The Tip of The Iceberg

 THERE HAD BEEN a buzzing about, a form of nonsense that you could feel on the tip of your tongue if you could pinpoint it. Careful, don’t think too hard. It’s happenstance; you found yourself in a discombobulated maze that was small but never ending. You could unfold it like a blueprint or a newspaper, the origami puzzle could span a life time. Catacombs to get lost in. 

   You’d try to get the attention of others around you. You take a closer look. You’d begin to realize they had no faces, no faces for you to familiarize and bring a sense of reality to. Every door and drawer, armoire, TV screen and mirror, had an entrance. Anything that was a window, or doorway, or a reflection rounded into the surface, bridging upon worlds— was to be tested. It was a tesseract. She spoke in your favorite book, joining two pieces of fabric—Mrs. Who’s It What’s It folding time and a half again. There was a wrinkle, a crook in your crown. 

    Don’t break the world, don’t try to think too hard that you begin to wonder if you are secretly a nihilist because just a minute ago you were repeating proverbs that could have given you some formula of hope. Don’t lose that hope. Hold onto it. Death grip it. It already felt like a seizure, like a really bad drug trip. The Deja Vu that maybe your great nan had that tall, slender lavender gold-plated teacup set that rested on the claw-footed table, frilled with handmade doily’s and Forget Me Nots. It struck memories, of reading books at tea time. It was a beautiful set up that existed in a corner of the room. The Jamias Vu that connected the dots on the unforeseeable map, little bits of unfamiliarity that existed in the tiny room full of hidden corners, held under stacked piles of old, interesting junk. Which to follow? You wondered if someone spiked your drink. You couldn’t recollect what you were doing before you got here— this small room with doors and armoires and TV screens that speculated, windows and doorways that bridged between worlds. Another wrinkle bore into your brow.

    Maybe you were so unobservant that you walked through one during your daily routine and ended up here. You remember the smell of the library you visited on Saturdays; that dusty old paper and ink, glue, leather and book binding smell—and it reeked of elevator grease. It made you salivate anyway, for knowledge of course. The floors were scuffed rubber and speckled beige linoleum, and you wonder what floor you might’ve accidentally ended up on. It was enough to get you sick, in that way that elevators played with your sea jelly legs. You didn’t like the mirrors, because they held onto the faceless. You tried to avoid the clocks, because they counted to nothing, the sundials traced shadows 12 times over, the analogs burned military red into your retinas, the cuckoos that swayed overhead began a migraine. Your grandfather was a clock winder, a fixer upper of strange mechanical parts that fit together perfectly. You recognized the grandfather clock that chimed with low bellows. Was it levitating? Your Papa was also a principle, who disciplined those who got out of line—those whose values and morals he didn’t agree with. 

    It was incessant squabbling that you didn’t know how to stop. You wouldn’t know when the church bells would ring, these clocks always sounded impeding. The mirrors held the faceless, and when you walked towards them the shadows of the faceless would walk away from you, and out a door that disappeared. Which door was the real door though? You could see them in the corner of your eye, before they would break into a million reflections, split to the point of bleeding through the pool of silver that rippled over green glass. 

    The funky deco light fixtures and Tiffany lamps that hung off the walls and drooped inward, were shedding light like a circus funhouse disco room, began to buzz along, creating a frequency that would stir any fly or moth or butterfly in a jar; in fact it sounded like a chorus of bees. They wanted to get out, they wanted to take their reign over this weird world, that haphazardly fell down and up these winding spiraling stairs too many times as if the architect were drunk and high on LSD for the job, and was inappropriately having sex with M.C. Escher. Stop short at the mirrors, the buzzing gets louder as you follow your faceless reflections disappearing into different worlds. You saw a cloud of cigarette smoke, ending near your fingers. They held the butt of a joke, mustard cream yellow burning soot into your thumbs. 

   “Did I have sex with M.C Esher?” You ponder. You almost expect David Bowie the Goblin King to descend from the heavens, he was the sexy dark king in your nightmares. His labyrinth always trapped you for eternal slumber. You hated the idea of being lost but enjoyed being lost in his trance. It was a funny idea— how lost could feel so familiar, like the old books and movies that soothed you, or spooked you to bed.

    Turn against the windows, they breathe foreign air from unknown places, the darkness that billows through the lace blue curtains is enough to worry about, the amber and crystal glow of the lights have a hard time casting out the shadows. It’s enough to know you’re not alone, the way the small world breathes in and out, like you were caught inside an iron lung that didn’t want to sleep. It kept you alive. 

   You open a desk— the writing kind that has the curved wood coverings that sloped over old letters and forgotten button projects, many of which you vaguely remember because you had a similar cookie tin full of them in your room. Underneath the quills and ink bottles, were formulas written out in cursive script. They were something wonderful, the only time capsule left that this desk brought forth, a person squandering for their memories, forgotten knowledge, as well as searching for the way through. You might as well say there was no way out, only through. 

     You found the post card and stamps drawer, and pulled it open by tugging on the metal coin slot handle. Just big enough to fit a quarter or a finger through. It jammed as you wrestled with it, the handle was shaped in a heart and dug into your finger tendon. You fished for a ruler, stuck it in and wriggled it free. A screech sound erupted while the jam fought back, and thousands of stamps flittered like tiny birds, the ones that would flock the streets and the national state park, always a bit too close for your comfort. They were riled up by your attempt to look through, petal through each bud of ink and watermarks of cities, treasured symbols and pieces of history. They broke free as you peeled up the collective rest of them, like you’d peel off vintage wallpaper, revealing a cold metal door which was diminished by the ugly speckled taupe colored floors and walls that lined the inside of the 8’ by 12’ drawer. It made you lean inward with caution. 

    There was a scale of buttons that wore the right side. Up or down? It sparked nostalgic smells of oiled up gears and workings, of a drab elevator. You opened the drawers that stacked around it.

   “Curiouser and Curiouser,” you’d say under its trance. Blue velvet drawers lined with fishtanks and books. Ah yes, the library on Saturdays. The Saturdays spent with your mother. You remember your hand that wrapped around her finger, you were too young to read but you could listen to the stories told by her and your father. 

   The library’s fishtanks held decrepit, war tattered calico goldfish the size of your head. Each weekend was a visit of surprise, one would always get fatter as the tank emptied over time. Scales would always flake off, reminiscent of its last battle. The goldfish swam up, multicolor scales of lit up elevator buttons lined it, as it bugged out and fish eye focused, it was under the magnified lens of the Alice looking glass. The wall wore the tank well, under blue velvet curtains, fat books and badly done taxidermy. They had a smell, a smell of collected dust, animalistic rectum, and fish stank permeated the room. It wafted out of the drawer and smacked you in the face. 

    “I suppose it wants me to go into the elevator,” You spoke to yourself, and maybe to all the other fragments of reflections that danced in the background. 

  You looked in the smaller drawer, at the fish tank room, the scales read the pattern that you entered like postcard stamps. Your hand— just like the looking glass—it shrunk and then expanded to fill the buggy fish-eye view, it was all honeycomb and complicated. Your finger made loud thuds as it pounded the mechanical code in. The elevator buttons were thinking like a lottery machine, slowly loading overtime. 

    It lit up and rang its bell, as the gears and pulley system cranked up the floating room. The metal doors parted like a mouth ready to swallow you like prey. You found yourself spiraling into the tiny writers desk, as the elevator door chomped on your accordion body, clock bell towers struck and cuckoo songs went wild. It was dizzying. You had made your choice, and now it was processing your request. It lulled you about, made you feel disconnected to the world around you, peering through the fishtanks riddled with colorful calico fish, that held the remnants of the previous room, splayed like a shipwreck on the surface. The elevator snatched you up with smooth jazz, and took you 7 minutes in heaven. The longest elevator ride ever, it gave you time to think, the flies were buzzing in the florescent lights above, they flickered with irritation. 

      You look to the floor, and to your surprise it was right where you left it. “My Book Bag!” You expressed with delight, like a little kid at the candy shop. 

   You opened the satchel and peered through the contents, it was another obnoxious stack that stretched for eternity, books Tetris and Jenga up the walls of the satchel. You transported yourself to the book staircase, that led you down into the abyss. Careful, don’t knock them. You crept around tediously like it was a prison jail break. Up above, the goldfish began to wear pointy teeth. They gobbled up books that had spilled open their guts like a mass homicide.

 “I didn’t know librarians could be this scary,” You said quietly under your breath. 

      You knew at some point, your situation was going to get worse, when the taxidermy lion began to creep around like you were their next fun little dinner party. 

   “I must be quick, I can use the letters in the books as a barricade. You know, before they start throwing up real characters… Oh.” It all made sense now. 

     You began to worry a bit, because you tend to pick up strange books. Wild movies. This wasn’t the tip of the iceberg… yet. There was a wing that flocked to the right, down the halls glittering with trinkets of gold, you follow the maze and it brings you to a library that was dank, dark, and all alone. Nobody had drank it in, or ripped open its spine in a long time. It perplexed you. The door you’d been chasing through the mirror was at the end, fluttering and flickering like it might disappear any moment. 

   “I can sense your confusion, young one.” The creature of knowledge said as it sprung forth on new ideas, most of which were yours to begin with. It was riding on your wavelength.

 Its eyes glowed, searing into the locked up books that rest beside it. If it held it’s glare upon them, rings of fire would creep up their pages and curl them like wilted flower petals. How terrifying, to be able to create and destroy knowledge. 

  The creature who had previously been taxidermy, loved to walk circles around you as it sang to you. 

  “You are asleep. You are not awake in your life time, and you do not possess the power to rise alone.”

   You knew the locked doors that rattled like a storm of 50 Jumanji games burdened inside of it was not an opponent you were ready to face. 

  “What lies inside?” You question.

  “It’s the only doorway that runs away from me in tremulous fear. And I keep seeing these television screens, they broadcast and speculate but they never finish their recordings, they always glitch and turn strange colors and I’m on the edge of my seat.”

   It’s jaded in green ice, the tip of the iceberg. The doorway that lead to it, down the long hall of jaded forgotten knowledge, most of which left bread crumbs that were stale and meant to be uninteresting, just like the cobwebs that stretched through its branches. It was casted into the cracks and crevices… you weren’t allowed to access this wing anymore. 

Your memories are distant this time. Untraceable. 

  “They hid your brain from the knowledge that makes people nervous and shake in their boots. They didn’t want an army sending earthquakes every swift move they make, all jagged and confused.”

  The doorway hid information, books, movies, news casts, articles, media. People. The things that you wished, on the tip of your tongue that buzz all about sending fractures across your brow, they had been silenced. 

  “How did they get away with banning knowledge? How long have I been this sleepwalking puppet?” You scream in fervent frustration.

   Your next steps must be careful, you have to take your Automaton body out of its pre-rigged routine, cutting off all those invisible puppetry strings. 

“They’ve put you all in a selective slumber, a daze. Think The Handmaid’s Tale. Fahrenheit 451. They’ll tell you that it was to protect you. But you know better.” There was a coy gleam in its eye. 

   I am a Vessel, a vessel between worlds. Bore Broken skin and a fire within, Burning bright— I am a weather map of color. There is a a tale-tell sign, the storm accumulating on my chest, my eye. Fingers dig violet lines. 

“Hey You, It’s time to Wake Up.”

   Welcome to my green screen. Welcome to the tip of the ice berg. I know it doesn’t always open to everybody, but I’ve seen you out there, you little wallflower, you climbed your way through here without the need for your small minded, idol like leaders—that tell you to look to them like they have the power of god. They took away your ability to free think. You can’t filter out that propaganda and hysteria that they force feed you. They stretched your gullet til the sides of your mouth split open. How does it feel to wake up and notice that you are just a puppet? 

    I miss the feeling, the way it feels to freely post how I view the world online. I want listen to what I want, read what I want, to have all the news and media accessible to the public. It was never something you had to chase after. The scholars left behind knowledge, the producers, writers, creators, all left behind the evidence and a peace of their damn minds. Will it have been tampered with? This world is riddled with doldrums. 

 “You’ve hid too long, it’s time to wake up.” The voice croons, hauntingly. 

   This is what you get, the tip of the iceberg. You should fear it, the chaos you let sleep and the TVs screens that breeched through worlds, all these possibilities have been silent. The propaganda and hysteria that brands us in ways that we can’t peel off unless we cut open our skin and figure out why it’s going to be buried with us. The TV screens that burn channel 5 on OLED firings, the phone screens dangling information, the important forgotten knowledge through out the decades like stupid little Time Capsules of previous traumatized generations, always played in a corner of a room like a secret that should have never been kept, unknown by most because they are too long gone to have hope. 

 “Are you finally awake, heavy sleeper?” It sang, impatiently. 

“What, awake from this forever thought matrix ruse that I can’t seem to get out of?” I question the jaded beast. 

 “Well you can see a little clearer through the looking glass, now can you? It’s not burning every little ant in it’s path.” 

“My head doesn’t feel clear, the weight of all this burdened knowledge is on my hands now,” I bring my hands up to the sky, questioning the mighty gods above. 

I have and always will be: a ritualistic people walker of earth, getting stuck in dangerous routines, because you know— we humans like a healthy set in stone algorithm to make life simple. But now, I don’t really know what to believe anymore. Why is living so sinful? Why is Feeling so human? What lies will unfold? I’m trying to expose all secrets, I’ve spent way too long trying to wake up the dead. 

  “What’s my fucking lesson?” I scream. The Wilder beast grins one last time before I am transported to another stupid complicated maze, where all the people have their faces, all the people have their ideas and their routines— each uniquely their own like the values and morals they take to. We are all collectively in a hive mind, yet now we are awake. We are aware, and most definitely afraid.