the shape of sound

He watched the sounds dance across the water as they gently kissed its mirrored surface ever so slightly, not even causing a ripple and in the same instant, lifting off to then ripple through the air until reaching his ears. One after another and sometimes multiple sounds at once arrived to his ears sounding so right to him, repeating the same dance over and over that he was watching them perform so elegantly. The beauty of the sounds and connection between what he saw and heard placed him in a space where he simply fell into an order unlike he ever experienced before and all he could think to himself to describe the sensation was that everything felt so right to him unlike ever before. He relaxed and his body relaxed and his muscled and bones relaxed and his mind relaxed letting go of so much he didn’t need to hold onto. The more he relaxed, the more he observed the dance of the sounds across the water and the sounds that reached his ears and he began to further observe the nature of this phenomena whereby together this interaction between what he saw and heard created a wholeness that was as real as any shape he ever witnessed yet as intangible as anything that never existed. This dichotomy inspired a desire within him to perceive this intangible shape of sound between his hands so that he might grasp both the feeling and meaning, so that he might further experience the sensation to where he felt he was being led so that he might understand a new mystery he hadn’t known before. He reached his hands outward imagining he could hold the sounds like he would hold a ball or sphere of some kind. Just as he felt his hands were in the right place he could almost sense the shape that he was trying to feel but he could also sense that it was slipping between his fingers and wasn’t quite there as he moved his hands closer together and then drawing them apart trying to find where and what the shape was. Anticipation built and seemed to gather on the tips of his fingers as he felt so close to grasping the shape but then bordering on frustration when he couldn’t feel what he thought he should be able feel. Before he actually became frustrated, he broke his hands from their place, bending his elbow and motioning his arm so that he could run one of his hands through his hair. He didn’t realize that as his fingers moved towards him, they traced invisible canals through the air in which the sounds fell, following along the paths of his fingers eventually running through his hair just like his fingers, between strands and along the skin of his scalp. The sounds awakened new sensations that at first he didn’t realize were caused by the sounds but as his scalp and hair could feel a sense of the shape he was seeking to feel he connected the feeling to the sounds he was observing. He ran his fingers through his hair again causing additional canals to open and they also filled with sounds multiplying the sounds that began to entangle like tendrils in his hair and follow every motion of his fingers. Everywhere his hands moved, the sounds would follow, moment by moment continually increasing the paths for the sound to follow, touching him and connecting him to their elusive shape. An intensity began to build and he touched his hands to his chest and the sounds followed; moving his hand up along his neck and jaw and the sounds followed; touching his face and then moving his hand over his mouth, pressed against his lips in an astonishment at what he was feeling and the sounds followed. He tried again to grasp what it was that he was feeling, moving his hands to try and hold the shape he thought the sounds embodied as the sounds began to encircle him. Concentrating on the shape, his lips parted and his mouth opened unknowingly inviting the sounds inside him. Dancing across his body and through his hair until they kissed his lips much like they kissed the water, with barely a disturbance, and then making their way in his mouth and down his throat further and further in. He felt something familiar stir within him, as if he might locate the shape inside of himself. He inhaled taking more sounds in. He swallowed, taking them further within himself and then exhaled breathing them out through his mouth and nostrils. The sounds were then coursing from the water in a steady stream towards him, wrapping around his body like thousands of rivers all converging over his mouth and flowing inside of him, filling him until he was wholly filled with the sounds and then they flowed out of him, a pattern repeating over and over until he was barely distinguishable from mass of sounds that seemed to be burying him. As he filled more and more with the sounds, they overflowed until they began to come out of his mouth and nostrils and eyes and carried with them his sight as far as the sounds would travel. He was able to see what the sounds could see and he felt the sounds barely kiss the surface of the mirrored water so gently as not to even cause a ripple and it was the most perfect moment he ever experienced, watching the sounds dance across the water until they danced across his skin and filled him, then carrying his sight to also dance across the water together with the sound. His hands outstretched further, grasping at the shape and it was in that moment he felt it but it was more than he anticipated feeling and it was larger than his hands could hold, the weight of the shape overflowing into his arms and like a wave they overcame his body and his whole body felt and discerned the shape and the shape was beyond what his body could sense but his sight extended his senses allowing him to comprehend the nature of the shape and he felt so satisfied at its understanding. In moments upon such understanding the sounds began to recede and withdrew themselves from within him and his finite sight was restored and his senses again confined within the skin of his body and they no longer danced across the water. He could no longer feel the shape of sound but it was imprinted upon his mind and whether he could feel it or not, he knew the shape of sound forever after. 

the great minds

He often observed the great minds as they floated here and there and he always observed the great minds with heightened curiosity whenever they would coalesce together at their randomly regular occurrence of the gathering of the great minds, a formal meeting with no particular schedule where the great minds would discuss stuff. He wondered what made them great instead of being like all the other minds and he wondered what made them any different than himself. One day he was watching them float single file down the hallway one by one as they entered the conference room for one of their gatherings and he had the idea to simply get in line. He figured if he just acted like he knew what he was doing, no one would notice and as it turned out, it worked. He soon found himself in the conference room with the great minds and he took a place towards the back of the room where he might float unnoticed. He could hardly believe he was about to witness what the great minds were about to discuss and he listened so intently. After the discussions began he waited for the truly great thoughts and ideas to be shared. As time moved on his anticipation increased and he could hardly wait to hear what he could only imagine would be so amazing but upon the precipice of what he thought would be the delivery of something truly amazing from the great minds the attention suddenly turned to him as one of the great minds intoned in an observing manner that their new guest hadn’t shared anything yet and that they would very much like to hear from him. After his initial astonishment that he had been discovered and not thrown out he began to stammer and stutter not knowing what to say. He searched but there were no thoughts to form the basis of words to speak. As he was about to form the thought to simply float out as fast as he could float, a voice came out from among the great minds asking him again what he thought. He was surprised to find that the voice was sincere and in that sincerity he found it within him to lose focus on his astonishment and relax so that his thoughts could form and he could share them. He wasn’t sure if the great minds were waiting to laugh at him or expel him from their gathering but after he finished sharing his thoughts on the matter he heard comments of agreement and new thoughts shared that were built upon his thoughts. He listened and listened as the discussion ensued without further acknowledgement of his presence in the room and he realized that not only did they not throw him out, as he would have thought, but that they weren’t ignoring him either. Rather, they continued on with the meeting as if nothing out of the ordinary happened which he realized was because they accepted him. Eventually, the meeting ended and the minds began to float out in single file just as they had entered and he wondered why the great minds weren’t upset with him for attending their gathering uninvited. Deep in these thoughts, the mind in front of him interrupted him and said, “It’s always nice when someone new decides to come in.”

Radioactive Man

meaningful or less

He was feeling so miscellaneous for a Tuesday in June and so he laid his head down to think about a thing or two and what he ended up thinking was that maybe what he thought was meaningful about life was not actually meaningful at all. In reality, this wasn’t the first time he thought that and the reoccurring nature of this thought made him think about the nature of such reoccurrences and he wondered if the reoccurrences spoke to the truthfulness of what reoccurred. A fear gripped him deeply because he had lived for so long with the meaning that he felt was so deeply a part of the universe and he wondered what was deeper, the fear in his heart of the possible meaninglessness of life or the meaning he felt he always knew. He tried to reach down within himself to feel which was deeper and he began to feel some things with a particularity he hadn’t felt before until he felt the edges of something that he didn’t quite understand whether it was his fear or the meaning. He felt and felt some more until he discerned that it was a spherical mass of a certain impenetrability. If he had to guess, he would have guessed that it would have fit in the palm of his hand but would not have disappeared in his own grip and it was in that moment that he realized this was the thing that the fear had gripped but that what he needed to understand was within the sphere and he wondered how to penetrate the sphere to learn of its contents. Was it empty or was it the meaning that he cherished? Time passed and he pondered this matter with weight and intensity and a hope to find his way in and eventually realizing that he was gripping this sphere more tightly than the fear had ever griped it and he realized the fear had been displaced by his own tight grip. This realization astonished him and in a reactive way, he let loose his grip. No longer gripping the sphere, which was also no longer griped with fear, it seemed at peace and relaxed and he also felt at peace and relaxed and in that moment, the sphere itself seemed to disappear yet what occupied it remained and what remained was a spherical space that was empty but empty in way that he had never considered empty could be because it was infinite and invited him to reach further within always going further into the infinite space and he realized that both this invitation and infinity was in fact the meaning that went beyond all fears and meaninglessness that he might ever be imagined. 

the armchair

Back when we had a variety of furniture to sit on and plenty of things to do, nobody really paid much attention attention to what we were sitting on. Days might go by without sitting in an armchair and I can only recall ever finally sitting in one out of random availability more than conscious choice. I guess I just took it for granted that I could always sit in an armchair anytime I wanted and never really thought of sitting in one as a luxury of leisure. But eventually everything changed and we were forced to leave to where we find ourselves now, strangers in a foreign place not entirely welcomed other than to be welcomed as visitors, temporary people that others need not get to know or invest in because our status will never be quite the same as everyone else’s.  We’re fortunate that we were given a place to live and some places to go to occupy our time but we’re acutely self-aware that something is amiss and as a result we can’t quite fall into the invisible routines that so easily evaporate our time by some mystical passage that we never notice until it’s gone and we fall in beds to sleep the night away.  Then again, I’m not sure that was good or bad...but anyways. It’s different when you have to consciously spend each hour without those routines causing an abundance of time to pile up in a day and it’s best not to think of the weeks of incalculable time ahead that you would never know how to spend if you really did think about it knowing you’ll only be left with your memories of what was and what was includes your dreams of what could have been. Still, you end up thinking a lot about those things when you have so much time for nothing. When we arrived here all we had was an empty room and we slept on the floor, which made our nights restless adding to our empty hours. Eventually we found mattresses and they were quite a luxury after having slept on the floor for so many nights but surprisingly they faded into the background quickly and even became ordinary as our only pieces of furniture to sit on and do the things that we once had other furniture for such as tables and chairs and stools and benches and even armchairs. Eventually, someone brought home an arm chair they found somewhere and that never became ordinary rather it was amongst our most coveted of our very few possessions. It wasn't much in comparison to armchairs  from our past life and in all honesty it was kind of dirty but we easily overlooked such details because while beds are better than nothing to sit on, they lacked things I never realized were so important such as back support when you want to sit up. As it turned out, beds were most comfortable when you wanted to lay down on them but you don’t always want to lay down. I’m not sure where we got the armchair but there it was one day and we all commented regularly how lucky we were to have it even if it cramped the little space we had. But with only one arm chair and too little room for too many people, it became quite a sought after piece of furniture and we ended up quarreling over what was fair and who got to sit in it next or who got to sit in it longer. When you finally did get your chance you always wondered how long you had before someone else would complain until you gave up and got out. That’s why someone came up with the idea of the schedule. We could count on the schedule for a reserved time to have the armchair all to ourselves and that gave us some peace of mind while we sat in it and the peace of mind coupled with a slight luxury gave birth to a freedom of mind I had never felt before. And so it became that our prescribed times to sit in a chair, which had once been a punishment, were now looked forward to and served as moments of individual healing from the collective heartbreak we had suffered. I once would not have known how to spend my time in a chair but then I came to look forward to it and absorbed each minute I sat their relishing each thought I had in that chair. Somehow everything was different in that moment. It was as if being stripped of everything I once knew and then given this one moment to look forward to wound my mind up so tightly that once I eventually sat in the chair my mind let loose and things came out of I didn’t know were there.  Thoughts and energies and powers to create and even when I finally allowed myself, hope. I was able to wonder how I might ever resurrect any hope I had ever hoped for and for some reason in those moments in that chair I could do that when everywhere else I was just reminded of who I wasn’t anymore. In that chair I was able to imagine who I might become.  

fire

a true story

Locking his friend in the rabbit cage seemed like such a good idea at the time because it would provide them a certain degree of realism and drama as they pretended to be superheroes. He pretended to be Superman and his friend was going to be Batman. The rabbit cage may just have been an old empty rabbit cage but in his imagination it was much more. The fact that his friend could actually fit inside the cage and that he could lock his friend in there from the outside elevated their imaginary play to something more real than it had ever been before. It was as if they were a little closer to actually being Batman and Superman. The rabbit cage, however, wasn’t entirely empty. It was just mostly empty with a small beehive taking up a fraction of space. He could have seen the bees as a problem but the realism the cage provided far outweighed in his mind any potential risk the bees might have presented. It was too perfect to pass up and he imagined that if his friend kept still and didn’t bother the bees that the bees wouldn’t have any reason to bother him. His friend did suggest that the bees might pose a more significant risk than he was appreciating at the time so they reasoned with each other each discussing the matter from each of their perspectives but he couldn’t accept allowing the bees to ruin the potential offered by the cage especially when it seemed that neither of them could know for sure that the bees would actually sting his friend. It also seemed to him that it would have been very unreasonable of the bees to sting his friend if his friend would stay still and not bother them. Eventually his friend relented and got in the cage. He closed the caged and even locked it to prevent any escape as a supervillain would have really done.  The plan was that once he imprisoned his friend, he would pretend to fly around the house one time and then return to free his captive superhero friend. It all made so much sense to him. His friend wouldn’t be in there long, the bees would have no reason to bother his friend since his friend wouldn’t bother them and it would be as if his friend really had been a superhero that had really been captured by a supervillain and that he would actually save and help escape. Once the latch was turned, he began to run around the house, pretending to fly by outstretching his arms in front of him.  As he ran, his heart beat from the excitement caused by all the elements coming together to complete what he had envisioned. It was so perfect to him except for a certain uneasiness that began to creep into his heart. He ran faster at the urging of his uneasiness and when he finally returned, his friend was crying. He had been stung by the bees. Neither of them were sure how many times he had been stung but just one would have been enough for him to regret ever having even wanted to convince his friend to get into that old rabbit cage. It had seemed like such a good idea to begin with but in actuality, it was not.