We have all killed...

We have all killed something. If not a life itself, we have killed dreams, relationships, jobs, friendships and time. Every step forward, you thread on the possible you that you are walking away from, crushing it just before it slips beyond the dark matter of your anti-history, your anti-life. Every step forward is across the bones and corpses of lives unlived.

I open my eyes. I stole a camel once. I wanted to escape to the solitude of the wilderness and my idea was that the camel still had the desert inside of him. All he needed to do was to find the path that led back to it and then we would both be there - under the full moon and the stars. The camel drooled over my shoulder and led me around and around, like I was its little human pet. Worlds changed and shifted around us. Someone touched my shoulder and the camel was gone. One of us kept moving. The other had abruptly come to a halt. I'm still not sure which of us it was, but without warning, we were in different worlds. I don't know if I will ever see the desert, but a reflection of the camel remains inside of me, like the faint ghost of a dream.

I close my eyes. I am sitting in the command chair of some scientific research station in the distant future. Everything is made of ice. I want to shout, "I don't know what I'm doing," but strangely enough, without thinking about it, I do know what I'm doing. My first officer is Reenie. I am relieved to see her alive. We act as one, without a word spoken. In some way, Reenie is me, or at least some extention of me. Through every porthole, I see colored puffs of smoke, twisting and whirling. Struggling to maintain its integrity. I discover that I can boost individual puffs just by focusing on them. The more I look at them, the easier it is to see what they really are. Souls. And each puff becomes a pattern, as distinct as a fingerprint. Now I know what I'm doing. But as this realization dawns, it is me that disintegrates to formless smoke. I reach for the controls, but I no longer have anything to reach with.

I open my eyes. I am lying on the beach, looking up at the sky. Too many beers inside me. All the other people in the world are balloons, lightly floating above me. I am the only one who is heavy and earthbound. All around me, balloon people are encouraging me to rise, to find my inner balloon and release it. I want to say, "No, no, you don't understand how different I am," but I feel too heavy even for speech.

I close my eyes... To continue, click here