Snippets and fragments of dreams past, on all things weighty, wise and wonderful:
In the same way that one can discover a freckle, or mole, or wart on one’s very own body with simultaneous surprise, dismay, and curiosity, I once discovered a dime-sized hole in the crook of my left elbow. Peering inside, I stared into the inky depths of the universe, replete with swirling galaxies and anonymous sentry stars. I wondered what it would feel like to stick my finger in there, and I marveled at how I didn’t know I had the universe so close at hand. Any time I wanted, I could just turn my head and look, and be lost in contemplation of the greatest thing there is. All in my left elbow.
—-
I stood on the edge of a bright and bustling town, perfect weather, happy people, and a six-story pink cinder-block, government-style (i.e. no style) building on the left side of the street. I’m on a tour, probably with school. We jostle into the narrow hallways of the building, passing a corkboard with my name and photo on it, among other things. Sigh. They always spell my name wrong.
As the falsely-cheerful inanity spills forth from the tour guide up ahead, I’m distracted with a ‘psst’ from a glinting-eyed mischeivious co-consipirator. He indicates a plain-vanilla stairwell going up, immediately after the entrance doors and prior to the corkboard, with a flick of his eyebrow and jerk of his chin. We skive off the back of the group and trace the stairs upward. Up and up, to floor five. We are aiming for the top, but the way is blocked. The only option is - as MacGyver would warrant - the grate-covered ventilation shaft in the wall to our right.
Setting the grate aside, we roll our bodies over the motion-detector laser beams near the floor, like the garage-door sensor at home. The ante is upped now, for we’re crossing into territory they don’t want us to know, to find. My companion, now, is Mr. Shannon. He says, Come on, it’s this way, we have to get to the top to see clearly. We crawl through the ducts, level, and come out on the roof.
This rooftop, though only six-stories up, is miles away from civilzation below. It’s hushed, and the ant-people below crawl about the gridded streets with surprising slowness and unknown ant-purposes. I look up, and the bright summer sky has dissolved to reveal the dark night sky behind it.
They didn’t want us up here, Mr. Shannon explains wordlessly, because from here you can see the truth. The world is happy, and it is ruled by benevolent aliens, masked as human government officials. People simply could not bear to know the true nature of things, and out of consideration of their peace, happiness, and sanity, the aliens keep their secret well-hidden. They mean us no harm, and it is a beautiful - if unasked-for - symbiosis. It’s best this way, they think.
But you and I, we can handle it, we can know the truth, and it’s right that we should know it. See here - and he holds up a prism-slide from physics class, and looks at the nearest, brightest star, and passes it to me to do the same. See here, through the prism you can see the star shines blue, and that tells us everything. It’s blue like an acetylene torch, and for the same reason. Triple-bonded carbon releases an incredible amount of energy. That’s where they’re from; it’s not a star, but their home.
He takes me aside and we sit down. The fate of the world is this: the earth we know is just an incipient stage for something greater. We may think our world is the most important thing there is - and in some sense that’s true - but in the next acts of the universe’s great play, all that we know will be gone - whoosh! gone, destroyed, imploded, never again - and that’s ok. Really, do you expect anything else? A million years is but a blink to the universe, but the entirety of the human imagination. We are not so great, not compared to this. Our earth will be gone, but it will beget seven other planets, revolving in its stead, and each will have a greater abundance of life than our earth has ever known. It will be a shining, radiant time of organic productivity and thriving. It will not happen to include humans, but that’s alright. We are not the measure of the universe’s progression or success.
I stood up, my mind standing as solidly on this new knowledge as my feet were upon the concrete of the rooftop. I felt only that distilled and dilated knowledge they call wisdom or perspective, the straight-shouldered and lifted-chin stance of unevaluable certainty, and a twang of sadness that this entailed the death of my father. This was the only thing that made me sad. I walked over to a set of stairs going down, and sat with my back against the cinderblock and looked up at the dark sky. For the best, I thought, and looked over at Dad, sitting across from me in the stairwell. I put my head in his lap, and thought: for the best, and maybe there’s a chance we’ll see each other again. Reason enough to be content. All’s for the best in the grand progression without end.
I opened my eyes and laid with the weight of knowledge on my mind. My eyes caught sight of a delicate brown spider on the ceiling above me, some two feet away. It was tan and shiny and the light seemed to pass right through its many spider-legs. It eased its way towards me, in gentle starts and stops, and tiptoed, tiptoed closer, then dissolved and it was gone.
—
More later.
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