0.1 Zephyr
The rhythm of my life has become as slow and steady as the Cranoor beetle ascending an Aker tree. But I wish to live as the quick and erratic bursts of sand carried by the wind at my feet. What is it within me that longs for danger in times of peace? Maybe I should have become a soldier of the Mankey Empire when I was young and patriotic. And yet, I know that in that life I would have ended up longing for peace. My brother always told me that peasants want to be kings and kings want to be peasants. Mankeys are no different than any other race in their desire for what they do not have. It reminds me of an Elder Belief, that unfortunate people search all of their lives to regain what they never lost.
While I enjoy pondering about the Cosmos, no amount of thinking about it really satisfies me anymore. I need to remember that it is right now that I lose when I think about timeless things. And so, why don’t I just walk in silence and surrender to the sight of the peaks and valleys? I’ll soak up Spiron’s familiar colors while I can. I haven’t been through the Canyon of Yore since I was a small mankey. But back then I was escaping the city of Len, not walking toward it. I was the runt of the pack, being led firmly (arguably dragged) by the hand of my brother. We were children navigating the rocky canyon without speaking. Our tears were gone by then so none of us cried the whole time. The only sound we could hear was the crunch of the porous rocks under our feet, the whip of the wind and the Yore birds, for which the canyon was named.
Now, there aren’t any Yore birds to be found. They left this place years ago. I heard about it from a traveler. He was a roaming scholar, supposedly famous for mapping and tracking the ecological systems of Cranoor. His research was not just a hobby. He dedicated every breath of his life to walking, documenting and presenting his findings. A truly bizarre man on a personal level, but noble in his dedication to knowledge. He told me that when the Yore birds mass migrated out of the canyon, the groundpig’s proliferated and ate through all of the vegetation. Within two years the canyon had become a desert. The scuttering, crawling, roaming, swaying, zipping movements of the canyon were all but lost. Now it is empty and the wind can only play with sand and rock.
Why does my heart feel like a desert too, with nothing but wind and stone?
0.2 Norr
When too much is given it is seldom repaid. I learned that long ago when my father lost what little we had so that he could feed and house a family of exodees. I remember their stench. Their sunken cheeks and dark eyes. The countless scrapes and cuts on their hands, wrists and the sides of their face and neck. Clearly they spent many days fleeing the cities and villages, and the marauding wanderers biting at their heels. All those crazed people, taking another opportunity to catch, fleece, or kill someone weaker than them. It’s like a chunk of meat being thrown to dogs after a lifetime of eating carrots. Their biology can’t be subdued for too long. Eventually, the smell of blood and victory will lead them to the same action as the vegetarian dogs, to feed on something with substance. For dogs, it’s meat. For people, it’s power. Since the majority of people in this world have spent lifetimes without it, they become hysterical, babbling lunatics, when they are given a chance to wield it. They can’t help but become overwhelmed by the forces that pour out of them when they are tossed a city-sanctioned, “Enemy of Spiron'' to devour.
All these people, all of them, can just rot on the vine. They toil, they kill, they have children. And for what? To make exact copies, born with the fear of faceless suits, forever slaves to rules and regulations? It’s enough to lose all hope in the future. At least for people. Spiron will go on spinning just the same. It never beckons anyone to get along. It never tells anyone to do anything, really. Unity and disunity is no different to a planet that transcends this mortal game of life and death, happiness and suffering. Us people are left to our own sense of reality. What is real to us, is certainly an illusion. And yet, I breathe and eat and sleep and hunt as if there is nothing else. And maybe there isn’t. Maybe the cycle of my life is for the sole purpose of filling space on the canvas of some brutal painting that I will never comprehend or appreciate. Maybe just breathing fills that space, and everything else in life is an illusion. “Here’s a dream to get lost in! Go on an adventure! Fall in love and enjoy life! Or just keep working tirelessly until you die. Just as long as you remember to breathe, for us, then it’s all just fine.”
This flood of bitter thinking is so powerful sometimes that I can taste it, like chewing on the peel of a mankey fruit. I wrinkle up my face, tense up, then let out a deep sigh and wait patiently for Mother Dream to cradle me through the dark, oily abyss, and onto the shores of sleep. And then, I awake, with no dreams to account for, just feelings without a source. Just aches and pains without a mark to prove them.
At least I can say I was warned about my loss of dreams. Over a year ago, when Mother Dream came to me and spoke about “the expansion of my Pran” and how I’m walking into the stage of my life, and the life of Spiron, when everything is “pulled from what is to what will be.” It was all very vague, except for one part, “you will not recall your dreams for some time,” Mother Dream told me, and then added, “your sleep mind already sees what’s coming, but your wake mind is not ready to see.” And so it is. My sleep mind is playing in the future and my wake mind is stuck in the past. I wish I didn’t care about it, though. If some kind of fateful shift is on the horizon, it’ll come when it does. No sooner or later, I guess. It’s enough to make me sick, trying to play the patient lep. I’m always fighting the urge to drop everything and run somewhere even more remote, to stubbornly wait until I see what my sleep mind sees.
When the time comes, what will my dreams finally reveal to me?
0.3 Salt
Living in the city has its perks, especially for those who put the work in. Travel is never an obstacle to meeting up with someone important. And, of course, money is never an issue. The city provides me with everything I need to rise to my highest place of power. And fortunately being a bov, and a woman, and an older woman at that, does not put me at a disadvantage. Even though bov people are mainly country folk, which I’m constantly reminded of whenever I spot a crowd of tourists, I’ve proven myself just as capable as any other race.
Spiron has millions of people, and that means a plethora of conflicting ideas about the meaning of life. I for one think that all the ancient teachings were missing the point. They all sought out the meaning of life instead of allowing it to be the byproduct of action. Meaning reveals itself only through one’s rigorous dedication to a self-enhancing cause. The old words of “wise men” crumble to the floor in the face of these changing times. The city represents the evolution of people, the “closer to the mark” approach to living. We few who have climbed to the pinnacle of Len have seen the bright light of our collective future. A future that brings the gods of the Cosmos into our own inner temples, to thrive in the challenging tides of our individual prowess.
All this excited thinking distracts me from my business, here and now. I need to be sharp, whether I’m crunching numbers and ideas alone or in a room deliberating with others. The upper echelon groups of Len do not care who joins their ranks, as long as their competence never falters, and their sense of responsibility is palpable. In this way, the only obstacles keeping people from achieving wealth and position in this city is a lack of self-esteem, the immoral behaviors brought on by hopelessness, and a firm objection to the free market, as if freedom were some kind of dirty thing! Here, in Len, we are all free to become or not become whatever we want.
As I sit in my office, overlooking the Grand Park of Hedon, I’m again visited with that same unusual feeling. It comes for me when I’m alone, and I’m not doing anything in particular. These days I’m always doing something, but, when I am not, the feeling is sure to come. It starts at the base of my spine, a sharply cold, vaporous sensation that begins as a pin point and grows to the size of a fist, while rising up my back. If I give the feeling all of my attention, it will finally reach my head where it expands outward, out of my body even, giving me the illusion of sensing and being all the things in the room around me. To explain what it feels like to be a pen or a lamp is impossible.
I would consider all of this too silly to even ponder, if it weren’t for the deep silence that it brings me. Before having that silence, I didn’t know a mind could rest from the unbreakable stream of thought. It’s as if I’m consciously experiencing sleep while awake. I become nothingness, but only until reality reaffirms itself around me and I’m able to rebuild myself again as Salt, and go on with my affairs. It’s alarming, yes. But only because I’ve never felt anything quite like it. The only uncomfortable part of becoming nothingness is that I somehow feel more alive. I have a real fear of what that could mean.
My life continues to give, but what might it take away?
0.4 Opal
Only in the twilight depth of the sea do I truly feel like I'm here. Like I’m actually alive and fully awake in my head. Everything is slower in these waters. Light and dark bleed into one another. My body pushes against the water, and the water pushes against me. It’s like I’m dancing in a mirror. I am me, and somehow, the water is me too. I can’t explain it better than that. I mean, isn’t it obvious that the subtle force that rocks me now is everywhere else in the sea, rocking everything else in it too? When I breathe, my chest and stomach rise in unison. When the sea breathes, it rises and falls, pushes and pulls, and even twists and turns depending on where I am. Everything is just dancing with itself. Sometimes the dance is steady and sometimes it’s erratic.
As gentle as the sea is right now, it can be just as violent without warning. The potential threat of the twilight depth frightened me as a child. I mean it still does kind of, but I remember that same fear long ago and how it would take my breath away. I’d have to shamefully swim for the surface before my family could even start mining. I mean, there are plenty of beasts that lurk just a few leagues deeper than here. They wander up every so often when they are really hungry. And, a torp could show up and pull me to the pitch black bottom of the sea. So, in a clam shell, my fears did make sense, ya know. I wasn’t afraid of some make believe ghouls and magic cyclones--they were there. I was afraid of something real.
While beasts make quick enough work of swimmers, torps take you into their lair at the bottom of the sea, burying you in a watery tomb. But, torps aren’t alive like beasts. They’re kind of like an underwater storm. Every time I imagine one overtaking me down here, I have it speak to me before pulling me under. I mean, I deserve an explanation before being killed, don’t I? It’s the least any torp could do.
“Surprise, young trog! Relax, while I pull you into the deepest darkness. Many of your kind are down there. Why don’t I help you pay them a visit!?”
In my mind, torps have a snarky, and cruel personality. It fits so well that I kind of believe there’s some truth to it. And who knows what “alive” is anyway. I’m not so sure that only things with faces deserve to be in that category.
As a young girl, just barely strong enough to withstand the pressure at the twilight depths, I found my fears unbearable. I remember how it would latch on and hold my thoughts hostage during expeditions. When I was told that it was normal, that all the adults feared like I did, I didn’t believe it. I needed to grow up to understand. The adults I swam with, with their fearless stone faces, were just as afraid as I was. That was a relief. I wasn’t alone anymore. But it was not a cure. I still didn’t want to die.
My greatest tool for fear was laughter. I made little jokes and stories to lighten things up. Oh, a big sea creature is coming this way? I better hide! But where? Maybe I’ll hold onto its nose so it has trouble spotting me with its side-eyes! I’ll tickle its scales and make it sneeze me out of danger. These little stories kept me from feeling powerless, like chum for the monsters below. Now I know that my fear isn’t there to be conquered. It’s there to be integrated. But, really, in the twilight depths, I’m always just one torp away from death no matter how brave I am.
Why am I not dead, yet!?