From Where
A story
There are days where the enchanting heat of hashish eludes my gaze. Days when I know it’ll give me a blister. The kind of blister that grows in my head, speaks with my voice, and pretends to know the all of the answers even though it itself is the problem. It could be assumed that such days are filled with empty blue skies and a warmth that passes gently over the skin like silk. But such days are often cold, with a grayness that permeates down and drowns out every hue with its brazen dullness.
On such days, I fly from my apartment, which sits comfortably upon two stories, looking out over construction and the crisscross of an overloaded intersection. Heading southbound before taking a sharp turn west, I push past the boundary of modernity and return once more to the forest along the river. The initial descent flows down from winding asphalt. The road turns back into town in a sharp curve, running away from the trailhead where I make my entrance. Here, a large bridge looms over and usurps the river’s grandeur. Graffiti, old and new, has been sprinkled over its underside. At the point where the bridge’s gray, concrete leg passes beneath the waterline, there is a portrait of an eye. Its iris is a brown so deep, that without the light, without the memory of light which once shined upon it, I would think it’s wholly black.
The eye looks forward, always looking at the water pass gently around it, always towards the forest which bends eternally into its periphery. It never blinks.
The greens here are never truly green, nor does the murky water ever seem to shake off the pollution which makes it so. Litter lines the gravel trail, accompanied by drooping sunflowers, depressed and dehydrated. The once mighty trees are tall and lanky, famished by the poison running through their veins. These citizens of the forest carry a permanent moisture, their wet leaves fall and collect themselves into piles. From them, a putrid odor summons the fungi to feast.
Sometimes when I walk, I see a man sleeping. His shriveled body, wrapped in rags, remains so still atop a heap of scavenged treasures that I assume he’s returned to nonexistent bliss. His bed never sits too close to the water, never too close to the road, never too close to the deeper web of bark where I wish to go. His senses, attuned not to the cacophony of man but rather the chorus of the leaves, notices my wandering presence although I try my best to not wrestle away his slumber. His eyes look to mine, their bloodshot gaze trembling. I nod to him. He always returns the greeting.
“From where does such stillness come?” I ask.
“From where you hunt dreams that never seem to die,” he responds.
Pondering his words, I search to my left and see the river run by. Where did it begin, I wonder. In the ocean blue, or the gray sky above? Did it emerge all at once from the Earth like a weed?
Unsatisfied, I leave the man to his rest, and turn towards the path where the gravel turns to dirt. Here, the trees do not stand tall. Their canopies gently curve towards one another, forming a single shield by which to share the gift of rain. The cover keeps the trail dry.
When the last metal sign has passed out of sight, and the low rumblings of engines cease, the trail becomes a corridor. The corridor seems to grow longer the more I walk, the end staying steady in its size. Like how the morning sun never shrinks, no matter how much I cower beneath the blanket.
But as the trees eventually pass behind my periphery, I’m met with a sudden clearing and a sitting child. Their posture is delicate yet straight, like a stack of coins balancing loosely in the air. Their thin arms extend out of a thick gray robe. Their eyes are closed, and their head is smooth of hair. The only sound is the rushing waters of a distributary that cuts through the surrounding web, forming into a pond in the center of the clearing.
“From where does such stillness come?” I ask.
The child raises themself up. Their motions are so gentle that I never see their legs as they rise, their robe moving fluidly around the transition of their body. They step forward, through the pond. They care not to maintain the tension of the water as their splashing steps agitate their robe but not their focus.
Their deepest eyes match my curiosity; and from their lush, mental garden they pluck an answer, “From where the roots and the trunk sprout forth,” they respond.
Pondering their words, I search behind them to the pond. As it’s fresh ripples hit the edge, they reflect back, balancing the disruption. Like a pendulum that’s been left to swing, the surface soon returns to a flat calmness.
When my attention returns to the child, they have turned from me. I follow them as they walk back across the pond, and although I dream to call out, to ask for more, the words remain trapped. I outstretch my hand, but extend too far. My feet trip over themselves. I fall into the water.
It is like a well with no end. My body becomes weightless but I yet resist gravity’s tug. I attempt to maneuver through the water which pulls me to its base like a static whirlpool. My body twists and contorts as I struggle to find any comfort in the depths. I give up, surrendering to the current, and fall into nothingness.
When light finds my eyes once more, I am dry and in a bed not my own. The mattress is harsher, the blanket made not from polyester but from the leather hide of a beast much larger than myself. The first thing I notice, before the scratched wooden walls or the cackling auburn fire, is the sweet smell of tea spreading through the air like pollen in the spring. Across the cabin is a stove, before which a woman stands.
As she brings me a steaming cup, I see thick streaks of gray hair growing around her temples alongside a mane of otherwise black hair. Her brown-almost-black eyes fall within a labyrinth of wrinkles, each layer folding inwards into the next.
I sip my tea, accepting the gift in full.
“Nobody knows,” she says.
My awareness sits with her, waiting for more.
“Nobody knows,” she continues, “because to search for it is to lose sight of it. It has to find you.”
I hand her back the empty cup, and emerge out of the bed’s comfort. She takes it, giving me a small smile and a nod. I return the gesture, and step forth out of the cabin into a limitless web of bark and concrete.