Marijuana embers glowed softly as he inhaled, the joint--only a roach, by now--clasped between the tongs of Victorinox tweezers, freshly plucked from their bladed sheath. 5 seconds, then 10, then 15, the chemicals and smoke and tar roiled in his lungs, his body unsure of this fearsome cloud. A tightness, a constriction in his body, a plume of blackness issuing from his mouth. The tightness grew, birthing panic; memories of the first time: a backwards scramble, mind screaming for fresh air, deliverance. Now, control; experience.

Another hit; control lost; sputtering.

One more hit, one more slow drag on the dwindling remains of his forever-disappearing supply. Enough.

The spinning sets in, muscle twitches and a slow, stupid grin; the beginnings of laughter. Sourceless music, a slow cello under breathy vocals; no frame of mind, no frame of reference anymore, suddenly context free. Spirals on a computer screen, colors shifting from red to green and back again in slow patterns, flashing in and out of consciousness, intense focus and perfect oblivion.

Heightening: a sudden, external thrust throwing him backwards onto the floor.

Existence no longer a question but a knowing, white spirals set against a black background, threads of lives lived and lost, birth followed by death in endless cycles within cycles: birth, childhood, adulthood, death, birth, all intertwined in a cosmic ball of Yarn, everything the same thing, contrasted against the same nothing. Life and death, black and white, awake and asleep, the full consciousness that every moment is discrete, that continuity is only an illusion, that every day and every night is the endless repetition of an ageless cycle of ones and zeroes, conscious and unconcsious, life and death, every day a rebirth, every night: oblivion. Fear the essence of absence, love the essence of all that is, and nothing in between, no grey space, no dark matter: there is and there isn't. The universe is in binary, fear and jealousy and anger and hate, all of the same fibers, or perhaps lack thereof; love and compassion and joy all the same thing: and thus, the profound conclusion. We are all one, and there is only one of us. Therefore, existence is fundamentally lonely, alone, a lightness cast starkly against a background of emptiness, with ceaseless repetition the only hope for future or past, fractals within themselves, wound tightly upon itself in a hopeful, fearful clinging. Sudden awareness of the self: a name, his name, repeating, an externality of existence. Third person now, school and home and driving and on the floor, a tousled mop of hair and an uncertain mask, awkward against the background. Awareness of the clacking of typewriter keys smacking forcefully against blank paper, creating ones where there were zeroes. This moment has happened before and will happen again, as it has for the ubiquitous thousand generations; no need for fear, though fear and darkness, like light, omnipresent, necessarily present: only through contrast can light take shape. The heart beating, faster, faster, a rapid thump-thunk, thump-thunk, the eyes wide, dry, bloodshot, not knowing if the body even matters if it's all just repetition, and CLACK CLACK go the typewriter keys, humna-hooway, moans the phantom music, humna-hooway; life-death; god-absence; light-dark; not a struggle anymore, just a coexistence, a symbiosis, a quid-pro-quo duality underlying all that is.

And a lowering, a rebirth into childhood. "Home is a child's word," and "sine is a middle-school word." And a slow return into adulthood. A slow reintroduction to subjective reality, to our world of make-believe so earnestly constructed and so fiercely defended. Cradled, finally, by sleep. Pillowed by the arms of dark, only tenuously suspended on the gossamer threads of life, clinging, without fervor and peacefully aquiescent, to the uncontestable constants. Yet even this was but a glimpse, a narrow window into a larger beyond. As his chest rises and falls a seed is sown, and from all well-sown seeds grow ripe and hearty fruit, as shall this...as shall this.

Like the timeless rise of smoke drifting heavenward from the smoldering ashes of a fire, we are connected to deeper selves, to the past. We are of the past.

The sun sets in a crimson, tangerine, and inky sapphire sky as voluminous and prismatic clouds eke slowly past. A tribe of nomads huddles around a blazing and crackling fire, sharing stories, tearing and chewing cooked meat, laughing and savoring their intrinsic camaraderie. A group of campers gathers closely together as the circumscribing forest presses tightly around them. They whisper ghost stories, roast S'mores, laugh, and savor their intrinsic camaraderie. A small family joins hands around the hearth as the cold winter snaps and freezes around them: their home is a snug and glowing bubble in the icy weather. They reminisce about old times, share a meal, laugh, and savor their intrinsic camaraderie. We are all connected to one another in spoken, unspoken, knowable, and unknowable ways.

As the drums of our hearts beat out the tattoos of ceremonies past, so too patter our feet on the dusty and well-trammeled paths of life. Countless billions have walked before, and countless billions will walk after us, but together we all walk, hands clasped and faces forward to the future. We are all one.

The fiberglass canoe cut swiftly and silently through the brackish water, sweeping invisibly past the chorus of frogs and insects of all imaginings inhabiting the swampy land portside. The sun was setting rapidly, basking the marshland in a crimson glow, one that, were we safely on land, would be comforting, the familiar visual knell of the day's end. Here on the water, an indeterminate distance from safety, it was the crimson of spilt blood, a portent of oncoming night. The wise take to land at night.

The fireflies flitted about, their warm glow a summons to deeper, darker places on the water. Neither of us said a word; we both felt the same apprehension. Novices, neophytes both. We would perhaps learn from this, learn to stick to familiar passageways, learn to estimate times, distances with greater accuracy. Perhaps learn to stay out of the water?

Small whirlpools, spirals within spirals glided past the oars, coalescing, reintegrating with the still, black water. Behind us lay only miles and hours, but our minds were convinced that we were being followed, that we needed hasten lest the imaginary swamp-goblins seize us as we heave the craft onto dry land. Our necks tingled, convinced of impending touch. I looked back. Only the gently roiling and receding water, only swiftly blackening foliage, a rapidly awakening ecosystem met my eyes through the gloaming.

Solitude and isolation, loneliness and barenness. These words all flitted past my eyes, fluttering like unwelcome butterflies, slow enough to see clearly, perhaps to reach out and touch, but too swift or too perhaps just to hardy to kill. To be alone at night can mean many things. In the city, it is the flickering glow of midnight television, the tequila haze and sweat-saturated once-white undershirts. In the suburbs, it is the low whine of automobile engines irregularly driving past as the hall clock ticks on interminably, the rest of the world asleep in cozy bubbles. Tick, tick, tick, tick. In the country, one cannot be alone, for the call and response chorus of insects, of toads and owls is forever company, the clanging of trash cans falling to the ground, defeated by raccoons irrecoverably dashes any hope of solitude. But in the forest and the swamp, the barren desert, solitude is genuine, it is real. Here there are no human comforts, no familiar late-night advertisements, no reassuring crunch of tires on gravel as a patrol car prowls past, not even the almost welcome dissonance of a garbage can, representative of our society's wastefulness, encroach here. No cellphones ring. No babies squeal. No automobile horns call out their querulous moans.

To some, this is relief, a welcome respite from the unending din of modern life. But here on the still water as darkness swells the shadows it is far from welcome, it is the resting place of boogeymen, of coiled pythons resting uneasily on a log, longing to drop into the boat. It is the snap of twigs in the distance, surely omens of mostrous creatures slinking through the trees. To stay on the water is to abandon hope, to admit defeat, to be lost for hours, days. To land on unfamiliar shores is to step into the domain of many-toothed beasts and invisible, fanged pests looking for their own kinds of warm comforts.

He sighed audibly, his uneven breath betraying his own anxiety.

Blackness.

The canoe cut through the water.

Cheez-Its and Famous Amos cookies from a vending machine for $1.10 and a water bottle I had with me at a rest stop in South Carolina at a sticky picnic table at dusk looking out over a fake lake. That is happiness.

I'm sitting alone in my apartment, nursing a beer, puffing a cigarette. The room is empty. Well, except for this packing box. Three thumps on the door. I slowly turn my head, "who is it?" No answer. Thump, thump, thump. I go answer the door. Landlady. She waves her hand in front of her face in disgust. "Two things poor people always have: beer and cigarettes." I take a puff. "I need you out. Now. So go." A take a long, slow drag, contemplate exhaling in her face, breathe out my nose. Reach down behind the door and think for a second: I wish I had a gun. But no, it's just my pack. I'm on the road again.

And so it passed that the Children became their own Rulers, liberated from the controlling menace that heretofore had maintained the cruelest of grips on the title. Many years transpired, and their wealth grew, as did their fame. But discontent within began to swell, and as the borders expanded, so too did the range of the dissenters' words.

History repeats itself, of this there can be no denial. And the Children who had become Rulers lost their hold, and the new Children became the new Rulers.

And so it passed.

It was morning, sometime in late April. I remember because it was the week after my grandson's wedding. That was a beautiful wedding--expensive, too, I wager. Just thinking about it, makes me smile. (I could walk then, you know. It's true. I've only been in this goddamn wheelchair 3 months or so. I'll get used to it, I suppose...) But you wanted to hear about that day. Well, like I told you, it was an April morning. The sunlight was dancing on the dew that lingered on the grass, there were even a few kids out on the road--how I wish they hadn't paved it--but there was something that just wasn't right. Not right at all. When I got up that morning, my joints were aching, like they do, but that didn't seem so unusual. The news was on the television set when I came into the room. But that was unusual, you see. That old television set hadn't worked for thirty years. And the news was in black and white.

Oh, I'll bet you're right. I bet it is a black and white set. I plumb forgot. So used to seeing these fancy colorized television sets at my daughter's house.

Anyway, even if the news was supposed to be in black and white, they said that the date was January 15, and I thought that was kind of funny, because surely I couldn't be that confused. I'm not that old, am I? But that wasn't the only funny thing that morning. I went out to the porch, like I told you, and I watched the kids heading along to school, and I watched the sun on the grass, but I also watched that tree, the one over yonder, just past the shed. It was dancing in the wind, only the strange thing was, none of the other trees were dancing in the wind. Just that one. And then I felt something cold on my leg. I looked down and what I saw, well, it just terrified me! To this day, I don't even like to think about it. When you look down at your leg expecting to see something and you end up seeing something entirely different, well, it just scares the bejeesus out of you, it does. So when I looked down--

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you! A week before then, there was thi--

Sorry?

Yes, yes, I'll get to that.

Like I was saying, not a week earlier, there was some salesman come by my house. He was all dressed up in a fancy suit and a briefcase. I thought he wanted to sell me the Bible or something. Hah! Mythology's all it is. But imagine my surprise: it was my son gone fifteen years! He came to see his momma, all grown up, all fancified. And by the looks of it, not doing too badly either. So we we--

Of course it's important. I don't talk abou things if they're not important. Stop pestering me, for chrissakes.

Oh forget it. You're not worth talking to anyway. All you damn reporters, you're all the same. But I'll tell you this. I did see something that day, and the rumors are true. I may be a batty old woman, and I may not be a sharp as I was 30 years ago, but I know what I saw. And even if I didn't, I got proof right here in this very house. And you, Mr. Fancy Pants with your goddamn tape recorder, you will never. Ever. See it.

Good day, sir.