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.