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.
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.
