He Walked Beneath The Philocalist

I knew I was dead the moment I woke up.  

It's something in the wind; a kind of stirring, I guess.

I remember just standing atop rusted train tracks, tall grass shuddering with the flow of that strange air as if I had been there all my life; as if I had only just been dreaming until now.

A kind of fog had lifted; I saw with a newfound clarity - I was weightless but somehow attached to the ground…if any of this was real at all. 

Something in me blatantly accepted it; I'm all alone now. I'm dead. What next?

And I stared at the tracks that seemed to go on for eternity and stared long enough as if I was trying to demand some kind of answer from it. But there was only silence and the wind with a heartbeat and I had nothing much left to do with myself. 

And so I started to walk.

And walk. 

Following the tracks that went on and on and on and on.

So far that days slipped into nights that lay awake dreaming. The stars were strange here, like eyes. Bloodshot, philocalist eyes that watched and followed my movements, curious perhaps. I could see irises in the larger ones but I delighted in having something close to company, and was hardly afraid. The bulging stars seemed to be whispering, whispering, whispering. 

Whispers that brushed the surface of my mind, slowly burning itself in the grooves of consciousness, settling deeper and deeper into my soul.

Go on. Find,  seek, go on and on and find yourself. 

Go!  

A curious thing; my legs - they never tired. 

I was never thirsty, or hungry, or needy of any sort. 

And so, absent from any distraction; I thought about life. 

Living my own, and how I died. 

It’s muddled now, save for a few precious memories or scents that both delighted and pained my senses. 

Now, I couldn’t recall whether I was an old man whose body I had escaped from, or that of a young boy who had only a glimpse at life. I only recalled lying down in bed and going to sleep. 

Best I could do was think up a wisp of a romanticized melody, a type of vibration, maybe. A strum of a harp that seemed to bind my soul to the body I had left behind. A low hum, a heavy octave which sounded sorrowful, like mourning.

A type of longing - the worst kind. The sickly kind that strangles your heart and tears at your mind because you could have, could have. Like watching the one you love most just a ‘hello’ away but your mind is too stuck wondering. But the longing turned to anger. I wanted to seek; to find - to rage and burn and crumble for all the world to see. I wanted to be something - feel something- create something mankind would stare at and applaud at or be angry at I wanted to be hated and be known and adored - adorned in scars and medals and bleeding burning wounds I wanted to live with meaning, not purpose. Purpose is different from meaning, because living with purpose is obligatory. But all this time I have lived above the surface - treading always on the thick of ice and never breaking or falling or breathing. I wish I would have taken a hammer to it when I had the chance.. 

But soon that flicker was gone too.

A tickling, familiar feeling washes the flames from my soul - like a sedative. I must have wanted to take these burning thoughts away in life - they must have been too troubling. 

I supposed I had - once - I must have had a wife. 

I could remember her more clearly now; chocolate hair and eyes frank with worry. Her laugh was a sweet thing, I think. 

Or perhaps she was my mother, I thought, and soon a strange pain stabbed at my heart for I had forgotten. The living was useless to me now, and so was I. 

All my accomplishments or views or laws in morality seemed to crumble away the moment I tried to lay a finger on who I was, cowering away like wild birds at the curious touch of an exuberant child.

And pondering about life and the death that stole me from it made me miserable, 

So I stopped thinking about that. 

And shamed myself for it.

Why forget?

Why forget the deeds I have done, the regrets I had (for I am sure I have had many)  why forget my shame and my pride and my world in the name of pitiful misery.

I must not have been a strong man on Earth.

I plead my own mind to whisk back the lyric, the verse and the music that my soul had crafted throughout my life, to bathe in the terrors and joys that once felt so important to my mortal mind and body.

But it was too late to wish them back, for my memories had already left me, peeling away like ancient strips of wallpaper on the walls of my mind. 

My name went first 

Then the colors 

Certain sounds had become a distant whisper 

That was when I began to run.

Run, run from the silence which was maddening 

Run from the ghosts of memory as if the amnesia would disappear if I didn't try to think. 

Or if I convinced myself that I didn't have memories to begin with.

Chasing the sun which rose and fell too fast, as if keeping pace with me, my heartbeat. 

Only I did not have a heartbeat - without the earthbound body I am nothing, nothing nothing. 

WHAT THE HELL AM I?

I found myself trapped on the tracks for it was the first time I tried to step off and in the distance there were shadowy silhouettes of others - but invisible vines were strangling the muscles of my imaginary legs as I tried to tread beyond the ladder. 

This chilled me but then there was the heat of the sun again and it reminded me of a time when life mattered and I felt the warmth of the sun on my skin and it was like love. 

And somehow the stars were still out, and somehow they looked upon me in a way a father would his child.

So I kept going on, until it stopped. 

Everything. 

Everything, everything, nothing.

The world, the grass, the tracks, the wind - crumbled away into a vast kaleidoscope of nothingness. 

And I felt so small. 

Fear stricken, I was rigid and breathless.

And yet… there was also wonder. 

As afraid as I was I kept leaning over the edge as the wind caressed my face like soft, delicate hands of an affectionate lover just before a very  long departure until it too disappeared into the tomb. 

“Could this be the end?” 

I closed my eyes and jumped - falling slow, falling silent, glimpsing a light I had never before experienced just before a darkness like God Himself  was drifting off to sleep.

87 years later

I woke up with a start and realized I was dead. A strange feeling rose around me as I viewed the rusted train tracks before me and the shivering grass and the whispering wind. 

It felt as though I had been here before. 

And so, naturally as the rain that was billowing in from miles to the right of which I was not concerned, and with the sureness in myself  as a tent is sure of his central cedar pole,

I began to walk.