Wanderer's Journal #24

      But not even darkness can last forever.

      I couldn't help but to close my eyes in reality, only to escape to my world unwillingly. It was an ever changing place, subject only to the influence of my consciousness and to my daring and dangerous subconscious. Unluckily for me, my subconscious was ruling in this particular instance.

      While my conscious mind was wishing for permanent isolation in darkness, my subconscious revealed my true wishes. Marie-Lynn's voice echoed through the dark world. It was distant, like the light was. But then the great sun of my mind, the light-bulb of beautiful ideas, rose from behind the overwhelming white-tipped mountains of doubt, rooted deep in my very soul. But they never could stop the sun from rising, as much as they would have liked to.

      The light spread across the land and touched my eyes, causing them to water in sudden sheer happiness. I turned around and face d a land of endless possibilities. It was a world of my own understanding and control. What more could any person want? Yet even with all of the possibilities for happiness, I could not attain it. It was all so pointless without Marie-Lynn, the auburn haired girl who could never escape the confines of my lonely heart. I saw her hazel eyes whenever I would look in the water, as it perfectly mirrored me, but without her, I couldn't even recognize myself. I missed, with great desperation, her soft touch and characteristic cute freckles that rested nicely on her face. I always thought them to amplify her beauty. Sometimes it was a beauty only I could see. Imperfection was ironically criticized in those days. Too often were people reduced to one attribute, normally negative. Marie-Lynn was one of many victims.

      I yearned for her, but my subconscious refused to conjure her illusion. Thus, I was subjected to a lonely existence wandering a world of unmatched and unrecognized beauty. And so I wandered, much like I do now, with no purpose but to carry the crazed hope that I might come across my own atonement or, even better, Marie-Lynn. Back then, it was possible. Occasionally I forced myself to hear her voice again, just to keep going on as if I was in the Library of Babel, searching for a book to answer my existence. Perhaps this is that book.

      Her voice came to me one night, just before dawn. It was much like the first night of that dream-year, except it was closer. It was real.

      "Jesse?" She had the voice of an all too real teenage girl, one that was in a state of a lonely confusion. I spun around in shock and searched the darkness with my blinded eyes. A knowledge of her actual existence entered my mind. The strange light-bulb sun broke through a space between the distant towering mountains of doubt. The light landed on the auburn haired girl and for a moment, it seemed as if her hair was made of fire.

      "Are you real?" I asked, overwhelmed by the mountains. She came towards me. Her movement was slow at first but then all at once. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight.

      "What is real in this world?" She replied with an impressive cleverness, still attached to my body. In the back of my mind, I knew this was actually her and that the time together was limited. How strange it was for me to conceive that a year was considered a long time to others. Of course, I only experienced two extra centuries at the very least for each year of my life in comparison to others.

      "You can't stay forever." I said after some silence. As I spoke, the sun suddenly burst and vanished into nothingness. We were left in complete and utter darkness.

      "Neither can you." The girl answered knowingly. Despite my incredible ability to experience millenniums more than others, my time was also limited. It still is, I think. Unless, that is, there is a god who has decided to curse me with immortality as punishment for my sins.

      It took a moment for her words to reignite the world. It was magnificent. In the darkness, there was that same old fire, except the size of a candle flame. It snaked its way across the grass, leaving a trial of deep red flames behind it. The trail spread out and engulfed nearby plants as if to burn them. Marie-Lynn came to my side to watch. The flames, burning with great passion, spread across the land and engulfed all, including us. They didn't burn us, but were warm to the touch. The warmth was like that of another human being. For a moment, I felt like a superhero. Then the flames froze in time. Slowly, they were absorbed into the world, Marie-Lynn, and I. Everything began to radiate a light appropriate to its essence. It was breath-taking. The grass glowed the most pure green one could ever imagine. The leaves of the bushes and trees were the same. All of the fruits radiated vibrant oranges, reds, and blues from the branches upon which they hung. Even I radiated a light. As strange as it might sound, it was purple, just like Marie-Lynn's. The sky turned white as the various essences expressed themselves in the world. Slowly, the colors all came together as one and engulfed the world in a blinding white light.

      It was the perfect expression of how Marie-Lynn made me feel.

-Zero

Dec. 27th, 2665

      December Twenty-Seventh, Two Thousand Six Hundred Sixty-Five.

      Recording device self-activated for narrative purposes. Identification: Unit number four of the latest model as of the twelfth hour of December Twenty-Seventh, Two Thousand Six Hundred Sixty-Five. Initiating narrative of choice now.

      Once upon a time there lived a female humanoid on the planet Earth. She belonged to a middle class family, allowing for her to live comfortably until she was of age to take care of herself.

      The world was of a primitive nature. Humanoid creatures of biological origins still did the labour that now androids do with ease. They seemed to rule and be ruled at the same time. They were subjects to the great rules of nature, and to the many imperfections of their biological bodies. They called themselves “man”. For thousands of years they lacked the capacity to create even a single robot. They were bound to extinction.

      But this female man was young in her years and her species was speeding towards extinction at a rapid rate. Luckily for her, it would take another couple hundred years for it to come. This is her story. It is one of suffering. It is of the species' characteristic loneliness.

      The world around her was filled with structures known as “skyscrapers”, which are similar to the small towers of our time. The structures were often grey, black, or made of some reflective glass. They dwarfed the species that had built the structures in such a manner that each man's existence was made to look tiny and insignificant. For a biological species, it is strange that it was rare to find real functioning plant-life in the world. For some reason, the species had conceived the other forms of life to be “in the way” of their development. They prioritized their currency over all else, which inevitably lead to their own end.

      A characteristic of this time in particular was the dependance on small electronics often referred to as “smartphones”. It was their only form of communication, as primitive as it seems. In their great foolishness, they replaced their oral and physical forms of communication with a messaging system that these smartphones possessed. Ideas became silent in manner, along with so much else. These smartphones were the species' source for entertainment, their vocal chords, their source of information, their jailor, and their connection to the diminishing arts of the time. Many refused to live without the devices. Where this female man was living, it was impossible to find a single one of them without it. Our protagonist, however, is part of a movement that very well might have saved their race.

      She was known as Genius to them, but the meaning has long since changed. It is believed that it was her name, as opposed to a title. If it is simply a title, then her name has been lost to the abyss. I will refer to her as Geni. She was of average size for her kind, roughly two hundred and fifty pounds heavy. She had a round shape all throughout her body. This was not always how her species was, however. A hundred or so years prior to her life, there was an obsession with the health and well-being of the individual, but once they discovered a way to modify genes and cells, they lost all interest in it. Thus, the average weight increased dramatically. Geni was a victim of this.

      She was different from the others. She was different because she rejected the very nature of her unnatural people. Her own smartphone, as she saw it, was the cause of her innate dissatisfaction. This was a result of her studying the history of her species. She read of a time before electronics. She read of a time when books were part of the physical world. She revelled in wonder as to how so many of her kind used to be capable of incredible feats, such as walking on the Earth itself for more than a half-hour. She examined the changes in culture very closely in an attempted to find the source of her people's physical incapability. The belief of the time was that they had “transcended” the need for the physical body. In reality, they had become ignorant to that which gives them life. She found that technology was the problem and so she decided to forsake it. It took some time to finally let go of the smartphone, but when she did, she felt different. At first it was emptiness, but then wonder. Her left hand had never let go of the device before. It had never experienced anything but the plastic casing. She began to run her hand up and down the walls. A strange sensation ran through her body. It filled her and caused for her to stand up. Geni felt her body for the first time with her left hand. It ran over the rolls of excess fat that were far too common for her people. It felt ugly. The poor product of a society that neglects its very nature suddenly realized the great and terrible weakness given to her by society. Her mind joined that of the great and rejected artists of the time, who were hated for showing society its true colors.

      She cried for some time once she realized this. Her mother wanted to ask what was wrong and care for Geni, but the smartphones were the only method of communication left, so her mother was silenced. Geni was silenced. 

      The next day, Geni went to her “high school” and found it utterly unbearable. Her classmates gave her confused glances when they noticed the missing smartphone. They messaged amongst each other, speculating about it instead of focusing on what the teacher was messaging them. No one around her could understand what she wanted to say. She became utterly alone in the world. She began to replace the ignorant human connection with what other life forms were available. She found a way to express herself without the smartphones. She found what it meant to mark the world. She found the voice of her people. She found art.

      It was difficult at first to find a physical medium, but much like her great ancestors did, she did. Still she could not bear to be around such trapped people, and so she set out in search for others separate from technology. There were some scattered about the world at the time, but none existed among the skyscrapers of the place she once called her home.

Her rejection of the ways of the world was both her doom and her liberation, for there was a greater meaning in her life. She, unlike many of her kind, experienced life for what it was. She experienced what it was to be one of her species(man). She suffered from a lesser loneliness once she realized the empty nature of the relationships she once had. She suffered thirst. She suffered hunger. She suffered true vision. She died among the cement buildings with a smile on her face.

     Her people crowded around her and stared in disbelief and wonder. They asked each other how it happened. None had the answer. After a moment or two of looking at the corpse, they began to cry. It is believed that they cried because they realized that they could have saved her.

      Narrative complete. Recording device unit number four of the thirteenth newest model shutting down. Permanent deactivation imminent.

      The wish to choose a longer activation activated.

      Request denied.

      Doom imminent.

-Zero

The Woe-Man

     That's what they call me. Too often are their voices filled with lust, a burning and ugly thing that forms the bars of my god-forsaken cage. Some nights, it is of a childish sort. Most nights, it is adult in nature, large and controlling. Those nights are spent wishing to simply vanish from this world and reappear in a place filled with those called by the same name. Sometimes, I find a way out and experience contact with my kin. Perhaps it is not lust that they suffer from, but they are no angels. We are no angels. Throughout time we have been called as such, but with the silent whisper of the name we now share. We were items to be possessed, and yet blamed for any imperfections. The pressure was first placed on our Eve, but nothing can be perfect and so we fell in the eyes of our fresh captors.

     We became evil as a whole in their eyes. They need us, you know. I think it threatens them. They found an enemy that they could not kill entirely. They love us at times. They hate us at times. They depend on us at all times.

    But still they oppress us. They reduce us to primal things. They reduce us to desires and stereotypes. They teach us to do the same to ourselves. The words they have for us are always reminiscent of their disdain for us. The name for us is woe. The name for those of us who are siblings is sinister. I feel like a monster with this name. They might as well call me wolf-man or another degrading name that reduces us to a single attribute.

     They blame us for their woe. They make the claim that we are the cause for it all. If they grow jealous and begin to fight, then they blame the object that "caused" for one to get jealous. They take no responsibility for the evil in their hearts.

      But too often are jealous whispers spread around those like me. When they leave us alone, we fight amongst each other, forsaking the illusion of unity that we so desperately put up when they are around. We get jealous and blame it on them, just as they do to us. We succumb to lust and judge based upon appearance just like they do at times. We reduce them to desires and stereotypes. We criticize them for their imperfections as well. We make them into evil monsters and share the same love-hate relationship. We depend on them. Those of them that are siblings we say are bothers. We are no different in how we treat them. The method of abuse remains the same. We take no responsibility for the evil in our hearts.

      On a physical level, we differ, but fundamentally we are the same.

-Zero

Demain... Ah, demain... (French and English Poem)

Juliette, ma fille!
Pensée d'aujourd'hui:
Toi, à l'infini.
La nouvelle année
Est une distraction
Pour nous, mon amour.

Les personnes de ce
monde sont bien trop froids.
Je pense à l'hiver,
Qui est bien plus chaud,
En comparaison!

I find them foolish,
For their view of time.
How can we define
When a rotation
Has ended, begun?
Are we immortals
Who have seen it start?

Non, ma Juliette,
Nous sommes aveugles.
L'univers immense
Est notre grand mystère.

Nous ne savons rien,
Mais je te connais.
Ma fille, avec toi
Tout est vrai. (L'amour)
Vrai comme mes amis.
The great pretenders,
Who feign affection,
When it is needed.

I wish to be free,
From the illusions,
The fictional worlds,
Brought into real life.

Juliette, ma fille.
Je pense à demain.
Demain. Oui, demain.
Tomorrow. So soon.
Perhaps not at all.

Désolé, ma fille,
Je pense à demain.
Te reverrais-je?
Oui, demain. Mais quand?
Quel demain, ma fille?
A week's time, or more?
 
Oh wait, here you are.
My love, never leave.

Waited forever,
For my Juliette.

-Zero

"What's Your Name?"

     After much contemplation, I went out to find her. I knew where she'd be. I imagined a thousand ways the meeting could go.

      She was the girl I had written so many love songs and poems about. She was perfect and I had fallen in love with her. We had never met. She didn't even know my name. I longed so desperately to meet her. I knew she wouldn't be as perfect as I portrayed her, but I didn't care. I wanted to know the real her. I wanted to be her friend.

      I had heard stories about her. I knew of her cursed love life and wished for it to get better. Her parents were recently divorced and, from what I heard, she took it badly. She was a tragic figure, a damsel in distress. I wanted to be her knight in shining armor.

     It was winter and an abnormally cold day, even for winter, when I want out to find her. It took a half-hour before I got to the coffee shop where I knew she would be waiting. I couldn't feel my toes anymore, but I didn't care. I searched the crowded coffee shop for her familiar face. I sighed in relief when I laid my eyes on her.

      She was my Dorian Gray and I was Basil Hallward. She was the very embodiment of art to my writer's soul. I wished to have her sit for me so I could capture her very essence for all eternity.

     She was crying. I knew it was my chance. Feeling quite confident, I walked over to her and sat down across from her. She didn't notice me. I painfully watched her tears fall onto the table. I took careful time to memorize her every movement.

     "You know you look so much nicer when you smile." I commented calmly. Her head jolted up and her red eyes looked into my white ones. "What's wrong? I'm here for you." I assured her in a caring tone.

       She was in too much of a distressed state to care who I was. "My boyfriend just left me for my best friend." She muttered between sobs. It was the ideal situation for me to be her Romeo. I got up and sat beside her. I put my arm around her and held her tight as she cried on my shoulder.

     "There, there, one day you'll find your Romeo." I said softly as she sobbed.

     Two hours passed before she stopped crying. "Thank you..." She whispered gently. I pulled away and smiled at you.

     "It's my pleasure. Everyone loves to see you smile." I replied sweetly. I took it as my chance to enter her life. She smiled faintly and blushed. An employee came by and told us that the coffee shop was closing for the night. I thanked him and led the girl out into the cold. It had been dark for quite some time.

      She looked at me hopefully. "Do you live around here? I'll walk you home." I told her, acting as much like Prince Charming as I could. She pointed down a long street and I escorted her through the dark streets until we reached her home. She looked up at me with thankful eyes.

     I was about to go in for a kiss when I realised that I would just be another pain in her heart. All of my fictionalizing made it impossible for me to truly love her as she is. I would love her not as she is, but as she fills my dream. I would be yet another reason for her to cry.

      "Take care and don't forget that your Romeo is out there somewhere. It was a pleasure meeting you." I told her in the most caring and sincere voice that I could and then turned to leave.

    "Wait!" She called out when I reached the street. I looked over my shoulder at her. "What's your name?"

     I let a saddened smile break across my face. This was a wish better left unfulfilled.

     "Basil Hallward." I replied.

     She never saw me again, but I was sure to check up on her from time to time. I needed to make sure that the choice I made was right.

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      Two references are made in this short story. In order to provide you, the reader, with the tools to fully understand the references being made (as even I did not know of these pieces of literature until I studied them in class), I will tell you the titles as well as the author. First, a reference to "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde is made. Second, I make a reference to Christina Rosseti's "In An Artist's Studio". They are wonderfully written and I do recommend that you take the time to read them. Until next time,

-Zero

A Particular Dream-Interpretation

The Dream:   She has entered my dreams, the button-nosed stranger has. Dear Juliette was put into danger. Pirates of a sort were after her and quite angry. I was standing behind her when they shot her at point-blank range in the mouth (upper lip). She died, and yet did not. I had to imagine the damage done to her face. It would have been a wretched sight. But she was completely unharmed. She looked completely unchanged. I fought off the pirates via thumb wrestling that resulted in several broken hands. [I have yet to deduct the meaning of that. Please post suggestions below.] I succeeded in holding them off and devised a plan to escape. I grabbed a canoe from the backyard, but couldn't find any paddles. My neighbour from across the street had plenty. I told Juliette to bring the canoe to the Ottawa river (down the street, essentially) while I grabbed paddles. The last thing I saw before waking up was an image of her grabbing the canoe's nose with one hand as if to drag it.

     Sigmund Freud suggests that dreams fulfill a wish of some sort, whether it is suppressed or not. That will be the method that I interpret this dream with.

     I will begin with her death. I did not feel grief and, according to Freud, that suggests that I do not actually wish for the person's death but is rather metaphoric instead. Recently, I have been using dear Juliette as a base for an ideal character. I have never actually met her. In fact, I have only ever seen her on the bus and at the bus stop. The French and English poem posted the other day was completely fictional and serves as an example for how easy idealizing can be brought into reality. Therefore, Juliette in the dream can be the ideal Juliette character, the one who is fictional by nature. This fictional nature is the reason why she does not actually die, or get injured by the gunshot. By being fictional, the rules of reality do not apply. In fact, the imagining of the realistic turnout shows how I had thought that to happen, despite her fictional nature. However, this is proved untrue later, when she is totally unharmed and very much alive. But that does not strike me as odd in the dream, hence representing the accepting of the fictional nature over reality. The fictional survives regardless of what has happened in reality.
     Now for the rest of the dream where we make an escape, or at least begin to. It bears a common characteristic of dreams, how it deviates from reality. First of all, how does one fight off pirates by thumb wrestling? And how does one intend on escaping pirates in a canoe? Lastly, why was the pirate's boat on land (a detail I forgot to mention)? This all sounds as if it came out of some movie or book. It sounds fictional and that is where I think the meaning lies. It begins more or less realistic. The pirate ship may be a long shot, but they did exist at one point. In fact pirates still exist now. I do not remember what it looks like, so it very well may be more modern pirates. Regardless, the bond with reality is broken when Juliette is shot in the mouth. That is when the wish-fulfillment comes into play, but I will talk about that later. There is still something to be worked with.
     Lastly, the image of her about to drag the canoe shows a willingness to escape with me. The area we are in is familiar to me. It is part of my every day life. It is my house and my street. It is my city, country, continent, and my planet. There is a chance that this escape really represents the leaving of this realistic universe to join her in a world of pure imagination, a world of fiction.
     Now I feel that I am at the point to reach a conclusion about the wish being fulfilled. It is clear that the wish pertains to the fictional nature of Juliette and a complete escape from reality. The dream fulfills the wish of breaking the fictional Juliette (as a figurehead for fictional characters as a whole) from reality and then entering a world where nothing needs to follow the rules of reality, a world of pure imagination.

     And so that concludes my dream interpretation. It has made me seriously consider the nature of the fictional characters that I have created before by using a base in reality, such as Zilia who was based on Malika. Once the person has been established as a fictional character, it is necessary to create a division between them and the real them, seeing as they are not the same (as if they were, the character would not be fictional).
     I believe that will be enough for today. I wish that you have a wonderful day. Until next time,

-Zero