I

And there you are, surrounded by strangers, the sound of
trickling water playing a symphony on your ear drums, the
smell of the trees widening your nostrils as you breathe
in. Your eyes look through the spray of the fountain and
search the park -
Nothing out of the ordinary, everything is as it should be
-
which in a way is out of the ordinary by itself.
You came here to look for inspiration; you found a new
puzzle instead.
Why did you ever think this place will help you? You came
to seek solitude in public, found yourself alone in the
multitude of living beings moving from one place to the
next. Your senses don't make sense.

You remember a dream, it was similar to this, there was a
song playing in your head, and everything was moving in
slow motion, the world was still turning - but now each day
was approximately 32 hours long, and nobody seemed to see
this but you. You could see the future, because you knew
how things really worked, you knew what happens to those 32
hours, because really there are only 24, and this made sense
-
at the time.

You pull your notebook out and sit on the lip of the
fountain, pen gripped between your teeth, you take it in
your finger tips - it worked, you were inspired - and as
you sit and write to the rhythm of those drums a bird flies
from out of those wonderfully scented trees - and shit
falls
on your new piece.

II

,Now you crank your neck, trying to see the end of the road
where the bus should appear any moment to take you home
after your journey.
Was this journey nothing more than a failure? No, you did
get SOME inspiration, there was a spark before you lost
your meditation, and a little bird can't possibly ruin your
day.
You are still strong and in quite good health, look at that
old lady with all those bags, takes her two hours to walk
down this road you can walk it in ten paces. She won't even
let you help her with her bags because her trust in her
fellow humans was shattered so long ago, probably
rightfully.
And suddenly you hear a BANG and some rolling sounds, and
you look around, and the old woman is lying face down on
the floor, and you run to her, and as you start helping her
up you hear a rumble from behind - your bus.
And you help her straighten, and you run to collect all the
rolling oranges and put them in her bag, and as you give her
the bag she looks at you and says, again and again, what a
kind young man you are, and how thankful she is, and you
sneak a look back, just in time to see the bus disappearing
in the other end of the road.
No, the journey wasn't a complete failure. YOU might be a
failure, but the journey? Never. So now you have to WALK
home, no big deal; after all, you are still strong and in
quite good health.

III

Breathless you sit down.
Does it matter why you are breathless? Yes, you just ran up
the stairs, trying to reach that stupid phone, and of course
you missed the call. No bigi, you were waiting for that one
phone call your whole life. It was the phone call that
.would change everything - it was her calling you. Finally
And now, now you've just sprinted, slipped, and ran and
picked up the phone to hear nothing but a flat line.
Your heart is racing like a car, but you are sure that if
your spirit could be plugged to one of those
heart-monitors, there would be a flat line there too.
So you sit down on your bed, phone in one hand, arms across
your bended knees.
Should I call back? Will the phone ring? Did I miss my
chance?
that's when your mobile phone starts ringing, but in your
rush to get the phone ringing upstairs you left the cell in
the living room - how stupid - and now you are running
again, jumping down the stairs, performing like a talking
monkey. "Hello?" and you try to control your breathing.
"
Why aren't you answering at home?"
Your racing heart sinks so fast that it seems it takes down
with it your lungs and shatters your rib cage.
You answer the voice "Sorry mom, I was just out."

IV

Bed.
There are a few definitions for Bed. You stick to the
fourth one of your big Collins dictionary - "A place where
people or animals sleep", that's what you quote whenever
someone argues that your bed is not a bed at all. Yes, so
you lie in this bed, YOUR bed, which you just made - you've
just pulled the clean sheet over the carpet where you like
to sleep - just under the window, just by the array of
photos you hung low enough for you to stare at when your
head is propped up on the pillow.
!Another sleepless night. Blame the bus! Blame the old lady
...Blame the journey! The need to be inspired! You are fired
from inside and out, thrown out and bursting - burning by
licking flames, fire so consuming that you can't feel it's
warmth, just it's devouring breath.
Blame her. Blame yourself. The inventor of the phone! The
possibility of living through death. Blame that bug that
took your health, your mental health, and left you feeling
drained and unsleeping, feeling insane for believing.
You don't believe in anything anymore.
Are you still trying to sleep now? Or are you thinking
about life again?
LIFE.
HA!
That is what we talk about, that is what we live, that is
what we think about - what we ALL think about - enough!
You open your eyes - it is morning.

V

Essentially dreams and life are made out of the same thing
-
ideas.
For anything to exist, someone had to put it there, had to
have an idea - and create it.
That's your life.
It's a series of ideas - ideas your parents had, and ideas
:you had, and what these ideas led to are your dreams
,because these ideas and thoughts cross through your head
but now with your eyes shut you see them in your sleep, and
these are called dreams, though essentially, they are just
thoughts.
Maybe that is confusing - but so is life.

It occurred to you that you spend life dreaming on - and
that your dreams are all about life. Even the most surreal
ones.

You don't always dream. But this morning you woke up
disturbed again. What were you dreaming of? Oh yes... you
were standing in the entrance to a cave, lightly lit by the
sun and its rays bouncing off the white sand - sand in
shapes of treasures and sunken ships; "Hurry", the vagabond
whispers as he walks towards the sea, "hurry and go in and
through, and up - before the tide reaches this place", and
:you look and see how high you have to climb, and you think
the water will come, I might as well stay here, just outside
this cave, and when the water comes I'll float up and reach
the shore that way; but you realize you will float up, and
have no where to climb to, nothing to grab hold on, you
will be too weak to climb into that ship that stands on top
of that sand mountain.
So you enter the cave and see wonders. You especially
remember seeing a dresser, and a globe - and they are all
made out of sand, or salt, left behind by the tide.

And you must have had more than one dream, you must have
woken up at some point, probably because of the dog kicking
you, and fell back to sleep, because you have an image in
your head, which has nothing to do with that cave. You were
talking with her, and she was talking with you and you were
both laughing.
Or did you dream that last week? Yes, that was a few nights
ago; last night you lay head to head, in a weird V shape and
.that was nice. But that wasn't her. That was someone else
Or was it? You remember now why you don't like dreaming.
You wake up with an eerie feeling, not sure what you were
thinking, what ideas crossed your head while you were
sleeping.

VI

It's absurd how your nights pass you by and you give them
so much meaning and importance, and it's really not clear
why.
So what if you have a repeated motif? So what if you saw
?the same tree? So what if it all comes down to the sea
What does it mean? Nobody really knows - and you don't even
care - what really bothers you is the fact she was there -
and more than that, what bothers you is that you are
bothered by it.
You wake up unhappy, or in a pensive mood - for no reason
but a crazy image that you had.

Your dreams in sleep and your dreams in wakefulness seem to
almost match, and then seem to make no sense.
You give up trying to understand this - you have a
different quest. You decide it's time to go out again, it's
time to vent.

VII

Your shoes are wet; soon your socks will be wet too.
The grass licks your jeans, you are almost cold, but the
water doesn't go through.
You arrive at a tree trunk - it looks like it was struck by
lightning. Most of the tree is thrown on the floor, and
beside it, black like coal, is its base sticking from the
ground, like a deep hole.
It reminds you of that fire, which consumes whole souls.
;This is a good spot. You climb up and sit on the dead tree
from here you can see the whole field, enclosed by a row of
living breathing green trees.
You take out your own piece of coal, and smile at the stem
of the tree you are sitting upon. You start sketching - you
don't know what, you sketch lines, and lines, and images
,come to your head, and your sheet is not so white any more
but it has none of those images on it, or any image you saw
before.
You look down at the page, and see you should have used a
pen, you wrote another song, but this one is not the same -
you try to find its rhythm, you try to give it a name. It
just happens to be a sonnet, a sonnet about "life" or a
sonnet about "love" and of course you can't name it any of
the above, so you call it Sonnet No. XXII and leave it at
that. There, you vented. Are you happy? No. You want to
cry. You look up at the sky, put down your pad - and shout
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
There, you vented. Feel better? A bit... yes. A bit... so
you jump off of the tree trunk, and rip your long sleeved
shirt off - and run. And cry.
.And you sit in the middle of the field, drops washing you
Tear drops and rain drops mix to make the healthiest
solution you ever tasted, and you wipe your eyes with the
back of your hand, and let your self fall - you land on
your back, and stare at the clouds, crying too, their tears
falling right on to you.
,Soaked, you walk slowly - pick up your shirt and your pad
and walk back home - relieved.

But still sad.

IIX

Yesterday, finally, after weeks of trying, you managed to
;sit a few hours straight and write. You just sat and wrote
you had an idea, and you managed to put it down on the
paper. You had almost a full story before the night took
over and you walked yourself back home from that little
coffee shop. You might have stayed, but they closed.
Today, you checked your horoscope; you don't know why you
do this, but you do. And today, the horoscope said you were
wrong - it said everything you sat to write yesterday, every
word from the first to the last, was plain wrong. It said
,your idea of home was false, that you can't live the past
home is here, not there, and you will never feel so fresh
again.
You almost ran and tore your story - how pathetic! How
pathetic to write a story so naive, how stupid of you to
even remotely believe that you might go back one day and
feel relived. And then you thought - how pathetic! I almost
ruined this, I almost ran and ripped those pages, I almost
erased the joy I felt, re-living that moment, even if only
on paper. How pathetic.
,Pathetic: "causing or evoking pity, sympathetic sadness
sorrow, etc.". That's the definition you carry in your mind
for as long as you remember; but the second definition - you
like that one better, you find it touching... so what if you
are pathetic, if Pathetic is "affecting or moving the
feelings"? You are a story teller, you are a writer. Why
tell stories? Why write? Just to vent? No. that is your
release, your relief - but what is your joy? You let your
older sister see something you wrote, and she smiled while
reading it - and even laughed out loud. That's joy. So call
me pathetic.
And you know what? You decided - I am going to go, and
finish that story I began last night. You know why? Because
otherwise there is no reason to write.

IX

It's a week before your birthday, you are almost 25. That's
?what everyone thinks, that's the official number. But you
You really? You are still about 22, you can accept that you
?are turning 23 - not more. Yeah, 23. 23 you can dig. But 25
No way. Ok? OK. But no one else seems to agree - you have
lived 25 years and that's it.
You live by yourself in a little apartment. You are
unemployed at the moment, but still have a bit of cash you
got for helping with some catering. It happens that you
need to ask for money - you don't like doing this, but your
parents don't seem to mind, now that you are out of the
house they have less expenses anyway, or so they say.
You spend your time "looking for a job", though you admit
.you don't look very far. And, of course, trying to write
Your hope is to publish a novel, and a collection of
stories. Every once in a while it hits you that maybe some
day someone will hear you singing one of your own songs or
;"playing them on your guitar and you might be "discovered
but as the years pass that idea grows old.
You are willing to do any work. Well, you don't like the
idea of cleaning so much. But boring office jobs, and
waiting on people - that you can do. You actually like your
previous experience as assistant chef - and hope to find a
place that will hire you to do just that, chop veggies for
the cook. Who knows, you might get lucky.
You can't stand the idea of being 25 without having
anything accomplished, without a job, without anything
published - with nothing but a bill of twenty in your back
pocket. You don't live like a 25 year old. You are not 25.



It's your birthday, and you walk into the coffee place, get
served and sit to write. Your lawyer sister walks in and
wished you happy birthday, the waitress overhears and asks
how old you are. I am 23 - you think, and answer "25". She
"?smiles. "Happy birthday. Oh, by the way, what do you do
Oh, really? Our chef was complaining he needs help - you"
see that woman by the counter? She's the boss, talk to
her."
Your parents bought you a nice pen, a nice pen and a
beautiful journal. Your sister bought you a pack of cards -
it's a personal joke. And you? You got yourself a job. What
can be better?
You walk out of the coffee place, smiling, happy, wait for
the green man and start crossing the road. Looks like
something MUST come in your way. You don't get home
tonight. You get to the hospital.

X

You laugh with no humor. You sister can't help but magnify
the irony of the whole situation - cheer up, you baby, it's
just a broken leg, you'll be up in no time.
Shia, right - that's not what the doctor said, but who
cares? You don't care, right? So what if you have to lie
here on your back this way. You can still write, right? You
still got a job, right? Probably... what are the chances
they will fire you for not showing up?
Saying this to yourself doesn't really make you feel any
better, you can't help but feel that life is just working
against you. That life is like a repeating cycle - it keeps
turning, and as soon as you reach the good part it seems to
slip away again.
The man in the bed beside you seems to understand you. He
laughs and says that this is the third time he is in
hospital in the last couple of years. It seems whenever he
gets a break - one of his bones have to break too. You
laugh at that and add "I'll remember that one". The man in
the bed next to you continues and says "who knows, maybe
this is your lucky break" and winks - maybe it's both of
ours lucky break.
What do you do?" "You are a writer. Really?" The man asks"
you. "Interesting. What kind of things do you write?" You
tell him the truth - you don't know what kind it is. You
write stories, you write prose, you write songs, you write
sonnets, you write blogs and journals and ideas and
sometimes short articles - but you hope to write a book.
The man smiles, "is that your notebook?" He points at your
new journal, and you pass it to him. You've only written in
the first page, so he reads it quickly and gives it back to
you. No smile. You are disappointed. You didn't write
anything joyful there, you were mostly inspired by the
ghostly air of the hospital.
Young man", he says to you, "what did you break?" You look"
,at your leg - "I broke my leg, in three places." He smiles
I guess it's your lucky breaks, not break." And you look"
back at him puzzled. He ignores and continues - "I am a
publisher. And you are going to be published."

You are back home, at last, relieved, at ease. You feel
fresh and new, the feeling of sadness left you, you can pay
for your own roof and you know just what to do.
You walk up to your room, you sit on your bed, look at
,those photos you have on the wall, the photos she sent you
and you smile.
You pack your bag; you walk through the park, dipping your
fingers in the water of the fountain - you get on the bus.
You are on an airplane, flying over that field, from here
you can't see it, but you have a pretty good idea that
charred tree is right underneath you, and you whisper
goodbye.
You were considering sleeping on this flight, and realized
it doesn't matter if you sleep or not, it's all just an
idea anyway, and your dreams have all come true, all but
one which you are about to bring to you.

You were never good at talking, maybe that's another reason
you write; it's easier to be poetic with a pen, it's easier
to be pathetic when it's on the paper.
The door opens and you just say what's on your mind -
Hi, sorry I haven't kept in touch; I never really had what"
to say. Did you get my mail?"
She answers you, "I got your book. Thank you, it's
beautiful." And she holds you tight. And you both laugh.

21 Oct '06