His breathing faltered as a vision appeared to him like a light over the broad horizon. It blinded him at once and he had to make a conscious attempt not to avert his gaze, for he knew that doing so would be an intolerable betrayal of that point which lay immediate and a denial of that luminous one upon which his fate had plotted its inevitable course.
The two points were of the same substance, dualities bound by space and time. The point immediate and the one beyond were, in fact, two opposing sides of a plane: rifts in the fabric that remained distinct by virtue of the transformation undergone in crossing between one side and the other. And to pass through would be as light through the perforations in a screen, separating to brilliant rudimental shapes malleable to obstruction, branching to distinct and solitary awareness in prismatic colors cast now upon a darkened wall.
Rays rouse sleeping matter unconcerned by the impartation upon it of an immeasurable, yet insignificant bounty of retrospect decayed to alternating forms over eons of traversal. Each form is inadequate, like a graft to be rejected by its intractable and unrelenting host and thus can only serve a brief and momentary purpose coherent to a context rooted in contiguous reason. This unbridled brash Spirit is, to itself, burdensome, yet dynamic, for it sees no flaw in working within the confines of a closed system to achieve ends that extend beyond it. This Spirit is, in fact, self-deceptive for to achieve such ends, it becomes necessary to bound manipulable fragments of the Self with a twine by which these parts can be joined indissolubly and maneuvered adroitly with the skill of a marionettist.
Maneuvered hollows of ossified substance tap in synchronicity amidst the bumps of adjoining pieces, as the form changes direction suddenly, or as a bitter wind of semblance whistles through, and the topology of its reality—the stage upon which it stands— transfigures itself to a different scene of a different act of a different version of the same time-worn narrative. Tapping in the choral chimes of substance blustered through by wind and circumstance, the soul migrates in sparks to expanded expression in the flare of ignited flames upon a crackling, dry parchment in the chilly neglected air of night. The nature of such air is buoyant and naïve: cold with the absence of trespass, increasingly leery of the imposition upon its trusting, diaphanous nature by this dreadful elemental parasite which now envelops the parchment in its reduction to exhausted granules. The parasite looms ephemeral to fade to dying embers and the air feels within itself a transmigration to new awareness as a sacred medium by which sparks ignite and embers weaken to darkened solemnity in the permeating gossamer.
The atmosphere exults in the glorious consistency of the interwoven fumes, for they bear in subtle swirling wisps, passages to events in space-time: air sweeps through a valley, whistles through canyons and gusts through a remote rice field to twirl inward upon itself, sensing the aromatic vapors of a young boy’s curiosity, like sizzling bacon fat laid upon the white-hot foundations of imagination; tasting the apprehension anchored, amidst gusts, to his naïve curiosity: a lack of assurance for his consciousness of the world existed only as far as his perception extended and, beyond that, only in the realm of fancy; feeling the charge he radiated in anticipation for something that lay beyond, something that he just could not know at the moment, but knew was out there waiting for him on the broad horizon, for there could be no other more suitable than he to unveil the object of this imminent wonder, as though it were bound intangibly to his romantic Will. The air swirled wildly with his spirit in its flurry of questions, in his lack of satisfaction with answers, in his need for greater and more satisfying inquiry into the nature of all that existed around him.
The landscape changes from fields to mountains to deserts to sea and the point beyond remains fixed upon that distant horizon. The boy stands upon the shoreline: timid and fearful of the depths that must be probed in search of his quarry. He looks about at the rocks sitting fixed in spite of the breaking of waves and impotently contemplating a similar fate: screaming inaudibly as a mad woman at the sea. Screams drowned by the surface water, for to venture further inward would be to resign oneself to the possibility of no return.
Waves scatter over rocks.
A bracing wind swirls about the boy and alights gently upon his shoulder to gape frightfully at droplets of fate joined infirmly to a sweep of atmospheric and lunar forces far beyond their capabilities to resist. He takes a long, deep breath of air—cleansed through its migration—and he closes his eyes.
Scattered waves roll back in to the sea.
About the Author
Ashim Shanker has never been, and probably isn't yet, but certainly aspires to be. Surely, one day he MIGHT be, but there is no guarantee he WILL be. He was disappointed to find out yesterday upon waking that he still wasn't, nor would he be for the rest of the day. But still, today has not yet passed. So we must wait and see. In the meantime, we cannot rule out the possibility, however negligible, that he will have been at some point in the distant horizon. Yet, for the present, we are still faced with the bleak and disheartening probability that he never was, nor shall ever be. Whatever comes of such confusing matters, he nonetheless appreciates the interest of the reader and apologizes in advance for any time that is sure to be wasted in pointlessly deciphering the befuddling prose of this trifling wannabe.
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