“For what’s not known is just what’s there
And knowing that’s at least an edge”
Sitting in darkness, I reach out and touch white noise.
On the edge, I look down to watch the red river of lights.
Time is flowing between the banks endless to the edge,
Of an invisible horizon where black joins black.
A gaping canyon stretches out below my perch,
And the voice within my skull politely suggests I jump,
As if a long lost part of me knows it would be okay,
As if I could swoop across, glide like my ancient ancestors.
My hand sinks into white noise, finding an anchor there.
No, I will not make that leap, I know the consequence,
And I do not desire my own destruction, not yet.
The ancient voice of animal ancestors sits, unperturbed.
Years ago, I thought I had left this place for good
To settle somewhere more suited to the ideal life.
But, years later I awoke to find myself there once again.
The edge had followed behind me, lying in wait, stalking.
All it took was one brief lapse in my attention,
Then the stalking beast launched its attack.
I never saw it coming, never heard the approach.
I awoke bloody and bruised in surroundings too familiar,
A monk’s cell of my own design, a private anchorhold
Ostensibly devoted to the holiest of my holy work
I have chosen a self-imposed solitary confinement,
Walled in and bricked up, but free to leave at any time.
I am attached to no church. I take no holy communion.
If anything drives my exercise, it is not spiritual.
Blind fear is the force and it casts a great shadow.
But fear only motivates so far. It is a hungry thing consuming
All the body stores from within, withering you to a skeleton.
A life lived in fear is no life at all. Forever aware,
Forever on the edge, tense and teetering between fight
Or flight. And can either take you far enough to be sure
That the threat is neutralized? If it can, then
How many times until you finally, inevitably, falter?
When my mental state falters, my thoughts turn poetic.
Spilling spleen onto the printed page in desperate release.
This is no life at all, a mind spiking and crashing
Like the outline of a craggy mountain range on the horizon,
the green phosphor glow on a electrocardiogram peaking.
A zenith from which there is only one direction to travel.
The highest peak rests upon the edge of the deepest canyon.
What a thrill it would be to stand at that point, surveying
All that is beneath me, assume that I am the eye of god.
Pride before a fall, of course, and a even a glancing hit
Will send me spiraling down the face of the cliff.
So, I cling to my anchor amid the white noise, comforted
By the security of my position in a Goldilocks Zone,
As the edge ever beckons me, threatens to swallow me.
“Do I take myself too seriously?
Very well, then. I take myself too seriously.”
“Do I not take myself seriously enough?
So be it, then, I do not take myself seriously enough.”
Which version of me shall be in command today?
Today, shall I be a creature of sloth
Desiring nothing, providing nothing,
Resting my bones that have grown weary from rest?
Or, shall I choose to be a creature of lust
Desiring all that is warm and fleshy
Seeking only release from within
From thrusts, spasms, and impure bodily fluids?
Perhaps I desire my wrathful side to rule
Seeing all things as enemies
My defenses up, my weapon at the ready,
Every situation a battle in life’s endless war.
They say all it takes for evil to triumph
Is for good to do nothing.
I wonder if there is good in me.
I wonder how much good there is in me.
Oh, it is true that I try not to be malicious
And I claim my own acts of violence are just.
Who better to know if I have been wronged
Than the one who has been wronged?
I embody a devious pattern of positions.
One morning, I arise ripe and ready
To take on the world, and take on myself,
My body loaded with energy that came from places
Unknown to my philosophy. A great mystery of the universe.
The engine is revved to full speed, and I produce.
For a time, that is, until reserves run low.
One morning, I will arise pained and shaky.
The star inside me has collapsed
Now hyper-dense, a singular singularity
I fight the gravity well to rise again,
But cruel gravity will always win in the end.
Once, I stopped biting my nails.
I’ve stopped another dozen or so times since.
Once, I stopped touching myself.
I’ve stopped another thousand or so times since.
A special cocktail at a special price. Whiskey this week. Happy hour.
Come. The doctor is in, and he sells the universal solvent
For dissolving all possible ailments of the mortal soul.
One shot to take the edge off. Name your poison.
For lost glory, there is cheap fizzy beer, yellow and sour.
For misplaced anger, there is the Old Crow for a dollar more.
“Goes down easy, for the price... If you know what I mean...”
But for the man of means, there are pricier medications to be had.
They all have the same destination, but you’ll arrive in comfort,
And, perhaps, a little more expediently. The choice is yours.
At the end of this line is a quiet place where the mind stops
Racing, and pulls into its roundhouse to await repairs.
The doctor offers lubrication for rusty gears, engine parts ground
To the quick, and tongues that have seized. A dose or two
Is all it takes to see the effects. Another satisfied customer drops
In to take his medicine. By prescription only, all plans accepted.
“Can I get you the usual, or are you gonna keep me on my toes?”
Cash and consume only, no credit and no running a tab.
Doctor needs to keep his license to keep his patient
Patients night after night. They know best what they need.
And the sharp dressed man in the corner sings the blues
With a smile on his face bright as the morning sun.
Bending notes like they were made of rubber, he plays
The mournful melodies of loves lost. Still, he smiles.
Voice dripping with honey, he coats every syllable of woe
With sweetness to help the medicine go down like candy.
“Thank you so much for having us. We’re so glad to be here.”
But he never misses a night, tuning the bar into a church,
Singing hymns of joyous pain for special Sunday services
With beer and whiskey in the place of communion wine.
Communal spirits, we join our voices and lose our selves
To the preacher, to the doctor, to the liquid in our glass.
Songs of spiritual things, Saint James, angels from Spain,
Rain, reefer, and champagne. The sharp dressed man drinks
Only water on ice. He passes no judgement on the flock,
Or on the doctor tending his patients at the bar.
“Make sure you tip well, the going rate is two hundred percent.”
Laughter from the assembled. Pass the plate around friends.
Our tithes will pay for a new set of strings to us to dangle from,
A new bottle neck for the finger, and picks for his thumb.
Faces lit in shimmering shades, women made up to hide imperfections.
The outside world fades into music drowning out conversations.
Put on a new face, step inside this chamber of sound.
You’re someone else, now, free from expectations.
Wait no more, tonight is the night. Come inside and join the bacchanal!
Consume delicious nectars that liberate spirit, body and all
From stresses and strains, the pains that compound.
There is freedom here, in strict rhythms mechanical.
Terpsichore would be proud, albeit confused, by sounds so strange
Alien noises of instruments that define this modern age
But the motions remain and they still resound
Within our primal drives that never change.
And tonight, there is the beautiful one, standing tall above the crowd
Beckoning you to her with animal magnetism unbound.
The heat of dancing bodies in this room surround
Together, however, you feel there is no crowd.
This is where you feel most like yourself, at last, but only in this room,
For here is a place where it is safe to remove your costume.
How strange these feelings, emotions that confound.
You are at peace from the music you consume.
Logic and sense have left the room, now only strange feelings remain.
Unfamiliar lust for the clockwork boy, but desire in vain.
And more you can’t understand but it feels profound.
Who am I now? Oh, I can’t begin to explain.
The first inklings of an awakening have begun to bloom and blossom.
This chamber contains within a power most awesome
To reshape a soul, make it seek new ground
And a journey will begin by the start of Autumn.
The plan, then, is executed in slow-motion
Or so it seems at first.
August brings activity at a rapid pace—
Tempus fugit, indeed.
My eyes and my spirit seek passage North.
Unreal City, Surreal City
Please clasp me to your bosom, I beg of you,
As so many others have.
Do not spurn me, for this is my second try.
I have failed before.
I was a young and overconfident fool then,
And I still am, true.
Now I am not as young, not as overconfident,
But forever a fool.
With the benefit of hindsight, I look back
Upon my mistakes.
I will own my mistakes, claim them for myself,
As no one else will.
They are my mistakes, and they are mine alone.
They define me.
For now, I dangle, on this precipice, this edge.
Biding my time.
Loosening the binds that tie me to this cliff face,
And then... flight!
A leap of faith, but not into the void below me.
Direction is meaningless,
And the arc of my trajectory can not be plotted
In Euclidean space.
I will bend reality to my whims, and bend space
With all my energy.
A journey of a hundred miles can be completed
In a single step.
Even as I go, a fear still stirs within my stomach—
Am I being followed?
Is the stalking beast still searching for its prey?
Does it have my scent?
I though I had escaped the edge long ago,
But have I this time?
There is only one way for me to know.
Time is the answer.
Patience, as always, is the watchword—
And my weakness.
Here, I begin my metamorphosis.
What will I become in this strange place?
There has been something within me, desperate to break free,
No matter how hard the world has tried to push it down.
For a time, for an eternity, even I forgot it was there,
Biding time, waiting patiently for its moment to be born.
Now, the moment has arrived.
The timing is inconvenient, of course.
I must let go of my last anchor, release the white noise,
The ever-present companion throughout my life.
Nothing is left to hold on to. The leap must be taken.
Consequences be damned, the ancient voice was right.
But where is the edge now?
I thought I had escaped it, left it behind.
What foolishness! The edge is always there, inescapable.
But I know something now I did not know then.
The edge is an illusion, the chasm is not as deep as it seems,
And there are people there who will catch me if I fall.
There are no versions of myself,
I have bound them up into something new.
This new me emerging from its chrysalis was there all along,
All I needed was the space to find it again.
Space that came with time, and with patient guidance,
And a few doses of the right medicines.
The doctor served only placebos,
And the preacher has found another church.
I left both behind long ago, though I do try to visit when I can.
A placebo is fine in small doses, if you’re aware that’s what it is.
And the chamber of sound has closed its doors,
But it was never the room, it was the people, and they have a new home.
I, too, have a new home. Several, in fact:
A place for sleep, a place for sound, a place for desire.
This unreal city, this surreal city, has much to explore.
But where I’ve explored has not been streets and avenues,
It is within myself—the city is just the catalyst
That jump-started the reaction, lighting the way to her.
She that is me is born anew,
And is learning to walk again on shaky legs.
It took half a lifetime to find her again, and I cannot let her go.
She awakens, she lives, she survives despite it all,
The damage and the scars, the baggage I still carry every day.
Now the time is coming when I must leave all that behind.
I must be free to be what she is
And to become what she must become.
Denial is a hungrier thing, and it takes the first, largest bite.
Leaving fear and anger to pick at the scraps, to say nothing
Of the positive feelings. What shall they feed upon?
A question for a future me. My task, for now, is clear.
I will become what I was not,
What I could never be under the circumstances.
Here at last, I face the edge despite my fears, but no longer blind.
I tear down the walls of my anchorhold, smash the bricks to dust.
The work is not done, but it cannot be done in hiding,
And I was never as alone as I thought anyway.
“But an edge is only an edge
Even the Empire State Building has one”
— Nora Neurosismancer (2021)
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0