My Subconscious: 'A Stroll Through Serendipity'
I did this for an English class a few weeks ago, and I got an incredible mark for it. I thought I'd share...
A Stroll Through Serendipity
1
In the darkness broken scarcely by dappled light, everything seems frantically active. Motion grabs at my face, hair, eyes. Fits of wild music dart through the trees and vines - maybe poles and ropes, it’s impossible to tell. An earthy smell and feel sprawl over everything and I am swinging in random directions, ropes - vines? - twined about me. Perspective distorts, puts a funhouse window between myself and the animals - maybe people in masks - leaping and dancing about, snarling, howling, reveling. The music steadily grows, throbs, crawls though thick air. Flames suggest their presence with flickering in my periphery. My pulse shifts erratically, somewhere something snaps, everything takes on an unreal vividness. I am rapidly swung to and fro, up and sideways, over and down, back and sideways, music and light and animals rushing all around me.
2
I swing forward one final time, and my vision slows, stretches to a convex plane in front of me. The ropes release me, and as though it were comprised of paper and electricity the ride and its inhabitants wrinkle backward and into a soft black, pulling slowly with them their wild music. Fading, crinkling backward, and I am now on a clean, cobbled path. It flows along an expanse of short grass - really quite green, this grass, almost too much so - and politely revises its course for the occasional young tree. Feeling decidedly calm, I walk along the cobbled path, stepping quietly, following a gentle rise and fall. Old mosses grow between the new stones, trekking by their own methods, and the charming scent of an immense lake nearby rests in the mild breeze.
I notice after a contented walk that on the far side of a mostly flat expanse, the path opens to a shallow plaza, host to a single little building in the centre. I smile at it and begin the last stretch of my journey, down a shallow slope. The path becomes more sheltered on either side by hemlock and juniper trees, those eventually becoming twice my height. The broad path narrows slightly and is now occasionally warmed by a lamppost’s frosted light. It intrigues me to find another being on the walkway, standing under about the eighth lamppost, looking thoughtfully into space. She notices me from many metres away and patiently awaits my arrival under the same lamplight.
3
“Why, hello there,” she says with a crisp, lilting voice. She is thin, of ambiguous age and with elegant features. “Allow me to introduce myself to you!” She does not give her name.
“Good evening, miss,” I reply, and she smiles and takes a step toward the centre of the pathway. Her long red gown sparkles, somehow catching the ambient light of the darkened sky.
“Where are you headed to on such fine an evening as this, if I might ask?” There’s something interesting about this woman’s character, a playing of expressions just behind her face. In her posture is something playful, and yet also somewhat predatory, a silken cat eyeing a dragonfly on the wharf.
“Away, perhaps,” I tell her, shifting my weight to my other foot and smiling into the breeze. She nods, and I begin to resume my walk toward the little building, presently out of view.
“A moment, if you please, my good sir?” Languidly, she moves to the path’s middle, smiling. “I was hoping you could aid me with finding my dear little puppy,” she says, with a faint pout. “You see, he’s gone off the path - he’s an inquisitive little scullion - and he’s gotten lost in the junipers. I would quite appreciate any help you could give, I would be most grateful…” The woman is closer to me now, leaning slightly forward and smiling, seeming to have cornered the fly and now deciding its next action.
I apprehensively sidestep, begin to walk my way around the woman. “Well, um, I would, madam, but you see, I really must go. Sorry, I really would love to help, but unfortunately I’m needed elsewhere. I do have to go.”
“Oh, do you really?” She takes on an air of disappointment. “Well, then sir,” she said, “I wish you well.” She takes a step backwards, but she does not break her feline gaze, nor does she relinquish quite enough space for me to pass her without turning sideways. She holds her gaze to me even after I lightly bow to her and begin to walk away. I recall again to breathe.
I feel gradually more comfortable as I walk further away from the woman. The path begins to rise again, the stolid trees become shorter; the path opens up to the plaza I saw from afar and the one little building, directly in front of me, framed by the last vestiges of the sun’s pink and violet afterthoughts. It looks a humble yet lively place, white siding on the walls and grey shingles on the roof. I hear a faint suggestion of a slow jazz piece in soft blue. The warm charm of the building instills a sort of bright feeling, and it draws me in under its spacious balcony, pale lights set in its bottom. The carpeted walk underneath leads me to a wide pair of glass doors covered in layers of faded posters. Large silver handles run across the glass at even angles. I pull open one to reveal a surprisingly tight hallway, completely dark save for the light whispering in from behind me, enough only to define where the walls meet the floor. Slowly carefully, I feel my way through the hallway, tracing the walls with fingertips.
4
A round gust of cold air greets me as I step out of the tiny hall and into a vast marble gallery in an 18th Century style, either Italian or French. The floor, at intervals around the walls, gives way to thick pillars reaching the ceiling. The sole other ornament of any sort in the gallery is in its exact centre, half in moonlight: a large, round fountain, filled with water but icily still. My footsteps echo very softly as I cross the floor. I look into the fountain’s inky waters and watch a handful of blackbirds watch me with varying expressions through the open ceiling. Many of them look inquisitive; none fly into the gallery. After a time I begin the wander along the edges of the room, looking about and listening to the nearly noiseless skittering of a few mice.
After circling the room, I return to what is now the only exit, a door with a simple frame between two of the uniform marble pillars. The door appears immensely unremarkable, paint flaking away, dust gathering on its surface. In simple script, the door is engraved with the words: Nirvana Workshop. It occurs to me now that the door itself is eons old. It smells faintly of age, only just enough to be discerned from the essences of cold and stone of the rest of the room. I place my hand to the wood; I am filled with both comfort and wonderment. I trail a hand from the common-looking yet extraordinary wood to the simple brass-coloured knob and twist slowly. The door swings in noiselessly and effortlessly, to a staircase as narrow and dark as the hallway through which I entered the gallery.
5
Mentally voicing a quiet thanks to the door, I descend the cramped staircase. The staircase ends a step sooner than one would expect and opens to a sort of club, with a seemingly untended bar to my right and a stage a far to my left. About a dozen large, round, black tables spot the floor and each are matriarch to about three or four chairs. The walls, floor and ceiling are all painted black. I feel a collective presence in the room, the presence of a group of people - no more than two at each table and occupying about half of them - sitting quietly and simply enjoying the performance of the young man on stage. The people, at the moment, are here, but they do not especially take a notice of me. He is in grey semi-formal attire with a matching hat, taking turns leading in a seated dance with his saxophone, under gentle spotlights of blue and pink. I take a seat at an empty table and watch and listen for a while. After really an all-too-short amount of time, the audience and the performer fade away, presences still remaining. It is then that I notice the shimmering sections of the walls. They are vaguely circular, rippling as water might, at fairly regular spots along the walls. I feel one in particular pulling at me, so I walk noiselessly to it.
The shimmering, liquescent patch of the wall reacts to my touch, pulsing quickly, then becoming still. From the patch on the wall outward, the club fades, and after an instance of vacuous grey a jungle shifts into being. The sky - high, high above - is a blue paler than any I’ve seen, and the ground is a haphazard collection of endless colours, but the rest radiates almost exclusively a vibrant green. The air itself seems to hum with a relentless sense of growing. From nowhere in particular, it occurs to me that I am locked inside the Workshop. Ah well, I feel, after a fleeting instant of concern, if I want to leave here, I can leave.
I find myself in a spot where the ground isn’t as covered by the foliage, so I pace forward slowly, tracing my fingertips over the nearby green. It is a surprise to me when I run my hand across a leaf of the same size and feel a pattern of odd ridges. These ridges appear to make letters, words, entire sentences. As I gaze about the space I see more and more of them, embossed on trees and raised from the dirt, anywhere a surface can fit a taste of wisdom. “Superfluity is the essence of mankind” read an overhanging branch here, “Live life as though it were your last” ran across the ground by my foot, a bold scrawl of angular figures bespoke something mysterious from its place on a ridge of mica. Hundreds, thousands of other quotes occupy the environment now, in every kind of hand, in languages I recognized, in languages I did not, in countless languages and dialects that likely no-one knew. I want to stay here for ages and read every one of them, glimpse the tiny life inside of each little phrase, but I am drawn, almost magnetically, to a puddle between two ambitious roots, mirroring a scattered mosaic of leaves above. Half-submerged in the water is a book.
6
Hastily but with great care, I take the book from the water to discover that it is quite dry. It is a squarish book, with yellowed yet malleable pages and bound in thick leather of a deep brown. It has no one discernable title, but dozens of them, as varying in nature as the quotes among the trees, written atop each other on the front. The spine is banded in black, but is otherwise blank. On opening the book with a little effort, I find that the few pages parallel the nature of the front cover, the rest of the pages the spine. I sit cross-legged with the book in my lap and explore those first view pages, reading everything I can, even if I have no inkling of its meaning. After a little while I begin to see on the third page what I believe to be Frost’s The Road Less Traveled By, at least its last two lines. I see also, soon after, in odd, varying script: “I do wrong to put my heart into what I write; that is no longer done.” That sounds familiar to me. I have the feeling that if I searched for long enough, I could find anything ever said written in these pages.
7
At last I decide to stop exploring the book, perhaps return to it at some other time. I close the book and carefully replace it in its pool of water, then rest on my knees for a short while. Out of a darker area of the air, seeming of normality, a large flat television drops from the ceiling and flicks itself on. There is a man, framed as though for a portrait. Big Brother: a man with a handsome face that seemed to have been made of stone. He stares at me, and as he stares the scenery morphs slowly back into the empty club, now devoid of the sounds of others and walls bare of shimmering. Big Brother nods his head in complete apathy, once, before he disappears.
8
The picture morphs into the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, Big Brother’s opposite. Goldstein’s face seems a little more worn, and has a frizzy white beard in contrast of Big Brother’s black. He is also older, softer, but far greater in difference is the man’s expression. In a single instant, a thousand ideas and feelings live and die across his face, behind his eyes; he is a man of the utmost grace, who has seen the world and most of the things in it.
He dips his head curtly, and gestures to a spot behind me. I twist round to see Goldstein sitting at the empty table nearest me, an heirloom smile gracing his entire being. He wears a trench coat of a brownish-burgundy hue, a broad hat to match. A cup of blueberry tea - sweet-smelling but with a hint of tartness - and a mancala board keep him company in his place at his table, while he simply sits and meets my gaze warmly. His eyes then change, and he briskly motions for me to look back at the screen, which has again changed.
9
The view before me is now of an old fashioned whitewashed village sleeping at the edge of a sheer rock face, gazing into the pinkish sky and letting the gentle rocking of the sea lull it into sleep. The scene grows larger, wraps around me, and I stand up on a street worn smooth by loving feet. Someone plays a saxophone on a corner somewhere out of view, possibly the young man from the club. Balconies of varying sizes offer perch to the occasional bird. I close my eyes and inhale as deeply as I can; the aroma of fruit trees tumble down the sloping plateau to embrace those of the sea before me. A sense of absolute peace descends over me, blankets me in a comfort not felt for years. I could live here for ages.
10
The scene fades back, or perhaps forward, and I am in the club again, which once again is empty. I look around with a trace of sadness, but it is only very momentary. As I turn my back to it, the blank screen slides slickly back into the obscure confines of the ceiling. I look back to where it was, and at once the brighter lights in the club go out, leaving only the very dim wall-mounted lamps. I smile as the shimmering spots return to the walls and then arch a brow curiously at one I hadn’t seen before, on the wall behind the vacant stage. Although the same silvery sort of colour, the patch is about twice the size of the others and it also seems to have the suggestion of two oviform spaces, side by side, each about the size of my palm, where the wall seems even less substantial than the wavy silver around it. I peer through these holes, and a scene substantiates itself from the silvery grey. A park presents itself, a little walkway and a bench very close by it. The trees’ deep greens frame a quiet pond before the bench. My eyes are drawn momentarily to a spot perfect for spontaneously striking up a tune. Floating in the cattail-framed pond is a single orange swan, looking contemplative and completely oblivious to his watcher.
The vision fades. From this angle, I spy a gramophone hidden amongst the curtains backstage, a great brass-and-cherry thing with a black hand-crank. Within minutes, it crackles eagerly to life and plays a warbling tune, interrupting sometimes to add the brief comment, a pop or a hiss. I wipe some of the tables down with a rag from behind the bar, then entertain a crossword puzzle of the same origin for a little while. I spend some time looking through the serendipitous spots on the walls, step into and explore most of them, but I inevitably return to the rainforest and explore the book again. I’ve no idea how much time has passed and now I feel as though lying down to read would be more comfortable. Perhaps a quick closing of my eyes will help me focus a little more on the book, I think. Soon, the tranquil sounds of the rainforest erode my last resistance against sleep, though my resistance was quite allowing of this breach. I sink into a relaxed and contented sleep, lying with my head against a forth-reaching root.
11
“Why?” I ask to an empty room. I am strapped to - seated on? - something. I cannot see it. There isn’t any particularly noticeable feeling in my body; only my face feels any particular sensation. I feel mostly only stale air.
“Because,” said Big Brother with a pause, solidifying into significance as he spoke, “we need to know a few things.
“Goldstein,” he barked deliberately, his voice turning from a cinder block into a piece of coal. “Where is he? What did he do? Why has he done this? What is he wearing? Why did he speak to you?”
I attempt a shrug. “I’ve no idea how to answer your questions.”
His brow furrowed. “I see,” he said slowly. “We’ll have resort to optimal tactics, then.”
We were in Room 101: that became inexplicably clear to me as the walls defined themselves for half of an instant. Big Brother was about to introduce me to my greatest fear. I believe I raise my eyebrows. “Um, sir. I’m curious to know my greatest fear,” I say with a genuine interest.
Big Brother starts and leans back in his chair. “Stay here,” he says. He rolls up his shirtsleeves and trudges out of a door somewhere beyond my immediate comprehension. I blurredly see him talking to an agent of his behind a pane of glass in an adjoining room. The agent looks incredulous for a moment, rubs his hands together nervously and shrugs. Big Brother loosens his tie, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. The window disappears and he reenters the room.
“We don’t know what you deem to be the worst thing in the world,” he said gruffly, hiding his embarrassment quite adequately. He sighs. “This has never happened before.” He moves his hands in a rueful sort of manner. “We may have to let you go.” As he speaks this, the room becomes clearer and Big Brother becomes less clear. The two begin to mold, twist, and a noise - more of a sound-making pressure, I believe - rises smoothly from the pinpricks in everywhere, and suddenly everything is vacuumed from the space in a blinding second, even space itself, and people are cheerfully singing, far away.
12
My coherence increases with the fading of my surrounding from the rainforest to the club. The collective presence of the audience is gone and the room seems objectively muted. The gramophone has exhausted its record and is now sitting peacefully on the edge of the stage.
A faint sense of open space trickles down from the narrow staircase near the bar, and I walk up the stairs to find the door has been unlocked and slightly opened. A badger of a demeanor both curious and nervous grasps the doorframe with one paw and is trying to see into the Workshop.
“Hi,” I say, greeting the badger in as gentle a manner as I can. The sense of wonder returns, hand in hand with curiosity.
“Oh, uh, hello sir,” he replies in a mildly worried tone, removing his top hat. “Might you be the one I’m a-looking for?”
“I believe I am, but I’m no sir,” I answer, smiling. “You can just refer to me by my regular name.”
“Ah. Alright.” He relaxes significantly and breaks into an infectious smile. “Well, we’d best be going then, oughtn’t we? We don’t want to be late….”
“True, we don’t. But, we can take the back way out. Come in,” I tell him, and he steps past me and hops down the stairs, the points of his coattails dragging on the step previous.
We enter the club and the badger looks around with unstoppable glee. “Oh, this is magnificent!” he proclaims. “How did you find this little place?”
“By listening and seeing, by asking and then answering,” I throw over my shoulder on my way to the stage. I feel am going to enjoy this badger’s company extremely. “Say, do you play?”
“Bassoon and cello, mostly,” says the badger, reaching up to set his hat on one of the tables, “but I also play a mean harmonica.”
“Well, sir, I’ve a trombone here, a piano there, and time aplenty. Shall we?”
Looking positively thrilled, the badger replied, “Let us play on.”
A Stroll Through Serendipity
1
In the darkness broken scarcely by dappled light, everything seems frantically active. Motion grabs at my face, hair, eyes. Fits of wild music dart through the trees and vines - maybe poles and ropes, it’s impossible to tell. An earthy smell and feel sprawl over everything and I am swinging in random directions, ropes - vines? - twined about me. Perspective distorts, puts a funhouse window between myself and the animals - maybe people in masks - leaping and dancing about, snarling, howling, reveling. The music steadily grows, throbs, crawls though thick air. Flames suggest their presence with flickering in my periphery. My pulse shifts erratically, somewhere something snaps, everything takes on an unreal vividness. I am rapidly swung to and fro, up and sideways, over and down, back and sideways, music and light and animals rushing all around me.
2
I swing forward one final time, and my vision slows, stretches to a convex plane in front of me. The ropes release me, and as though it were comprised of paper and electricity the ride and its inhabitants wrinkle backward and into a soft black, pulling slowly with them their wild music. Fading, crinkling backward, and I am now on a clean, cobbled path. It flows along an expanse of short grass - really quite green, this grass, almost too much so - and politely revises its course for the occasional young tree. Feeling decidedly calm, I walk along the cobbled path, stepping quietly, following a gentle rise and fall. Old mosses grow between the new stones, trekking by their own methods, and the charming scent of an immense lake nearby rests in the mild breeze.
I notice after a contented walk that on the far side of a mostly flat expanse, the path opens to a shallow plaza, host to a single little building in the centre. I smile at it and begin the last stretch of my journey, down a shallow slope. The path becomes more sheltered on either side by hemlock and juniper trees, those eventually becoming twice my height. The broad path narrows slightly and is now occasionally warmed by a lamppost’s frosted light. It intrigues me to find another being on the walkway, standing under about the eighth lamppost, looking thoughtfully into space. She notices me from many metres away and patiently awaits my arrival under the same lamplight.
3
“Why, hello there,” she says with a crisp, lilting voice. She is thin, of ambiguous age and with elegant features. “Allow me to introduce myself to you!” She does not give her name.
“Good evening, miss,” I reply, and she smiles and takes a step toward the centre of the pathway. Her long red gown sparkles, somehow catching the ambient light of the darkened sky.
“Where are you headed to on such fine an evening as this, if I might ask?” There’s something interesting about this woman’s character, a playing of expressions just behind her face. In her posture is something playful, and yet also somewhat predatory, a silken cat eyeing a dragonfly on the wharf.
“Away, perhaps,” I tell her, shifting my weight to my other foot and smiling into the breeze. She nods, and I begin to resume my walk toward the little building, presently out of view.
“A moment, if you please, my good sir?” Languidly, she moves to the path’s middle, smiling. “I was hoping you could aid me with finding my dear little puppy,” she says, with a faint pout. “You see, he’s gone off the path - he’s an inquisitive little scullion - and he’s gotten lost in the junipers. I would quite appreciate any help you could give, I would be most grateful…” The woman is closer to me now, leaning slightly forward and smiling, seeming to have cornered the fly and now deciding its next action.
I apprehensively sidestep, begin to walk my way around the woman. “Well, um, I would, madam, but you see, I really must go. Sorry, I really would love to help, but unfortunately I’m needed elsewhere. I do have to go.”
“Oh, do you really?” She takes on an air of disappointment. “Well, then sir,” she said, “I wish you well.” She takes a step backwards, but she does not break her feline gaze, nor does she relinquish quite enough space for me to pass her without turning sideways. She holds her gaze to me even after I lightly bow to her and begin to walk away. I recall again to breathe.
I feel gradually more comfortable as I walk further away from the woman. The path begins to rise again, the stolid trees become shorter; the path opens up to the plaza I saw from afar and the one little building, directly in front of me, framed by the last vestiges of the sun’s pink and violet afterthoughts. It looks a humble yet lively place, white siding on the walls and grey shingles on the roof. I hear a faint suggestion of a slow jazz piece in soft blue. The warm charm of the building instills a sort of bright feeling, and it draws me in under its spacious balcony, pale lights set in its bottom. The carpeted walk underneath leads me to a wide pair of glass doors covered in layers of faded posters. Large silver handles run across the glass at even angles. I pull open one to reveal a surprisingly tight hallway, completely dark save for the light whispering in from behind me, enough only to define where the walls meet the floor. Slowly carefully, I feel my way through the hallway, tracing the walls with fingertips.
4
A round gust of cold air greets me as I step out of the tiny hall and into a vast marble gallery in an 18th Century style, either Italian or French. The floor, at intervals around the walls, gives way to thick pillars reaching the ceiling. The sole other ornament of any sort in the gallery is in its exact centre, half in moonlight: a large, round fountain, filled with water but icily still. My footsteps echo very softly as I cross the floor. I look into the fountain’s inky waters and watch a handful of blackbirds watch me with varying expressions through the open ceiling. Many of them look inquisitive; none fly into the gallery. After a time I begin the wander along the edges of the room, looking about and listening to the nearly noiseless skittering of a few mice.
After circling the room, I return to what is now the only exit, a door with a simple frame between two of the uniform marble pillars. The door appears immensely unremarkable, paint flaking away, dust gathering on its surface. In simple script, the door is engraved with the words: Nirvana Workshop. It occurs to me now that the door itself is eons old. It smells faintly of age, only just enough to be discerned from the essences of cold and stone of the rest of the room. I place my hand to the wood; I am filled with both comfort and wonderment. I trail a hand from the common-looking yet extraordinary wood to the simple brass-coloured knob and twist slowly. The door swings in noiselessly and effortlessly, to a staircase as narrow and dark as the hallway through which I entered the gallery.
5
Mentally voicing a quiet thanks to the door, I descend the cramped staircase. The staircase ends a step sooner than one would expect and opens to a sort of club, with a seemingly untended bar to my right and a stage a far to my left. About a dozen large, round, black tables spot the floor and each are matriarch to about three or four chairs. The walls, floor and ceiling are all painted black. I feel a collective presence in the room, the presence of a group of people - no more than two at each table and occupying about half of them - sitting quietly and simply enjoying the performance of the young man on stage. The people, at the moment, are here, but they do not especially take a notice of me. He is in grey semi-formal attire with a matching hat, taking turns leading in a seated dance with his saxophone, under gentle spotlights of blue and pink. I take a seat at an empty table and watch and listen for a while. After really an all-too-short amount of time, the audience and the performer fade away, presences still remaining. It is then that I notice the shimmering sections of the walls. They are vaguely circular, rippling as water might, at fairly regular spots along the walls. I feel one in particular pulling at me, so I walk noiselessly to it.
The shimmering, liquescent patch of the wall reacts to my touch, pulsing quickly, then becoming still. From the patch on the wall outward, the club fades, and after an instance of vacuous grey a jungle shifts into being. The sky - high, high above - is a blue paler than any I’ve seen, and the ground is a haphazard collection of endless colours, but the rest radiates almost exclusively a vibrant green. The air itself seems to hum with a relentless sense of growing. From nowhere in particular, it occurs to me that I am locked inside the Workshop. Ah well, I feel, after a fleeting instant of concern, if I want to leave here, I can leave.
I find myself in a spot where the ground isn’t as covered by the foliage, so I pace forward slowly, tracing my fingertips over the nearby green. It is a surprise to me when I run my hand across a leaf of the same size and feel a pattern of odd ridges. These ridges appear to make letters, words, entire sentences. As I gaze about the space I see more and more of them, embossed on trees and raised from the dirt, anywhere a surface can fit a taste of wisdom. “Superfluity is the essence of mankind” read an overhanging branch here, “Live life as though it were your last” ran across the ground by my foot, a bold scrawl of angular figures bespoke something mysterious from its place on a ridge of mica. Hundreds, thousands of other quotes occupy the environment now, in every kind of hand, in languages I recognized, in languages I did not, in countless languages and dialects that likely no-one knew. I want to stay here for ages and read every one of them, glimpse the tiny life inside of each little phrase, but I am drawn, almost magnetically, to a puddle between two ambitious roots, mirroring a scattered mosaic of leaves above. Half-submerged in the water is a book.
6
Hastily but with great care, I take the book from the water to discover that it is quite dry. It is a squarish book, with yellowed yet malleable pages and bound in thick leather of a deep brown. It has no one discernable title, but dozens of them, as varying in nature as the quotes among the trees, written atop each other on the front. The spine is banded in black, but is otherwise blank. On opening the book with a little effort, I find that the few pages parallel the nature of the front cover, the rest of the pages the spine. I sit cross-legged with the book in my lap and explore those first view pages, reading everything I can, even if I have no inkling of its meaning. After a little while I begin to see on the third page what I believe to be Frost’s The Road Less Traveled By, at least its last two lines. I see also, soon after, in odd, varying script: “I do wrong to put my heart into what I write; that is no longer done.” That sounds familiar to me. I have the feeling that if I searched for long enough, I could find anything ever said written in these pages.
7
At last I decide to stop exploring the book, perhaps return to it at some other time. I close the book and carefully replace it in its pool of water, then rest on my knees for a short while. Out of a darker area of the air, seeming of normality, a large flat television drops from the ceiling and flicks itself on. There is a man, framed as though for a portrait. Big Brother: a man with a handsome face that seemed to have been made of stone. He stares at me, and as he stares the scenery morphs slowly back into the empty club, now devoid of the sounds of others and walls bare of shimmering. Big Brother nods his head in complete apathy, once, before he disappears.
8
The picture morphs into the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, Big Brother’s opposite. Goldstein’s face seems a little more worn, and has a frizzy white beard in contrast of Big Brother’s black. He is also older, softer, but far greater in difference is the man’s expression. In a single instant, a thousand ideas and feelings live and die across his face, behind his eyes; he is a man of the utmost grace, who has seen the world and most of the things in it.
He dips his head curtly, and gestures to a spot behind me. I twist round to see Goldstein sitting at the empty table nearest me, an heirloom smile gracing his entire being. He wears a trench coat of a brownish-burgundy hue, a broad hat to match. A cup of blueberry tea - sweet-smelling but with a hint of tartness - and a mancala board keep him company in his place at his table, while he simply sits and meets my gaze warmly. His eyes then change, and he briskly motions for me to look back at the screen, which has again changed.
9
The view before me is now of an old fashioned whitewashed village sleeping at the edge of a sheer rock face, gazing into the pinkish sky and letting the gentle rocking of the sea lull it into sleep. The scene grows larger, wraps around me, and I stand up on a street worn smooth by loving feet. Someone plays a saxophone on a corner somewhere out of view, possibly the young man from the club. Balconies of varying sizes offer perch to the occasional bird. I close my eyes and inhale as deeply as I can; the aroma of fruit trees tumble down the sloping plateau to embrace those of the sea before me. A sense of absolute peace descends over me, blankets me in a comfort not felt for years. I could live here for ages.
10
The scene fades back, or perhaps forward, and I am in the club again, which once again is empty. I look around with a trace of sadness, but it is only very momentary. As I turn my back to it, the blank screen slides slickly back into the obscure confines of the ceiling. I look back to where it was, and at once the brighter lights in the club go out, leaving only the very dim wall-mounted lamps. I smile as the shimmering spots return to the walls and then arch a brow curiously at one I hadn’t seen before, on the wall behind the vacant stage. Although the same silvery sort of colour, the patch is about twice the size of the others and it also seems to have the suggestion of two oviform spaces, side by side, each about the size of my palm, where the wall seems even less substantial than the wavy silver around it. I peer through these holes, and a scene substantiates itself from the silvery grey. A park presents itself, a little walkway and a bench very close by it. The trees’ deep greens frame a quiet pond before the bench. My eyes are drawn momentarily to a spot perfect for spontaneously striking up a tune. Floating in the cattail-framed pond is a single orange swan, looking contemplative and completely oblivious to his watcher.
The vision fades. From this angle, I spy a gramophone hidden amongst the curtains backstage, a great brass-and-cherry thing with a black hand-crank. Within minutes, it crackles eagerly to life and plays a warbling tune, interrupting sometimes to add the brief comment, a pop or a hiss. I wipe some of the tables down with a rag from behind the bar, then entertain a crossword puzzle of the same origin for a little while. I spend some time looking through the serendipitous spots on the walls, step into and explore most of them, but I inevitably return to the rainforest and explore the book again. I’ve no idea how much time has passed and now I feel as though lying down to read would be more comfortable. Perhaps a quick closing of my eyes will help me focus a little more on the book, I think. Soon, the tranquil sounds of the rainforest erode my last resistance against sleep, though my resistance was quite allowing of this breach. I sink into a relaxed and contented sleep, lying with my head against a forth-reaching root.
11
“Why?” I ask to an empty room. I am strapped to - seated on? - something. I cannot see it. There isn’t any particularly noticeable feeling in my body; only my face feels any particular sensation. I feel mostly only stale air.
“Because,” said Big Brother with a pause, solidifying into significance as he spoke, “we need to know a few things.
“Goldstein,” he barked deliberately, his voice turning from a cinder block into a piece of coal. “Where is he? What did he do? Why has he done this? What is he wearing? Why did he speak to you?”
I attempt a shrug. “I’ve no idea how to answer your questions.”
His brow furrowed. “I see,” he said slowly. “We’ll have resort to optimal tactics, then.”
We were in Room 101: that became inexplicably clear to me as the walls defined themselves for half of an instant. Big Brother was about to introduce me to my greatest fear. I believe I raise my eyebrows. “Um, sir. I’m curious to know my greatest fear,” I say with a genuine interest.
Big Brother starts and leans back in his chair. “Stay here,” he says. He rolls up his shirtsleeves and trudges out of a door somewhere beyond my immediate comprehension. I blurredly see him talking to an agent of his behind a pane of glass in an adjoining room. The agent looks incredulous for a moment, rubs his hands together nervously and shrugs. Big Brother loosens his tie, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. The window disappears and he reenters the room.
“We don’t know what you deem to be the worst thing in the world,” he said gruffly, hiding his embarrassment quite adequately. He sighs. “This has never happened before.” He moves his hands in a rueful sort of manner. “We may have to let you go.” As he speaks this, the room becomes clearer and Big Brother becomes less clear. The two begin to mold, twist, and a noise - more of a sound-making pressure, I believe - rises smoothly from the pinpricks in everywhere, and suddenly everything is vacuumed from the space in a blinding second, even space itself, and people are cheerfully singing, far away.
12
My coherence increases with the fading of my surrounding from the rainforest to the club. The collective presence of the audience is gone and the room seems objectively muted. The gramophone has exhausted its record and is now sitting peacefully on the edge of the stage.
A faint sense of open space trickles down from the narrow staircase near the bar, and I walk up the stairs to find the door has been unlocked and slightly opened. A badger of a demeanor both curious and nervous grasps the doorframe with one paw and is trying to see into the Workshop.
“Hi,” I say, greeting the badger in as gentle a manner as I can. The sense of wonder returns, hand in hand with curiosity.
“Oh, uh, hello sir,” he replies in a mildly worried tone, removing his top hat. “Might you be the one I’m a-looking for?”
“I believe I am, but I’m no sir,” I answer, smiling. “You can just refer to me by my regular name.”
“Ah. Alright.” He relaxes significantly and breaks into an infectious smile. “Well, we’d best be going then, oughtn’t we? We don’t want to be late….”
“True, we don’t. But, we can take the back way out. Come in,” I tell him, and he steps past me and hops down the stairs, the points of his coattails dragging on the step previous.
We enter the club and the badger looks around with unstoppable glee. “Oh, this is magnificent!” he proclaims. “How did you find this little place?”
“By listening and seeing, by asking and then answering,” I throw over my shoulder on my way to the stage. I feel am going to enjoy this badger’s company extremely. “Say, do you play?”
“Bassoon and cello, mostly,” says the badger, reaching up to set his hat on one of the tables, “but I also play a mean harmonica.”
“Well, sir, I’ve a trombone here, a piano there, and time aplenty. Shall we?”
Looking positively thrilled, the badger replied, “Let us play on.”