An excerpt from a WIP:
How long as she been walking? How long does one ever walk, in the vast expanse of a space beyond reason and doubt, shaped of an imagined form only given to by the mind’s flow. It remains suspended in both a visual and lingual part of the mind both lending from lived experience and borrowing creative realism from the deepest reaches of our mind. This place is not yours nor mine, but a suspension of the echoes bound between the material and metaphysical. In a sense, it is not here, nor there, but indeed everywhere.
Her shoes kick up grains of dust with each dragging step across a web of irregular shapes between split ground. It is without texture, cracked in countless hexagons, rhombuses, and other earthy shapes, yet lacking an identifiable material. The chipped particulate vanishes as quickly as it appears, coating, but never increasing, it’s coverage of her neat, expensive shoes. In the recesses of her mind, she recalls the great salt flats, those relatively featureless but expansive swaths of barren land. They always seemed so serenely isolated from the communal world bound by deadlines, expectations, obsessive productivity, and never-ending workloads assigned for the sake of being occupied. She often thought of how freeing that world would be, how it could provide an endless escape while keeping her grounded by the surrounding nature. In a world strife with the chaotic smashing of supermassive, tectonic plates across inhuman timescales, that we can view an immobile snapshot of a land is a gift. And yet, even those had distinguishing, material features, especially contrast to the current environment.
The landscape appears in her visual field as if she could reach out and feel it all, smell the saline air, hear the gentle sweeping breeze, feel the dull warmth of a blinding sun, however, these enriching sensations feel distant, as if extending from the recesses of her mind. This view remains his surest sign of existence, and yet it is only perceivable as far as his directing mind can conjure it. The landscape is formless with each ebb and flow of the mind, only returning to its conceivable form once consciously noted. Merely existing suggests great mental effort.
Despite her assumed effort, any fatigue is easily addressed by scaling back mental faculties. If sound becomes deafening, effort is refocused to sight. If deaf, slightly more exertion is given. The impermanence of the whole hints at the need for more practice, but to strive this far is no passable feat. Some aspects are still very crudely defined: her strides underly a featureless sky, one not blue, not white, not black, but blank. Of an intangible quality, as if looking upon it only draws confusion, like an idea of the mind, only sustained by directed creativity does it materialize, ever flowing, ever shapeless as the fluidity of our mind oscillates between thoughts.
Time is relative. she cannot recall definitively how long it took to develop a tangible sense of being, only that now, to remain occupied, she walks, land forming alongside her and disappearing all the same. It is both a burden of stress and relinquishment of pain. The indescribable space that ceded to her current domain was leagues worse, and only fueled her desire to maintain something. Anything. Everything. What was and what will be didn’t seem to matter back then, but now… now, walking provides an anchor to the current world, and reminds her of one distantly passed. She senses it is one never to be returned to, only dreamed of in feverish and flawed recollections of a melancholic soul. Those emotions don’t feel biochemically fueled anymore, almost as if their essence only remains, a psychosocial definition devoid of a direct connection to the body. It isn’t a feeling. It is a being.
For someone who spends their life focusing on destinations, achievements, and the like, wandering an aimless journey is a curse. Old sayings claimed the journey was the purpose, but she believed a purposeless journey leads to desultory and unhelpful terminus. And that, in her eyes, was the greatest injustice one could obsess over. She did after all spend the better part of her life in the confines of a classroom promising a great future. That future as she learned was predicated on abjuring all her life’s energy to a great cause beyond her current meaning. After all, society thrives on having aims, prioritizing goals, making sacrifices in the process, finding a scapegoat. In times of peace and war, two dualistic state of humanity, there exists nonetheless a struggle for meaning and purpose. In war, it may consist of a valiant win over an opponent, or a visionary future of prosperity, or a subjection of some “other”—no differently in times of peace civilization finds groups to subjugate for an entrenched “greater good”. Anything to further the peace, is popularized, ironically often requiring great conflict. In the end it’s all fervour of some sort. And by God is it exhausting.
Each step feels heavy. Breathing used to require great effort, but it starting to become second nature, like she was beginning to reform her cerebellum by pure thought. So too she will walk with ease, run in great stride, and perhaps jump great lengths. Flying has always sounded interesting. Sound—what did her voice sound like? In the far reaches of her mind, she can sense a once great appreciation for sound—especially that of great choirs intertwined with instruments of wind and string. Melody provided comfort and purpose in times of excruciating silence. Even a distant humdrum outside her apartment window helped distract unwanted thoughts and create new, gentle curiosities about the world surrounding her. It wasn’t always that she wanted to escape from certain thoughts, just that there was constantly something new to explore, so why linger on unpleasant feelings, uncomfortable topics? Life is about living, not reflecting, she thought, reflecting on her life, and while seeing a lone door, several yards in the distance.
The now suddenly materialized door flutters transparent as the sense of shock washes over her. Controlling her initial confusion, the object slowly becomes stably opaque. Why, here of all places, would someone put a door? She continues toward it, step after step still feeling labored, slowly noticing more details on her approach. It is about eight feet tall, has hinges on the right side and a rounded doorhandle on the left. It is white with two parallel rectangular indentations running horizontally down either side of the broad face, ending before the handle, and continuing thereafter down to the bottom of the door. At the level of the handle where there would normally be a latch, nothing protrudes from the frame. Why the handle then? What’s stopping it from blowing in the wind like a weathervane?
Now only feet from the door, she glances quizzically. Where normally invoking a door would require great effort, this seems to now concretely remain the center of her focus.
She takes a few steps to the side of the door, observing the same appearance on the opposite side. There appears no latch connected to either handle. What’s the point then?
In her previous life, perhaps she ought not open the door and avoid the fraught nature of taking any action. This same fear lead her down a passive life’s journey, drifting from one obvious opportunity to the next, not really taking strides toward anything permanent. In many ways she was “successful”, enjoyed a good life with good people, but at all times it left distant. She was locked in a house of her own creation, peering through a muddled window at the wind flowing outside. All she ever had to do, and never could, was walk through the door and feel the breeze.
Fingers already gently pressed on the knob, she slowly retracted her hand.
She believed she was a woman of cautious fortitude, one who could withstand much of life’s unexpected circumstances. In her castle of comfortable isolation, she was independent. But in this same castle, she could never move, never travel, never see much of life’s wonder. This hadn’t bothered her though, or so she thought, ever since she was a child. Her room was her respite from the world, filled from floor to ceiling with books, toys, painting supplies and products of her burgeoning creativity, stacked on sagging wood-grain shelves. It served as a display of spiritual immortality, and more realistically, sound dampening for the reality lurking beyond her door. Her retreat was as much peaceful as it could be protective. Whether substances or the subject of the government’s many imposed regulations and tax laws, or simply forgetting to pick up milk, a fight was always to be had. So she sat in her castle, hearing but not daring to glean at the no-man’s land lying amidst the halls outside the bounds of her walls.
And yet, back then, so too came a time for her to decide. Unfortunately, indecision is an omnipresent option. And it cast itself like a plague over her sensibilities.
She could have left her house. She could have contacted authorities. She could have lived with friends, sought professional council, traveled, or stayed, interfering, risking herself and her father’s wellbeing… and this vast array of possible futures weighed her down to the point of fatigue. So, she remained immobile. Never opening doors.
Hell, why not. Just this once.
Her hand returned to the knob, fingers outstretched. With a grasp, turn, and push, a silent latch clink echoed in her mind as the door hinged open, surrendering to her resolve. As she stepped forth, a kind wind nipped her heels as if to equalize the pressure on two sides separated by an endless, missing barrier in space. Her mind cleared. And through it she fell into the expanse.
More to come.
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