Out of Apathy, pt. 17

He stood up with this last statement and I looked up at him. By now I’m sure that my eyes were as big as saucers and I must have lost all my features of wisdom because I felt as if I had become a child again. When I didn’t rise he struck me and told me to stop acting like a fool. Snapping from my daze, I said my goodbyes to the strange hermit and looked up toward the peak of the mountain. In the darkness of night it was difficult to make out the peak, and I was unsure for a moment if it even had one. The mountain seemed to rise higher and higher, stretching beyond the sky and straight into the heavens. For a moment I could feel seeds of doubt sprouting within my bowels, but I remembered the words of the hermit and shook the feelings away. There was only one way, and that way was up. I put one foot forward and made my up the slope.

Though there was no moon out, the night seemed to be very brightly lit by the amount of stars that were scattered all over the sky. It was bright enough to penetrate the trees and light a path in front of me and even if I couldn’t see very far ahead of me, as I walked forward things seemed to illuminate, like I had light coming from my body. The traveling was very easy through these woods and I felt very light even with the talk of “trial” from the hermit. As I proceeded I began to have the feeling that I was being watched, so I stopped to look around. Around me, in the woods away from the path, all I could see was blackness. It seemed that the starlight did not penetrate through the treetops away from the path. I called out to see if anyone was there, but I received no response and the feeling persisted. Resigning myself to being watched by what was surely just a forest animal, I continued onward. After I had gone another few feet there was the sound of movement that was in sync with my footsteps.

At first I couldn’t tell which direction is was coming from, but eventually I could tell that it was behind me. The steps didn’t seem to be human and whatever was walking was very heavy. Now a slow fear was creeping through me because not only was I being stalked by something unknown, it was apparently quite large. My pace quickened in hopes that it would lose interest, but as I walked faster so did it. Finally, I broke into a run, never looking back because now the words of the hermit came back to me. I tried to allow his words to flow through me and find the strength to absolve my fear. Within me I could feel my doubt fading and the fear subsiding, trusting in the hermit’s words somehow brought comfort to me and I stopped running. Right where I was I stopped and so the following steps stopped too. “I do not fear you,” I yelled out and surprised myself with the booming of my voice, which sounded much more like a lion’s roar than a man’s voice, “you will not hinder me any more. There is something building in me that I cannot explain, a passion, and with it I can tackle any obstacle. You are a mere trifle in my path and my power surpasses you. You who trail behind me, but can never catch me. You who would be the hunter to dominate me can never force me to succumb to you because your weapon is fear, and fear is only a weakness. My will to succeed, my Strength, is linked with my passion and together they are unstoppable. Now, go! Pursue some weaker foe with whom you may hope to subdue, but I will not be your prey.”

When I had finished these last words and began my ascent again, there were no trailing footsteps anymore, and though I could still feel eyes watching me, they no longer held any weight on me. The path became suddenly steep and as I climbed up the trees disappeared from around me. From here on I would be climbing up toward the peak of the mountain, but to my left and right I could see wide paths leading around the mountain. For a moment I hesitated because these paths were very appealing because they surely provided and easy route around the mountain; however, I put no lightness on the words of the hermit. In order to meet the challenge I had to go over the mountain, no matter how difficult it seemed looking up from the bottom.

The climb was simple at first because I was able to walk up the steep path, but as I ascended higher I was forced to begin climbing. Large boulders provided a good route for climbing and I found myself making my way up still fairly easily. Eventually I reached a point where I could not go any farther forward and up. In front of me stood a sheer cliff that went straight up at least 20 meters. When I walked around to see if I could find another route up there was nothing except drop offs on either side. As I looked more closely at the cliff there were indentations that looked deep enough for me to use them as holds for climbing. I had only been rock climbing once or twice, but I did fairly well; however, this was a completely different situation. Here I had no safety ropes, there was no trained expert at the bottom guiding me up, and there was no guarantee of being able to find holds all the way up the cliff face. Just when I began to feel fear and doubt making their way back into my mind, I shook myself and grabbed a hold of the wall before they could grip me once again.

My hands and feet gripped firmly to the wall and I was able to make my way up without much difficulty at first. There were ample places for me to grab during the first leg of the climb, but as I went higher they became farther apart. When I reached about fifteen meters up I reached a point where I stretched across the wall as far as I could and it still wasn’t far enough to reach the next hold. Pushing myself as hard as I could towards the hold my toes gave way and my foot slipped out of its hold. A sudden panic came over me in that moment, but I managed to think quickly before the panic had the opportunity to conquer my judgment. With my foot free I swung my weight out towards the hold before I began to fall and I managed to jam my fingers in far enough to grip it. My fingers gripped hard as I swung back and forth like a pendulum hanging from the wall. Using my feet I stopped myself from swinging and tried to find a place to put them into the wall to take the weigh from my hand.

It was then that I realized how little strain I felt in my arm, though I should have been dramatically fatigued from the climb so far and this situation, somehow I didn’t feel the least bit tired. There was no hold near the one my hand was in except one that was about a half meter above it. Before I would never have been able to pull myself up with one hand, but Strength was within me now and making this jump was surely no match for my Strength. Seemingly with no effort I pulled myself up and grabbed the hold with more speed than I had anticipated, so I almost overshot it. As I grasped it with one hand, I reached up with the other searching for another place to grasp, and when I had found one my momentum only increased until I felt like I was barely gripping the wall at all. The last five meters seemed like I was flying up the cliff face instead of climbing, and before I knew it I was at the top. Though I had not yet reached the summit, the rest of the climb seemed less intimidating now and the end was in sight. Suddenly the top of the mountain didn’t seem to be beyond the sky, or maybe I had gone into the heavens without realizing it. Up here the stars not only looked brighter, but much larger to and I could only wonder how things would look from the summit.

Feasting Day

To many in the U.S. tomorrow is thanksgiving or as my wife and I like to call it, "Feasting Day". A celebration of food and family. We will be spending it with her parents and having an almost completely vegan feast. I say almost because her parents will be dining on a meat dish of some sort while we are enjoying her delicious seitan roast. Thanksgiving here in the U.S. is all about the turkey and it is to the point that the President actually chooses one to "spare" from the slaughter on this holiday, which seems sort of silly given the millions who have been ruthlessly and brutally killed to satisfy the cravings of the masses.

For those that know me, I have been vegan for about two years now, and have come to see the strong link between my lifestyle choice and my philosophy on life. There are a lot of ethical issues concerning the use and abuse of animals, too many for me to include here without people thinking "tl;dr", so I think I should focus on the thing closest to this holiday, namely the turkey. First, there is a general conception that people are basically doing the bird a favor by eating it because they are "stupid". While this statement seems to be true based on behavior exhibited by farmed turkeys, it's far from accurate based on the animals natural behaviors. Farmed turkeys are bred fast to be fat and docile. I've heard stories about turkeys standing outside in the cold and freezing to death with an open barn in front of them. The effects of conditioning are pretty astounding, even humans can show this sort of ridiculous behavior if they have been conditioned properly. The wild turkey (where farm turkeys are bred from) does not behave this way and is in fact intelligent and social. So, no we are not doing any favors to the animal by killing it.

So that makes this about gluttony and fulfilling our desire to consume them. To make this palatable desire a reality, turkeys are bred extremely quickly and kept well confined to limit the amount of fat loss. Crammed in dimly lit barns and standing in their own filth many die before slaughter due to disease and stress. The image of the turkey that you see is not the reality:

Image


Reality


The fact is that most people simply don't care about the suffering of these animals because "that's what they are there fore." But what if one asks themselves why that is the case? Consider a dog, wouldn't it be considered animal abuse to raise a dog in such an environment? Yes, it would. There are strict laws against puppy mills. Why is the plight of the turkey so different? People own dogs or cats and think it's awful when someone abuses them, but then they go back to eating that steak in front of them. One can say that a pet becomes part of the family and so it is different in some way. Then we must conclude that is because of how it is raised and not based on species. But then let me present this scenario, someone owns a dog and a cat. The cat is raised as part of the family, given attention, love and kept inside. The dog is raised as livestock, fed to become fat and kept at a distance from the family to be slaughtered for meat later. Most people probably would say that is terrible to treat a dog that way. Why? What is so different? Nothing, that's what. It's all a matter of conditioning. It's someone telling you this animal is for eating and this animal is for loving.

By participating in this kind of behavior, you are showing species-ism. Just as terrible as racism or sexism, but ignored by most. Think about that as you sit down for dinner tomorrow. Think about the life that bird in front of you likely led and the slaughter it had to endure so that you could consume its flesh for no other reason than your own aesthetic pleasure. Was the trade off worth it? If on some level you feel that it might be wrong, then congratulations because you still have a shred of humanity left, but if no part of you cares then I challenge you to examine yourself and realize how apathy leads to so much suffering.

Out of Apathy, pt. 16

The man was dressed in robes that were worn with age and they flowed about him as he strode, making him look quite majestic. His hair was completely white and one couldn’t tell where it ended and his beard began; both of which hung down to his waste. He wore no shoes, but his feet did not look worse for wear even though it was apparent that he had been hiking these woods for many years. Though he didn’t look surprised at my presence he stared at me for a long time. His eyes were small and black amidst the mass of hair on his face, but they were also bright and piercing. The gaze he gave me seemed to go straight through me, and was almost painful. I felt that I couldn’t look him directly in the eyes and turned my face away. Time seemed to stretch on and on, but I knew only moments were passing. Each time I looked up at him, I was forced to turn away.

Finally he spoke in a deep, booming voice that commanded attention, “Well, are you just going to stand there staring at the ground like some kind of groveler or are you going to come and sit with me?” His question startled me at first, not just because we had been in silence for so long but also because I wasn’t exactly sure he could speak. Now it wasn’t that I thought he was primitive in any fashion because his presence seemed educated, but I was surprised he could speak because I had heard tails of hermits losing their powers of speech for sheer lack of someone to talk to. This was not the case, however, for him. Another reason I was surprised was that no one had directly spoken to me in a while now and I was beginning to doubt my own existence! At first I didn’t respond to his question because I was unsure of what to say, but eventually I uttered, “oh, yeah, sure…I was about to…I mean…” “Confound it man! Stop stammering and come with me,” he replied to my incoherence and began walking toward the cave. Despite my apprehensions I followed him into the cave.

Inside the cave was nothing surprising, it was fairly large, and there was a few rocks placed like chairs toward the entrance. A bedroll was rolled up against the wall of the cave, but it looked like it had never been used. Other than these items, there was nothing else in the cave. The man immediately sat on one of the rocks and indicated for me to do the same on the other. When I hesitated he became insistent, “don’t dilly dally, we wouldn’t want to waste time.” I sat down without saying a word and then looked up at him. His eyes were still brilliant in the dim of the cave, but somehow I was able to bear it now. Next, I had one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had:

The Hermit: How is it that you have come into my realm?

-Well, it sounds kind of ridiculous, but…

The Hermit: Ridiculous? I will decide what is ridiculous. Tell me the truth and I will not doubt you. I can see through men.

-I came with a truck driver to a gas station somewhere on the other side of that valley down there, and there was an eagle in the sky who led me into the woods.

The Hermit: Ha-ha! Was that you? (He looked outside the cave at a massive eagle that was perched on a branch; presumably it was the one I had followed before.) Were you leading him to me? You must be something if he led you here.

-I’m not exactly sure what you mean. Do you communicate with this animal?

The Hermit: Of course I do! I talk to all of my animals. They are much wiser than men. Now finish your tale.

-After I entered the woods, I became lost, but a red stag guided me through them and into the valley on the other side.

The Hermit: Oh you saw him. This is quite an occasion. He doesn’t come out for just anyone you know, but we’ll talk about that later, now finish.

(By now my curiosity about this strange man had been peaked, but I knew from his tone that I should ask questions later.)

-When I entered the valley I became lethargic and content and rested against the tree. It was very strange because I became so apathetic, and then a figure spoke softly to me with a man’s voice. He urged me to stay there in that place, but I ignored his words and ran off toward the woods at the base of this mountain. After I passed through the woods, I ended up here by your cave.

The Hermit: That is quite the story you’ve spun there, but I believe every word of it because I’ve seen and heard stranger things and I was there of course.

-Wait, what? How were you there this is the first time I’ve ever seen you.

(And then I realized the truth before he even said it)

The Hermit: Why it was me, of course, who was speaking to you by that tree in the valley. You looked much different then.

-Why were you trying to stop me from moving on? Especially in that awful place…wait, how do I look different, that was only yesterday?

The Hermit: I was trying to save you from the pain of leaving that place. You see, once you leave there, you can never go back. Despite what you might think, you will never find that place again. Was it really awful? Could you say that you have been more at peace in your life?

-No, I can’t say I have ever felt peace like that, but I didn’t feel good either. I simply felt empty and devoid of feeling at all. If I can never go back there, then how did you find me there?

The Hermit: You are making assumptions, my friend. I said that you could never go back that there, nothing in that says anything about me. But because you brought it up I will attempt to explain. I found you there, but when I was there it was a different place than what you experienced. Even though we were in the same place we were experiencing completely separate phenomena. I could tell by your appearance that you were in that place, especially the way you were clutching that clump of dirt as if it were some luscious fruit. I only encouraged you to stay because I too have been there, and now wish I had stayed.

-How is that even possible, experiencing different realities?

The Hermit: Ha! Don’t act so surprised! Surely you have seen things seen things stranger than this. The world is not as neat and orderly as you would like to believe. We like to conform the world into a little box and limit our imaginations, so we can cope with reality. But when you let the world take the lead on your reality, you find much more interesting things can happen.

(I was mesmerized by his words, and despite how unbelievable they might have sounded I took in everything he said, soaking it up like a sponge)

-You never answered me before. How is it that I look so different than last time you saw me?

The Hermit: Don’t think that I had forgotten your question! You say that our meeting occurred yesterday, but what exactly do you mean by yesterday?

-How can you ask such a question? I mean the day before today, of course, before the night passed last.

The Hermit: I stopped counting days long ago. Time only has meaning if you want it to. I am no longer a slave to that tyrant who dominates men! I have fought and defeated time at his own game. ‘Submit!’ he cried, and when I refused he lost all power, turned and disappeared. Out here submission leads to the death of spirit, one must use his Strength and Will to rend his would be enemies asunder. Now, I say you look different because indeed you do. Your appearance is very different than when I saw you last.

-How is that?

The Hermit: When I saw you before you had the look of a young man, naïve, but leery of things that were out of the ordinary. Now you have a much bolder look about you. Your hair has begun to turn much as mine did once. In your eyes, I no longer see youth, but age and wisdom.

(With all that had transpired this didn’t surprise me, but I did wonder if I truly did look older or if I just felt that way. Something about this place was making me feel aged. In the air was the sense of countless ideas that must have passed through this man’s mind. I wondered how long he had been there by my time measurement.)

-Why have I changed?

The Hermit: You have changed because, by leaving your apathy behind and grabbing hold of your passion, you have embarked on the real journey, the pursuit of knowledge.

-But I thought that I had been pursuing knowledge before?

The Hermit: Knowledge is not gained by reading books! The dusty thoughts of some dead philosopher help no one. One must go out into the world to discover his reality. He must speak to the world and listen for its answer. Those scholars locked away in their libraries know nothing of knowledge. Their knowledge is limited by the boundaries of their lifetime, but my knowledge is eternal and because my knowledge is eternal, so am I.

(This last statement stunned me, and my eyes became wide. It was as if I had been asleep and dormant all my life, and now I had been awakened by this man’s words)

The Hermit: At last you realize the truth! I knew you would! Many are unable to understand or accept the true reality of things, but I knew that you would.

-Yes, I do. I can’t explain how, but you have awoken me from my slumber. Everything seems so clear now. Before I would have said that this was an insane notion, but after everything that has transpired I understand.

The Hermit: Then you have begun the transformation. It is long and arduous, but wholly worthwhile. Of course you no longer have a choice. You have already embarked on the journey and you cannot turn back. This place around you is nothing, but the first stepping-stone. It is the plateau where you may rest and survey your surroundings before beginning the climb. Here you can turn and look back upon the way you came, but ahead you cannot. Turning back implies doubt and on this path one must never doubt. This is my sin, I doubted and turned to look down on the path, and now I must remain here. My only purpose now is to lead those who pass through here; however, wanderers are very few anymore because people have lost their faith. They no longer trust their passions, their emotions, the very essence of their being. The people of your time have forgotten their nature and created a new “nature” with laws and morals. Nature serves no one, not even him.

-That is the second time you have mentioned him. Who is he, and why do you regard him with such reverence?

The Hermit: If you knew him as I do, you would never think to ask such a question. This is not because it is taboo, but because he explains himself. He is a guide for those who are lost, a seeker for those waiting to be found. While some animals can be trained and put to use, he cannot be tamed. His presence has always been here, before, that villain, Time was born. Some of the animals have told me that he is the father of Time, and Nature is Time’s mother. She is the fury, the tempest, and he is the guiding light that will lead you to shore. Nature is fierce and has become especially weary of us men, but he speaks softly to her and convinces her that we are trying to right our wrongs. Eventually, he will lose, but not because he is weak, only because Time will be on his deathbed and the end will be at hand. Nature will unleash her scorn upon us, and nothing will remain of our kind. After that, things can begin again.

You must be on the grandest of adventures if he has appeared before you. From what I know, he guides those that are lost, but never shows himself. In all my wanderings of this realm, I have yet to meet him and if it were not for the animals I would doubt his existence. I would put him among those religious phantasms created by ignorant men. Now I see that my rambling is not only hindering you from this path, but it is obstructing his plans. The sun has gone to sleep in the west and the stars are beginning to shine, this is the best time to travel. You must climb the mountain, do not try to circumvent it because this will lead you astray. This is a trial that must be faced. Now my friend, go and do not look back. The path is forward!

Out of Apathy, pt. 15

While all of this had been going through my mind, I could feel myself becoming more and more agitated, which was almost a new sensation. My passions were slowly returning to me out here in the real world, away from the cold, concrete world that had been built up by people. Out here I could feel the ground beneath my feet, and it was soft and moist. This was true freedom, not freedom granted to you by an overarching government, but this was freedom of spirit. In this wilderness I could truly do what I wanted without fear of anything happening that wouldn’t be the result of nature. In the day and age that I had been living, disappearing like this wasn’t really freedom because someone would report me missing and a search would commence, but somehow this was different. I felt that I was really free and there were no worries of ever being found, it was a feeling I couldn’t really explain, it was more of an instinct. Only when one experiences liberty of this sort can that person really understand the lack of it they have amongst other people.

The plants and animals will never censor the things you say. There are no children’s ears to “damage” with “foul” language. No subject is too taboo for the trees. There is no murder because, in nature, one must only survive. One kills only to eat or to defend oneself because death otherwise would serve no other purpose than to boost an ego, but who would that person be trying to impress except themselves. There are no crimes here, no judges and no jury; the human mind is the only thing that can act in this way because it is the only thing with the ability to reason. When one abandons this capacity, one loses the last limit on humanity and returns to the realm of the animals where instinctual morals are the only limits. When these are stripped away, one becomes akin to the plant life that does not have the ability to think or feel, as we understand it, and is free from these limits. Yet as one progresses upward in degrees of freedom in this way, one loses freedoms in other ways. As a tree it is limited by its inability to move or think and as an animal one is unable to reason, in both of these one loses the very thing that makes him human. One chooses to accept the limitations that come with humanity because he does not want to lose the ability to reason. This is why an escape to the wilderness is something that can be so helpful to people because one can return to nature without losing what makes him human. In death one finds true freedom. The sleep of death provides escape from the limits on everything living and one can truly say they are limitless with one exception. The exception is that one is no longer free to live.

Evidently all this thought had taken more time than I realized because a dull light began to pierce the darkness of the sky. I was not the least bit tired and I was able to make out my surroundings once again, so I stood up and began to make my up through the woods. The forest was very dense, so the going was tough. There was no real trail for me to make my way and I had to step along on the undergrowth, being mindful to not lose my footing. If I fell and hurt myself here, no one would be there to help me and I doubt I would ever be found. It was strangely quiet there, I couldn’t here any of the forest sounds that one would expect. There was no breeze, the air hung still and thick. The only noticeable noise was the sound of my feet, padding along the ground, but even this was only slight because the ground was plush. Finally, when I felt that I couldn’t stand this silence anymore, I could see a clearing up ahead.

I quickened my pace and made way for the sunlight. At the clearing, I could hear the sounds of nature once again. Birds were chirping from the trees and I could here the wind blowing through. In the center of the clearing was a small pond, and on the other side of the pond I could see a large cave into the side of the mountain. Just outside the cave was a fire pit that had obviously been well used. The rocks it was made of were all black and charred, and the ashes of an uncountable amount of fires lay inside. This was the first sign of human life I had seen since I left the truck driver at the gas station. Though I had been enjoying the time to myself, the knowledge that someone else was out here was a little reassuring.

I began to wonder what sort of person it was that was out here in the wilderness. Could it have been someone like me who was lost on the way to somewhere, or was it someone who left everything behind to be one with his nature? How long had this person been out here, could he (or she) have been living here for years? My interest was peaked by this last thought and I began to hope that whoever it was had been in this place for many years. If this was the case then I could ask him (or her) so many questions about what was seen and thought about in the solitude. Could this person still even speak with no one else to talk to? I began walking around toward the cave to see if I could meet whoever lived there, and I heard a noise somewhere in front of me. Out of the woods ahead of me came a wild looking man who didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised by my presence.

Out of Apathy, pt. 14

{So it's been a long time since I've posted anything. Sorry about that! I would like to regale you with how I haven't found time to post because I was busy slaying dragons and battling evil wizards, but the truth is that I just haven't posted. Ruby June and I did go Iceland however for 2 weeks, which was pretty epic and amazing! Seriously, go there. Now. On to the next part...}

Once I started walking the brilliance of the stag began to lessen and the sunlight passing through the trees became visible again. I could still see the stag ahead of me, bounding ahead and then stopping to watch me follow. My full concentration was on the animal and I no longer noticed whether I was going up or down hill anymore. As we proceeded through the woods I noticed the trees becoming less dense as I moved forward. Eventually the trees became sparse enough that I could see a clearing on what looked like a peak, and I concluded that I had reached the top of the hill. By the time I had walked into the clearing the stag disappeared somewhere and I was left alone again. It must have been early afternoon because the sun was just past its apex in the sky.

Looking back behind me I could no longer see the gas station in the distance, only a vast expanse of land. In the other direction I could see a low valley that led up into a range of mountains not too far away. Was this direction I was supposed to go? Surprisingly, this was the only question that entered my mind at that time. In my moment of doubt, I felt a low rumbling under my feet and I knew that it was a confirmation of my instincts. On the other side of the hill there was a significantly less amount of trees, so I felt more confident traversing downward. At the bottom of the hill, on the valley floor, the grass was long and lush. The ground felt very soft under my feet and I could hear birds cooing from somewhere. The whole atmosphere in this place was very soothing and began to make me feel quite drowsy. A sweetness filled the air and the smell not only excited my nostrils, but my taste buds as well.

This place was like nothing I had ever experienced before and my determination began to fade because I didn’t want these feelings to fade. My pace began to slow and the path I walked was no longer straight as I was letting my hands pass through the waist high grass. There was a single tree nearby and began to walk toward to take a short break from my journey. Beneath the tree there was a small pond with fish swimming in it. The tree itself was an apple tree and the apples all seemed to be ripe and ready to fall from the sinking branches. I plucked one from the tree, washed it off in the pond, and sat with my back against the tree to eat my snack. Oddly enough I wasn’t even hungry, but somehow the fruit from the tree was irresistible and I just had to have a piece of it. However, before I could even take a bite, the drowsiness I had been feeling became much more intense and my eyelids began to feel very heavy. It was a strange sensation because I never fell asleep, but I couldn’t move; I had fallen into some kind of trance and was unable to shake myself free.

Everything around me became distorted, as if the colors had all been pushed outside of their boundary lines. When the wind blew I could see the changing light patterns on the grass that was swaying. Besides this motion there was another movement, a dark shape moved across my field. I couldn’t tell what exactly it was, but it walked upright and was moving toward me. Finally it stopped right in front of me and seemed to be only inches from my face. “Lovely day, isn’t it,” the shape said to me, and I could only moan some sort of affirmation in reply. After my murmur the shape chuckled and said, “you do seem to be enjoying it. I would never leave here if I could, but I’ve got a job to do. Always work to be done.” The shape’s voice trailed off and it began to move away out of my line of sight.

After my brief encounter with that odd shape I could no longer tell how much time had passed. Time seemed to have no meaning in this place, things just happened as they did. There was never a beginning or end, so to make a temporal reference would be meaningless. One could certainly say that a patch of grass moved in a certain way before moving in another direction, but this observation was pointless because everything was in motion constantly, going back and forth. So perhaps a more accurate way to say it is that time was not meaningless, but just pointless. I would like to say that it was a very good feeling; however, this would be inaccurate. Things were not good or bad, they just were. Somewhere between the two extremes, without either of them actually existing. It was a constant middle state where no decision ever had to be made because none of them mattered. This place was apathy embodied in a physical form.


At some point during my haze under that tree things began to shift. Like someone adjusting the lens of a camera, things began to come into focus and there came a clarity like I had never known before. While I had good eyesight in general, this was a completely different sensation. I perceived colors like I never had before and I could pick out individual blades of the grass moving in the breeze. My eyes had become like those of the eagle who had guided me from the beginning. Then I began to notice sounds around me, not just those of the wind through the grass, but sounds of animals crawling along the ground somewhere in the distance and bugs moving about within the tree I was leaning against.

Just like the stag with its impeccable hearing, my hearing had improved significantly. Along with this sensory improvement related to my animal guides, my other senses had become heightened to an amazing extent. The sweet smell of the air was so intense now that it was almost unbearable, and smell found its way into my mouth, caressing my taste buds. The sleepy state that I had succumbed to before was now off of me and I felt invigorated once again. Despite the appeal to stay in this place, my drive was too much and I bounded off toward the mountains at full speed, dropping my apple onto the ground before I had even taken a bite of it because it suddenly lost its attraction. Only one thing mattered now and that was the path. “The path is forward.” Those words repeated in my head over and over again, they filled me with something that I had not felt before. All that apathy I had felt for most of my life seemed like wasted time with this new found enthusiasm.

Somewhere behind me I heard a voice calling me back, “why are you leaving? I thought we were just beginning to have some fun. Don’t go! Are you just going to leave all this behind? You’ll never find comfort like that you find here!” None of these words fazed me and I didn’t even turn around to see the speaker. The voice was just a distraction, just another thing trying to keep me from my destination. As I ran I felt my pocket and touched the square shape of the picture in my pocket bringing the image of the girl to my mind. Her voice from my dreams drove me harder and I ran faster and faster until the foot of the mountains approached so rapidly that I was unsure if I could stop in time before I ran right through them.


When I had realized how close I was to the thickening trees at the base of the mountains, I stopped running and stopped quite suddenly. The odd thing was that when I stopped there was no surge forward due to inertia; I just ceased to move, like I had run straight into a wall. However, the scenery around me took time to come back into focus and there was some reverberation back and forth when everything around me finally stopped moving. I looked up to survey the trek I was about to undertake and could see the top of the nearest peak at least a mile into the heavens. It was white against the blue backdrop of the afternoon sky and surely cast an intimidating shadow on the other side. The ground in front of me was beginning to climb up the slopes and I could see a dense forest taking shape along the way. Not wanting to become lost as I had before, I searched for a path into the trees.

Not too far away I could see a slight inlet and a clearing, and as I approached it I could see that it was actually a narrow path cut into the woods. The initial ascent was not too difficult and it reminded me of conquering the hill not too long ago, but as I progressed and the day wore on, the surface became much more steep. Eventually I was forced to begin climbing up large boulders. With the increasing darkness I was having a hard time seeing where I was going and was afraid I was going to lose my footing, so I thought I better stop for the night. I found a spot against a tree and leaned there looking up through the canopy.

Sounds of the night began to fill the air, there was the flapping of bats going through the air who were searching for their prey, nocturnal animals could be heard moving about in the trees and various other sounds that make many people nervous when they are all alone. There was no hostility here though; the sounds were actually quite calming because I could feel that life was all around me. No matter where I turned there was something alive, even the tree I was leaning against was alive, though it had ceased growing. I began thinking about the tree and all the things that it must have seen (if it had the ability to perceive). Inside its trunk there were countless numbers of insects crawling about in colonies, and surely in some of the higher parts were burrows in which squirrels hid their snacks. Birds built nests on its branches and gave birth to a new generation, which would continue their species. Around the other side of the tree was a hollow in between the roots; many animals of the forest had crawled into to spend their last days alone. Yet, they were never alone, the tree was there providing a quiet place for a peaceful death.

When the animals would die, their decomposing body would provide fodder for many of the insects living inside the tree and the waste of those insects would give nutrients to the tree. The breathing of the animals of the forest also provided life giving carbon dioxide to the tree, which would in turn provide oxygen for the animals to breathe. Everything out here seemed to have a cycle, and everything out here was dependent on each other, except me that is. I was of the species that left the forest and the plains, the species that tainted the lands. My species had lost touch with everything and began to consume more than it put back. This was the price my species paid for progress and technology.

When the people became comfortable in one place they propagated and began to destroy the land. At first the impact was not so profound, but as time wore on and the people became more advanced the affect became drastic. Suddenly there were talks of disappearing rain forests, global warming, and threats of nuclear war. Was the trade off really worth it? Are the comforts of entertainment and microwave dinners worth the loss of the land? Surely not, because one day the people will run out of resources to use up and there will be nothing left.

Discourse

I have a friend who posts videos on facebook quite a bit. Normally, they are music videos, videos about his sport, or funny things. But sometimes he posts on debatable topics. Recently, he posted a video that related to religion and problems that this girl saw with them. So, maybe that's not all it was about, but it was full of really weak arguments and pseudointellectual babbling. Here is the link:



So I called out some of the bullshit that I saw in the video. His response was less than satisfactory, basically just attempting to dismiss me and say he didn't want to argue.

I'm not trying to make him seem bad or anything like that, but this is something I see as a much bigger problem in general. It seems that discourse is being lost and people are just stopping their ears more and more when someone disagrees. It's especially disheartening when I see it among my friends. My thought is this: if you don't want to debate, then don't post something in a public place. Why would you demonstrate your support for someone's thought if you aren't prepared to defend that belief.

Am I out of line? I don't think so. If someone posts an opinion, I might disagree and I might say something, but if it goes to a standstill because it is a matter of opinion, then I'm fine with leaving it at that. But when someone is spouting something that is not factual, then I feel an obligation to point out that it isn't true. That is what I would expect someone to do for me and I am lucky enough to have someone who does just that for me.

Out of Apathy, pt. 13

It was a glorious thing to behold, that sunrise. The sun appeared to be many times its normal size and because of its low position on the horizon, it created immensely long shadows from the surroundings. Despite the beauty of the sunrise, these elongated shadows gave the morning an ominous feeling. The hills and plateaus around the gas station looked much taller and foreboding, and it sent a shiver through my bones. When I looked back towards that brilliant sunrise, however, all those feelings of apprehension faded and I was again filled with soft warmth. My eyes began to burn and I was forced to look away, but the image of the sun had burned its way into my retinas and all I could see was a large hemisphere that changed color each time I blinked.

As I tried to shake the image from my mind I noticed that the driver and the dog were both missing. I guessed that, while the truck was being fueled, he had taken the dog for a walk, and as I looked off to the left of the truck I could see him throwing a ball for the dog on the grass outside the parking lot. Deciding that getting out of the truck would probably do me some good; I opened the door and began walking toward the driver. He had ceased throwing the ball, and was down scratching and talking to the dog. “I know, boy, we should have been there by now, but that flat tire took a lot of time to fix. We’ll be on the road soon, then we can drop this load and take a nice vacation,” he said to the dog, who seemed very pleased with the plans. “Alright, let’s get back on it,” he said. The dog barked in agreement and bounded off toward the truck, looking back every 20 feet or so to make sure his friend was following.

I decided not to disturb the driver, who looked deep in thought, and stopped to take one last look at the surroundings before heading back to the truck. From here, those tall shadows looked less intimidating and I no longer felt that chill that I had before. Above me, there came a cry, so I looked up to investigate and saw a bird of prey gliding high in the sky. There was another cry and I began to wonder what it was calling to. It was then that I noticed the bird had been circling around where I was standing. When I moved to test this notion, the bird followed; however, its circles became a little elliptical and it seemed to be leading off away from the gas station and toward the hills. When I didn’t follow, the bird began to fly lower and its cries became more insistent. This lower altitude provided me with a clearer view of the bird and I could see it was a golden eagle, which struck me as strange because one doesn’t usually find them where I was. I could feel those sharp eyes burning into me and I could no longer resist its calls. When I began following its lead, the cries stopped and it took a more straightforward course ahead of me, but it was careful to circle back and assure my following every once in a while.

At this point I should have been thinking about my ride leaving without me because the driver is surely more concerned with his job than my transportation, but I was under some sort of spell by this bird. The hills that seemed so far away were suddenly right in front of me and seemed more like mountains from my position at their feet. The trees, which had been sparse before, were suddenly denser and I lost sight of my aerial guide. Ahead of me I could hear its cries once in a while, but they slowly faded until they altogether disappeared. Finally, the realization came over me that I had most likely missed my ride and was now lost in a strange wood. As I progressed I came upon a clearing with a large rock jutting from the side of the hill. In an attempt to gain a better view I clambered to the top of the rock and surveyed my surroundings.

The rock was sufficiently tall that I could see over the trees down the hill from me and see out across the field that led to the gas station I had come from. Apparently I had walked several miles in what seemed to be only a few minutes because the gas station was barely a speck in the distance. Fear began to creep into my mind because I was now in an unrecognizable environment and my ride had disappeared. From my experience, panicking is the worst thing one can do in a situation like this, so I sat down and tried to figure out what I was going to do. When I did so, a voice began to speak from somewhere. “You cannot go back. The path is forward, to retread old steps leads only to despair. The path is forward; you must face the fear of the unknown. The path is forward,” it said, but it was not a voice that I could describe in any meaningful way. I heard the voice, but not with my ears, nor was it inside my head; it was more of a feeling, or a vibration throughout my being. Stranger than this fact was that I understood exactly what the voice meant and stood up to make my away onward through the hills.

The path through the trees began to disappear and I had to make my through the dense forest with only an incline as my guide. Despite my walk uphill, somehow I found myself walking downhill without realizing it, so I turned around to walk back up the hill, but again a few minutes later I was going downhill again. Not only was the slope changing from uphill to downhill, but also the surroundings became more and more familiar as I realized that I was walking in circles. How I was walking in circles, I wasn’t sure because there was never any noticeable change in direction, as I was walking in a mostly straight path. A disturbance off to my right caught my attention and I looked over to see what had caused it. There was a stag standing not too far from me, and he was staring deep into me. His gaze seemed to look right through me and see into the very essence of my being. In the same way as the eagle before, the stag seemed to beckon me onward, and I felt the voice, again, resonating through me, “The path is dark. You will need a guide until you find what you seek. Many become lost here, but all find their way when they follow the light ahead.” It was then that the woods began to grow very bright, as if some brilliant star was there, illuminating the woods. However, there was no star, the light was coming from the stag. He had become a beacon for me to follow and the rest of the woods had become dark except for the narrow path of light from the stag that led right to me. With a new found assurance I began walking in the light unafraid and full of determination.

Out of Apathy, pt. 12

There was the sound of a car coming down the road, so I turned to try and flag it down. The headlights washed over me and I began waving my arms frantically and yelling for them to stop, but I was ignored and they continued on past me into the darkness. With a sigh I looked back towards the events that were happening above me, but to my surprise the stars had all resumed their normal positions and it was as if all that I had seen never occurred. Feeling very confused, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. After feeling the sharp pain and nothing changed, I resigned myself to the fact that I must have imagined it and continued on my path. After walking for what seemed like ages, I began to see some light up ahead down the road. I let out a slight cry of joy and began to quicken my pace toward the lights.

It was an odd sensation, however, because I felt that no matter how fast I walked the lights remained the same distance away, as if I was walking backwards on a moving sidewalk one sees in an airport. Becoming more and more frustrated, I began to run toward the light, but the lights didn’t move. To my left and right I could see the scenery changing, so that I knew I must be moving (and in a forward direction because the landmarks on either side of me were moving behind me). I began to push myself harder and began running faster, but somehow I didn’t lose my breath and my legs never felt any more tired. The hills and plateaus out in the distance moved faster and faster away from me, until I could no longer recognize their shapes and everything turned into a blur. I focused ahead of me on those lights, which were just out my reach, and they still remained the same distance away.

I was moving so fast now that everything turned dark around me and I couldn’t see anything except the lights that were ahead of me. Finally, I realized that I was never going to make it to the lights in this way. I was moving at the speed of light (at the time it did not even occur to me how absurd this idea was) and everything around me had disappeared because the light could not reach me, but because I was traveling in the path of the light from those lights I was chasing, I could still see them. Whatever those lights were being emitted from was moving away from me at the same speed I was travelling. So I stopped running and began to feel a sense of hopelessness. How was I ever to catch up?

Something then creeped into my mind that I had learned once, and that was that the speed of light is a universal speed limit and nothing could break it. I began to think about what I could do if I couldn’t break that limit, and then I realized that I could just be there. The power of thought could be my transport to those lights, my thoughts existing outside of space and outside of time, and therefore not succumbing to the limiting laws of physics. We are limited in that we make such laws for ourselves, if we would only let our minds be free of such rigid structure we might see that the things we think are impossible, actually are possible. Our world is limited only by our mind, and our mind is limited by our rational element that dominates our imagination. In this world anything is possible, but we must allow our imagination to lead the revolution and take over our mind. All this went through my mind as I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, when I opened my eyes again I was in the middle of the parking lot of the diner I had eaten at not that long ago.


The bright lights hurt my eyes because they had become so adjusted to the darkness in which had been moving for so long. Inside, I saw the tired waitress standing behind the counter filling up another cup of coffee for the truck driver who was harmlessly flirting with her. “Come on, I’ve got a big ol’ sleeper. You can come ride with me to Beaufort. It’ll be fun, and I swear I’ll be nice,” he smiled with a wide grin and innocent eyes at the waitress. She just shook her head, and gave him only the slightest hint of returning smile, but this was the most she could muster. He shrugged and then continued to drink his coffee. Around the corner of the building I found a pay phone and tried to make a call to triple A, but when I picked up the receiver all I heard was silence. I hung it up, and then tried again, still I heard nothing; so I made my way inside to see if they had a phone I could use inside.

When I walked inside I tried to get the waitress’ attention, but she seemed to look right through me and stare off at something far off in the distance behind me. The look she had struck me as odd because it wasn’t as if she was simply glazed over, but really seemed to not even recognize that I was there. “Excuse me,” I said and waved my hand slightly to try and break her concentration. The only reaction she gave was that she began to wipe down the counters, so I tried again several times and received the same result. Frustrated, I walked back outside to gather myself before I made another attempt. As I paced outside the man who had been flirting with the waitress came out and made his way toward his truck, then it struck me. Even if I am able to call and have my car towed somewhere, there is no way I could have it repaired, it was totaled, and I was being driven on this mission, of sorts, by some unseen force that I could not ignore. The truck driver’s words stuck out in my mind because he had said he was going to Beaufort, which was on the coast and could be my venue to set out and find the girl in the photograph.

I chased after the truck driver trying to get his attention as he was getting into his truck, and just as if he could read my mind, the passenger door opened and I was let into his truck. I climbed up onto the seat and thanked him profusely for letting me in. He didn’t respond, but seemed to nod in acknowledgement. He then let out a loud whistle, and just as I was about to shut the door, I heard a bark right next to me. A dog came springing out of the darkness, jumped in over me and climbed back behind the front seats in the cab. After some sniffing about his head reappeared between the seats and the truck driver scratched behind the dog’s ears and said, “let’s get back on the road. We should make it by sunrise, so you get some sleep.” I said thanks and as the engine started I sank back into the seat and fell asleep.


It was strange that I fell asleep so quickly because I seemed to have been spending most of the night sleeping with my late start going to work and being knocked unconscious after the accident; however, I hadn’t slept much the day before, and with all the trauma, I believe it was to be expected. There didn’t seem to be any transition into the dream-state as I continued to perceive everything happening around me. The lights of the truck flipped on and illuminated the parking lot, and soon enough we were driving down the road. Everything around the truck had become dark. The stars seemed to have been blotted out of the sky by some great ink well that had been spilled over the entire canvas.

All the shadows of the hills on either side of the highway disappeared, and the only thing that was visible we the narrow corridor of light in front of the truck. The driver seemed to be in his own world and concentrating on the road, so I didn’t want to talk to him and break his focus. As I stared ahead into what I could see from the glow of the headlights I began to notice the column of light becoming shorter. Like we were driving into an dark fog, the lights had less and less of an effect on the darkness around us, but the driver didn’t seem to take any notice of this. The truck also seemed to be accelerating, not as if the driver was trying to make it go faster, but as if we were being pulled forward by some tremendous force. I sat up in alarm as I felt the truck go faster and faster, and watched the lights get closer and closer to the truck until they almost faded completely and left us in complete darkness. “Do you see that?” I cried out, but the driver maintained his composure, as if nothing was happening. I wanted to shake him loose from his spell and yell at him, but I realized that that would not accomplish anything and it might even insult him. He was a professional driver after all and judging by his reaction, he must have encountered situations like this before, or he was asleep at the wheel.

Finally the light completely faded and suddenly a strange thing happened. The terrible pulling sensation I had been feeling grow stronger by the second ceased completely. Furthermore, I no longer even felt the vibrations from the wheels on the ground or the hum of the engine. I was now all alone in a dark void with no signs of anything around me, and it occurred to me that I could not feel the chair beneath me anymore and when I reached out I couldn’t feel the interior of the truck around me. Somehow I had been taken out of everything and been put into nothing, into vast emptiness, if it can be called vast. When there is nothing, it cannot be really described because to describe it would be say that there is something to describe. The emptiness wasn’t just a feeling of being surrounded, but it was feeling that fully consumed me. My entire being felt empty, it wasn’t lonesome because there wasn’t anything to be longing for, but it was painful nonetheless. Painful might not be the proper word either because pain insinuates a cause, this was a feeling that cannot properly be put into words.

Imagine being drained of everything that makes one human; all emotions, passions, longings, just everything, and all that is left are thoughts, empty analytic thoughts. Here there was no time and no space, so there was no reference for description, and I cannot say how long I was there, but I would have spent a million lifetimes in the most horrible prison on Earth than to have remained there. In the darkness there came a light, small at first, but growing in intensity. As the light began to grow brighter and seemed to come closer, I began to feel again. A warmth began coursing through my veins comforting me. The light began to take on a recognizable shape as it came closer; it was the shape of a woman daintily walking toward me, swinging one foot in front of the other. She began to speak soft words to me that made me shudder from pure adoration, “Pas encore amour. Tu as besoin de réveiller!” When she said this last line the light she exuded become so bright that it burned my eyes and I was forced to shut them. When I opened my eyes again I was back in the truck and we were pulling in to a gas station, and the sun was rising on the horizon.

Out of Apathy, pt. 11

It had been a long time since I had seen my own face. For such a long time my routine had become so drilled into my brain that I did everything without even looking up. When you haven’t seen your own face for an extended period of time, it is very strange to look upon it. In some ways it is like being a baby once again, playing with different expressions to see what they look like and moving about in odd ways just to make sure that it is really you. Once the water had become smooth again, I could see myself clearly. My eyes looked so tired, like I had been awake for weeks, which was not too far off because the sleep I had been getting wasn’t exactly what one would call restful. Many nights I didn’t even dream and it seemed that as soon as I put my head on the pillow, the alarm clock was going off telling me to get up to go for work. Other nights my dreams were so draining it made me wish I hadn’t gone to sleep in the first place.

I realized another curious thing when I was looking at my reflection, and that was how desensitized I had become to everything. Before that night, I had let my emotions all but disappear. All my passions had been sucked out of me and I no longer felt any drive to do anything. It was as if my soul had left my body completely leaving just a robot made of flesh and blood. There were certain functions that had become automated, and I continued to perform them with my brain simply shut off. There was a certain amount of comfort in this state. It allowed me to not dwell on problems in my life and at the same time completely ignore those of the people around me.

Without passion though, was I really human anymore? With no creative energy or emotions, how was I any different than a computer program? And then all at once the program ceased and my brain clicked back on. There was surge of emotion that had been pent up for so long, and it released like an arrow let loose from its bow. I was brimming with passion, passion for what? Not for what, but for who; a passion for this girl whom I had never met, but had felt like I had always been in love with. She was the catalyst that I needed to restart my psyche. She had resurrected me, brought me back to life, and I just wanted to give her my thanks.


After staring at myself for what felt like hours, I stood up and began to really become aware of my surroundings and my current situation. There wasn’t really any choice for me and I began to walk back toward the diner down the road. I stuck my thumb out hoping that someone would pick me up, but there were very few cars out on the road and even if there were more, I’m sure that picking a stranger up late at night on a deserted road is something they could do without. The walk was good for me though; it gave me time to really think about how I had sunk to the sad state I had been in. It must have been a year or so before that night. That was about the time that the girl I had devoted myself to walked out on me.

At the time I gave her everything I had, and it still didn’t seem to be enough. She reciprocated my compliments and repeated the utterance when I told her those three special words. In my delusions, I became blinded to the disintegration of my spirit and of our relationship. Any interest she had ever had in me vanished and I began to cling to her desperately. Finally, one day she walked in and told me that she was leaving. It felt as if my spine had been ripped from me and I just sank into a pathetic heap on the floor. After a few minutes of blubbering and begging, she told me to shut up and said that that was the reason she was going. She had become my crutch because I had given so much that there was nothing left for me to support myself. I denied it vehemently, but looking back on it, she was right.

After she left, I was so defeated and stuck in my own self-pity for months. When my feelings for her started to fade, however, I didn’t feel any better. Instead I began to feel nothing at all. Apathy had become my new best friend, and it consumed my life. People would try to converse with me and I would give one word responses, and sometimes I would simply ignore them. This life deteriorated more and more until I lost all my senses completely. My body went through all the actions for me and I no longer had to think about anything. I had left my body completely and seemed to be observing myself from some other plane. Up until that night of the accident, this state persisted. Then all at once, in the span of a few hours it disappeared. Needless to say it was a little disorienting.


The walk began to become very dull as the frequency of cars decreased to the point where I went an hour without seeing one. I began looking out into the vast expanse on either side of the road, examining my surroundings. There were low hills and a few plateaus that could barely be seen against the dark background. These shadows looked as if they were simply chunks that had been taken out of the starry sky. They looked as if some great being had taken a giant cookie cutter to the low sky. Looking up from the hills I could see the North Star and a few constellations.

With my small knowledge of astronomy, I managed to find Orion perched in the heavens, bow in hand. Orion had always been my favorite constellation; I love his warrior stance with his two hunting dogs, fighting off Taurus the bull. As I stared at Orion, the form of the stars began to blur and take on a much more human like appearance. Taurus, the bull, also began to look much more like a bull. I stopped and rubbed my eyes to try and clear the image up, but as I did I could hear two dogs barking violently in the distance. Looking back at the sky I could clearly see the transparent image of a warrior, with his sword drawn, two hunting dogs, and an angry bull stamping its hooves. As I stood in awe of the scene, the figures began moving about in what seemed like a synchronized fight amongst the celestial bodies.

The bull charged and Orion swiftly moved out of the way and struck the bull with the flat of his sword. This struck me as odd, not only because of the absurdity of what I was seeing, but because his life seemed to be in immediate danger from the bull, so killing it would make more sense than just striking it and making it more angry. After Taurus had made his pass on Orion, I could hear Orion laugh. It was a great, deep laugh that shook the ground beneath my feet. This made the bull snort and the bright glow of the stars in his eyes became red as he made preparations for another charge. The two dogs moved right in the bull’s path, in front of Orion, but quickly moved out of his way, yelping with their tails between their legs. Orion, on the other hand, stood his ground. He sheathed his great sword and put his hands up in a ready position.

To my astonishment he seemed to double in size and when the bull’s great horns were upon him, he seized them with his bare hands and stopped the bull dead in its tracks. After some pushing back and forth, Orion managed to twist Taurus down and held him down. Taurus fought hard, kicking, snorting, and trying to move his great horns out of Orion’s grip. His struggle was futile however, and eventually he submitted to Orion’s superior strength. After this, Orion let Taurus up and patted him on the back. He then said something to Taurus, but I couldn’t understand what it was because of the rumbling his voice caused in the ground. I did see a glimmer however on the horizon, it was the shape of a woman and she was smiling looking at the battle. She seemed to be satisfied with the result.

Out of Apathy, pt.10

The scenery around was dark and slightly damp. The air became cool enough to allow moisture to condense on the greenery around. Stars shone above intermittently between the sparse clouds that passed by illuminating just enough to determine the surroundings. There was a stream running in the center of the ditch that seemed to have been the landing site from some terrific event. Upon climbing out of the ditch the car could be seen on its back and badly damaged with the wheels still moving furiously like an overturned turtle desperately trying to right itself. Somehow the memory of the events that led to this position was missing and only two bright headlights in a sea of blackness could be recalled.

The highway wasn’t too far off, but there were no police, no other vehicle involved in the collision, nothing but cars passing by once every few minutes. The air was quiet except for the whirring motor of the flipped car. Approaching the car to shut off the engine, confusion slowly dissipated into worry over the predicament of how to get back to civilization. Only one solution presented itself and that was to walk. Not the most appealing idea since it was the dead of night, cold, and between fifteen and twenty miles back to the diner. A cell phone would come in handy in a situation like this, but going day in and day out seeing everyone walking and driving while talking on their phone can lead someone to do drastic things, like hurling a cell phone off the roof of a thirty story building. Some people might not understand an action like this, and yet others probably more than relate to it. The satisfaction that arises from seeing this pinnacle of modern technology explode upon the asphalt greatly outweighs the horror that follows when it is realized that phone numbers are no longer memorized; they are stored in electronic devices. Also, not having a home phone greatly limits the ability to contact family members and friends or to receive the calls from work when someone is chronically late. The weight of the circumstance was becoming more and more apparent, and stress began to creep its way into the mind. Walking back to the stream, to find some sort of refreshment and grounding back to reality, a splash of water was a welcome help and as the circular ripples began to dissipate a face took shape in the water. This reflection was startling and almost shocking. The reflection was of me.

Out of Apathy, Pt. 9

There was not much of a wait before the food arrived and was quickly devoured because of the thrill and excitement of this adventure. After paying the bill an ample tip was left on the table in hopes that it would help provide a little bit of happiness for the waitress with the sad eyes. While filling up the tank with gas, the sun began to rise on the horizon. The orange and purple glow that had been slowly growing brighter now revealed the top of the brilliant yellow orb that was the sun. Reflections from the sun made the wasteland surrounding the truck stop emit its own gleam. Everything looked as if it had been illustrated by soft brush strokes, and the depth of this panorama became hypnotizing. When the pump clicked because the tank was full, it seemed to destroy this euphoric state and renew the dismal surrounding's reality. Jumping back into the car, it roared to life and sped off down the highway continuing the trek onward toward the coast that was, who knows, how far away.

“You belong to me” by Patsy Cline was playing on the radio, and despite the loudness of the wind rushing through the open window, her distinctive voice could be hear gently singing, “Fly the ocean in a silver plane, See the jungle when it's wet with rain, Just remember till you're home again, You belong to me…” The air seemed to be moving and responding to her voice. It was whispering the words at the same time as she was, emphasizing each line as if it were the most important words one should ever hear, and that missing even one of them would be like missing out on the very essence of existence. That voice was so easy to get lost in, staring at the horizon with the sun rising on the casting its warm rays down. Just like at the pump, the scene was mesmerizing and the surroundings melted away until all that was left was a comforting glow, the feel of the wind and the sound of Patsy Cline’s voice.

This wave of euphoria is normally something that many seek throughout their lives. States like this are not easily come by and for most require deep meditation and relaxation, and yet it just seemed to happen. Perhaps that is the key to attaining peace within one’s self. Not to spend years studying the words of long dead minds, not to work hard practicing ancient techniques and not to spend years trying to ignore the surroundings through meditation. All that was required was to simply become lost in the surroundings, not forget them. To let all the senses run wild and take in as much as was possible, that was the key. In this place, the sensation of an entire Universe becomes vivid and though one is lost, they find themselves. Normally, all of this is a good thing, but when the car is cruising down the highway at seventy miles an hour and drifts into the path of an oncoming truck, it is not the most desired of places to be.


Many people say that just before death one’s life flashes before his (or her) eyes; however, this isn’t the case. When death comes upon a person, it is swift like a hawk diving down upon its prey. There is no time to reminisce on past experiences, only time to sigh and say goodbye before sleep envelopes all of one’s being. Depending upon the death that one is about to meet other actions might occur, such as: the face contorting into a horrific expression of disbelief at the prospect of the terrific pain that is surely to come, a cry out to loved one’s who are sitting next to the bed waiting for the final moment with baited breath in hopes of a large inheritance, or various other small things that don’t seem to matter much because the end result is still the same. There are times, however, when not everything goes as planned even for such a merciless killer as death.

After the inevitable happens there are those who look back upon their body and feel a great pain at the loss of all their earthly pleasures, so they attempt to return to their now lifeless bodies. Death’s grip is strong, but some individuals’ will is far too much for even death to hold back. So these people return to their lives on the mortal plain and talk about the things they have seen and the icy grip they felt as they were being torn away from their bodies. Not everyone has the same experience during this time though. Some people say that they see a white light at the end of a long tunnel, others say that there is a voice calling to them and they run toward it, another group says that they see their loved ones at the end of a long path, and still others say that there is just nothing in death, but a vast emptiness. Such questions about what happens after death have plagued humans since they began to think and reason. Their fear of death has developed into belief structures where all-powerful beings exist and guide them through life and death or into a belief that when they die they will return to the Earth in a new form.

Many people scoff at the idea that once one dies, he/she is simply dead and does not exist anymore. His/Her essence simply ceases and doesn’t go on to greater things. Most don’t like this because it is not a very comforting thought, but there are those who believe it nonetheless. But can one really believe such an idea? For sure one can talk about it and accept it, on the surface, because it is such a simple idea, but to truly believe in something one must accept it in it’s totality and try to understand it completely. In this finite life that humans live in, where life begins when they are born and ends when they die, can one truly fathom the idea of not existing? Human minds are finite things and one cannot completely comprehend the concept of nothingness or infiniteness. There is always a search for the beginning and end to life and everything.

With recent developments in science there has been the Big Bang Theory which gives people a starting point for the Universe, but this theory still begs the question, “Where did the stuff that was in the big bang come from?” The idea that the cosmic stuff of the Universe has just always existed is a seemingly ridiculous notion to humans. An even more mind bending notion for humans is that there was nothing before the big bang simply because time did not even exist before the big bang, so how could something exist without a reference to time (and space since there was no space before the big bang either). Is it desperation that drives humans to refuse to accept such notions or is it as simple as that there is no possible way for them to comprehend such an idea and it must be left up to their God. In the end, perhaps the afterlife is what one makes it and it really only exists in the mind, which persists outside of space and time, and exists forever like an endless dream.


Watching late night TV gives a glimpse into the severity of some people’s delusions and their unwillingness to accept any sort of reasoning. It seems that some religions are so hell bent on keeping their afterlife an exclusive resort that they will persecute anyone who believes otherwise. The largest example that comes to mind is those people that fall under the denomination of Christianity. More than one church of this sect has stated the fact that not believing in their God, not having faith in "his" presence in everyday human life, and not affirming that "his" son died on a cross somewhere in the Middle East for their sins is a one-way ticket to hell. Yet they proceed to refer to their God has benevolent and merciful. Furthermore, when the curious mind searches for any sort of proof or logical argument towards this belief system and even more simply, their God’s existence, the response is simply that one must have faith and accept it.

Faith seems to be quite the controversial word. For the religious mind it is the end of all arguments, but for the curious or scientific mind it seems preposterous. Initially one who is not part of a religious sect would consider the word faith to be mere fluff, but further understanding of the word can help to show that it is not just a word meant for the religious zealot. Through science, evidence is gathered and piled up. Scientists then use this evidence to come up with theories about the subjects they have been researching; these theories are then tested rigorously to see if they hold up in reality outside of the paper. If the theory survives the assault the scientific community accepts it and may turn it into scientific law, at least until another, more accurate, theory comes along. However, though there may be mountains of evidence toward a theory, one can never say that it has been proven. This is because most of science uses inductive reasoning to justify its theories. Inductive reasoning implies that the outcome is assumed from the evidence, but isn’t shown directly from the evidence. This is where faith comes into play; a scientist must take a leap of faith to go from theory to law. She must have faith that her evidence is accurate and well founded, and that all her calculations were done correctly. If she believes all of this then she has faith that her theory is true.

An example of this sort of faith and where it fails is Isaac Newton. Newton developed his three laws of motion and through testing they were found to be mostly accurate and were accepted as laws of physics. Then in the early twentieth century Albert Einstein changed the way physicists looked at their field by showing that Newton’s laws were lacking. Einstein was eventually able to shatter the faith that Newton’s laws were entirely accurate and represented reality. From that event a new faith was born, a faith in Einstein’s new laws. Faith can be broken down even more into everyday life. A person may have a friend that he trusts whole-heartedly and he would never think that this friend would betray him because he has faith in their friendship. This person can never say for sure that his friend will never betray him, but he is willing to accept the friendship on faith based on his prior experiences with this friend. An even further simplification might be the simple notion of color. One can identify the color and is reasonably certain that whatever object is blue will remain blue, but it is just as likely that it could change and become green. Yet based on this person’s previous experiences he will have faith that the object will remain blue. All of this breaks down into philosopher David Hume’s problem of induction, which has yet to be resolved despite the attempts of many philosophers. In the end all that remains is faith. Not faith in God, but faith in science and scientific theory. Taking this into consideration, one can’t help, but ask themselves: does knowledge of anything outside of mathematics really exist? Or, do the definitions within mathematics really exist?

Out of Apathy Pt. 8

She smiled as she leaned back to stretch her body out in the still night air and continued on her seaward path. A gentle roll over onto her stomach allowed her to look down upon the city below to examine the happenings of the night. The city seemed dead at first, the streets vacant and lifeless, but as she began to cross over the city’s center the scene below became illuminated with various colors and shapes around the sculpture in the town square. Small swirls of yellow and orange colors showed where the streetlights emitted their effervescence. Blurred dark shapes moved about in rhythmic harmony to some fast paced music that was out of audible range.

In the glow of the lights she could see the movement of laughter from the people below; though she couldn’t make out any of their features. She had now become enveloped in the great impressionist painting she had been viewing from her window. When she escaped the city and looked down again, she was over the ocean and could see her reflection in the dark water below. More shocking than all the events she had been experiencing and witnessing was that she appeared to be part of this masterpiece as well. Her features had softened and the contours of her body became just groupings of shape and color. She could no longer make out the expression on her face, all she saw was dark spots where her eyes and mouth were, and bright specks of light in the middle of her eyes where the brilliant moonlight reflected back out. The absurdity of her appearance made her laugh to herself, but that same time she couldn’t help but feel taken aback by the beauty of it. It was as if when all the details were removed from the images she saw, she could finally see them as they were meant to be.

Now she finally realized that, though the fine details do much to accentuate the things she saw, the colors and shapes underneath those details are what make them beautiful. In some ways the detailed edges of refinement of this raw paint scheme hinder its ability to express itself. They confine the colors into concentric shapes and trap them inside walls not allowing them to affect their surroundings, to blend seamlessly into the background. What an atrocity it is to confine the artwork of the cosmos! To limit the expression of billions of billions of billions of sub-atomic particles swirling about at incredible speeds because of the will of the strings that guide them on their course, what kind of creature could think of such a thing! Yet there in lies the problem. It is the human mind that builds these ramparts. The brain searches for edges to every shape, a beginning and an end, without these limits a human brain would cease to function.


The water was as smooth as glass beneath her, and she could make out the entire scene above her in the illustrated sky. As she stared deeply at her reflection, she could feel herself descending closer towards the sea. Lower and lower she fell, until she closed her eyes and curled up to brace for the impact in the water, but when nothing happened she opened her eyes again and saw that she was now inches above the water. She stretched herself back out again and dragged her fingers through the water, which was surprisingly warm. There was hardly a sensation of temperature change between the water and the air surrounding. The only real noticeable affect was that her fingers met with some resistance in the water. Looking back in the direction she had come from, she could see the ripples caused by her fingers spreading out causing tiny distortions in the reflection of the sky. This made the image come alive with movement, and the stars began dancing in tiny circular movements like pirouetting ballet dancers.

Turning over onto her back to examine the sky once again she noticed that the stars above her were moving in sync with the ones she had seen in the reflection. She shut her eyes and rubbed them to make certain that she wasn’t being deceived, but when she opened them again the stars were still twirling about an invisible point. To test her now formed hypothesis she lowered her hand back into the water and watched to see if there was any effect. Sure enough a subtle movement began to drag across the sky making the movement of the stars more violent, but no less graceful. This made her smile, to see this kind of Godlike impact she had on the fabric of the cosmos and to be able to manipulate the movement of the heavens to suit her fancy. At this point she became curious as to the extent of her effect on the sky.

Laying her hand flat just above the water, she jostled it side to side to create a blur of the image above. The violence above her was surprising, but not disheartening. Stars blurred and spread out; striking one another, their colors blending together in odd shapes and hues, and the ripple effect was so severe that the stars looked as if they were collapsing in on themselves with the crashing of the tiny waves. Perhaps this is just the way God felt in creating the Universe, standing on a pedestal of nothing but imagination, pallet in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Spontaneously creating an explosion of color without shape, then slowly and methodically shaping it into strings, quarks, nucleic particles, atoms, and on up to galaxies to fill the black void of nothingness, so that he wouldn’t have to be lonely anymore.


Some philosophers have questioned the existence of the world, and all that exists within it, with exception of the person thinking such things. In the process of such a maneuver one denies the splendor and beauty of the world and at the same time absolves themselves from being responsible for living. Not the sort of living that the average person does, but actually living. Filling themselves with the breath of all living things that surround them, taking in all of their surroundings, and deciding that life isn’t about just making ends meet, but is filled with riches of experience. Some of these philosophers deny that anything of substance can be gained through experience. What an absurd claim! The fulfillment of experience provides the brilliance with which one gives meaning to himself.

For the young swimmer and painter of the skies, her experience is the only thing that makes her days bright. Being locked inside of her own thoughts only draws out painful memories and weighs down on her like the cross upon the martyr. How can one possibly hope to gain any knowledge of meaning and existence having never truly existed? George Berkeley said, “To exist is to be perceived,” this statement says much about those who would deny experience. At the same time it also demonstrates the necessity of experience. One cannot know anything of the world without first going out and seeing it. As if the entire world doesn’t even exist for those who enclose themselves within their own blinded point of view on the world. Maybe that’s why something suddenly snapped and the car whipped around away from those strangling city lights across the ocean from the swimming girl; the realization that time continues forward, whether or not it is used in any meaningful way, and the distant feeling that someone was yearning and feeling the same way. To give up everything is to gain everything. Like reading a Kerouac novel there was nothing, but possibilities in the glow of the high beams.


Stopping off when the gas tank was reading below the bold “E” a brightly lit truck stop provided the necessities. Before refueling the car certain abdominal pains needed to be relieved with nourishment. After placing an order with the tired looking waitress named Dorothy, a deep sigh emitted from her as she turned to walk away. She was not that old, but the years of working in such an environment and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day had leathered her face. The deep grooves on her face and the eternal frown that she wore showed her desire for escape from this life she’d been given. Each line is a reminder of where she was and what she had become. The youthful beauty she once proudly wore had faded and become distorted through years of abuse.

Her life must have taken a downward spiral early on as she must have been working at this place since she graduated high school. Every night she points her finger, passing blame on whatever is around her trying to avoid depression by turning it into scorn. She blames her children, saying that if she hadn’t become pregnant right after graduation her life would have been better. She blames their father, who disappeared shortly after finding out that she was with child. Tears provided her only comfort late at night when she was all alone in her small trailer a few miles from the truck stop. When she was working she tried to put on a smile for the truckers and was usually successful, but to those who can see beyond the surface there is nothing except sadness in her eyes. No matter how much she tries to blame others, she knows that her life was her own doing and her own decisions.

She said yes to the boy with the pretty smile in the car that night, she decided to give up on her hopes of going to college and becoming a lawyer, and she stopped trying to overcome the obstacles that came her way to take the easy path of acceptance. Of course, none of this may be true, but that is the story that her face told. The weight of an entire ocean of sadness isn’t a mistakable quality in the frail human form.

Out of Apathy Pt. 7

The air was calm and cool, hinting of the early autumn chill. The boat rocked and swayed as the water gently exerted itself against the port side of the boat in a hypnotizing, rhythmic fashion. The sun had hidden itself behind the horizon and the last of its residual rays disappeared. The velvet night sky was interrupted by the brilliance of the full moon hanging low on the horizon, seeming to rise up straight out of the ocean. It was larger than she had ever seen it before and seemed so close. She lost herself in its glory for a moment and nearly fell overboard reaching out to grasp at the glowing orb.

Despite the brightness of the moon, more stars that she had ever imagined could be seen. Lying down on the deck, she tried to soak up the scenery surrounding her. It filled her with such exuberance that she could hardly contain her joy, as if all these stars, so beautifully constructed, had been placed there just for her at this very moment. As she was breathing in there was a noise outside of the vessel. Sitting up and peering over the railing she could make out something floating in the water that resembled a slightly human form. “Salut?” she called out to it. Hearing no response, she called out again, squinting hard to try and make out what exactly it was. More splashing occurred and finally the light of the moon cast its gaze on the figure of a man floating on his back drifting away from the boat.

The body didn’t appear to be at a loss of life, but was floating of its own accord. Though she could plainly see all the features of this man, she couldn’t discern his face despite her best effort. She felt compulsively drawn to this man, who was drifting further and further away from the boat. Her curiosity and the gravity that the man exuded were so great that she leapt into the water and began swimming after him. The water was strangely warm and felt pleasant around her body. Looking for her target, she engaged in pursuit, quietly skimming through the water. She was astounded how effortlessly she traversed, almost as if she were swimming right through the air. Yet, the faster she went, the farther away he was. After struggling for what seemed like an eternity she gave up the chase and turned over to lie on her back to stare at the sky. To her great surprise there was a sudden warmth around her and a feeling that she couldn’t describe and the man was right next to her. Hearing his breathing and the water splashing against his body, she turned to look at the face of the person she had been so vigilant for. But before she had the chance to see his face the loud singing of a drunk outside her open window roused her from her sleep.


Looking about in the dark, her eyes were unable to focus on the clock to check the time because of her sudden arousal. Her throat was parched and she got up to quench it. Like a lion let loose from the cage, she threw the covers off and bounded across the room. The air had grown cool from the open window, and she wanted to make her trip as quick as possible so as to not catch a chill. In the dark of the room, she lost her footing and stubbed her toe on the dresser next to her bathroom door. The throbbing pain surged its way up the nerves in her leg causing her whole foot to tremble from the sudden jolt. As she fell forward she grabbed onto the door to the bathroom and regained her balance. When the lights flickered on she shut her eyes quickly to avoid the burning of her unadjusted pupils.

Standing there, after the ordeal with her foot, she had forgotten why she got up in the first place, and it wasn’t until she saw the glass sitting on the counter that she remembered she was thirsty. After drinking her fill of the luke-warm tap water, she made her way back into the room and over towards the window again to shut out the, now cold, night air. On her way to the window she looked back over to check the time again, now that she was fully awake, but as she stared hard at the red blur on her nightstand she couldn’t make out any digits. Rubbing her eyes she looked again and still couldn’t make anything out. Chalking this anomaly up to the trauma of the bright bathroom lights, she continued on her way to the window.

As she approached the window, it occurred to her that there wasn’t any chill at all from the window and that there wasn’t even a breeze moving through. This was odd as there was always a coastal breeze blowing through the window. Stepping closer to the window, she looked up at the sky and the familiar stars that she often stared at from this spot, but was struck by the image that she saw.


Yet another oddity occurred to her looking up at the deep velvet sky. The starry night appeared as if a late 19th century impressionist had painted it. The deep black of the night backdrop was replaced with dark blues and purples in great swirls like windswept leaves. Amidst these great curls of color were bright and huge stars with sharp accentuated points, the stars were so large and vibrant that she thought if she reached out they would cut her hand. But the most astounding feature of this odd night was the outstanding size of the moon. Like a huge plate it hung in the scene of the night, consuming almost the entirety of her area of vision when she looked directly at it.

The moon’s features were soft and the usual definitions of the craters couldn’t be seen. Instead there was a blending of light and dark areas with no real edges to speak of, and even the outer rim of the moon itself seemed to just fade into the background. Other buildings surrounding her home, which normally existed at the same level as hers, were far beneath her and she looked down upon their rooftops almost seeing straight through them at the people inside the homes. As she leaned farther out the window to look at the streets below and watch the late night wanderers walk by looking like ants that have lost their way. She leaned back to stand back up in her window when she realized that she was no longer standing in her room.

Turning around she could see the room that she had been in moments ago, and not only that, but she could see herself still standing in the window looking out into the night. Despite this incredibly strange scenario she had become involved in, she didn’t feel the slightest bit of alarm or fear. In fact, she felt perfectly comfortable looking at herself in the window, as she began floating back away and towards the sea.

Out of Apathy pt. 6

This girl has been encountered before, though her scent has never been smelled, the taste of her lips has never greeted the eager palate, nor her touch been felt caressing the skin. Through the lens of another admirer, her image has been seen and recorded into a permanent memory. She exists as both a real and imagined persona, but neither of these two has communicated with each other. The imagined is being searched for, while the real will be the end result of the search. Full knowledge of this is kept in its rightful place within the mind, but the prospect seems so great that, though disappointment is a grim possibility, it fails to hinder the progress in any way. In all actuality the real persona is more than could ever have been imagined. All the pedestals and ideals of this female have fallen short of her grandeur. Her looks are unmatched by even Dante’s Beatrice, who guided him through the paradisio and into the warm glow of his God.

Pale skin compliments her unnaturally dark locks, which must be kept up once every waxing and waning period, and also allows the brilliance of her eyes to be seen from across an eternity. When those eyes attach themselves to another a temporal anomaly occurs and everything surrounding the two parties begins to slow to a stop. During this lapse in time (that one could only wish to last forever, but ends despairingly too soon) all the sensations of the world course through eager veins. All the senses become consumed by the eyes of this girl and become amplified to the point of exasperation and utter ecstasy, and just when the body nearly convulses from this sudden flood of emotional captivity, the gaze is broken and time resumes its natural course. It is amazing how two organs used to view the world can have such an effect on someone. After all, what are eyes? Nothing but two liquid covered hollow orbs of tissue, and in most cases are regarded as unpleasant to the touch. Yet the eyes have an amazing power like that which was described. Beyond the simple gravity of the eyes, they also provide a way of determining many different things about a person.

Emotions and personalities are conveyed through many facets, but can be hidden from nearly everything except the eyes. Staring into these “mirrors”, as an author once called them, anger, lust, love, happiness, the entire array of humanness can be seen. Memories are stored in these pools, an entire lifetime of dreams, hopes and aspirations, all residing inside something so seemingly trivial. What a marvel the eyes are! And the eyes of the young girl tell the story of someone who has been hated, abused, forgotten, lusted after, and left behind. Though she hides the trials of her life well, there is no cloaking them within the realm of her emerald windows to the soul.

As her laughter subsides, the girl looks deep into the night sky at the stars and takes a deep breath. She holds the cold air in her lungs as long as she can before breathing it out slowly with a content smile upon her face. The air making its way slowly out of her throat and across her lips makes her feel alive. A night like this is one she will always remember, when she feels filled with the world, filled with all the life that it contains. The surroundings brimming with the things that make life worth living, the color of the sky, the movement of the trees, the sounds of conversation in the cafe down the road; all the things in the world teaming with life in all its brilliance. She sees this and realizes that each and every thing is so beautiful; from the dirt in the ground, to the trees, to the people who inhabit the earth. With all the differences in appearances, species, even the type of thing itself (i.e. trees, rocks, people, animals) everything comes from the same thing, the stars. Every atom that makes up a person, a mountain, or anything on the terrestrial sphere originates in the heart of the solar nebula. In this sense everything is connected and is full of the same life and existence. Everything is one and the same, and every person is in one-way or another the same as another person.

This idea has a profound effect on the girl as she breathes the air out of her lungs, which will feed the plant life, which will expel the oxygen she needs to survive. And upon her death, she knows that her body will become the fodder to sprout all kinds of new life and continue the cycle on and on. Knowing simply and absolutely these facts of life, she can't help but feel so energized about being alive, and ready for anything that might come her way. She knows that every stumble she has along the way only helps her to value this gift more. This night air also has an added feature that is somewhat strange, but makes her feel even more giddy and excited to see what the days ahead will bring. Placing the bookmark back into her book she decides to go to sleep early on this night and dream of the things to come.

Her bed is plain and seemingly uninspired, but on the contrary it isn’t the dressings on it that show its true colors. The adventures, romances, and tragedies within the sheets, in that state of slumber, are what design the beauty of it. Kneeling in front of the bed she begins her nightly prayers. These are general run of the mill prayers of the common believer: praying for the well being of her family and those close to her, for the unfortunate who cannot pull themselves out of the situations they have been encumbered in and placing a special addendum about this strange feeling that has come over her, asking for clarification. The strange thing about her prayers is that no one ever taught her about the Bible (Koran, Torah, Bahavad Gita, etc.) or took her to church, her idea of God developed of its own accord, not a sudden realization, but a process over a lifetime. For her there was always a lingering feeling that something was always over her shoulder, keeping a watchful eye on her actions. Not in the sense that it was interfering on or against her behalf, but was just watching, like the loving eyes of a mother whose child struggles with forming its words or trying to stand on its own.

So she began to pray, not for things in a direct sense, but simply for guidance in decisions important in her life. Whether or not this really had any affect, it gave her a feeling of self-assurance and the confidence to proceed with what she felt was right. She scarcely has time to place her head on the pillow before that dark veil of sleep consumes her. However, the blackness of her eyelids closing is brief, for her dreams come so rapidly that she scarcely has time to ward off the image of her room before they begin. An almost seamless transition occurs. One moment she is in her bedroom, the next she is on a boat out at sea.