spins, taking her in a full rotation, spinning her a day into the future around their imaginary sun. ³⁵An old woman sits on a swing by herself. I notice that the other swing is empty and I know that she used to be married and that she used to have a husband and that she is very sad that he is gone and she misses him terribly because they were together their entire lives. Their whole life. ³⁶They were together when she was fifteen and he was sixteen and they’ve now been together for sixty years. ³⁷They don’t remember life before one another. ³⁸The memory of their individual lives before their counterpart existed has long ago been washed away off the placards of remembrance. ³⁹They were together for so long that she considers him a true extension of herself. ⁴⁰He had the authority to act on both of their behalves because they had achieved such simpatico that they had become the same person in two bodies with two separate interests. ⁴¹They understood and achieved true love and compassion for the other person until they understood what the other person wanted perfectly. ⁴²Her husband has been dead for three years and she doesn’t have any friends. She has people in her life but she would not consider them friends. They are okay to eat lunch with but she couldn’t share these thoughts and emotions with them. ⁴³They don’t understand and none of them has ever lost a husband and she wishes she could speak to someone about it. ⁴⁴And because I know I am supposed to, I approach her and ask how she is and she looks at me because the question is very straightforward. Her face crunches up and then becomes very kind and she says she is alright and I tell her that the day is beautiful and she agrees and I see the foot marks in the ground where her wooden shoes have been dragging back and forth in the dirt. ⁴⁵Her skirt looks homemade. It is white and comprised of chicken feathers. She wears a pilgrim style bonnet that is white and her chest is covered in purple sheen although it is completely transparent. It projects a perfect twenty year old chest onto her body and it deceives the eyes in order to look as real as possible and this is what these people do here. ⁴⁶It is okay and acceptable because it isn’t a question. ⁴⁷She tells me that she is fine and I ask her if she knows which one of these buildings is a schoolhouse and then I hear a loud BANG or BOOM and it’s the same sound as before and she tells me to run with her. ⁴⁸She gets off the swing and starts to strain towards a home. She is old and moves very, very slowly but I stood by her and I helped her as she hung onto my elbow. I notice that her back is quite hunched over. ⁴⁹She takes me to a small plot of land that is filled with doors – just regular house doors – but they all appear the same. ⁵⁰Identical black doors. ⁵¹There are no numbers on any of them. Just handles. ⁵²She approaches one in the front row and opens it. Inside I see stairs spiraling downwards. ⁵³I don’t ask if we are going underground because I know that we are not. ⁵⁴The doors are vices that hold the fine fibrous Fabric of Feich open like surgical clamps hold open a wound. ⁵⁵These doors lead to Someplace Else. ⁵⁶It isn’t on this Earth but it also is not off this Earth. It is a kind of side-step to a higher perception of reality that exists on top of us, an overlay that we cannot perceive. ⁵⁷We have not yet discovered where this other place is in relation to our world or planet or solar system or existence. ⁵⁸Scientists have gone through and acquired samples and have found strange molecular patterns, sacred geometry and interesting fruits and flowers but still no people and the doors are too small to take any major tool through – like an astro-scope or bio-splitter. ⁵⁹But I also know that scientist is a very loose term because the people in this village are the only people on this planet. ⁶⁰There is no one else. ⁶¹The moment I heard the bang I knew. It was like the vibration alerted me. There are no others but these. ⁶²I know this to be true. ⁶³But what is out there? What is beyond their city? ⁶⁴I need to know. Do I need to know? Do I want to know? Why does it matter? Why does it matter what is beyond their city? Why do I care? ⁶⁴Is this my human nature? ⁶⁵Is curiosity just an advanced form of the house cat and the laser pointer from the future of my old world past? Is my entire life someone’s stupid video? Am I the punch line to an advanced joke? ⁶⁶Are alien children watching us and cooing, “Oh! He’s becoming curious! Watch him play with his curiosity! Hehe! He is going to see what that scratching noise is! He’s going to go investigate the odd auditory stimulation! Tee hee!” ⁶⁷I have my life happening right here and I have problems at hand so why does it matter if there is a desert or a mountain or something else entirely out there? ⁶⁸Right now I have to deal with this problem and that’s how I need to live my life. I need to appreciate the now and right now I need to get to safety and this old woman is walking very slowly but finally we do get close to the doors but before we do I see in the distance a great metal rod stamp out of the clouds and slam into the earth. ⁶⁹BOOM            !! And then another. And another. And another. BOOM   !! BOOM          !!BOOM           !! The sound hits my ears seconds after the vision does. ⁷⁰I ask her what they are doing and she says that they are collecting and I say, “For what?” because I already know who. ⁷¹She says that they are fixing them – hey, Chuck! – but I don’t know what she means and I also know that there are other people out there. ⁷²Why was I so certain there was nobody else out there? How could I have known that? ⁷³How could I have been so certain that it was true but now here I am being proven completely wrong? What else am I wrong about? What else is sneaking up on me? What else am I living with that I need to re-examine and release? ⁷⁴She opens the door and enters first.

 

 

Return next Monday, May 30th for part 3 of 10 as we visit a prison at the center of time, witness the mystical collection of energy and fall into complete oblivion.

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The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [seq. 1 – 2]

[SEQ. I]¹Inside, but also outside, of the grand sweltering nothingness I do not exist. Nor am I an I. No singularities drift. ²In empty space that is not cold, a warmth suddenly envelops me and I recognize and accept that I am a thing. ³Liquid washes over my being although I do not know the word liquid because I have never known anything. The currents of motion and time push me where they wish. ⁴I am the first of my kind. ⁵Something tingles at my core and I feel a tugging and a separation of my being before becoming aware that there is another. A second presence is nearby and it is the same as me because it came from me. ⁶I am a singular cell. A collection of atoms. A bond of life. I am both mortal and divine. I am spiritual and temporal. I am life. The very first. ⁷And now there is a second, made from me. My partner was pulled from my essence and made from my content. ⁸We are not identical but we are not the same. ⁹Another spasm and then we have some company. There are four of us. Eight of us. Sixteen of us. A village of faceless, emotionless, drifting amoebas in the liquid love juice of existence. ¹⁰We are the spermatozoa in the semen of creation. ¹¹A tail. Gills. Limbs sprout from my core. Intentional movement drags me to a mate where we replicate and create our own life. Our community calls our replication evil. Says we are dabbling in the unknown. Playing God. ¹²The breath of life rushes over me again and I can move faster, hide better. ¹³Survive in the darkness. ¹⁴Stay away from That Thing that has engulfed so many of my kind. ¹⁴Above me is a sharp blanket. It hurts my eyes to look for too long. I push towards it. Ah, yes. Light. ¹⁵The pressure of the environment pushes back against me. ¹⁶Our tribe says not to go towards it. They say that is where God lives and we were meant to stay back. If He wanted us to approach Him, then He would not have placed the pressure barrier between us. ¹⁶My body has changed and the pressure doesn’t bother me any more. ¹⁷I am curious. ¹⁸I crawl along in the shallow dirt, the light just above me calling not my name, as I have no name, but calling me. My code. ¹⁹If it is God, I want to see. I want to press upon It with my eyes. ²⁰I press on to the light and then, like a gentle slap, my face births from the water and I understand that I am in water and that there is such a thing as out of water. ²¹I have been reborn. ²²One step at a time I emerge from the ocean, the cradle of existence, the warm goo that is The Earth’s Womb. As I have birthed a child, so too has the Earth. ²³The air is cold and a fibrous material begins to coat my body, covering me, changing my form. ²⁴Fruit hangs from trees and I crawl up them to eat their sweetness and I look around and I see The Land stretch out in front of me in such a great distance that I become dizzy observing The Eternal. ²⁵I hop out of the tree and my face has altered. ²⁶In the distance I hear a noise and when I follow it with my recent eyes, I see a four footed creature behind a tree. It too is covered in brown fur but it is not like me. My stomach rumbles and I know what I must do but I know not how. ²⁷I straighten up, accepting the task at hand. ²⁸I pick up a stick that has fallen to the ground. I rub it against a rock until the end is sharp and I hunt. I follow the creature until I fall upon it and I stab it. ²⁹Red life gushes out of it in currents and I drop to my knees and press my hands into the warm blood. I did this to you. You gave your life for me. I am grateful for you. ³⁰I watch as its eyes blink, staring into the trees. I follow its gaze and see another one like it but a smaller version. A baby. ³¹I am ambivalent to it. ³²Without waiting for my beast to die, I reach my fingers into its chest and I pull, ripping open the skin. Greasy and stinking organs ooze out of its hole and coalesce at my feet. ³³What are you? What is it that controls you? ³⁴I dig in deeper and find a hard white material. I crack it open and expose a soft beating rock. I lift it up. Here you are. ³⁵And I smell it and I engulf it and I am filled up and the creature that is a part of this place becomes a part of me and I become stronger. ³⁶A breeze scratches me and I find that I am cold and so I peel off the hide of this creature and I wrap myself in it, dripping blood down my naked and goose pimpled body. ³⁷I stand above this beast and I stare at its empty shell. I stare into its hollow eyes and I send my value and worth towards it. I am grateful that it has given its life for me. It has given me food and warmth at the very cost of its breath. ³⁸I recognize something called color and that each object in my surroundings contains variances of its own. ³⁹In an empty field that is green and yellow, a forest suddenly bursts from the ground, not saplings but large oaks that are mature and the Earth continues to change as I do. ⁴⁰It happens fast because I don’t pay attention. ⁴¹There are natural holes in the trees trunks, inverted knots, where small animals roost and nest. Creatures scurry in the branches. I see a red squirrel with a white belly and a fuzzy tail. It has big cheeks, full of food. The squirrel runs down and curls up in the hole of the tree but then the tree eats it, consumes it, nurtures itself. ⁴¹It contracts and the hole squeezes shut and I hear a crunch and a squeal and the tail of the squirrel, which is trapped outside of the nest, gives a few weak kicks and then the tree sucks it in like a dog eating spaghetti. ⁴²I walk towards the river and I find a small raft made out of thick cut branches tied together with old yellow fabric. ⁴³Who built this? ⁴⁴Underneath the raft I find a dead and bloated body that resembles my own save for the color of the skin. Where mine is dark, his is light. It reminds me of the color I saw in the ocean, hovering above me. ⁴⁵Could this be the source of the light? Could this be God? ⁴⁶Has our understanding of God been wrong? ⁴⁷This is a man with a potbelly. He has white hair in a male patterned type of baldness. His skin has turned into cottage cheese. His eyes used to be green but now they look like someone has poured glue over them. His fingernails are yellow and brown and caked with dirt. ⁴⁸I wonder what this man’s penis looks like, mangled and gross, bloated and crawling with bugs. ⁴⁹He is wearing a white shirt with blue trim. The subtle intricacies of the design are unparalleled. How he was able to fabricate such a creation sits beyond the fence of my understanding and must be a kind of divine wonder. ⁵⁰I wonder what is in his pockets. I wonder who this man was. ⁵¹I hear another crunch and my senses tingle. I turn my head and see another beast walking towards me but this one is far different. It is what I will look like someday. It is what I will become. What I will change into if I am left to change. But I will not be left to change. This thing is about to take me away and show me things. ⁵²I have been chosen. I have been chosen. ⁵³If the others thought the bloated man was God, it was because they did not lay eyes upon the creature approaching me in grace. ⁵⁴It is short and thin – its body structure narrow and delicate. It has big black eyes and gray skin. It approaches me and I see that it has a very tiny mouth. ⁵⁵I wonder if it has teeth. ⁵⁶It stands before me and we observe one another in silence. ⁵⁷The Great Being looks at me and I get lost in those monolithic eyes. Getting lost in their darkness. Am lost. ⁵⁸I want to sing their praises and write their poetry. A sense of awe pours over me and I realize how tiny I am. The Earth that I saw from the top of the tree is nothing. ⁵⁹I am a speck of shit on the toilet paper of existence. And now I’m going to have my nose rubbed in it for thinking I was better than I was. Such a foolish and limited creature I am. My stupidity and primal state are embarrassing. ⁶⁰I take a step closer. I could touch it if I chose. Or I could try to. ⁶¹A gentle humming that is not verbal radiates from the body and sends shivers up my spine. My penis tingles and a tear runs down my cheek. I smile and my hands clench to fists. I drop to my knees and stare up at this thing. “I love you. Please. Save me. Show me. Anything.” ⁶²If it wanted to, it could end me. It could simply cap off my life and tear me open and wear my skin to cover its nakedness but I sense that it won’t because it has not an interest, but no need to do it. ⁶³The holy black eye surrounds me and [SEQ. II] ¹then I am standing on a craft that crawls through the blackness of space. ²I know this to be true. ³The fence that circles my mind doubles outward and I see the lay of more land. My understanding rises up out of the Earthly sludge and comprehension of things previously unknown dawn on me like the beginning of time. ⁴I now understand that there is a fence and that my mind can only approach the fence and that I cannot wander past it. Present, future and past tense are moot. All happen simultaneously. Language tense is invalid and lacking true dimensionality. ⁵All around me are greys, none of them staring, all of them observing. I am the center of naked attention. ⁶There are machines everywhere. And hallways that seem endless. ⁷I walk down one and off to the side I see a woman with the top of her head split open and her brain exposed but she is still alive. She says, “Hey, Chuck!” and wiggles her eyebrows at me in a friendly gesture. Her hair is brown and curly. The grey operating on her brain reminds me more of a mechanic than a doctor. ⁸He is just fixing a small problem in one of the machines. ⁹I enter another room that is more like a great hall and see that it is more vast than my simple field. So large that I cannot see the roof. ¹⁰Where am I? Am I not on a craft? The sky seems endless. Am I on a planet? Where have they taken me? ¹¹The inside of the cavern glows with perfect light that radiates from nowhere. The essence of life gives light to itself. It is a light that exists at the origin of everything.

 

 

Return next Monday, May 23rd for part 2 of 10 as our adventure continues through the realms of deep space. We’ll also ground down to a small village and meet a woman who carries the weight of many lifetimes of misery. She will guide us to a community park filled with doors that lead us to the land of Somewhere Else. Fear, hope, anxiety, betrayal and escape. This is the beginning.

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