The Awakening
My head played with notions of how this conversion will work itself through. Scenarios traveled the channels of reason within roads loaned to the map by the sparrow’s transitory course.
Each rope I found to pull truth (veritas) from beneath the horizon lent a new line to the proper side of the lion’s gate, into the beautiful world of Miriam and Max. Into the perfect national and international geography drenched with overtures of elusive yet attainable happiness. Into an ocean offering fruitful fishing among schools of unassigned, unclaimed fates, I’d float. Into a realm where solitude’s drowning grip would slip its chain from my ankle to sink into the lost fathoms of the forgotten.
Like a mattress strapped to the back of a giant, I waited to be crushed in the fall of the facade veiling this place. I listened for the severing of the tether that once held a mockingbird to its iced station in the desolate arctic.
While these playful thoughts raced in my head, and the sun slit the darkness with a beam from my window (yes, it’s still there) to the floor, another note came from the emptiness beyond my cell to rest beside the pile of my journal, causing my crayon to rock gently back and forth before resting.
“Your progress is amazing. Only one step remains. Your journal, which helped us so much to understand, what of the pages this newest version is written on? We gave you a tool for realization when you arrived here. You only have to accept it. Only you stand in your way. You are not the shadow of yourself, but remain the one blocking the light from shining through. Good luck and see you soon. ”
I could rant for hours on the content of this note, but haven’t the will. Rather, I’ll just recount what I found. Besides, progress is often responsibly letting go of boundaries that once constrained.
My first reaction, after the whirlwind in my head settled, and I gathered the debris of fragmented thought, was to do much as I had the day before. My hand set the note on the cold tiles of the floor, and I turned my focus to my newly organized journal. The last I remembered, it had been slightly askew, but it was now neatly piled. Regardless…
And, as before, it took a moment, but then I saw murky signs of life in the pages. Dark wisps, like the twirling trail left by a hand quickly passing through a thick exhale of cigarette smoke, began to rise from deep within the pages.
Gradually letters, then words, and finally sentences and paragraphs began to form beneath the uneven, sideways lines of my green crayon script. At first, there was no true essence to the words, only the neatly shaped columns around a large picture at the top center, below the large text of the newspaper’s name.
Then, as clarity and firmness took over, the picture jumped out at me.
It was me.
My own writing stretched over and tried to conceal the picture, as well as they body of the article, but it was clearly me.
I was in the grasp of two police officers, looking more than a little dazed, being escorted from the entrance of a Wal-Mart. In the forefront of the pictures bottom edge, you could see the open door of a waiting squad car.
My mind wouldn’t settle enough to allow me to read the entire article, but here is what the caption beneath the picture said:
“Above, Thomas Addison, the newest victim of the WDD Virus is escorted from a local Wal-Mart store.”
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