You stare awkwardly at the small stone wall before you. You know you are too fugly and portly to attempt this plight, but walking to the steps is an extra 27-30 feet, and the walking to them would demean a fashion as alienated as looking out-of-place climbing the ledge. A healthy kid would climb this ledge. A cool kid would climb this ledge. So, clenching undersized, sweaty fists you lick your lips (hint of jalapeno), you embark the wall. The final 1 minute and 16 seconds of “Prelude 3.0” plays in your mind and you illusion your motions slowed.
“This is it,” you think. “Either I’m going up this thing, or I’m going down! Fuck it!”
One portly leg lifts from the ground, sealing your fate. For, replacing the leg this late in the choice would depict a self-consciousnesses of aphid attraction. You think of faded sweatpants in value village, but your not sure as to why. Bitter taste.
Your doing it you think. Today I am healthy. Today I am not overweight. Today I am cool. You feel magnetic. Cataclysmic. Unfathomably raw and composed of the pure fabric that twisted the first proto-galaxies of our universe.
You don’t see anyone around, so you think for a slight moment that your are indifferent to holding onto such lasting perfection while still alone, and you feel an odd twitch of a movement made by the left half of your body. Not even sure it happened, for it was so brief, so meagre. But, your certain this awkward muscle reaction… this… this… communist movement… was not an aesthetically pleasing demonstration of grace.
The idea of self repulsion disgusts you as the domestic rumour develops rapidly in your mind.
You are now over the wall.
Your offer now an exaggerated shoulder-strap adjustment of your backpack; and, thus present a gawking belly swing. You try holding your breath to disguise your oxygen deprivation at this particular moment, and you consider how awful it would be to partake in a marathon. This you release yourself from with a jerk of a nod to the right and a small lip twitch.
No one saw anything.
Then you see them as you round the pine tree. A girl, bearing malicious eyes above cheap-lipstick stained buckers. She is with two skinny corn-cobbers in clothing too tight and French looking to stimulate an initial thought of anything other than, “Fucking cunts,” in the deep places of your mind.
Just when you finish conjuring up a false projection of impressing these individuals with so few admirable adjectives describing them, and your oxygen deprived heart puts on his grandfathers WWII helmet and demands “AIR!”
The girl breaks the space between her buckers. You envision your inescapable destruction. Here. Now. Denil. Psycho-hypostatic-episodic-…….psychcosoicialism images flutter on the end of the black-cherry tree too far grown to evade bequeathing its knowledge unto your foreseeable future.
“You guys see that little communist climb that…wall there?”
She then gruffles out something like a bloated laugh mixed with 10% burp of sugar candies and cheap cola and a cigarette (puffed, but not inhaled).
The word communist balks your senses. “Inconceivable,” you utter under your breath. In the darkening world of bewilderment, you stumble over a small root or stone perhaps; that, combined with your already venom-filled nerves, is enough to send you staggering downwards. You focus enough to see a larger rock in your immediate airfield space as your approach the landing enactment finale.
A rare moment, this. A you-tube moment for Tosh.O, but no one has a fucking camera you think. Especially not these fucking French cunts over here.
You feel your face crunch against the rock, your cheek bone surrenders its integrity to the superior substance. You wonder how long before the taste of blood arrives in your broken mouth.
As the last circumstance that your prepared for that morning on the toilet occurs, you embrace the pain associated to your apparent calamity.
“Fuck,” you think. Just, “fuck.”
One of the French cunts pipes up, reminding you of their presence:
“Yo, I just got that on camera!”
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Everlasting
I stand on the brink.
Grey to my right, life to my left.
Peripherals see buildings and trees,
Yet both are now filled with sadness.
And, in the coming dark,
There will be both, but we will have neither.
Or perhaps they will have it.
They can have it.
For I wanted little, and it has decayed,
Too much so that its brittle frame would crumble,
From my infant self’s gaze.
We were told, but have forgotten.
The endless waves of sand,
Offer only neutrality.
Before birth, and in death,
We are neutral.
In life,
We can be anything but.
I wonder if they can see them?
My dark eyes, not my brown ones.
Has my mask slipped, or did I ever wear one?
I am truth,
And I hide in plain sight.
But I am not invisible, I have given you my name.
If I were he who came before me,
Courage and honour,
Would rest in the foreground, not the back.
Who Will take up this seat in the Timeless Halls?
There is only Hephaestus.
Pandora’s Box is all that remains,
To feed the million mouths that have not teeth.
I am a religious fanatic.
I am an atheist.
I am Bernardo Vittone.
I am Alaric.
I am perfection.
I am the damaged one.
I am utterly human,
And I was created by you.
Now, we can only stare down into reflections,
Of times past that never existed.
And except neutrality,
As too much water,
Slips through the cracks between our fingers.
Grey to my right, life to my left.
Peripherals see buildings and trees,
Yet both are now filled with sadness.
And, in the coming dark,
There will be both, but we will have neither.
Or perhaps they will have it.
They can have it.
For I wanted little, and it has decayed,
Too much so that its brittle frame would crumble,
From my infant self’s gaze.
We were told, but have forgotten.
The endless waves of sand,
Offer only neutrality.
Before birth, and in death,
We are neutral.
In life,
We can be anything but.
I wonder if they can see them?
My dark eyes, not my brown ones.
Has my mask slipped, or did I ever wear one?
I am truth,
And I hide in plain sight.
But I am not invisible, I have given you my name.
If I were he who came before me,
Courage and honour,
Would rest in the foreground, not the back.
Who Will take up this seat in the Timeless Halls?
There is only Hephaestus.
Pandora’s Box is all that remains,
To feed the million mouths that have not teeth.
I am a religious fanatic.
I am an atheist.
I am Bernardo Vittone.
I am Alaric.
I am perfection.
I am the damaged one.
I am utterly human,
And I was created by you.
Now, we can only stare down into reflections,
Of times past that never existed.
And except neutrality,
As too much water,
Slips through the cracks between our fingers.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Iron Vice Sanity
I thought only the insane could understand our “sane” society. I pictured a man with sharp eyes and tight lips rubbing his hands from the cold and within his mind lingered the darkening thoughts of the errors in our construction. So much was unconsidered and left for surprise upon the often helpless. Charles Bronson never considered one thing in his life. Living always in the present, in violence. But only enlightened professionals of a given trade or focus that have the capability of considering the future can give a mediocre psychoanalysis of Charles Bronson and believe maybe that some part of you is bettered or worsened by your viewing of such a dark, moustache smiling goat path of blood and knuckles stained with artwork. How much pain endured only to meet human eyes and only smile while you take eternal rage and malice out with the only weapons given to you upon birth? The only reason Charles Bronson is the most famous prisoner in Britain is because he let loose the gold and red eyed demon from its blood-iron stained prison. I would like to meet Charles Bronson. Maybe fight him. Cause then I could be certain if her truly enjoyed his violence or was just too emerged in a façade that was no longer in his grasp to control.
We pour so much money into authorities and comforts for prisoners and the criminally insane, because part of us needs them. Conforming to financial strategists, killing off the wicked and insane would be ensuring, yet this would yield all strings to our minds and our humane defecation to humanly sick individuals; generating a 21st century twisted form of Equilibrium. Too much to ask.
There has got to be some stable ground left to walk on, else all would be mirrors of hope in a paradox of Plat’s allegory of the cave in which sanctuary looms every on the brink of attainment. So why don’t you take steps away from being alone, when the insides have rotten away the dead flesh, pain was just another trial on the road to understanding all of life’s little treasures. Ah because, “Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.” Mephistophilis dwelled too deep in the doctor’s mind, and what he released was his untamed dystopia to which he could cure in his mind. With knowledge, brought destruction of such a need or desire.
Our memories hold the key to our futures, for surely we are doomed to repeat the tiniest of “mistakes” that linger in our minds and eventually demand demise from such occurrences, and the life-line is cut. The building beside me shadows my thoughts from the sun’s wisdom, and the cold shields its lust like a phalanx. But its just a crack in the surface. Expanding and splintering away the adamantine glass steal that will surely provoke our untimely end. But at least we saw it coming.
Take this measure of peace, and in its warming orange aura in dark fall leaves, lock yourself against its embrace and be damned if you let go.
And when the memories are all left behind and the days have gone forever, lost within my mind. I came to this once, and so I come to it again. The darkness ever fettering on the bounders of my sanity unscathed when in the eye of the storm. Glimpsing inward from neutrality, however, inflicts shame and bewilderment. When the steal doors close, when one is truly alone, then critique and judgement can be passed by the self alone. For none know the heart better than its benefactor. Such was Esther’s conflict; not knowing to whom her life-blood was being sent to when she awoke. But just as the Old Forest compares to Mirkwood, the tyrants of our world cross and weave, avoiding interaction with their creations amongst the trees. Then it hardly matters which fucking forest your in. But it does! It matters because we choose it does.
Smoke before my eyes. I put it there. I dare its influence to stand before my degradation and my resolve. Satan had no fame in heaven, but now remains our fictional personification of evil. Why should Milton glorify Lucifer? He doesn’t have your sight behind his back. For faith, I give to you:
All this and it turns out people such as myself are the problem and always have been.
That’s if you buy this particular view. I don’t.
But trouble not to decide which way to fall over the fence, for the grasp is loosening regardless of resistance. When the hand reaches forward, slow and tentative, and pushes away the film of dust, then they will understand why we loved, why we hated. Too many tear drops on the window panes, before you stop looking out.
We pour so much money into authorities and comforts for prisoners and the criminally insane, because part of us needs them. Conforming to financial strategists, killing off the wicked and insane would be ensuring, yet this would yield all strings to our minds and our humane defecation to humanly sick individuals; generating a 21st century twisted form of Equilibrium. Too much to ask.
There has got to be some stable ground left to walk on, else all would be mirrors of hope in a paradox of Plat’s allegory of the cave in which sanctuary looms every on the brink of attainment. So why don’t you take steps away from being alone, when the insides have rotten away the dead flesh, pain was just another trial on the road to understanding all of life’s little treasures. Ah because, “Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.” Mephistophilis dwelled too deep in the doctor’s mind, and what he released was his untamed dystopia to which he could cure in his mind. With knowledge, brought destruction of such a need or desire.
Our memories hold the key to our futures, for surely we are doomed to repeat the tiniest of “mistakes” that linger in our minds and eventually demand demise from such occurrences, and the life-line is cut. The building beside me shadows my thoughts from the sun’s wisdom, and the cold shields its lust like a phalanx. But its just a crack in the surface. Expanding and splintering away the adamantine glass steal that will surely provoke our untimely end. But at least we saw it coming.
Take this measure of peace, and in its warming orange aura in dark fall leaves, lock yourself against its embrace and be damned if you let go.
And when the memories are all left behind and the days have gone forever, lost within my mind. I came to this once, and so I come to it again. The darkness ever fettering on the bounders of my sanity unscathed when in the eye of the storm. Glimpsing inward from neutrality, however, inflicts shame and bewilderment. When the steal doors close, when one is truly alone, then critique and judgement can be passed by the self alone. For none know the heart better than its benefactor. Such was Esther’s conflict; not knowing to whom her life-blood was being sent to when she awoke. But just as the Old Forest compares to Mirkwood, the tyrants of our world cross and weave, avoiding interaction with their creations amongst the trees. Then it hardly matters which fucking forest your in. But it does! It matters because we choose it does.
Smoke before my eyes. I put it there. I dare its influence to stand before my degradation and my resolve. Satan had no fame in heaven, but now remains our fictional personification of evil. Why should Milton glorify Lucifer? He doesn’t have your sight behind his back. For faith, I give to you:
Why In God’s Plan
Did he make the
Devil so much stronger
Than a man
Spare me the senseless babble explaining our trials for his satisfaction of our purity. I heard once that religion was meant once to be a shared illusion, bringing false assurances and peace of mind to the masses. The only problem with this plan were those who refused to participate in the illusion. They widened the cracks in the promises, and subtly split the fabric of the goal in half. So after the thousands of years of bloodshed in the name of faith, the crusades, religious genocides, warrrrr, terrorisssssssssss……Did he make the
Devil so much stronger
Than a man
All this and it turns out people such as myself are the problem and always have been.
That’s if you buy this particular view. I don’t.
But trouble not to decide which way to fall over the fence, for the grasp is loosening regardless of resistance. When the hand reaches forward, slow and tentative, and pushes away the film of dust, then they will understand why we loved, why we hated. Too many tear drops on the window panes, before you stop looking out.
Monday, March 7, 2011
The Seasons
There is some measure of peace to be found in the changing of the seasons. Bleak white winters that burn the eyes with white fire. The fall unleashes a utopia of colours in the leaves of the trees; hues of red, yellow, and orange dance in the air as the leaves fall from their life perch. Neutral comfort and subjection to subtle truth stimulates my composure: insignificance… hate. I press my prior thoughts. How leaves except their demise atop the earth in the open air, when we humans proceed to bury our dead six feet under, just in case its windy. I laughed at human simplicity and ridiculousness.
They represent only death, and yet what we see is autumn. Spring, traditionally recognized as “rebirth” in literary terms; when the ices of winter fade away and we are left only with life. Small streams run and cross, like a network of veins upon the face of the earth, as its heart once again beats, shacking away the cobwebs with slightly greyer eyes. People, pale and frightened, emerge from their houses as the sun promises reprieve, if only for months.
Rejecting technology meant sticky, blistering quell of summer. When all the world seemed hot, destine to cook our skin. Thoughts of electrocution and blue-rare steak slap me in the face. Searing skin. Should my body temperature climb high enough, how long before the blood within me rose up and filled my eyes with red? I imagined the pain would be to great that if it occurred, my anguish would be too extreme for me to record the statistics.
The seasons…
Inspire emptiness in their midst, but upon the changing it is refreshing and forgiving. Chaucer must have been cold at least when he wrote half of the Canterbury Tales. Cold stone and cold flesh and quill. Chaucer probably had ‘mad’ bitches, as they say. I wonder if he had any type of lifestyle like the deeply homosexual Italians of Florence and Sicily in the fifteenth century? Who cares…
Corey Taylor is yelling at me. The piles of work layer my desk, and I wish for nothing more than to wrap it up in a tidy bundle with string, and write in large, thick letters on the top: BULLSHIT. But such as this mind rejects outward intuition, I know myself better than anyone, and worse than none. So I’ll do the work, but not tonight, and trust that they meant what they said.
Too many hours sitting hurts the spirit as much as the body, but how quickly we forget when after standing for five minutes after sitting for three hours, that we sit down happily when offered a seat. Somewhere, at some point in history, sitting was culturally incorporated into our daily lives. When all hope is gone, someone will need to mend the world. Will it be those who sit, or those who stand? As far as the seasons go, we can sit and stand until the seas rise far above our tallest buildings. Some will likely still be sitting when it happens. But lets pretend we not at the end. The end is final, thus we are not there yet, and amidst the chaos we pour into time solving this final end, some breakdown and sit while other, cramp-legged and blue-balled, remain standing. Chaucer would have a thing or two to say about that.
A bulbous man passes me on street, above his dry, swollen lips, clung a rogue blotch of mustard. I observe his gluttonous, reckless figure and balding head unscathed of the sun’s warmth. I nearly vomit.
Clenching my jaw and knuckles, I jolt my head to the left in a snapping motion and tense my legs. Too often this heart forgets passed purging and fucking remedies.
They represent only death, and yet what we see is autumn. Spring, traditionally recognized as “rebirth” in literary terms; when the ices of winter fade away and we are left only with life. Small streams run and cross, like a network of veins upon the face of the earth, as its heart once again beats, shacking away the cobwebs with slightly greyer eyes. People, pale and frightened, emerge from their houses as the sun promises reprieve, if only for months.
Rejecting technology meant sticky, blistering quell of summer. When all the world seemed hot, destine to cook our skin. Thoughts of electrocution and blue-rare steak slap me in the face. Searing skin. Should my body temperature climb high enough, how long before the blood within me rose up and filled my eyes with red? I imagined the pain would be to great that if it occurred, my anguish would be too extreme for me to record the statistics.
The seasons…
Inspire emptiness in their midst, but upon the changing it is refreshing and forgiving. Chaucer must have been cold at least when he wrote half of the Canterbury Tales. Cold stone and cold flesh and quill. Chaucer probably had ‘mad’ bitches, as they say. I wonder if he had any type of lifestyle like the deeply homosexual Italians of Florence and Sicily in the fifteenth century? Who cares…
Corey Taylor is yelling at me. The piles of work layer my desk, and I wish for nothing more than to wrap it up in a tidy bundle with string, and write in large, thick letters on the top: BULLSHIT. But such as this mind rejects outward intuition, I know myself better than anyone, and worse than none. So I’ll do the work, but not tonight, and trust that they meant what they said.
Too many hours sitting hurts the spirit as much as the body, but how quickly we forget when after standing for five minutes after sitting for three hours, that we sit down happily when offered a seat. Somewhere, at some point in history, sitting was culturally incorporated into our daily lives. When all hope is gone, someone will need to mend the world. Will it be those who sit, or those who stand? As far as the seasons go, we can sit and stand until the seas rise far above our tallest buildings. Some will likely still be sitting when it happens. But lets pretend we not at the end. The end is final, thus we are not there yet, and amidst the chaos we pour into time solving this final end, some breakdown and sit while other, cramp-legged and blue-balled, remain standing. Chaucer would have a thing or two to say about that.
A bulbous man passes me on street, above his dry, swollen lips, clung a rogue blotch of mustard. I observe his gluttonous, reckless figure and balding head unscathed of the sun’s warmth. I nearly vomit.
Clenching my jaw and knuckles, I jolt my head to the left in a snapping motion and tense my legs. Too often this heart forgets passed purging and fucking remedies.
Monday, February 28, 2011
In Human We Trust
“Say not that you understand, for I see through thy hollow eyes and into thy soul. Thou doth not embrace Human as his savoir!” The words spewed forth like arrows of fire, the fury on God’s face, however, stood more terrifying than his booming speech.
As he gazed upon with me with hate, I remained silent. The elders formed an arch of angel around God and myself. Wings marked the shadow less realm of sunlight that was heaven.
“Was it not we that were made in the image of Human?” God asked me more calmly, waving his right arm across his body to extenuate his point. “Human created I, and from me I spawn Jesus from my thought. The line of elder is known to you, yet you show no respect for the divine ones!”
“May I speak?” I ask quietly.
God frowns slightly and narrows his left eye as thought he is in pain. Giving me a nod of approval, I continue.
“How is it that we have come to worship a being so frail and impermanent? Though we may be the children of Human, he will soon perish and leave the next Human upon the throne to reign over earth. They die so hastily that we have not the time to orient ourselves with the last before the arrival of the new. Statues are torn down, scrolls re-written, all to accommodate a woman that was a man, or a man that was a woman…”
“How dare you speak the title of their power!” God interjected in rage so sudden I thought he would surely strike me. But he did not, and took a moment to clam himself. “It was they who created us; born of their imagination and kindness. Without Human we would not be.”
“I understand this, but…”
“Silence! Did I not tell you that I saw through your hollow eyes? Your right to speak is forfeit, as is your place in heaven.” God motioned to Gabriel to move forward and restrain me.
“You will render your remaining days in Hell, result of thy own blasphemy toward the divine one.”
“You know not how to cast me to hell!” I yelled angrily, struggling to remain free of Gabriel’s grasp. “Hell is a fabric of Human that we cannot see, we do not even know if the Fiery Lake is yet created!”
“Human will show us our path, for trust in Human we must”, was all God offered as I was dragged away.
Behind me, I could her the faint unison of the elders breathe: “Human watch over us, and we shall not despair, for Human is all that is Holy.”
As he gazed upon with me with hate, I remained silent. The elders formed an arch of angel around God and myself. Wings marked the shadow less realm of sunlight that was heaven.
“Was it not we that were made in the image of Human?” God asked me more calmly, waving his right arm across his body to extenuate his point. “Human created I, and from me I spawn Jesus from my thought. The line of elder is known to you, yet you show no respect for the divine ones!”
“May I speak?” I ask quietly.
God frowns slightly and narrows his left eye as thought he is in pain. Giving me a nod of approval, I continue.
“How is it that we have come to worship a being so frail and impermanent? Though we may be the children of Human, he will soon perish and leave the next Human upon the throne to reign over earth. They die so hastily that we have not the time to orient ourselves with the last before the arrival of the new. Statues are torn down, scrolls re-written, all to accommodate a woman that was a man, or a man that was a woman…”
“How dare you speak the title of their power!” God interjected in rage so sudden I thought he would surely strike me. But he did not, and took a moment to clam himself. “It was they who created us; born of their imagination and kindness. Without Human we would not be.”
“I understand this, but…”
“Silence! Did I not tell you that I saw through your hollow eyes? Your right to speak is forfeit, as is your place in heaven.” God motioned to Gabriel to move forward and restrain me.
“You will render your remaining days in Hell, result of thy own blasphemy toward the divine one.”
“You know not how to cast me to hell!” I yelled angrily, struggling to remain free of Gabriel’s grasp. “Hell is a fabric of Human that we cannot see, we do not even know if the Fiery Lake is yet created!”
“Human will show us our path, for trust in Human we must”, was all God offered as I was dragged away.
Behind me, I could her the faint unison of the elders breathe: “Human watch over us, and we shall not despair, for Human is all that is Holy.”
Friday, February 18, 2011
Servant of a Haven (prt. 2)
*****
I blink, but those first things I see are only wisps of smoke in a valley deep within my mind. The first site I could distinguish was the sky. Not my sky, that I had spent every night an day of my life under, but another sky. I believed myself to be laying. As I lay, seas of distant golden flares and clouds of night danced among stars that I would not begin to orientate. That sky, was the source of my small understanding.
When I stood, I felt fabric upon my body again, and weight of sword belted across my waist. I had not to draw it forth from its sheath to feel its power nor confirm its sharpness. The armour fit perfectly, all straps and links appropriately notched and secured. I turned my head, seeking the great tree, but it was not along the horizon. I felt as though I had awoken in a much different place than I had fell senseless in.
The Turner cranks the wheel, but do I feel it?
Much inside me was changed now, I knew this beyond doubt. It was though I had been improved in every way imaginable. My mind was sharper, my already advanced balance bettered, my vision keener. All that once burdened me or slowed me in life had been removed from my life and body. Anything that did not work to the advantage of my new goal was now gone from me. There was no justifying grief for parting with it.
Gifts for my quest, yet I knew nothing of my purpose or how to exact it. I had to be days away from any remote village or kingdom, and remnants in my mind still could not behold the idea that this place, this haven, was somewhere alongside the world I had lived my life in.
How long would I wander this expanse of land in search of an escape through or over the walls of mountains? Skills rendered useless should the only enemy I find in this haven be myself. Somehow I knew the tree, nor any other power residing in this place would not let me suffer an oblique demise such as that. And nor did it.
My mind blinked, and then I heard it. Grotesque words uttered in drabbled tongue; mechanical and twisted, as if the speakers mouth itself were rusted. Never before had I heard such a sound, and yet it compelled me downward. Staring at the grassy ground that seemed not to support my frame, I denied the barrier and extended forth my right hand. Moving my wrist slightly upwards just once caused commotion in myself as much as it did to the world around me.
The earth below me split apart, tunnelling down into the dark corners of the world. Like a great mine the hole opened. Spiralling down along it edge began a great staircase of cold grey stone that’s end disappeared into the black. When the chaos ceased, my feet stood upon the first stair of possibly thousands of its siblings.
A hole to an unknown part of the world, and I bore my eyes into that descending darkness without fear or complaint. My quest was down, and so down I must go, for should all things fade, the tree must never wilt, nor the haven fall.
I lifted my foot and placed it on the second step.
A soon as I felt the impact of that step upon the stone, I nearly fell for eternity. For the great rigid voice from before echoed again in my mind, this time full of malice and knotted wisdom. Air wrestled up from the black of the hole, from somewhere very unlike anything I had ever known. A strong sense in me told me to move away, that I was diverting from my path, and yet I was already committed as my feet made their own path down the winding staircase into the great abyss of the world.
Cautious I had moved at first, yet now my steps quickened with unknown resolve. Blinded by the moment, I now looked back for the sky above, already filling with sorrow for leaving it. The entrance of the hole was now a mere dot above me, as the stairs had sped me along my path. I noticed then that it was not of natural light that guided my consciousness, but rather my armour. The lines of gold along the black plates produced a faint glow, and thus my eyes were bathed in light that was gifted by the great tree.
It did not happen all at once, but I could not ignore the feeling of being moved to a place of great mystery. The locations within the mind that no one dare explore when they alone can sense what dark power lies behind the veil of secrecy and pain. No. That door remains always locked in the farthest reaches of the mind. And it was now, to that place which I embarked, yet involuntarily.
Suddenly, I was no longer on the stairs of the hole, but on flat ground once more. It was then, that I looked up, and saw it.
Its hands seemed to be part of the Wheel of time itself; the two were one, the Wheel, and its titan Turner. I title the creature “it”, because in all my visions and travels, I had never seen such a form that should be deemed with a name of man. Both the Wheel and its Turner were older than time itself, ancient constructs inspiring the question of who was first: the Wheel or the Turner? Was it the Turner who sought to build the Wheel from nameless materials, or was the Turner created to turn the Wheel? To address the latter, who would then have created the Turner? Surely man’s construct of a force similar to that of gods would be the maker of all, yet against the monstrous site that was the Wheel and Turner I now gazed upon, there could be no higher power. Of this, I was certain. Even the tree paled in comparison. If such an entity existed that could be fit to our expectations of a “god”, then why the need for a Turner at all? No. There was nothing above this which I now stared upon unblinkingly.
Amongst the ancient stone, wooden structures of roots that delved too greedily into the earth, the air was not really air at all. Here, in this dream that was reality, there was only time, and yet time did not touch this room. Time stems downward from the room, and the room only. A dying man once told me that a river cannot flow uphill, and thus when too much of our blood has flowed from our veins, we too, must accept fate. Time was blood.
Cloaked in extremely faded dark brown robes in which roots and clay found sanctuary, the Turner’s face was covered as I had seen it before in my vision. Should there lay a face beyond that veil of black, it would bear unrecognizable traits in relation to man. The thought of whether its hands ever left the Wheel stirred in my mind, as the Turner seemed oblivious to my presence. Should its hands leave the Wheel and the turning cease, would time pause? And should it pause, would we its victims even notice? Such thoughts could drive a person mad I quickly realized, and shook them from my mind by gripping the hilt of my sword.
I was unsure whether the Turner was even an enemy, and should it prove such, could my weapon even begin to harm it? A sudden flare image of the great tree shattered my composure, and the Turner seemed to feel it as well.
Its hands remaining on the Wheel, the Turner’s head snapped in my direction of the room, and my eyes bored deep into the blackness of its cloaked face. The terrible words of the Turner’s language shook the walls of the vast room, and it was all I could do to place my hands over me ears to repulse the powerful words. Dropping my sword, its clang against the stone floor was drowned out by the words of the Turner.
When it finally stood quiet, I removed my hands from my ears and tried to grasp my senses. I was bewildered and awestruck, but I knew in my heart that I, nor anyone, could not stand to bare another string or words from the Turner. Sheer volume and grit from perhaps a never before used voice would be my demise.
The Turner stood perfectly still, head still facing me, and hands always turning the enormous Wheel of time. Ignorant to the meaning of its words, I could compose no semblance of a reply, and chose only to gather my sword from the floor. As my hand grasp the hilt, I could feel the air around me being sucked towards the Turner as it prepared another earth-shaking barrage of language.
Deep within me I felt the utter need to stop it before the Turner crushed my very bones with its words. Gripping my sword until my knuckles turned white, I clenched my teeth and ran headlong at the feet of the titan. It began to bellow forth speech, and the force nearly lifted me from my feet, yet I pushed myself forward, knowing no path but this one.
The volume increased, and I thought my head would simply cease my futile resistance and accept death, but I pressed on. The Turner, perhaps threatened, lifted one of its massive legs from the ground, where it paused suspended in the air for a brief moment before it began to race toward the floor. While completing this unfathomable stomp, the Turner’s left hand slipped ever so slightly from the Wheel’s grips, and the turning pace slowed and clicked with delay by only a heartbeat.
If ever I had thought previous events had shaped my life in an alternate path than that chosen originally for me, I was now certain my eyes would never see again what they should have seen. They would never see what was perhaps indented.
The Turner’s enormous foot crashed upon the floor, but I only began to feel its result, as just then I was cast back upon the descending staircase. The Turner and Wheel were gone from my site, replaced by dark and the faint golden glow of my armour. Gasping for air, I fell back upon the stairs, my armour clanging in protest.
I felt a rising within me, similar to my first thoughts of this place, yet altered. Perhaps it was my memory that had changed, however, for so many lifetimes ago did I awake within the wall of mountains. I then heard the voice of the great tree.
“Deriosen”, the voice uttered.
“My Master”, I breathed.
“Valour could not save the haven.” The voice said lowly, yet reverberating all around me. “It will destroy another as feared.”
My mind whirled in confusion. “I do not understand”, I choked.
“Long has it sought this place, to taint this haven like it has tainted the others. Now, its dream will be realised.” The voice paused, and lay upon the cold stairs was all I could do. “Deriosen, you must see that time has never penetrated the haven until now, and even though it will not for nearly a thousand years, it will come. The haven was free of time, and now the root of the mountains will decay, as will all. You were not the correct soldier for the haven, and failure has brought about this death.”
Suddenly feeling restrained like a caged beast, my muscles moved upon their own accord and I began to flee up the stairs, toward the sky. Yet it felt as though I had ran for weeks and the small opening that was the sky never grew larger to my eyes. It was this that inspired the eternal fear within me.
“Deriosen”, the voice of the tree followed. “You are stuck between the river of time and a haven which resists it. You will escape this dungeon of nothingness in three days after nine hundred years have passed. Until then, your mind must decay as the haven one day will.”
Those were the last words the tree ever spoke to me, for I am certain now that its life-force has abandoned these lands. That day when the staircase closed around me seems like years to me now, yet I have no real way of telling. I reside in this cold black always. Un-aging for time still hasn’t reached this place. The Turner’s hand has yet to reclaim its place upon the Wheel it seems. I know only the dark now, pacing the stairs that lead neither upwards nor downwards, filling only the immense reach of space between titan forces that yank viscously upon my strings.
I have had all too much time to recover the lost fabric in my mind where my past is written, revealing the secrets to my coming of this place. There, deep in the locked door of my mind lies the key to answer of how it was I that came to exists here. To see powers beyond any force of the world, witness armour glowing gold in the darkness and to feel no fear. Pacing the staircase, turning my thoughts always inward, for there is no outward amongst the black of this place.
I search my past for answers to riddles. I accept my title, though diminished, I must wonder still if I remain… the servant of a haven.
I blink, but those first things I see are only wisps of smoke in a valley deep within my mind. The first site I could distinguish was the sky. Not my sky, that I had spent every night an day of my life under, but another sky. I believed myself to be laying. As I lay, seas of distant golden flares and clouds of night danced among stars that I would not begin to orientate. That sky, was the source of my small understanding.
When I stood, I felt fabric upon my body again, and weight of sword belted across my waist. I had not to draw it forth from its sheath to feel its power nor confirm its sharpness. The armour fit perfectly, all straps and links appropriately notched and secured. I turned my head, seeking the great tree, but it was not along the horizon. I felt as though I had awoken in a much different place than I had fell senseless in.
The Turner cranks the wheel, but do I feel it?
Much inside me was changed now, I knew this beyond doubt. It was though I had been improved in every way imaginable. My mind was sharper, my already advanced balance bettered, my vision keener. All that once burdened me or slowed me in life had been removed from my life and body. Anything that did not work to the advantage of my new goal was now gone from me. There was no justifying grief for parting with it.
Gifts for my quest, yet I knew nothing of my purpose or how to exact it. I had to be days away from any remote village or kingdom, and remnants in my mind still could not behold the idea that this place, this haven, was somewhere alongside the world I had lived my life in.
How long would I wander this expanse of land in search of an escape through or over the walls of mountains? Skills rendered useless should the only enemy I find in this haven be myself. Somehow I knew the tree, nor any other power residing in this place would not let me suffer an oblique demise such as that. And nor did it.
My mind blinked, and then I heard it. Grotesque words uttered in drabbled tongue; mechanical and twisted, as if the speakers mouth itself were rusted. Never before had I heard such a sound, and yet it compelled me downward. Staring at the grassy ground that seemed not to support my frame, I denied the barrier and extended forth my right hand. Moving my wrist slightly upwards just once caused commotion in myself as much as it did to the world around me.
The earth below me split apart, tunnelling down into the dark corners of the world. Like a great mine the hole opened. Spiralling down along it edge began a great staircase of cold grey stone that’s end disappeared into the black. When the chaos ceased, my feet stood upon the first stair of possibly thousands of its siblings.
A hole to an unknown part of the world, and I bore my eyes into that descending darkness without fear or complaint. My quest was down, and so down I must go, for should all things fade, the tree must never wilt, nor the haven fall.
I lifted my foot and placed it on the second step.
A soon as I felt the impact of that step upon the stone, I nearly fell for eternity. For the great rigid voice from before echoed again in my mind, this time full of malice and knotted wisdom. Air wrestled up from the black of the hole, from somewhere very unlike anything I had ever known. A strong sense in me told me to move away, that I was diverting from my path, and yet I was already committed as my feet made their own path down the winding staircase into the great abyss of the world.
Cautious I had moved at first, yet now my steps quickened with unknown resolve. Blinded by the moment, I now looked back for the sky above, already filling with sorrow for leaving it. The entrance of the hole was now a mere dot above me, as the stairs had sped me along my path. I noticed then that it was not of natural light that guided my consciousness, but rather my armour. The lines of gold along the black plates produced a faint glow, and thus my eyes were bathed in light that was gifted by the great tree.
It did not happen all at once, but I could not ignore the feeling of being moved to a place of great mystery. The locations within the mind that no one dare explore when they alone can sense what dark power lies behind the veil of secrecy and pain. No. That door remains always locked in the farthest reaches of the mind. And it was now, to that place which I embarked, yet involuntarily.
Suddenly, I was no longer on the stairs of the hole, but on flat ground once more. It was then, that I looked up, and saw it.
Its hands seemed to be part of the Wheel of time itself; the two were one, the Wheel, and its titan Turner. I title the creature “it”, because in all my visions and travels, I had never seen such a form that should be deemed with a name of man. Both the Wheel and its Turner were older than time itself, ancient constructs inspiring the question of who was first: the Wheel or the Turner? Was it the Turner who sought to build the Wheel from nameless materials, or was the Turner created to turn the Wheel? To address the latter, who would then have created the Turner? Surely man’s construct of a force similar to that of gods would be the maker of all, yet against the monstrous site that was the Wheel and Turner I now gazed upon, there could be no higher power. Of this, I was certain. Even the tree paled in comparison. If such an entity existed that could be fit to our expectations of a “god”, then why the need for a Turner at all? No. There was nothing above this which I now stared upon unblinkingly.
Amongst the ancient stone, wooden structures of roots that delved too greedily into the earth, the air was not really air at all. Here, in this dream that was reality, there was only time, and yet time did not touch this room. Time stems downward from the room, and the room only. A dying man once told me that a river cannot flow uphill, and thus when too much of our blood has flowed from our veins, we too, must accept fate. Time was blood.
Cloaked in extremely faded dark brown robes in which roots and clay found sanctuary, the Turner’s face was covered as I had seen it before in my vision. Should there lay a face beyond that veil of black, it would bear unrecognizable traits in relation to man. The thought of whether its hands ever left the Wheel stirred in my mind, as the Turner seemed oblivious to my presence. Should its hands leave the Wheel and the turning cease, would time pause? And should it pause, would we its victims even notice? Such thoughts could drive a person mad I quickly realized, and shook them from my mind by gripping the hilt of my sword.
I was unsure whether the Turner was even an enemy, and should it prove such, could my weapon even begin to harm it? A sudden flare image of the great tree shattered my composure, and the Turner seemed to feel it as well.
Its hands remaining on the Wheel, the Turner’s head snapped in my direction of the room, and my eyes bored deep into the blackness of its cloaked face. The terrible words of the Turner’s language shook the walls of the vast room, and it was all I could do to place my hands over me ears to repulse the powerful words. Dropping my sword, its clang against the stone floor was drowned out by the words of the Turner.
When it finally stood quiet, I removed my hands from my ears and tried to grasp my senses. I was bewildered and awestruck, but I knew in my heart that I, nor anyone, could not stand to bare another string or words from the Turner. Sheer volume and grit from perhaps a never before used voice would be my demise.
The Turner stood perfectly still, head still facing me, and hands always turning the enormous Wheel of time. Ignorant to the meaning of its words, I could compose no semblance of a reply, and chose only to gather my sword from the floor. As my hand grasp the hilt, I could feel the air around me being sucked towards the Turner as it prepared another earth-shaking barrage of language.
Deep within me I felt the utter need to stop it before the Turner crushed my very bones with its words. Gripping my sword until my knuckles turned white, I clenched my teeth and ran headlong at the feet of the titan. It began to bellow forth speech, and the force nearly lifted me from my feet, yet I pushed myself forward, knowing no path but this one.
The volume increased, and I thought my head would simply cease my futile resistance and accept death, but I pressed on. The Turner, perhaps threatened, lifted one of its massive legs from the ground, where it paused suspended in the air for a brief moment before it began to race toward the floor. While completing this unfathomable stomp, the Turner’s left hand slipped ever so slightly from the Wheel’s grips, and the turning pace slowed and clicked with delay by only a heartbeat.
If ever I had thought previous events had shaped my life in an alternate path than that chosen originally for me, I was now certain my eyes would never see again what they should have seen. They would never see what was perhaps indented.
The Turner’s enormous foot crashed upon the floor, but I only began to feel its result, as just then I was cast back upon the descending staircase. The Turner and Wheel were gone from my site, replaced by dark and the faint golden glow of my armour. Gasping for air, I fell back upon the stairs, my armour clanging in protest.
I felt a rising within me, similar to my first thoughts of this place, yet altered. Perhaps it was my memory that had changed, however, for so many lifetimes ago did I awake within the wall of mountains. I then heard the voice of the great tree.
“Deriosen”, the voice uttered.
“My Master”, I breathed.
“Valour could not save the haven.” The voice said lowly, yet reverberating all around me. “It will destroy another as feared.”
My mind whirled in confusion. “I do not understand”, I choked.
“Long has it sought this place, to taint this haven like it has tainted the others. Now, its dream will be realised.” The voice paused, and lay upon the cold stairs was all I could do. “Deriosen, you must see that time has never penetrated the haven until now, and even though it will not for nearly a thousand years, it will come. The haven was free of time, and now the root of the mountains will decay, as will all. You were not the correct soldier for the haven, and failure has brought about this death.”
Suddenly feeling restrained like a caged beast, my muscles moved upon their own accord and I began to flee up the stairs, toward the sky. Yet it felt as though I had ran for weeks and the small opening that was the sky never grew larger to my eyes. It was this that inspired the eternal fear within me.
“Deriosen”, the voice of the tree followed. “You are stuck between the river of time and a haven which resists it. You will escape this dungeon of nothingness in three days after nine hundred years have passed. Until then, your mind must decay as the haven one day will.”
Those were the last words the tree ever spoke to me, for I am certain now that its life-force has abandoned these lands. That day when the staircase closed around me seems like years to me now, yet I have no real way of telling. I reside in this cold black always. Un-aging for time still hasn’t reached this place. The Turner’s hand has yet to reclaim its place upon the Wheel it seems. I know only the dark now, pacing the stairs that lead neither upwards nor downwards, filling only the immense reach of space between titan forces that yank viscously upon my strings.
I have had all too much time to recover the lost fabric in my mind where my past is written, revealing the secrets to my coming of this place. There, deep in the locked door of my mind lies the key to answer of how it was I that came to exists here. To see powers beyond any force of the world, witness armour glowing gold in the darkness and to feel no fear. Pacing the staircase, turning my thoughts always inward, for there is no outward amongst the black of this place.
I search my past for answers to riddles. I accept my title, though diminished, I must wonder still if I remain… the servant of a haven.
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