There is Freedom in Revelation, Truth in Realization

Flames lick the blackened ground a demons hand charring the untouched earth as with snaky finger of charcoal smoke reaching into the sky, grabbing greedily at th the rapidly receding skyline. The building was too old to survive, the city had wanted it destroyed years ago, brought down so new lofts and sky risers could spread out and overtake the last remaints of the areas humble rapidly forgotten history. A wave of new generation drowning the generations of its mother and fathers it origins in a rush to establish the supremacy of their own. Perhaps that is why, the firetrucks have yet to arrive, they are letting the fire takes it course, making sure the job is a job well done indeed.

Looking out the window from the third floor at the mass of fire erupting from the earth as if vomiting up the last vestiges of scandal and secrets the old building held before being brought down completely by it's own fiery consumption. I too have some secrets to expose of, with that I throw not one but two identical black leather bound journals into the growing hungry, cavernous mouth below. Ironically the fire destroying my imprisonment; my detachment from the world, shutting myself inside these four white walls, will be the destruction of my prisoner. Pining my life away upon pages of scrawled thoughts that cannot be shared, conversations that never were, experiences that were recorded but not lived. All this time I was searching for a past, yet I was a phantom in the present; neither sleeping nor eating but searching, always searching. Searching for what cannot be found, for what could a past tell me? I am the man who stands here today, a culmination of thoughts, experiences, emotions, I am that man regardless of memory, that I have always been. In my ruthless search to find out who I was, I lost sight of who I am, who I want to be. I lived too much for the past, and withered away my present destroying shard by shard a life for the future. Just as this fire consumes Thallow Flats, as the separate lives of it's occupants evacuate to mingle on the stairs exiting together out onto the street, pouring forth as one big culmination of lives, experiences, moments, thoughts until the building is brought down and those lives come together collect themselves to rebuild again, to move on, to continue. But those instances, in the raw burn where they shared everything they had going down in flame, that bond can never be destroyed. As the smoke leaks under the doorway, the building creaking as its foundation is slowly ravished as the fire works it way up, I too evacuate to the street below. Down here, in safety among the occupants, I lived among for so long and yet never really met, I, too watch the great building shudder and claim it's last sigh, I too, vow to rebuild, to begin anew, to live—as life goes on.

2-16-07_____________________Time:2:17am

Blackness. Falling through the cracks, piling up, wrapping around familiar objects with it's inky curtain, transforming the familiar into vast crevices for… for what? When you're too old to believe in vampires and monster, you begin to be more afraid of reality than imagination. A reality that rises each morning and blinds all those who live for light, and in the night remain in darkness.
In abstract details and thoughts, half-finished dreams between sleep and consciousness, somewhere, I was prepared for this moment. Prepared to find out who I was. But what, no, who, does your past make you? Is anybody ever completely happy with their past, who they are inside, or how they got there? Perhaps, I am better off not knowing. Memories are meant to be re-lived, yet most feel the greatest emotional response when reliving the worst ones, filled with shame and perceived embarrassment, while the happiest fade bit by bit. And, if you had the power to choose a fresh start, a new life with no past, would you? Or would you want to know to validate some concept that you are already the embodiment of? Or, if you choose to know, how much better will you sleep at night with ghosts and shards of the past re-enacting inescapable defeats and slights before your eyes right just as you begin to drift in sleep.
So now, I sit on the broad rooftop of Thallow Flats, the city all but asleep before me and the heavy key anchored next to me upon the paved ridge, the black journal—still unopened. But the question I have, what I must be absolutely sure of, the one thing I keep coming back to--do I really want to know? And in the still of dark, with no breeze a cold draft wrenches the journal from it's place beside me and the journals clutters to the rooftop at my feet. The pages rustle and fall open; in the dim lit I can just make out the first entry. Goosebumps travel up my neck and the back of my arms, chills run down my back as I feel, for the first time that night, not quite alone...

2-16-07_____________Time: 3: 59 p.m

In present time I woke up, not knowing what day it was or where I was. Deja vu hit and my stomach rolled with unease and hunger, not knowing what happened last night or the night before is a leaded dread to wake up to. It felt as if no time has passed and and once again I am reliving that first morning I finally awoke only to find myself in a bare room with nothing but a blank journal and strange clothes. This time a strange nonsensical dream of scattered images and faces, lies distantly but still present in my mind. Compulsively, I reach out for that familiar journal, now filled with entries and as I write this it starts trickling back. Slowly at first but then a flood of memories and images from the past couple of days submerse me, wave upon wave. As I write the last ones come, like distant friends tugging at my memory, trying to tell me something. I see the a simple glass vial tipped over, but there are no contents left to spill, a rough piece of white paper with something scrawled on it. Take with caution, effective immediately. Dose- 1/3 vial at one time = 10-12 hours undisturbed sleep. I had taken 3 doses, and slept through a day and a half. But why had I wanted the draught in the first place?

Slowly it came back... I had misplaced hours and hours, I won't find them, they're no longer mine to keep. Time's an intricate thread holding the days together into a bigger patch, of month, year, decade; a quilt pieced together by those little minutes and hours, marking our time, our brief passage. Sometimes, time will disappear; hold, pause. Or sometimes it just stops. I will piece together the next three days as best I can...

Vaguely, I remember bumping into a young girl, reaching under the shelf for the last elusive paper back, and as I brought my eyes lower to the last shelf I saw it. That black leather bound journal, so familiar yet untouched as I felt the old leather bound cover and the floppy half pages, I knew so well. Each page held in by the leather stitched binding, sewn by hand. I had never seen another journal like it, until now. It was my own.

Time here, is no longer relative. Disjointed images blend together, like the pieces of snow in a snow globe, shaken up then falling ever so lightly through the water. That clerk with the lanky frame and thick, obscure glasses.

"Excuse me, are you, uh, alright? Can I help you find something?"

"No I've haven't seen that before (here a perceptible shudder, hand withdrawn as he noted the aged, time worn cover) but then, we have a lot of unusual books and editions here. Perhaps Mrs. Ryan's would know…" he stammered, trailing off swiftly and stumbling back with eyes unmoving from the black journal. Why had he reacted so? I wished to question him further but he stumbled out of the aisle, precariously knocking into a thick stack of books.

Another image, flashes of scrawled handwriting spilling out, twisting and turning over one another in attempt to escape from the page, dancing before my eyes. The cramped r's, and loopy a's, and half crossed t' all sloping slightly right running before my eyes. Feel of pliant and slightly piling underside of the fine leather cover, marked in the upper left corner, barely legible. Jude V n ra ke with a date, unreadable except as a black smear. The handwriting could belong to no other. I don't remember leaving the bookstore, or whether I paid for my thoughts or not, I'd pay for them soon enough.

In another image I find myself at the door way of a little shop, with the journal firmly bound up and secured in my coat. “Hello! Welcome, welcome, please what may I get for you? Love potion? Perhaps a ” A small flighty man with white hair and laughing eyes winked at me, letting me in on his joke. “I need...a sleeping draught, anything please, just make it strong.” He glanced at me curiously, and then nodded quickly dancing from bin to bin, gathering herbs and roots and mixtures before disappearing behind a dusty red velvet curtain in the back.

Finally I find myself with two secure parcels heavily weighing on my conscience at Thallow Flats. The image is a blur of myself going through the motions, but one point becomes sharp among the static. A young man, around my age but with a different air, a foreign air about him. The point of collision on the entry way of the third floor, and then the black cover peeking out of the packaging from the rare book bag. That black corner, so sharp, even in recollection it is almost piercing with focus. I stumbled, thoughts doing pinwheels in my head, automatically reaching for my package to touch the familiar worn cover. No, he can't, impossible. But really, how many journals are there? Did I leave behind one, or a series? Either way, I have to get my hands on that book.

A Previous Entry

Layers of old paint had been scraped off the window's pitted edge; left open in the vacant apartment in hopes of catching a faint breeze from the grimy city air outside. A black journal on a packing crate nearest the window had been left carelessly open, with loose pages strewn about the floor as various black ink splotches lead a faint trail towards the door. A sudden breeze stirs the pages and they flip open to reveal a previous entry.

Month one, Day 12____________Time:The darkest hour

Perhaps if I am slowly going insane, I am not the only one. A solitary passenger clinging with desperate conviction to a sinking lifeboat. Or perhaps, in a poor attempt to rationalize my own acute neurosis, I perceive it popping up in those around me. Today, as I was making my way up to my floor close to midnight I overhead a rather one-way conversation. For no reason I could discern, it held my interest. I watched as a gentlemen in a shabby overcoat tightly clutching a black book in his left hand, attempt to unlock his apartment door. The argument heightened as he grew more and more agitated at trying to unlock his door and shut this unseen assailant out. I could not see his face, but his hands were blustered and his posture poor, as if the weight of the world on his shoulders was slowly growing with each fumble of the key.

“Roger! I tell you, not now!”

Had he been drinking? My keen sense of smell picked up a strong trail of old cigar smoke and the damp yeasty smell that prevailed from the tavern, wafting from his coat in onslaughts as he fumbled with the lock. A sharp angle jutting out from the hallway corner kept his attacker just out of sight. But still no audible reply was issued, of this I felt sure. I paused on the step hesitant, but something rooted me to the spot. Exhaustion?

“Blimey Roger, I just don't have it okay…I don't have any of it!”

The door finally swung open, hitting the interior of the apartment as the silhouetted figure burst through from the hallway.

“There's none left!” He thundered murderously, before slamming the door in punctuation. I peered around the angled wall to finally catch a glimpse of his tormentor. There was no one there.

Month one, Day 12 Time:Morning?Afternoon?

Even now as I fight to bring these words to paper, I know I am losing. The overwhelming need for fresh air rattles in my lung with the regularity and rhythm of my hand scrawling across the page. Vapors and solid columns of stale air shifted solely by inhalation are sucked down and coughed back up. I have to get out of here.

Same day_____________________________Time: Much Later

Sometimes in my dreams, when I dream at all, I glimpse a shard or two, of my past. Or as accurate a representation of a past a man who remembers nothing of a life before can have. I leave it up to brain chemicals, firing synapses, and lazy neurons to warp and alter a thin strand of memories and spin them out at will. A thread pulled taunter and tighter with each failing. It breaks, and I am left with nothing but broken strands and a puppeteers bitter frustration. So far, I have determined two things in absolution: I live in the crux of hell; and secondly, am destined to remain here until I remember a life to go back to. Lately, in the twilight of night, I am haunted by the thought that perhaps I am not forgotten at all, but that this is really my life and subconsciously I am rationalizing it by pretending to be stuck here due to an absence of memory. That really my memories have not locked themselves away from me, but I from them. It is the darkest part of the night, and the despair pierces through any chance of sleep. Numb and cold I fight myself doubtfully, faithfully,crazily. Is it so sane to rationalize that I am insane?

The hours between dusk and dawn here are sacred. The bustle of the apartment building is nearly silent, for if anyone else is awake they creep quietly, silently alongside the night. Entrenched in silence, it is now that I can mull over the day clearly, sorting out the disjointed events as I make my way up to the roof. Leaning against the door jam, I face the outline of the city, never really looking at it too lost in myself. Sometimes I bring my journal up, thumbing through the various pages and entries, always searching; never finding.

Earlier, I left the building hurriedly, brushing past the hunched figure of a girl with rich, dark hair crouched over on the top of the landing of the third floor. Hiding her face against knees pulled up to her chest, hair flowing on all sides of her like a river darkened by a moonless night. But I couldn't stop, not even by the mailboxes where an elderly man with graying hair and deep crows feet etched around kind, intelligent eyes paused and turned expectantly, a half bemused smile on his absent face, lost in the recess of his own thoughts. Closer, closer. I reached the door, shoved through it and strode out into the street exhaling deeply; exchanging the musty, dank air of Thallow Flats with the polluted, grubby air that passes for clean in a city.

I turned down the street, walking toward nothing: dim, hunched buildings shadowed in the afternoon's weak rays or hidden behind a thick paint of grimy film line both sides of the street. RAGE caught my eye, the GAR faded and reduced to a dull outline, washed away by filth, rain, and a fresh layer of smog.

I anticipated walking miles, to the outskirts, with nothing to hold me back, to leave, to truly disappear, but the irony was too much. Who would miss me, but myself, which begs the question: who am I really? A neon, blinking Rare Books sign threatening to sputter out at any moment, caught my eye before I reached the end of the block.

I ducked under the dusty overhanging and stepped inside. As my eyes adjusted, filtering in heaps of books piled haphazardly on shelves and tables. Dingy yellowed light from a few tarnished lamps cast mellow circles around a few crumbling corners. A tattered red velvet arm chair sagged against the end of a book shelf, its hackneyed foot stool missing one leg, sloping awkwardly toward the floor but still manging to hoist up a few bounded covers and flimsy manuscripts from the growing stacks on the floor. I let my fingers follow the bumps of old, thick spines as I ran my hand along a shelf leading towards the back with a skinny, winding staircase. I turned the corner abruptly, running into a youngish, girl with a stack of books piled heavily in her arms. She gasped as the pile crashed on the floor between our feet, furtively reaching into the pocket of her sheepskin coat, as a beady head poked out. A rat? She patted it reassuringly, watching me as I bent down to pick up the scattered pile. I apologized, and a terse smile flitted across her face, she seemed distracted. Crouching down, I reached under the shelf for the last thin book , lowering my head to peer under the shelf as my fingers found nothing but plush carpeting, stirring up little pockets of dust with their probing. And that's when I saw it...

Month one, Day 7 Time: Late

I woke up from a bottle crashing on the landing outside the paper thin cover of my feverish eyelids; so hot, I imagine I can fill the minuscule veins pumping iron rich blood in and out, slowly heating the papery skin in the cool night.

Spilt liquid sloshing against the floor with a final, dull splat as it rushes to escape through the permanently damp, wooden floorboards. Had I been dreaming? Shards of glass follow, scattering on the creaking floorboards, barely contained by the flimsy brown vacuous sack still holding a bottle's shape. A moment later the drunk stupidly stumbles up the continuing stairs. The insomniac in me guesses three am, perhaps, if I buy him an alarm clock, he will sleep. No halved dreams tonight; the fog hasn't lifted for three days. So tired. Tired of waiting, lying. Still enough for Sleep to visit, to stay for more than five minutes. But it can't, chased away by my incessant questioning, quickly it retreats farther back into the dark abyss of congealed answers, lost again. I give in, and sit up in the fetid darkness watching the shadows from the window flicker against the bare walls; free to haunt in their entirety without being broken up and distorted by furniture. I shift to the tension in my arm, the need to write, and stave it off by rising and crossing the room away from the treacherous black journal. Distancing the need as much from my mind, as from the packing crate next to the stacked mattresses. The tension not relaxing but becoming overpowered by the aches, the need to exhaust this restless form as much as the sentient mind. Recovering from the forced stillness, the body recoils like a caged-up panther. Pacing, pacing in it's cramped cage stretching lithe muscles for the day the door springs open. I want the door open. Instead, I bend over the dingy white ceramic basin, frozen water coursing through the gaps in fingers and down my face. The shock wiping restless inactivity from my mind. Icy, clear-- a blank slate. Above the sink the cracked mirror reflects a silhouette. Switch. Yellowed, garish light filters across the silhouette, slowly illuminating, as my eyes adjust, to reveal the shadowed identity. But whose? The face that stares back is not mine. The cutting sharp, chiseled jaw, lost to the gauntness of the face and the hollows of the cheekbones sticking out at too harsh an angle. The pale shock of swallowed, ill skin, that hasn't seen the sun's light in months. Dark, hard circles under the eyes enveloping them, but not quite stifling the piercing steel blue eyes. Dulled iris like that of a blade sharpened and resharpened , beckoning to peer beneath, like a well to their harrowed depths. Sparking the grey from behind, matches striking flint, mesmerizing and dancing like a wolf. Dangerous? Hungry, eating away at something, like a wolf. Thick black lashes bending with the ragged ends and stray shards peeking through long black daggers. Sharp almost aristocratic nose, distinguished on any other face, a signature feature. So unusual, but lost on this sunken ghost. Who am I? He mouth's the words back at me slowly without recognition, the words lost and splintered by plaster uncovered by a large gap in the old crusty mirror. Red, hungry hints of lips splay across the thousand faceted fragments on the edge of the crack. I touch the hollowed cheek, my hand shrinks back from the frozen, moist flesh. The image is a stranger, I don't recognize my own face.

Sneak Peek

Here's an exciting preview of the brillant blogs to come this season...




yeah, show's over.