Ch. 1
You know, I always thought it was about where I was. I always thought it came down to the world I was surrounded by. As if I had no involvement in my own life. I really believed if I just packed everything up and went somewhere else that everything would suddenly fall into place. I never really thought that it was just me. I didn’t think I could be the problem. Now here I am. Exactly how I was before.
I can’t do it anymore. I can’t justify another exhausting attempt at trying to change everything. I can’t lie to myself and invent some new reason as to why things are the way that they are. I feel this way because that’s how I am. That’s exactly who I am.
It’s not like I had any say in anything. I was born, I was given a name, I was told how to live my life, I was told what was expected of me. Then one day you wake up and it’s too late to admit how much you hate everything about the life you’re forced to live. I thought I could delete everything around me and finally find some peace in my life.
I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not sure what really matters. Nothing really matters. It was all taken away from me before I had a chance to decide for myself. I’m done, I’m not trying anymore. I’m going up there on that cliff and I’m stepping right off. I’ve done it a thousand times in my head, it’ll be the same thing.
I start the long drawn out hike to the top of the canyon walls, and all of the misery and jaded hatred starts coming back to me as if taking its last final stand. All of those truths I thought about the world, the one I was forced to be a part of.
That was it, I woke up one day and they said, “Everett, welcome to the rest of your life. Find a way to enjoy it… or don’t, there’s not much you can do about it.” There is no control for anyone to have, it’s already decided for us. It was all decided for you and someone said it was “Us and We.” It just works me up so much, I’m getting angry walking to my own death.
We sutured this Earth with our roadbeds. Glided our pen over the blank dirt, playing God - as if it was all a simple soft cloud of malleable adobe that could only be exhaled by our pure lungs. As if we had any power. We invented power. We found God, and we reinvented Him. We invented God to pull ourselves up. To separate “Us” from “them”. We separated ourselves from Nature, making everything we see either Human or inhuman. Then we derived everything we consider inhumane. We invented God to make ourselves next in line. There’s God, then there’s Us, then there’s them. We carved into these soils to make it ours. This is our land, these are our roads. This is our Earth. This is our world.
Furloughed the peace and freedom of everyone in front of Us, before Us, in the way of Us. We don’t ask, we take. Hundreds of years later, we don’t mend any fracture we caused, we keep bending until it breaks. We don’t share, we tell. We don’t talk, we scream the loudest. Be louder, be better - follow the lines and stay right where you belong.
Boundaries, Rules, Laws, Facts.
Don’t trust them. They look different, they sound different, they think different. Whatever you do, don’t talk to different. They might hurt you. They lie. You’re better off looking at the ground than saying hello. Stay inside, stay in line and you’ll be okay. You’ll be better. You’ll be better than those other people, you’ll always be right. Sanctity in trust. Loving blind. We are the best, so why would we lie? Freedom is here, freedom is mine. Raise high that “A”, or you’re bound to die. Come, stay with Us and everything you do will be right, everything you do will be good, everything you do will be the best.
I’m done with words.
I’m done with names.
I’m done with people.
I’m done with everything that happened before.
I have to shake all of that loose. I can’t start now, I can’t be something new if I have all of those old thoughts hanging onto me. I need to forget everything that’s been holding me up. I need to let go of everything that keeps following me. It follows me because I let it. Those perspectives were crutches before, I’d rather fold myself into the ground than carry them over my shoulder for the opportunity I have now. That’s exactly what I have: a chance to breathe fresh air and let it all slip away from me. I mean, really be free. No more fences, or territory, or ownership, or hostility. I am my own community, under my own morally driven jurisdiction, under my own scrutiny. I am my own self flying through the empty land by the whim of the breeze, by the love in my heart. I can feel the pressure leaving my body as I get to the top of the canyon wall. I’m becoming weightless already.
I have no name anymore, I don’t need one. I am defined by my thoughts, ideas, and expressions. If you look through my eyes you’ll see the squint of my eyelids, the spread of sunlight across my iris, and my feet pushing the ground below me. That’s it. My skin has no color - no pigment. I am a sheer reflection of my surroundings. I am the illumination of my feelings. I am my own being. Depict me not by my sight, but understand me by my soul. Everything else from before doesn’t exist any more.
I am my Dreams.
I am my Thoughts.
I am my Voice.
I am my Word.
I am my elongated shadow draping purple across the burning desert scene, the blanketed cool air that follows me eclipsing the heat as I glide along the road.
To judge me by anything else is a crime. To hear but not listen, to not feel, to not absorb what I give is like wasting rations. Let me be heard, let us exchange and share. I will not stretch what I can’t stretch, I will not bend what I can’t bend. I will not twist what I have no right to. What I provide is real. It’s how I see it, it’s how I want it to be. It is the fresh dawn of the desert that helps change seem possible. A prayer for my next life. A promise to myself to start something new. It is my mantra.
I am my Dreams.
I am my Thoughts.
I am my Voice.
I am my Word.
I had grown stagnant where I was living before this. I was surrounded by dead monotony. It meant nothing to me, it only ever made me hate what I had. It was what made me want to leave, I had nothing there for me. I needed to leave, but I hadn’t found a reason before. I’m not sure I really even found my reason now. It’ll come to me. I still have to move, or I would have just given in to the way everything was. I wouldn’t have found my way here, where I can finally start over. High above the empty desert, I stand free. I am free for the first time. I can finally pretend to be unaware of anything else otherwise.
As I look out over the burnt landscape, captured by the brightness of the sun, I feel a lightness enter my body. I finally feel like I can let go. Maybe I can finally move on. I step closer to the edge of the cliff side. I can finally be free.
As if I truly never had control, or as if I was losing it for the very first time, I start to lose track of my perception. My vision seeps beyond the boundaries of my eye sight. The beautiful desert melds into a blissfully bright image and I am over taken by the sensation of what I see.
Just as I was about to take the last step from the cliff, I fell into the ground I was standing on. Something stopped me before I could walk any further. I feel nothing anymore. I’m slowly surrounded by a vast emptiness. Suddenly, I slip away from all sense of my being.
Timeless, I wait.
I wait without form.
Out of nothing, the concept of a moment begins to form around me. I feel the presence of my own awareness, yet it is something completely different. I’m unfamiliar with how it was before, how I was before. I’m not sure that I was ever there in existence to begin with. I have never known my being before now.
“Hello?” I cry out into the nothingness. “Am I alone?”
“This is your first day, John.” A voice echoed from every direction of my mind. “You have a lot of work ahead of you. You’re going to figure it out. You’re going to find where you belong.” A hand falls down onto my shoulder, covering me in warmth. Light returns to my vision in a subtle orchestra.
The first color to sweep across the blankness is a broad, filling swipe of light-birdie-blue. It fills everything before me. A green green green hill slopes up, inflating from the bottom like a swelling soar. The grass created for its skin cushions my barefoot steps, floating me above the ground. Around the hill, in great distances all around, white clouds catch colors of chamomile and shift them down onto the rolling dives and jumps of the many other green hills, forever on around me. Before I can catch it being created, I look up to see a full appl
Then, gasping in lucidity, I am walking along the roadside. I have returned to something. I know where I am, yet I cannot remember. I know where I am going, but I’m not quite sure. Something came to me. Am I even me? Of course I am, I can only be myself. I’ve always been me… only I feel as though I’ve never been this before. I can’t remember even a second before this moment. Time has no tangibility, yet it has infinite depth. How did I get here? I can’t recall enough before this version of now to even think beyond a question. Somehow, all that really matters is that I’m leaving. That is all that exists inside of me, some primordial notion. I was just standing somewhere, I was just about to do something. Yet, somehow, I’m beginning now. I am something completely new.
I’m not sure where I’m going, or why. I just know I’m not running from anything, I’m running to something. I’m learning to disregard anything but now: how long, how far, why this, why that. It doesn’t matter. The past is a riptide that thrashed me about, ten-feet-deep and left me asking how I arrived. And, now, I am born - the white foam stuck to the top of my skin as I was carried in by heavy blue waves crashing onto some foreign shore. My soul has been delivered, ripping through my own concepts of reality. It happened between breaths, between moments. Yet, somehow, I can unpack the entire scene. When I try to reflect on how I got here I see an overwhelming vision, bombarded by memories of a lifetime in one second. When I wasn’t consumed by the infinities of time - mal flurries of white bubbles and sea-floor dust - I was spit into the various caverns of something greater than myself. Each opening I was pushed into was vastly different from the last in every participle of sensation and expression imaginable. Until they left perfect indentations of how to feel inside of me. I was forged by an entirety of something I had never known, all within a single moment. That was everything that happened in the blink of a life I had before now. I’m more confused by the lack of knowing with every investigatory thought. It’s too much to put together.
There was something new in me - an opening - and I took that one closing shot at it. Now here I am. I’ll leave it at that, a sign to move forward. Maybe that was the reason I couldn’t remember who I was. Maybe that was a gift.
I’m still shaking something loose. Some of the things that made me leave wherever I was before. This is the first day. This is my first day. It’s not a matter of being reborn at all, but a fact of just now being created. I don’t know what is ahead of me, yet, but all I really know is it will be alright. Everything from this point on will be for something, something just like that riptide: much greater than myself. A feeling like this is so much more than words, it’s the empowerment of a message - a promise delivered to the self from within. Somewhere indescribable. But now, there is nothing holding onto me. Everything I need or want sits in front of me. Everything can be mine. Everything can be for me. Everything can be mine for free. Everything can become real. Everything can be done. I will become what I want to be.
I am my Dreams.
I am my Thoughts.
I am my Voice.
I am my Word.
I am Everything.
*******
I’m on my way out of Zion National Park now, in southern Utah. By talking to some people, if I want to get to the Grand Canyon I’ll need to hitch a ride for a few miles. There’s a tunnel down the road on Route 9 that I won’t be able to walk through. That’s been my first and only job for the past hour, or so. I can be patient. The road is a remarkable home, somehow it feels like it’s always treated me well. Now it leads me on. Black and yellow, surrounded by green and red dirty canyons, falling below sprouting walls of sunburnt stone. This is what I see, all twisted in the pulsating heat that rises from the ground. I slip between the tall clay faces of the canyon as a mere spec, belittled by their mass. The walls have started to stick their hands into the wash of sunlight flowing in through the raised horizon as the day falls. Cars have been driving past me relentlessly.
I’ve been walking for about three hours today. After I found out I couldn’t walk through this tunnel, I’ve been the image of a thumb sticking out the side of a giant red backpack. There are hardly any people driving by, only tourists. They’re always in such an uncomfortable world, so scared of so little. Most of that fear probably comes from the massive overbearing schedule they’ve let become their dictator. But who am I to know anything? I live on “the road” now.
After a few turns and large hills, the road puts me right in front of the tunnel entrance. I decided to take a quick break. Maybe people will be less afraid if I don’t move as much. I stopped walking and stood where it seemed a lot of people had been stopping to take pictures. I sat down in the middle, listening to the music in the wind while the cautious traffic danced around me. People that stopped driving stayed on their side of the empty pull-off. I think it’s just so great how we find a way to acknowledge people, only to completely ignore them. It’s as if every time we cross another person, we’re supposed to create these unspoken walls between us. Why are we all so nervous? I have to let that stuff go. I feel like I’m just getting used to myself for the first time.
After trying to sweet talk my way into a few cars of families, college kids, and romantic vacations I had no success. A person couldn’t possibly involve themselves with a stranger, there are too many whispers of worry still ringing in their ears from other people who’ve talked to other people who’ve talked to other people who’ve heard on the news that bad people are littering their streets tracking them down. If conversation is too much of a risk, a shared ride for a few minutes with a person that has a backpack is impractical suicide. I’m packed with these preexisting realizations. Maybe that’s what I’m moving away from.
While the sun had completely left the visible sky, an orange hue followed. Less and less cars drove by. I try to always keep in mind that nothing’s ever really wrong, as if I’m invincible. I guess it hasn’t failed yet, so I still trust it. It worked out this time at least, because after I thought all of the cars had finally stopped driving by, a young couple came hopping off of a nearby trail. After talking to them for a little bit, I finally sprung the question. And just like that, I was on the other side of the tunnel. They saved me practically three days of travel in thirty minutes.
They dropped me off just outside of Kenab, a small town trapped in the burnt dirt of southern Utah. It prides itself on the success of the western films produced near the town, it’s quick to inform you so. I could only make out so much at night, so I try not to believe I actually know anything about it. That’s some habit we were born into: a hastily formulated idea of something, giving ourselves too much credit.
It doesn’t take long walking around a small town in an area as open as this to find a good place to tuck away and sleep for the night. I don’t have any money. I hardly even know where I am. Apparently I have everything I need in this backpack, somehow I have the little knowledge I need to survive and keep walking. I’ll keep moving down this route I'm on, and stay wherever I end up. Everything from here on will have to be for free, I guess.
I found some thick, low to the ground tree and slipped underneath with my sleeping bag. It’s not going to rain and it’s not too cold. I watch the empty tree limbs lying above me in the stars and purple sky while the moon sits quietly. A roof would only cover that up. I’m going to figure this out.
* * * * *
I wake up with the sun, early and cool. I don’t have too much with me in this backpack. I keep a sleeping bag, a pad, a tarp, an old bivy, some cooking gear, another change of clothes, some stuff for the cold and some stuff for the rain. Honestly, I’d keep nothing with me but my own body if that’s how life worked.
There’s a certain connectivity to the whole day if I start when it does. Plus, now I get a chance to walk through town before anyone is up, listening to its soundless sound, swimming in the feeling of something new. I pack up and start walking before I hear the first car in town start its engine.
There was only one road through the town, holding little shops and dusty window displays. I decided to go into the visitor’s center on the other side of town. There was a very old man standing behind the desk directly across from the door as I walked in. The desk came up to his chest, and he stood with his hands limp on top of the glass of the desk covering a map of the nearby area. He didn’t acknowledge me when I came in. I’m not sure he even knew I was there. I stood for a moment, curiously staring into the glare of the man’s circular glasses. His lips were barely separated, and the folds of his face had begun to accumulate stagnant dust. I went to take a step but was interrupted by the timid crackle of a voice.
“Where do you wanna go?” The man asked.
The room was empty, and the sound of his voice rose above the hum of the lights and buzzing fans around us. Nothing moved.
“Me?” I squinted, confused.
There was no verbal response, but I think the man closed his eyes and sent me the slightest of nods, accompanied by a subtle lick of the lips. I decided to close the gap, and took the ten second crawl of a walk from the door to the front of the desk. The man didn’t move. There was a large map of Utah and Arizona beneath the glass that was supporting his wax hands. The glare didn’t leave his glasses, as he tilted them up toward me.
“Where do you wanna go?” He asked again.
“I’m not sure. I think I’m heading south.” I replied realizing I hadn’t thought of an answer yet.
He took a deep breath and looked down to the map, bending to get closer. He scanned the map for where we were. After about ten seconds, he lifted his hand into a pointed finger floating over the map to drop it directly on the town we were in. I didn’t really need directions. I hadn’t even figured out where I was going.
The buzzing in the room was starting to sting, and I was beginning to feel a note of impatience. I don’t need to get anywhere any time soon, but all of a sudden I had a real sense of urgency. I didn't want to be held to anyone else’s schedule. I wasn’t trying to be rude, I wasn’t trying to be offensive, but I turned right around and left. I don’t think he really noticed though, because when I got to the door I heard, “Let’s see…”
It’s pretty straight forward, I'm going the same direction down the same road out of town. There was really only one. There aren’t any roads going west and I can’t go north. So I started walking south. It was seven miles until the next town, which isn’t very far for a day. This is when I get to turn on auto pilot and let my mind coast. Let the road lay down before me.
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The Valley
The rock was white, tickled by sparse trickles of pine green. The sky held clouds as if a storm had just decided to clear up. The structure was massive. The rock stood as tall as a man’s imagination, shooting up alone in the middle of a valley. Everything around the rock had a smooth filter of gray caked over its colors. Contained by a uniform, monochromatic blanket. At the proper angle, looking at the rock one might see the tip of a nose and the slope of a brow on a forehead. Upon investigating, the presence of a face is noticed in the large rock side. The face is staring up into the sky. It’s neck stretched out from the ground, still slowly emerging. A solely shining light breaks through the brittle clouds to strike just a pixel onto the rock, dim in the afternoon. It lands between the eyebrows of the face, above the bridge of the nose. Where the stream struck, a bit of soil had collected in a slight bend on the otherwise level rock. More dirt rolls over the rim of the bowl from the low rumbles of a distant storm that was now moving on.
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