A drama of reason.
I woke up face up on a beach of black sand. My disorientation was immediate. The throbbing in my head was matched only by the shock of cold I received from the crashing waves. I collect myself momentarily and stand up to discover the sand vibrates and pulses slowly with every step. The seemingly keen external awareness of my presence limits my actions to those things derived from reason—the kind of reason that’s inherently communicable. I take a moment to look around.
A vast black ocean stretches out before me. The sky is dark, consumed by black smoky clouds that frustrate any sincere attempt at existential placement in this terrible place. Faint illumination by a dreamlike moon is sufficient for movement but little else. A collection of gargantuan pine trees shaking in the brisk wind draws my attention away from the capricious sea and towards an endless valley engrossed by a dense fog and soaring rocky mountains.
I instinctually begin to ask myself why I’m here, but before the thought manages to find its terminus, a new, more important question comes up—the kind of question so disproportionately complex that even its brief consideration stops you in your tracks, but which nevertheless lends itself to ignorance, for excess brooding over it leads nowhere, and is perhaps the antithesis to the acquisition of its solution.
I turned back to the ocean to orient myself and by the time my sight returned to the valley, a white owl flew past me and landed on the trunk of a fallen tree. He stared at me with an unmistakable look of curiosity and reverent authority. After a short pause, I began to slowly approach him. His eyes and manner seemed now indifferent to my presence. I stood opposite him for some time until I decided to sit. Following my action, he looked at me for a brief moment and then looked away into the distance. I followed his gaze. Glancing with a cruel exactitude, he focused on a faint white light pulsing subtly at the center of the forest in the distance. I stood up and began to walk towards it. With a short delay, the owl silently flew up and began to follow me.
The valley was long and cold. The dense fog made it difficult to ascertain the distance to the light. Indeed, the light seemed exempt from my efforts to reach it, appearing to recede further into the trees the nearer I became; I could not, however, be certain if this apparent illusion had correspondent in reality—the distance was, at present, too great. The owl, although hovering high above me, seemed to lead the way, occasionally stopping to look back at me in that characteristic inexpressiveness. When he did, his wings continued to beat slowly, and without cause or effect, but his body remained fixed in the air, frozen.
The path itself was largely unobstructed, but the terrain was rough and uneven. I stopped without cause to collect my thoughts and ponder the purpose of my visit. “‘Visit,’” I thought, “‘visit’ implies there’s somewhere else to go.” Before closing my eyes, I verified that the owl remained suspended in the air, unmoving. I began to think.
I tried in vain to think of the last thing I remembered before my untimely respite—nothing came to mind. Instead, all I had were these faint melodies of previous times, fragments of a reality that once existed humming in my mind. It was as if these shards dangled from a precarious and inaccessible source, their erratic movement projecting obscure reflections, enough only to have awareness of their existence, but not of their nature. Despite their obvious locality, they all seemed farther away than the infinite abyss that lies ahead of me. My memory overall didn't feel foggy, as I expected, but empty—stretched and unoccupied in a way indicative of once being full, but now vacuous.
I instead attempted to take a more static approach to the consideration of my situation. I had nothing to go on but what’s been observed since waking up on the black beach. The memory of the beach itself now began to crumble at the tail in a manner terribly foreign to me; the rate of its dissolution was, however, not proportional to its inspection—the certainty that was at once apparent of this former and recent reality rebelled against me, as though the thoughts that served as the foundation of its construction became invalidated with time, or perhaps space. It was as though those things in my recent past betrayed me, or perhaps the conditions for their existence were no longer well founded; indeed, there was a brief but discernible moment where, looking back to the origin of my travel, I saw the ground crumble away into that endless abyss, very much like the way in which the memory of the origin did itself. Refocusing, I found this to be merely a stubborn but convincing illusion. My mind then drifted into other thoughts.
Having brooded for some great time, I continued to walk, and the owl continued to follow. Of my own accord, I occasionally stopped to verify the owl's position. I felt compelled, by means of some instinctual force, to recognize a pattern in his behavior. When I stopped, he did so, and remained suspended within the air. I'm not sure this consideration in particular was of any significance, but it was the only one I could make—the everlasting veracity of this conclusion was, as previously determined, unreliable. For the brief moment in which it was certain, however, its assistance to my understanding was great, and so I continued this absentminded journey with this oxymoronically in mind, that those things presenting themselves to the faculties of my awareness should, at all costs, be subjected to further inquiry.
I could not tell how long I walked, but eventually, the exemption of the light’s movability ceased, and as I approached, the brightness filled the peripheral of my vision but the center remained clear. I met the light. It was a white, glowing orb, about the size of a considerable boulder, pulsing slowly and steadily, levitating just before a dense forest. The air was still. A ghostly mist of blue and of some other color, for it was quite unlike those implicitly known to me, followed the orb as it oscillated in the air. I shivered with pyrrhic chills, corresponding only in their existence to the vacant success I felt of my arrival.
The owl landed on a nearby branch, completely indifferent to the light. Instead, he remained fixed on me. I raised a hand to the light. At once the owl flinched in an uncharacteristically human way, and at that instant the orb dissolved unapologetically into the darkness, leaving only a faded impression on the nearby trees. I turned back to him, and a thin radiance developed which traced the outline of the forest. I turned again, and again the light had withdrawn, slowly enough to afford an unrewarding glimpse of its untimely depreciation. From the conceptual silhouettes of these observations, the delicate pattern emerged. The thing fled attention and endured only under witness. Privy to the effects of this enigmatic mechanism, but not, regrettably, to its underlying causes, I faced the owl, not the light, and reached once more. The act completed itself before thought could name it. The air grew ominously still, and a distinct soundless expansion filled the valley. Within an instant, the orb increased exponentially in size and luminosity, rising above the trees and defiantly escaping that preconceived expectation of its previous form.
When at last my eyes fell back to the earth, a path revealed itself through the center of the forest.