The Birthday Present

by phil on Wednesday Apr 16, 2003 6:18 PM
prose

My eyes were open, I saw through a rectangular artifice that I remembered was labeled "window." A sense of inside and outside emerged, and I felt I was on the inside. Inside was attached with a sense of calm, of peace, and beyond the window was the opening of vastness that I sensed existed "out" there. My vision was blocked somewhat by the window, but since distant objects came into view simultaneously, almost on top of the window, I knew I was looking "through" the window. There was a continuous plane of green items under a homogenous plane of an opposite color. The label of this color popped into my head. "blue" I thought. Superimposed, but not exactly, were comparisons to other scenes "through" the window. The scenes were darker, less green and less blue. Immediately, I felt like what I was seeing was good. This was odd because I was inside, and not outside, but immediately, there was a quickening of the pace of my thought, a releasing of tension, and I felt some muscles a little bit below my eye tense up. If what I felt before I noticed the green-blue scene, or what I later knew was a "landscape," was a negative, then I felt a positive, it's opposite. The weather was good.

I moved my head around and noticed that there was a desk around me with a computer a few pixels ahead in the y direction. Thanks to the shapes and some automatic system, I recognized that the computer, or rather the monitor, was above and further back, hovering around the desk. My hands and body definitely weren't hovering. I felt rooted to my seat and henceforth, so I concluded that the monitor was on top of the desk and not the desk being on top of the monitor. Upon looking at the monitor, I had a sense that this monitor was a part of me. An infinitely long vision of previous prescences of me in front of the monitor confirmed that it was a part of me, and hence I felt like it was mine. If this monitor was no longer on top of this desk, I think there would be an space cut out inside of me. I later found that the term for this sentiment was "possession."

A new image appeared and replaced the old image. There was a rectangular trapezoid. The side closest to my right eye was shorter, the other side longer. But this image was shaken and stirred as the relative length of the sides changed. A golden circular object half way down the previously longer side grew a little bit. The door was opening, I thought.

While I was stationary, the images changed. I couldn't recover the older image and meditation of the "through the window" scene, nor was I looking at the monitor. Those previous recognitions had since disappeared and were forever lost. Now I was fixated on this door opening. Because of the permanence of losing the previous scene and the immediacy of the door opening, I divided the previous scenes from the current scene. The previous scenes, as you can tell by my usage of language, were in what I already knew to call, the "past." As for the scene in front of me, that I coined as part of "now." It was easy to distinguish the past because I was no longer looking at it. Determining the now was difficult because I didn't know whether the trapezoidal movements in flux should still be considered the now or should the state be called now now, of the door stationary and opened.

Nonetheless, I felt like this current scene would also change. What popped over the image was the thought of doors opening associated with a tall figure appearing immediately thereafter. I figured there must be a third division, the "future" I knew to call it, where this image would arrive, in a more solid way, and replace the now. The past, the now, and the future, these coincided in into a nice, homogeneous whole. One followed the other consistently everywhere. The future was going to be a tall figure, and so my head turned to greet this figure.

Upon glancing upon the figure, I felt a sense of roughness, a sense not unlike looking at the trees. Here was a man, I thought. I also had the same sense of possession that I had with my computer. This figure had been in my view permanently over time, yet I knew him in infinitely different situations yet almost in every situation I could look back. In certain places where I had been, he had usually been. Images of my mouth moving and his mouth moving appeared a lot, along with a whiff of images of me and him moving together in faster moments. These were all in the past and were spotted all over the time period. It became apparent this was not a stranger.

Then, I looked at the tall figure and I had a sense that I was looking through him and seeing another image. I saw another figure that I couldn't discern easily, but I sensed it was myself. Then it came to me that a part of me was inside of this person. This was a little foreign because indeed I was sitting here and he was over there. The initial foreignness sparked some movement in my head. My mental pace quickened a little more and I felt other parts of me start to animate in a way that felt special or ordained for this figure. Then I realized, that indeed, I was in this person because were part of the same one. This one was a group of other images I had collected of other figures who were scattered often in the same place but throughout a large sequence of time. The one was my family and this man my brother.

I then realized something, this "now" was actually a date, and that date was one of many dates, but a more important one at that. It was a date that was of special importance to my brother. I realized that an event I was supposed to be responsible for was lacking, and alas, I realized, I forgot to buy him a birthday present.

Campo-mato-Mo-Mo: The AIR BAG is full, the sun and green wake, Woody Allen, happy eagle. Don't cry son.

UPDATE: Dah, I forgot to use a new Dictionary.com Word of the Day. Well, I would have done something like, uh, and in the susurrus of the sounds creeping through the door or over the landscape, or some other nonsense. susurrus, susurrus, susurrus. There, it's in my brain and hopefully, in yours.