Wavering in the past, the present, the future and the imagination

What is the planet? What is the world? What is the solar system? What is this life? What are these intakes of breath, billion upon billions of them, every day?  What are the colours? What is the sky? What are the lives and the thoughts and the beating hearts? Who are they beating for – what are they beating for? What is the mind, what is the soul; what is psychological pain? What is sadness when it is heavy like rocks, what is joy when it lifts you to the edge of the universe? What is a journey, what are these words, why am I writing, why are you reading? How does your brain work – isn’t It beautiful? Isn't the way your fingers bend and the way you blink fascinating, the way your toes quiver, the way your insides squirm. The way no knowledge will ever be enough, the way we wonder and wonder. What is my purpose? My goal? My belief? I am intrinsically linked to the point of restlessness with something that I cannot comprehend. I’ve struck a chord in some dimension that no one even knows about. My life is spent wavering in the past, the present, the future and the imagination; spent half in mind and half in action, questioning things more than anyone could know. Thinking of things and feeling hopelessness, because as humans, it’s hard sometimes not to feel hopelessness when we’ve been presented with life, following each other, leading it, accepting it, and not questioning it. It shakes me, like a harrowing storm, to think so deep; ‘tis safer to stay on dry land: “life’s more painless, for the brainless.” But my mind, she has a mind of her own; I am filled with craziness; everything I touch, like skittles, turns to something odd, something strange, something perhaps ruined. Ruined in the eyes of the beholder, blundering my way through life, wondering if ever I will grasp what is to me an understanding. But we, as human, as simple masters of ourselves and yet brainless, stupid, insignificant nothings, created this word “understanding.” We placed letters together; we learned the concept; we shared the concept. But how is it a word, when understanding does not exist? Everything that you know, that you think you know, is not real. Potentially, none of this is real. None but pain, because that is blinding yet enlightening to the point where it can never fail, walking hand in hand with fear and hate to destroy us all. I have faith in humanity, yet I weep for humanity…I fail to “understand” humanity. I fail to understand myself, or what it is that we plan to do, to enjoy, to cry, to weep, to die. To keep on moving forward, ‘til tears have been shed for eternity, babies have been born ‘til the end of time and things have shifted beyond anything we in this snapshot of time, of this thing we call time, could know. Time, time, time, you slip away, you leave us; where do you go? Is there an intergalactic storage centre in the core of nature, of natural comprehension, where the time goes? Does it frolic amongst meadows, does it sing, does it feel emotion? Is it like sand from a sand timer; will we run out of it, before we run out of air? How do you explain things such as time which are real and fundamental but do not truly exist? How to define what it is to spend time, like it is currency, something you can own. No one owns time, time is unownable; time is in itself a Houdini, a terrific performer; an escapist. I’m taking your time, taking it, right now; as if time can be taken, as if time can be told. As if time has been old and young and born and shall die again. Where am I going with this? That’s not the question, for it seems we have no destination; the word destination is just as made up, just as fake, as what it represents. As false as our metaphors, as our similes, of our allusions. A hopeless destination: perhaps I should be filled with utter gloom, perhaps you’re feeling now like I have overstepped the mark; I have questioned too much. But there is no gloom; there is no need for comprehension, or destination. Enjoy the colours, the sky, the emotion, the air, the time, the feelings that shake your soul, the actions that clear your mind, the movements that evoke thought and happiness. Contentment is in those that accept defeat in all understanding and just wonder, and feel joy in something that is entirely out of reach. World - you are truly wonderful. 

The elimination of scepticism

I stared up at the temple, white against the black of the sky, arched above my head. There were stars in the air and stars in my eyes as I took a breath, my hands held out in front of me as if in prayer. I felt alone, I didn't quite know what to do. The temple was empty, its large pillars colder than the air, its beauty marred almost by its bleak void of life. I, on the marble steps, breathing in and out, felt isolated from everything. What was I even doing here? My hands shook as the stars wavered through the slats in the stone roof.

Then, out of the darkness, floating as if on a cloud, came a mermaid. Her skin seemed grey and her face was bloodless, like the ghost of a sea woman. Her face was pained, yet there was contentment in her pearly eyes. Her scales glistened like silver in the precious starlight, but her tail flicked impatiently and nervously from side to side, searching for something.

“What do you pray for?” I asked hesitantly, and her eyes seemed to notice me for the first time. My hands were still clasped before my chest, my feet planted on the steps. She floated up and down slightly as she answered.

“To swim,” she murmured simply, before closing her eyes. Then, she sighed and started to fade, 'til all I could see again was black and white and the stars. As doom set in, another figure emerged, and soon I had a man hovering before me. His face was equally as grey as the mermaids, but his eyes were a summer sky blue. His legs were stumps, with ripped trousers revealing smooth scarred skin around the knee bone, where the calf and shin should begin.

“What do you pray for?” I asked, fearing him almost. But his reply was placid; he did not hate the world for what it had done to him.

“To walk,” he nodded, as he too started to fade and leave me, I waited for another figure, and at first I thought perhaps I was truly alone, but then he appeared. This man had black holes for eyes, and my initial instinct was to run. They were darker than anything I had ever seen and seemed to shine out of his pale face, questioning me. Sight, I knew he prayed for sight, and that I could not give him. My throat and tongue dried in my mouth as I shook, ready to cry, unable to ask. But he spoke to me.

“Not sight. I do not pray for sight. I only pray to have had the ability to see, so that when I sense the world, I can imagine it as it is. I only wish for visual knowledge and memory.” He bowed his head, the holes gaping hopelessly at the floor.

My heart thudded as he faded, and my hands left their pose of prayer to reach up and trace the rims of my own eyes. I wished, crazy as it was, that he could borrow them to see the world. But maybe, perhaps, he was better off believing its brilliance, than forever brooding on the darkness and the stars. I stared down at my own feet then, the feet made for this world, the feet able to take steps and run. As if on que they jolted forward, carrying me up into the temple, 'til I was standing in the middle, my eyes wide. Everything was as it should be. My body held no ailments, no cuts, no bruises, and no breaks. I had scope to dream, scope to live, scope to achieve. Yet, I was praying. What for? What was it that I required?

All of a sudden I felt alone again. There was no helping this. It was as swift as a dagger to the heart, that sadness. It struck when you were wavering like the stars. Then, the figure of myself floated down from the darkness. It looked grim and tired, weary from wanting. But I could not guess what it would say, so I asked; I had to ask.

“What do you pray for?”

It's eyes opened – my eyes opened. They were silent for a second to the point where I thought perhaps I would not receive an answer. But then, the mirrored me spoke, and I felt a sense of gratitude for this strange night and my own mental madness.

“The elimination of scepticism,” the figure said. “Hope. I pray for hope.”

White phantom faces

The white phantom faces whimpered and wept. She strolled among them, draping her darkness, cradling them close to her with those cruel long fingers. They flinched, but still seemed drawn in, fascinated almost. She was the only light in this god forsaken place, but yet darkness followed her like a faithful bloodhound. She smiled crookedly at her trapped phantom faces, but couldn't help but look beautiful. Like a God, they adored her; they unwillingly lay down their lives before her. Why?

All she did was hold them back. She trapped them here, in this darkness, that seemingly had no end or purpose. There was a whole world out there for them to explore, but yet they stayed and stared and cried at her, and she smiled back so lovingly with those perfect pearly white teeth every time. She was almost a sorcerer of some kind, she had them under a spell – a trance, yes – they didn't know what they were thinking. They knew no life without her, and were as faithful as the darkness that trailed behind her in the shadows.

And those on the outside, those who could barely peer in through the dim grimy windows, had no real understanding. It was too dark to really see anything properly, it was almost understandable if they missed her perfect glowing face from where they were looking. Just a bunch of faces, cowering over nothing, hovering together like newborn sightless kittens. How strange, how unnerving. But swallowed up on the other side, from the very jaws of a very real surreal danger, the faces can say nothing, do nothing. They just stare back through the windows and sigh, deep sighs that sound like howling wind on a stormy summer night shuddering through the trees.

After some time, the people will walk away. Something else will catch their attention, because humans are much like that. They will walk away, and the faces will fade from their memories. It was like they never existed, not in the real world. They were made in some fantasy dimension, and that was where they would stay.