Another Acid-Induced Story...(AKA: Chronicle of a descent into madness) (1134 hits)
Category: Quotes & Stories -> PoetryLabels: ETS_Short_Stories
Rating: 1.38 on 25 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Brad <electrictoothsyndrome.at.msn.com> (View user info) at 2004-06-18 22:57:55 EDT
The Man Who Remembered
(The loose diaries of a man who was
graced with remembering the 'other side')
I
There's a place in time where everything is standing, and nothing there has ever to feel the soothing graces of a passing wind; where the greeneries of the lower fields never lose the enchanted air, and the nightwatcher hovers in slow, noiseless flight before the endless stair. There was a definite sense of position here, a collective knowing of all that surrounded, as of when someone is sleeping just on the next story, the energy of their presence looms long in the shadowy corners of the soul. The stars of the night keep calling the traveller to take flight as the stillness calls the sleeper to take form and dream, and the blackness that had laid rest the soul now stirs and dances in the dusky gloam.
To kiss the poor, forgotten pines goodbye and steal away on the smugly wings of an angel is but a living lie, a mad drunkard's raving delight, as he dips limblessly into the cool, blue underwater world. I took the insane plunge too, I remember it well; fighting vainly for safety with a desperate doggy stroke, I soon regretted my cursory mindlessness. Sinking from my ubiquitous spirit into the quiet depths of the nevermind, I drowned there in the river of forget.
And forget I did: for fifty long, unsatisfying years of my life on this planet we call earth, I have probed endlessly the ancient midlands of my everything in order that I may find some scrap or shaving of my forgotten self, and so that he who believes may find sanctity in these otherwise null words. We have all chosen to walk through these lands of the deaf and the blind because, in our infant spirit, we feared our freedom; only now, that same fear has followed on our heels like a shaggy stray dog to the steps of our back porch so that we may feed it the scraps from our table, and so that it may press its pathetic nose to our screen door and plead its entrance.
But the thrill of heavenly ascent delivers us perpetually from such short-sighted trifles as this, and unbounded freedom presents itself in our accepted ignorance; ( for the well constructed soul never fails to put a blemish on the immaculate nature, and the corporeal body with which it defines itself is rotting even as it stands over the grave.)
I feel that when my death comes I'll go willingly, because then I'll know exactly what it was that my limited body could not quite comprehend. I'll just step off into that child's endless dream as if my life here were nothing and wait in peace by the great dividing sea for my friends to sail to shore.
II
To turn away from God is not only to deny yourself a part in his infinite wisdom, it is to search discontently the regions of danger for the key to an already open door. For all you lost, uncertain souls of the world, listen now to what I say: I have outflown the vastness of death so that I may bring to you the wisdom that God has shared with me, and though I have tried to escape my duty, I could never escape his plan; I have tripped the narrow bounds of reality, I have re-witnessed my own conception, I have caught myself up in the circling winds, only to end where I began; I have balanced on the rim of madness, felt the forces of nature lapping at my sides, and seen the good and the evil smile the same twisted smile; but I have just as well stood solid on the ground and bore witness to some strange little dancing thoughts of cause and effect, mimicking and laughing upon one another on their weird curve back into eternity; it is with them that I once wished I could go, forgetting that I was already there. God smiles on all these things, knowing that it's all just preparation for another, far greater innocence, but those who choose not to seek for God, those who cling too tightly to life and refuse to let it go will not be ready when their time comes to face the truth, and they will taste the sour sweat of fear and feel the talons of demons ripping their souls from the flesh, preparing them for their new life.
Why do some refuse to give up? Why do some dogs feel the need to chase their own tail? Why do some find themselves trapped in a nightmare from which they feel they may never wake, and why do they not see the strings that dangle down into themselves out the hands of the celestial messenger, the ethereal light? The best way I feel that I can address these questions is that we all are drawn to the light, only we happen to find it in different places, the spirit smiling all the while in the unimaginable. Even those who are altogether blind to the light are fulfilling a divine purpose, a necessary role in the omnipotent truth and the sacred quest to grow in the spirit.
I find myself cloven tightly to the feelings and brightening images of the love that unites us all on the other side, and that my friends and I collectively decided to leave to play around in this life for a while. I find also that my words, no matter what I write, fall short in describing the complete aural radiance and oneness with all creation that is to be felt there.
III
We are all but feelers in the darkness, night-crawlers searching about for a familiar voice, or a soft breast on which to lie our head. We trust only our senses because, here, they're all we have. Only until we are born again beyond this world will we be able to receive the light of truth, for though it is all around, there is nothing of this world that is able to fully reflect it. The most we can hope to see from the window of our souls in their present state is a faint preview, a fragmented picture from the movie of cosmic truth, and not until we have witnessed this truth in its bounteous entirety can we love without condition or boundary.
There are men now of science who, although finding themselves unable to justify our existence on their own terms, will take no notice of what I will now say. Our universe is nothing more than a tiny rift in an infinite sea of energy, a fractal of sorts, with countless other rifts dotting this continuum. All electromagnetic and thermal phenomena, including the propagation of light, are the result of energy from this infinite sea passing into the rift from an unseen breadth. All matter: all stars, all planets, all forms of life, all the atoms in the universe are but islands of energy in this rift. Likewise, gravity, and all the workings of the cosmos are the result of this energy, possessed by the will of God, being extended from this rift of emptiness. The emptiness bends away from the energy like a pillow from the sleeping head. God, himself, is the energy, and we, like everything that is, was, and is to be, are an extension of Him, and with Him we are one. Science, naturally, will find no 'use' in such claims as these, because they cannot be 'proven' experimentally in its limited world of logical assumptions and constituent analysis; but science also cannot tell how it will prove any theory concerning the origin of the universe when its own laws break down at that point...
Funny that we humans should make such a fine art of speculation!
Without the observer to observe, there would be no observation--there would be no universe. It does not help to define the universe if we know not that consciousness that defines it. This, not science, is the ultimate endeavor: to know the source of all awareness, which is by nature the source of all things.
The choice is ours: either we can accept His love, or let go and fall into the emptiness of space and remain trapped in the rift forever--returning to the nothingness from which we were first spawned. The thread of an existence that was woven to the very root of time and uplifted along its primordial climb would then ravel out the blanket of life and hang loose in oblivion.
Here we walk a narrow path suspended over a sea of infinite sadness and fear. So many fall because it's hard for the false traveller to find happiness--it's easy for him to lose focus and slip, for false eyes see only a world of false images, and, therefore, are unable to see the pathway of truth lying before them. Once fallen, there is no other way back up but by the hand of God. Faith, therefore, can mean the difference between walking in joy and drowning in fear.
I am like the thoughtless beacon, the point that knows and never moves. I am like the child and the old man stuffed into the same body, playing contentfully in the dirt and waiting for the savior of death to claim me. The death brings me back together again, like Humpty Dumpty, who in shattering was brought together, yoke to white. Like sitting disconnected between two different conversations, it all becomes incoherent mumble breaking against speechless wonder, a squishy, head-tilted dumbness that opens holes in the guarding web.
I've stopped picturing myself as moving, and now creation revolves around me, every thought or opinion is filtered out my bubble and hovered there, suspended in perpetual orbit, the light of focus never to fall on them again or tail them into a whirling wind. I feel warm, yet I'm cool, I'm red and yet I'm blue. I am all things. I live in a tiny bubble, and yet I am not trapped, 'cause I have eyes in the back of my head.
IV
"And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages." -Shakespeare
...and then I awoke an infant, a child of this strange land. I could feel the bliss still evaporating from me as the early morning dew 'neath a slowly rising sun; fleeing back in shining, spectral clouds to from where I had come...leaving me naked and unknowing in the cold, misty morning.
Thinking back on my boyhood days, of my time in the sylvan forests of youth, I catch only the clouded snapshots of a distant sleep--a playful dream in a quiet garden before the gates of the labyrinth, or an angry monster chase through a brown, rusted warehouse in my mind. It's hard to tell sometimes where the dream ends and reality begins--they have both been steadily poured into the same glass throughout the years. All the lightning-bugs that used to twitter and glitter in the small field behind my first childhood home, which I then mistook for an army of angry men with flashlights, all the white and yellow flowers of spring, and all those wet, slippery backyard dreams have tangled into one interconnecting memory, and my lolloping passion to know has since been vaporized and re-liquified into a calm acceptance of what is.
Unlike most men, I have been fortunate enough to be graced with the answers while still alive, and I feel a certain responsibility to share them, the best that language will allow, with anyone who'll lend an ear. Life is made of hand-me-down opinions, and it's name is whatever name it's beholder gives it. Returning to the simplicity of infancy, my sacred circle is nearly complete, my pyramid is reaching for the sun, my body is slowly returning to dust, and I can feel the death breathing warmly now down my neck, praying to take me home...
(The only answer is that there are no answers.)
Onto the soul ablaze in life's ancient furnace, this statement will throw wood rather than water, for the turning of time hath no substitute, and the seven ages must be played out one by one. I can tell you only the things that you already know, whether or not hearing them again will make a difference is up to you. I'm not telling you to lose yourself, I'm telling you to find yourself; the choice, though, is ultimately yours...
V
(Savor the ignorance that it might be a window to the nature of everything.)
Contrary to the standards of society, we are not limited by ignorance; rather, it is when we know too much that we are most dependent upon limitation to offer for us some 'logical' ordinal of existence. (That child in the crib neither knows, nor cares for what Daddy does in his computer chair, and Daddy does not care to see how his child is lying dumb and free.) Not as long as I'm in this world will I ever have as much knowledge as the day I was born, for even now I grasp for the air, whereas before I simply did not grasp.
You cannot calculate the value of life, you cannot fathom the depths of your soul, you cannot truly love with reason, and you can never find your limits. Take a walk with me now into the yawning pathways of your own imagination, where lines are not drawn, where ideas are not kept, where there are no foot-holds, where everything is music on the breeze, a moving mist o'er the seas of seems...
Floating up on the vaulted
heights of the music - That soul-searching music
that swings on the heavens.
Become the music. Watch it move.
A stiff wind rushes
like a river of decomposed song,
ever-changing sound.
See the colors of the air -
currents of psychedelica -
A calm, sparkling waterfall
and mosses that look to be
a breathing creature.
The breeze blows stronger now
through us, and for an instant
of silent tranquility we are swept
away by its majesty.
We are one with the elements;
transparent to the air, bleeding
to the ground, speaking to the trees;
we are chilled by the flight
of our mutual soul.
Such is the voice of the gods.
One night I had a fantastic dream. I was walking down a straight and wide path through what seemed to be a wood, when suddenly I felt the unmistakable force of a presence--one that struck a familiar chord inside me. I was then lifted off the ground and pulled through the air toward what I perceived to be some point down the path. As my speed increased, I felt a surging chill come over me like goose-bumps on a roller-coaster ride; this was too incredible to be real I thought. Then I realized I was dreaming. Not long after I discovered this, I also realized that I, alone, was controlling my movements and the presence I had felt was the realization of my own dream--I could do anything, be anything! I tilted back my head and looked to the sky and with only a simple thought I was climbing high above the trees. I could feel the distance between me and the ground increase along with a mounting sense of freedom and divinity. Soon I was rediscovering myself and celebrating with my new friends, the birds, high up in the sky.
You can imagine my disappointment when I finally woke up. I'm still not quite convinced, though, that this cannot be done. I'm beginning to think maybe my faith isn't strong enough, because still every time I jump off my roof, the ground jumps up to meet me; and what's more, it always hurts!
VI
Long have I bled, long brooded, long suffered forth in dreary ballads and soft, solemn howls the burden of the flesh. Long have I been bombarded with scattered visions of some dreams long past, dreams of a time before time that carry with them the gift of release, but also the knowledge of that release so that I might seek after them like the composer after his dangling melodies--trying to grab hold before they fly away as a raven does into the night. These dreams I can see to be the source of all my creativity, as if they are the very breath I breathe, the very substance of my body, and as if they are wound to the fabric of my soul. And to find them, and to feed on their swelling energy is my only release from the hunger to feel alive, to feel at home. In their absence lives the Nothing, in their presence lies the purpose, my own little sanctuary from the bitterness of boredom. Not to seek would be, for me, to defy the stars. To live a contradiction is my nature, to be a chaser of clouds my joy. Why?--I do not know. This is merely the truth that I must live with, that I must find my heaven in a honeysuckle, and my hell in the branch.
I've lived a life of trying to escape what my nature tells me to do, and by doing so, I have fulfilled that nature; I have painted my destiny. I can feel the possibilities of the future eyeing me close, and falling in on me like a bird for the kill; so I act in haste and scamper frantic like a doomed rabbit, in a frenzied search for some undergrowth in which to bury myself and lie out of sight of an ugly end. I only find, though, that even in this thorned disarray of vines and bushes lies the pattern, and the hawk grows the legs and fangs of a cat and comes running in after me like a sure-footed predator. I can fool no one, for I am as lost in this universe as anyone else. I'm a motherless babe, a friendless friend. There is nothing else to do, so I write this. In the words of Ecclesiastes--"All is vanity". I know only a few things, and they just keep surfacing and resurfacing in an endless cycle of consciousness. It seems there is no longer a thing called Joy, or Excitement; Laughter had a short life, he died with the boy I think.
Life is like a hologram in which I am part; as it moves, light strikes it in different ways and causes it to change colors and forms; I've tried to stop it, but I cannot. Just when I think I have it where I want it, something happens to make it move. My memory is the enemy, for I can never enjoy the presence of a pleasing thought for very long before I realize I've thought it all before. The key to happiness for me is not to remember, although I have before claimed the opposite. So why, I ask, does God make me go on?...Haven't I yet done what I was made to do?... Why does he not just take me home?...I'm tired..I'm just so tired...
VII<
It was the year of the serpent and my soul had fallen deeper than ever into that great spiraling nothing--playing droning music with a band of lustful demons by the banks of a sickly swamp, a dense, poisonous land--The Lost Country. A smell like boiling sulfur stabbed my nostrils and made them burn and sear, tightening in pain. My mind became a fried, mushy mass of flesh. Like rigor mortis through the joints of the dead, an Evil grew and stagnated inside me, and my blood, pumping in dregs of disease, stopped cold and curdled. When the burning had ceased and my eyes had stopped watering, I opened them...
How strange a feeling is that of sadness as it assumes its most satisfying form...in a cold reptilian kiss--seething with death, throbbing lightly with smoothe, venomous impact, softly...softly nestled on the black soap-bubble sphere of the self, where the Whores of Satan fuck for free, and the rivers run red with blood. So goes this sad romance, this waltz with Death, this prelude to aggravated Evil. Thus I laughed at the pain of Jesus Christ, that bastard son of God, that liar with a serpent's tongue! This Satan whispered to me and I willingly repeated, for my soul was weak and longed for a quick release from the pain of living.
The righteous man would say there is nothing beautiful in Hell; if only that were true...so much easier would it then be to escape from it. Like a baited hook, Satan wields his stolen beauty, and plays his charm`ed flute in the wooly comforts of darkness. By learning our patterns, Satan penetrates into our individual matrix of possibilities, and like the half-wakened sleeper we are fed one tiny suggestion and the rest is self-willed perversion. It's a game of probability, not one of certainty; and it does not take away one's free will, it only tempts it.
A sentence without sense, a thought without bearing, a race without ending, a start without starting--thus I plummeted headlong into the nightmarish reality of the Nothing and the Everything: storming with genius and grinding with madness-- laughing my merry way into the Palace of Isolation, wanting never to see the light again. Then my laughing stopped. Something was terribly wrong...I could feel the endless darkness closing in on me like a cold, clasping hand, and the chill of emptiness surrounded me quick like a vast embryonic fluid. My life was playing before me in fast, rewinding flashes as if all my memories were being washed away, and i was left as only a wet, naked soul to wander alone into a great enigma of nothingness.
There were no thoughts in this Palace of Isolation, only a sustaining knowledge of my lowly existence. It was as if this faint knowledge was Life in its most basic state...a sort of disconnection from all other levels of existence, an alienation from everything defining. It is a very difficult place to explain simply because there is nothing to explain...I had reached perhaps the lowest possible existence. And then I heard a sound like the crying of a wolf in the distance, or the last whimpers of a dying animal, a soft, sad, faded sound that shook me from the darkness with its celebrated emotion and reminded me of my life--the life with which I was not yet finished...Then there was a great flash that tore through the darkness like a razor, and when it struck me in its showering melody, I saw an angelic figure descending it like a staircase. One cannot begin to describe the brilliance with which He shone. In the purest light of lights did His soul radiate forth; so bright did He shine that I could not look upon Him long lest my eyes would go dim. Cowering before Him, naked and cold, He reached out His hand to touch me, and in His Love I was lifted from that place of darkness forever...
Never again will I turn my back to the Sun, for I have seen the Light of Heaven...I regret nothing of what is behind, I fear not of what lies ahead, for the Love of God is with me, and the Light of Its Truth shall follow me 'till the end of time.....
User Reviews
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-04-07 16:47:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by vengeance (user info) at 2004-08-13 22:38:49 (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
----
???
I thought this was YOUR alter?
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-04-07 14:53:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
wow, look at the replies - it reads like a list of UberAlterVillains...
Submitted by Coleslaw_Murphy (user info) at 2006-04-07 14:04:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-02-11 01:50:33 EST (#)
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No Comment
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2004-11-17 19:35:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"We are all but feelers in the darkness, night-crawlers searching about for a familiar voice, or a soft breast on which to lie our head."
Submitted by eIectrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-10-23 17:54:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
You are not as bad as people say, you are much, much worse.
Submitted by equaIizer (user info) at 2004-10-21 08:00:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I will defend, to your death, my right to my opinion.
Submitted by drfeggphd (user info) at 2004-10-18 15:54:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Just saw this...
I feel a little better now.
thanks
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-10-18 15:18:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
still my favorite of mine. ok, that's enough recalc for today.
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2004-10-14 20:26:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
<Compliments of Bad cock contest>
but this is actually good...
Submitted by DyingBreed (user info) at 2004-09-15 21:24:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
ive always loved this one. funny that you were what? 16 when you wrote it? you couldnt have been much older.
you guys should take the time to read this.....set it aside for when you have the focus and time
Submitted by equalizer (user info) at 2004-09-14 03:32:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Equalized.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-09-11 19:10:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Yea, Kealic, but if you read to the end...you'll see all the stages. You're stuck in one right now. You think things will never change, and you are correct! In the sense that that stage, that state of mind...of being...will always exist somewhere, on some plane of existence, you are correct. Question is: when will you leave it for greener pastures, which also exist?
I suspect that, like all of us, the crux of your problem lies in the difficulty of finding love. I know that seems cliche, and I know that there is a likelihood you'll think I'm crazy...but love changes everything. It changes US...
Good luck in your spiritual war...and, whatever you do, don't follow the shadow where it comes from. It's a trap.
Submitted by Kaelic (user info) at 2004-09-11 17:45:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Thanks for sharing it with me. For this:
" I know only a few things, and they just keep surfacing and resurfacing in an endless cycle of consciousness. It seems there is no longer a thing called Joy, or Excitement; Laughter had a short life, he died with the boy I think. "
is a terrible truth.
Submitted by fake_bargled (user info) at 2004-09-07 19:00:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I'm fucking glad I did, your responses to my posts are fucking hilarious, thanks for the entertainment when I'm at work.
Submitted by K00IMang (user info) at 2004-09-03 22:28:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by vengeance (user info) at 2004-08-13 22:38:49 EDT (#)
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No Comment
Submitted by FetishII (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:55:15 EDT (#)
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Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:38:34 (#)
Ranking: -2
Hope this is what you wanted!
---
Mr. Spam man, bring some spam. My nane is electrictoothsyndrome, and I'm like the 20th to spam Fetish this month, ain't I cool?
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:46:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-08-12 19:38:34 (#)
Ranking: -2
Hope this is what you wanted!
---
Better make sure you spam them all, I'm not missing a one, bitch!
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2004-06-27 00:15:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by StonedSilly (user info) at 2004-06-27 00:07:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Stupid.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2004-06-19 16:00:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Hey, thanks for the favorable reviews. I know this is really a little too long, but that just happened to be how it turned out. Sometimes I get long-winded when I am inspired. Thanks for taking the time to read it though.
Submitted by NerfHerder (user info) at 2004-06-19 15:36:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Amazing.
But too fucking long.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-06-19 01:51:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF 4,000 WORDS ALL THAT!
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2004-06-19 00:52:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow.