Dave Matthes's Blog - Posts Tagged "sadness"

(This will not be the final edit; it is only meant to relay the style in which the book will be written, and where the "story" takes place. The line of bold text is to be taken as spoken dialog. In the final edit of the book, each character's dialog will have an individual type of font and style given to their spoken words to reflect the personality of the character.)

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There had to be something in that defilement, some clue or divulgement to be reckoned with. This life couldn’t be all a strange, aimless, mystery full of lavish lust; there had to be something more, something more obvious to deshroud.

When I was a child, I would sometimes come to a vault at the top of a mound with fields and herb widespread all around in all directions. This vault was of course metaphorical and no more material than it was transparent; after all, who in their sanest of dispositions would ever place a vault on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere for everyone and anyone to find?

There was nothing actually IN this vault, so nothing could be taken out. It was simply...there, as a contingency. A “just in case” sort of thing. An exclamation point to the ceaseless paraphrase of my life.

I only went to this mound because something truly troublesome had lashed out at me, whether that something was material or not, physical or within. It was a place I could meld with; my mind, my heart, my soul, my spirit; digging my fingernails into the earth’s cool, calm soil; digging deep and rooting myself to a standstill. Absolute solidarity. Absolute absolution. It was here I didn’t have to worry about the mundane policies of life and society and the “rules” or “laws” forth-written. I was young, but even so young these things were known to me.

Only once was that solitude ever broken.

I was sitting at the top, about to go home for the night. The sun with its orange face, a ripple tearing through its chin dividing time from solstice, had begun its final descent. The encircling canopy below had darkened; its top black as tar. Here and there, far and near, there appeared swirling, staggering smoke trails leading up and out of the trees and into the heavens. I could just barely begin to smell the incineration of leaves...

The trees parted, and I saw a gaping jaw line masked in smoke and flame, and soon it became apparent that these other stacks of smoke climbing up and out of the trees, filtering through the canopy, were merely other people’s plights and terrors and superstitions, burning away at the seams. Mine was much more however, as the tread marks on the pavement faded into the clear, I knew that something far more obtrusive and much more terrifying had indeed made its way to my doorstep.

Everywhere you look there are time travelers...or at least they were at some point. They say actions speak louder than words, but it’s in our intentions where our greatest or our most terrifying art forms materialize.

I wanted to get out of this place, the pressure from all directions, the catacombs of emotion and denial all intertwining into one unavoidable guillotine just seconds away from severing mind from body. This mound, this hill, this abashed encoding abrasive and revolutionary in its intentions, corroding my palms, wearing down to my very bones so that I could not move nor dream of moving. Who would dare approve of such a reminder, such torment? Who would condone this ideology for others to suffer?

I stood at the top of this mound, longer than any such childhood memory would grant me, and found that the sun was neither rising nor falling. The trees were neither dark nor ambient. The wind was neither chilled nor promiscuous. Nothing moved. Nothing shuddered. The vault however, lying at my toes, embraced a far more haunting tune; evoking the lyrical pounding of my heart in a cunning and disquieting duet that echoed throughout the valley. For a moment, I was disgusted at the thought of something as inanimate as a vault stealing my heart’s words, but then again who really owns their heart to begin with? Is such a thing ours even from the start? From birth? Or do we make scattered and assorted payments and reparations towards it throughout our existence until the day we die in which we become its true owners?

Your handprints on the window,
Are closer than your fears.
There’s someone on the other side,
Playing with your tears...

Her voice again. From somewhere in the trees. I’d have to traverse the side of this hill and leave my vault behind if I was to pursue. And now that the thought of leaving such a place, even after growing to loathe it, became something less than axiomatic. I’m not sure I want to leave. This place, where everything including time stands still...why can’t I stay?