Trespasser
Arts & Culture / / Sep 10, 2018
You’re not allowed to read this.
If you’ve read this far you’re already a trespasser.
This is where the secrets are. This is forbidden fucking territory. This is the land they stole from you. This is the land where all dreams are made. This is where you find the love of your life and also watch it die—all in a single moment. This is where the outer is shed and prophecies are like voicemail—you don’t even bother to listen to them. This land is no man’s land, because this land belongs to the raging silence.
This is the crossroads—where all the ribbons of time come together to dance in the wind.
A creature of flesh and bone stumbles occasionally into this place. And though they will eventually leave it, it surely never leaves them. For it is true what they say; what is seen simply cannot be unseen. What is witnessed cannot be unwitnessed. And so, when that fateful creature of flesh and bone retreats again into the darkness, he does not return as merely flesh and bone.
With the naked eye, he appears the exact same as ever. Only through a trained lens is the truth revealed. And when the truth IS revealed, it is so fleeting that most would say it never existed at all. The existential neutrino—the God of god particles. It will even be written off as a hallucination—a figment of the weary eye.
Let’s call this creature of flesh and bone a man. It is only through deliberate seeking that the new differences within him may be witnessed. Perhaps most frustratingly of all is that these differences, however dramatic, will only be recognizable by someone who already knows that they do, in fact, exist in this life.
So, imagine for a moment that you already knew. You already knew about the blurred lines. You already knew about the secrets that lie in this man’s fringe. Imagine for a moment.
When this man would reach out to you, you would never feel his hand. Instead, you would feel only the softest petals of ancient roses. Ancient roses from the gardens of gods. The flowers of love and promises-kept would embrace you just like the ribbons of time once embraced this man.
And you would blink in wonderment as the man’s eyes became kaleidoscopes, where in the deepest corners you would only see yourself tumbling and fractioning within the prism. And you would hear only your own voice echoing into your ears, saying..
“Listen. Listen! When you were shit-kickin,
I was bricked up in an underground prison.
I was fast-walking ‘cross the ground as it was crumbling.
You see, I was never fixed when you were in the mix.”
And I’m that moment, you would find yourself surprised—as surprised as the desert itself when the skies open up and weep down upon it.
And in that moment, the skies would open up for you too. The rains would fill up your heart until they were pouring out your eyes.
You’d see the tiny flowers blooming from this man’s weathered edges. You’d see where his skin begins to disintegrate into an elegant metaphor.
You would see right through his chest to find not a heart, but a wildfire consuming unapologetically all things limited in their nature. All things of doubt, of completion, of conclusion, of understanding, of fear, of self-will, of control, and especially of logic—incinerated relentlessly.
And when your gaze would return to this man’s face, he would be gone like the snow in springtime. You would see only the silvery puddle where the man once stood, and in the water’s reflection the truth would hit you like a train:
You would see that you had actually been gazing into yourself for quite some time. You would see that the wildfire burning within this man was actually the wildfire burning within you.
Unapologetically.
Relentlessly.
But let’s not forget:
You do not already know these things, and you are a trespasser here.
And so when this man reaches out to you, all you feel is his leathery hand, and you avert your eyes from just another stranger.
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