as above, so below

Time was an island. This place was where it felt like it all began, and where it ceases to. Memories flashed by in the moment they were made, as we projected into the future, and it was happiness so gratifying.

He embodied gravity, existing so gently you’re none the wiser that day in and day out this is what would keep you. To say he was handsome falls flatly, he was elegant.

Our life was at a milestone, families gathered together to celebrate everything traditional success affirms we represent. Have you ever thought of a word but couldn’t register the literary value until experience abled you to capture the essence of it? ‘Jovial’ was that here.

I maneuvered the room, swaying from conversation to conversation while subtly counting my lucky stars on the one hand, and a word alternatively I knew well ‘lurk’ed into pretence before I could get to the other. Fear was smog. The he is different now, and this He always knew how to clear a room for him alone in my mind- faces blurred and dissolved all around me. I didn’t need to see him to know he was there somewhere; it’s like a drop in temperature activated by our proximity. Comedic relief stopped in crisply to mock my naivety at the whole scene, thinking I could get away with restfulness unscathed.

- Run.

Maybe it’s all comedic, no relief, because the concern weighing on my mind was how to isolate the impact of the encounter to avoid sullying the day for other people, not hopes that this isn’t the time where I’ve gone too far out into my own world, outside of ours- too far outside of his ability to feel me anymore, in a way that was incomprehensible in being so absolute unless I no longer existed. It was a dramatic attempt to save my life and the good time of all parties involved, but sequence is diligent. The blacking out of my humanity to accommodate the dilated void in his gaze and claim me passed event horizon for the remainder of time was thrilling, the slick of blood washing him as if he’d just come up from a quick dip in a pool of my petering existence, backdrop.

- Is this a dream? I've heard it before that you couldn’t actually kick the bucket in one, you’d wake up before the buzzer goes, and bob’s your uncle. I can’t die now.

I opened a door to a gravely white room feeling overlooked due process, mislead, misinformed, though intrigued by an elsewhere. The lighting was just short a few degrees of blinding, less in a sterile way, and with more a cleansing and uplifting air to it. Someone of no distinction met me at the bottom of an escalator. They wore jet-black hair, bluntly cut to bob length, accessorized by a steward hat. The clothes to accompany were tailored, and professional, in a variation of grey light enough to offer the slightest contrast to the background. They took the adjacent stairs but kept pace, never breaking eye contact while dolling out instruction to me, and fellow passengers. We were informed that this was the place after bodily death. Everything is as it is and has a place in the ecosystem- you experience no resistance, just understanding and acceptance. What your thoughts can visualize, it can too create in real time, and what each of us perceives is in prerogative of the mind’s eye. Because in this way the brain no longer has to clear itself of harmful toxins, amassed by noxious opposition to circumstance, sleep and it’s prompts are obsolete. The action of sleep however is ingrained in our total recall. The balancing effect: a constant feedback cycle of electrical stimulation is what keeps your mind relative in this place, cut off the efficiency of transmission while you’re in a lower energy state, as in dozing due to reflex, and the circuit will cease with your consciousness in tow.

The escalator didn’t seem at first like it went on long enough to explain oblivion, but I was sure the place was filled with optimal illusions. At this point we reached the top of the stairs, signaling a nimble close to the lecture. With a hand outstretched and sympathetic look of response to my bewilderment, followed up by one of jubilant excitement, my initial wonderment was restored by the attendant.

The doors at this platform were double with far more grandiose and wide open for entrance. Mine was to be a world of flight. I jumped from the ledge of the platform into my city of elevations. Despite the sun-like light emitting promise on the day the temperature was that of a summer night, neither hot nor cold. It left space to consume the remaining details. This planet was reminiscent of an Atlantis- suspended, ethereal, opulent azure. Everything was through an adept lens, magnified and vibrant. The smell of earth completely consumed me, I was intoxicated.

-I’ve always wanted this.

My thoughts flexed to the possibility of boundless golden-hour beaches, blue-hour mountains, and nighttime city neon, these second natures now up for expansion. The moment followed my tour into evening. I laid back to make vaster the field of view, and immerse in the selection of tones.

The natural ease of my focus fluctuated the details offered by the light into a melding of kaleidoscope figures, flickering and blinking- it reminded me of the Fair at night. The motif danced into strands of twitching, floating ultraviolet, moving in funnel-like momentum towards me, guiding me to it in simultaneous travel. The channel abruptly broke off, granulating into an expanse of porcelain light that adjusted into sand-hued translucence. The landscape ahead of me was fragmented, looking like the topical view of the ground from a plane. In retrospect I can surely say the fissuring framework was that of skin and vein.

I opened my eyes to a room that existed to me prior to any of this, once again feeling cheated something. It was all a dream, perhaps- but that visceral and occupying? Somatization weighed on me while conjuring a form of acclimation. Evaluation came next. It took me through this matrix of the mind, heralded by theories of the quantum, relative, and conspiracy kind. They were cross-referencing with psychosis; my being was metamorphosing in real time. This image of me, hamster-esque, on a self-constellated Rolodex of multi-dimensional existences added animation to injury.

What I decided to conclude was this: we spend time in the reality we find ourselves at any given time accumulating intellectual property to build our castles in the sky. Less doomed to the fringes of our fate, more choice-savvy to the construct.

I'd moved out of the material, into the experiential, and I smiled that peaceful smile of being one with the wildness that characterizes the universe. It’s a powerful place and I'm a part of that power.