oh words, words, words, words. you don’t arrange yourself in the way i think lately. so i’ll ignore you until you come back around again. and maybe that means i’m happier these days. because you never really called unless there was an open space large enough to contain you. and i don’t wish to be that empty any time soon.
i have this constant need to create. when i am put into a situation for any long period of time where i am unable to step out of myself, i become restless, as though there were some great imaginary purpose i was neglecting. and if i should fail to produce anything after trying, i can believe it is my own fault. for there is inspiration in everything. but that is the struggle, allowing yourself to see it, to take it. sometimes the mind becomes overwhelmed, centering on itself. that can be the best time to create, or the worst, depending on how honest you allow yourself to be with yourself. but in the absence of honesty, i will think “what is the point, the purpose?”
if you can’t face yourself, then it’s quite possible that you are hiding your voice, or haven’t yet found it. if i find myself creating with the purpose of pleasing others or meeting some external expectation, i will question if i actually have anything to say, or if am simply to afraid to say it. if all form of fear and insecurity could be set aside, i sincerely believe that every person holds something meaningful that they could express in their own way. it is strange to me, to think that there are people who may never feel the need. -joel
by Joel R. M.
I awoke one night and saw a ghost sitting at the foot of my bed. I felt unsettled, and I could feel my heart accelerate as if trying to tear itself free from my chest to escape the sight of her. But her face was perfectly tranquil, and so I took great effort to conceal any emotion in my expression. I sat awake staring at her for what felt like some small expanse of eternity. When I finally opened my mouth I said, “Hello”, though not the way one would answer the phone. It was more of a quiet declaration, breaking the perfect silence of the room. She looked into my eyes, and in a most gentle sea-breeze voice answered, “Hello, Joel.” At that moment a certain dread came over my entire being, the like of which I have never felt and can find no adequate comparison to. I was certain she was the angel of death come to remind me of every terrible thing I have ever done, and to tell me that I had no escape. She undoubtedly read my reaction, as she subtlety shifted her delicate frame to face me directly. I caught myself breathing faster, shorter breaths, and I consciously took effort to control myself.
We stared at each other for awhile longer. I studied the shape of her features, the sweep of her clavicles, the tiny hills that formed her kneecaps, the pale-peach dress that hung so freely from her shoulders. And all of her appeared much like a faded picture. Not white or blue, or glowing or transparent, as you might imagine a ghost to be. But otherworldly still, as though she had come from a different plane of reality then had anything else around her. She stared back at me, but not with the same curiosity or wonder as I. She gazed upon me as though she had known me forever. And I suspected somehow that there was nothing I could say that would surprise her, as if her familiarity with me was complete. I felt that I was no match. And in many ways I felt insignificant beside her. And so I carried on in my silence and waited for her to speak. Though after some more time had passed with an absence of any sound, I began to feel insecure. In everything. My face, my voice, the color of the blankets, the stupid objects resting on my desk, the wastebasket left unemptied for weeks. Anything and everything that I could identify as ‘me’ or ‘mine’ felt so undesirable, so meaningless. And possibly, for a faction of a second, I wondered if I had died.
Finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I asked her in my most calm voice, “What is your name?” She gave a half smile, as though my question had been quite expected. “My name is Solace”, she replied, in a voice barely above a whisper. In some strange way I felt my heart flutter, as if in speaking her own name she had recited some beautiful work of poetry. And in that instant I no longer felt afraid. And without even thinking I asked her, “Am I dreaming?” She stared directly into my eyes, and without hesitation said, “You are always dreaming Joel. But someday you must wake up.” “But I am not ready!”, I blurted out, realizing I must have sounded like a squirmy child. Without any expression she replied to me, “One day I will become nothing but a memory. And you will hold it closely or you will erase it.” “So you have come to inspire me?”, I questioned. “The dead have no motives”, she said with a modest smile. And in that instant my entire body was overtaken in a thick haze, and I watched as her figure became slowly blurred in the way a camera loses focus. And then, against my will, I began to drift into sleep. I saw the colors blue and purple dance in a swirl and pass through each other like clouds, without breaking form or losing shade. I remembered the feeling of being in love. I tried very hard to think of nothing else.
Suddenly I found myself in a dream where I sat in the passenger seat of a van speeding across the Nevada desert. There was a letter resting on my lap. The words were written in my own hand writing, although I struggled to make them out. “Dear desert, there are many things that I find beautiful about you. But you have a face that becomes more like a blank chalkboard with each passing hour, and it’s starting to get to me. You are miles without trees. And I can only admire you in the most fleeting of ways for this. Though still I try. Love, Joel”. I folded the letter and was about to release it from the window pouring wind beside me. But I turned and noticed my friends were there with me. Some of them were sleeping. Some of them where reading books and looked as though they did not want to be disturbed. I looked again at the letter in my hand. It had turned into a phone, and there was a notification of a message to me. It read: “This too shall pass. -Solace”.
I gazed at the road ahead, and as far as I could see the desert winds had kicked up a wall of dust stretching across the horizon. I felt a sadness sink into my limbs, and I wondered if my entire universe had become trapped on four wheels, and if there would be anything better on the other side of the tidal wave before me. The radio suddenly came on, and the raspy voice of an old man spoke above static hiss. In the background there was the drone of a church organ playing some unfamiliar hymn. He repeated himself again, and again, as if reciting some Eastern mantra in an improper tongue: “This is your reality…this is your creation…this is your experience”. For a brief moment the entire universe, and my place in it, seemed obvious and answered. And then I began to wonder about the subjectivity of my own thoughts. The radio suddenly stopped. The sound of billions of sand grains crashing against the windshield wiped the contents of my mind into a blank chalkboard. And I felt nothing in particular. There was no past or future, only constant creation.
I awoke, feeling the flappy tongue of my dog across my face, as the sunlight stabbed my eyes through the windows. I pulled on her shaggy ears and asked her to kindly stop licking me. Then I asked her if I had been asleep at all, as if I expected some response. My clothes reeked of cigarettes, and both my shoes where still on. I laid there for awhile trying to reconstruct where I had been and why. But it was no use. I staggered to the bathroom and began looking at myself in the mirror. My beard was much longer then I would usually allow, and it had been quite awhile since my face had shown so much tan (save for two circular spots around each of my eyes). My head twisted and split inwardly like the aftermath of some deranged night of heavy drinking. I pulled out my phone from my pocket and dialed my sisters number. No answer. I washed my face. And then I washed it again. I strolled into the living room and wondered if the television had always been adjacent to the fireplace. Everything I owned appeared to me like the possessions of someone else. I tried to call my sister again. This time I listened to the entire sequence of rings until her voice finally answered in pre-recorded fashion, reminding me of her new last name. I hadn’t actually anticipated saying anything, so when the message reached the conclusive ‘beep’ I must have spoken with all the eloquence of a paranoid addict experiencing agonizing withdrawals: “Hi sis, it’s Joel. Just wanted to talk, say hi. I wanted to, well I guess, I am sort of broken feeling. Uh, i don’t know. Call me when you’re free. Love you.“
I walked outside to the porch and admired the massive tree near the street. I put on my sunglasses and imagined that each leaf formed an interconnected network of swaying mirrors, pushing light back into the heavens. I lit the only cigarette I could find, and I thought about the lives of those who harvest tobacco in fields somewhere. And I wondered if they were rich or poor, or in the least, happy sometimes. “Are their lives very different from what they had imagined as children?”, I asked myself. “Of course they are. No one dreams of harvesting something that kills everyone”, I imagined someone clever would reply. I sat on a small patch of grass next to the porch steps, and I watched a young couple crossing the street together. The woman walked several steps in front of the man, and he held his phone open in his palm, glancing up and down. “They don’t even care to hold hands”, I thought to myself. “They are disconnected. If they were leaves, they would have fallen.” And then I laughed in my head, remembering the fear I had felt at seeing a ghost. And then I thought to myself, “I should stop inventing people to talk to.”
I looked through my phone, and there were no messages from anyone. I remembered how it felt when there had been no past or future in my dream. I wanted to feel that way again. But I thought of how the mind never allows for that easily, and how people are constantly pulled back and forth between memories, and their expectations of the future, never holding hands often enough. I put a leash on my dog, and I told her we would walk together until we felt like stopping. In that moment my phone rang, and I answered it without looking at the name or number. My sister’s voice greeted me, and she asked how I felt. I told her to disregard what I had left in her voicemail. And I told her that I felt unsure about many things, but that I suspected that too shall pass. I asked her if she had ever seen a dress in a pale-peach color before. She said, “I’m sure I have. I don’t think it is an uncommon color for a dress.” And I thought to myself, “When have I seen a dress of that color?“ And then we talked about how excited dogs become when you take them for a walk.
by joel r. m.
the overwhelming scramble of a thousand simultaneous sensations connecting, twisting shape, forming a unified body of streaming images. you are safe in your dreams. there is no paper trail. no stack of tin caster coils of film to be sorted through and edited. no scattered artifacts to analyze. what you saw was yours. and yours alone. this was a sweet consolation once upon a time. you awoke and the world you left dematerialized as quickly or as gradually as it had come into being. and no matter how far you plummeted into its realm, no matter how disconnected your life became in its midst, there would always be an exit upon your awaking.
the separation was clear. there would be nothing to romanticize or dread when all of your familiar surroundings and circumstances returned into focus. it didn’t matter where you had been. it was irrelevant in the continuum of time and space that held you captive in your waking hours. you could live out the duration of your life in perfect harmony with the universe and never have cause to call into question the two planes of existence upon which you had tread. so long as the neurophysiologist and oneirologist could so easily confine the plane of dream into regimented segments of the brain and their associated electrical activity, there was nothing more to contemplate, nothing more to be had. that is until i met you. yes, that was quite enough to undo all i had known about anything, dreams aside.
i had for some time held a sense of familiarity, perhaps even attached some meaning to a series of reoccurring dreams i would experience. there is still something unsettling about the dreams, despite my complete familiarity with the setting. i would be placed in the house i lived in during my childhood. always there was the two windows overlooking the backyard of the house. in my childhood i recall that the yard seemed to stretch for miles upon miles. i held a sense of awe and perhaps disillusionment upon actually visiting the house in my adulthood to find that the yard was but a modest one hundred feet at best. strange how in my dreams the yard still retains the length and dimensions that my childhood mind had perceived, as if the two places now strangely coexist. each to their own plane of reality that i have occasion to visit still.
regardless of what ever psycho-emotional attachment i have developed to the dreams that places me back within the walls of that house, there was never any thought given to it beyond the simple explanation that i had (1) fallen asleep, (2), lapsed into a dream state, and (3) was then subjected to my minds compendium of a memory-fantasy-real-life experience. my body would awake where i had laid to rest, as my brain begun its task of erasing what little fragments of the dream i could recall, as if to further separate it from the memories of my waking reality.
what first drew me to you was the manner in which you spoke of your dreams. there was always a certainty, a clarity, a factual recollection. you spoke concisely in piecing the sequence of events together, as if a seamless fluidity of time existed as in ones memories of the waking world. but perhaps what drew me to you most profoundly was the realization that (at least in your mind) no distinction was being made between the two planes. it was as if crossing from one to the other had become as effortless as passing though a doorway. awake or subconsciously, you possessed …control?
your initial descriptions to me were vague and abstract recounts of the fantastic. i immediately recalled bits of subject matter that i had studied to some extent in my years as a student. back then i held a certain interest in the mystical, pseudo-scientific phenomenon of autoscopy, astral projections, and etheric flights. curiously your stories bared no particular resemblance to any of those experiences. i could sense this was something else entirely, but not not completely removed from such phenomenon. there was some connection, some common thread i wanted to piece together. however, even at the time of this writing, in all you have allowed me to see, to share, to ponder, i suspect i only retain a small fragment of a greater occurrence. despite the complete disruption (disintegration?) of my personal life that my knowledge of this phenomenon has inflicted, i myself could not imagine the possibility of ignoring what i have unwittingly, yet so completely, become a part of.
i have thus complied this manuscript for our shared benefit. it is my hope that this writing may serve as a means of sorting out a seemingly wide collection of journal entries, conversations, and contemplations i have assembled over the last three and a half years since our first conversation via telephone. it is my hope that as a single body, this work will become an invaluable aid in making some sense, finding some pattern, some anything out of what has become known to us.
however, i do feel a pressing need to eventually produce this manuscript to the authorities, scientific community, and perhaps general public. although i do not anticipate you will approve of this. regrettably i fear the information contained in these pages likely reaches beyond what we are capable of fully understanding by our own methods of research and that our limitations have begun to present themselves. so that those following after us heretofore may find a more illuminated path then was originally held out before us, so my documentation begins. on the following page i have presented a transcription of the first journal entry you gave to me shortly after i became involved with you in this matter. although void of any significant details, you described what would become our shared fascination, and the archetype of this phenomenon.
TRANSCRIPTION OF JOURNAL ENTRY ONE
august 27, 2006
i could see a bridge across the opening.two figures appeared to be holding the passage open. dark. faceless. i don’t know what they were. last few nights i was afraid to go in. just stared at them and the opening until i woke up. felt really sick when i woke up. they don’t talk or nothing. but i could tell they wanted me to go in, like i was supposed to or something. so i finally did. fucking shit goddamn fuck.
they didn’t even look at me when i walked though. didn’t make a sound. i felt really light. fucking scared as shit. it was like i was awake, like i woke up but i was still in the dream. next thing i know i’m 50 miles away in my old house where i grew up. its like i thought of that place and i was there. not sure why that house entered my mind in the first place. fucking shit goddamn fuck.
people in the house got real scared and called police. i tried to tell them i’m not a thief, or a goddamn tweaker. just a weird accident or something. fuck shit, i think i got drugged or something. i keep puking. my eyes are swelled up real bad.
people dropped charges. thank god. had to take bus home. fell asleep once. but i didn’t have dream again till i got home. i didn’t go back into the opening. i just stared at the two figures. fucking creeps. dream won’t go away. don’t think i was drugged anymore. trying not to sleep.
END ENTRY
by the time you had contacted me, the several weeks that had elapsed since the writing of your first journal entry had provided you with some degree of experimentation and exploration into your reoccurring vision. however, before i could digest all the information you would share with me, the circumstances that had proceeded them were significant enough that i had found it necessary to interrogate you to some degree as to assemble for myself a collective picture of your psycho-emotional state at the time, and the factors that may or may not have been at play.
firstly, i learned of the tragedy that had struck you on august 21, 2006. both of your grandparents had died the same morning under less then transparent circumstances. gross negligence on the part of the staff in the elderly home they resided in had been one accusation, as had the notion of a preconceived murder plot or a cleverly untraceable act of a double suicide. considering they were each documented as being in outstanding health according to prior routine medical examinations, each proposed cause of death that had been raised seemed more troubling then the last.
secondly, i learned you had moved into your current place of residence on august 23, just two days later. troubled by the death of your grandparents, not a single box had been unpacked in the apartment (with the exception of a strangely beautiful square shaped clock that had been placed atop the dresser in your room). by your own account, sleep had completely alluded you for nearly three days until the afternoon of august 26, when your body finally gave way to sleep and you experienced the first vision as recounted in the first journal entry.
by september 1st, 2006, six days had passed, in which you had slept three or four more times in the apartment. each time you were met with the same occurrence summarized as seeing two figures standing opposite a portal or gateway. across the portal a bridge would be visible. the identity of the two figures was still unknown, although they were perceived as aloof, perhaps incapable of interaction. this vision had become a great source of anxiety and you had found it necessary to remove yourself from the apartment, renting a few nights at hotel as a means of avoidance. you had theorized the vision would not follow you outside of the apartment, and this seemed to be accurate. preparing yourself for returning home the coming night and anticipating falling asleep again, you had decided to contact me.
perhaps you sought some reassurance that you hadn’t completely lost your mind. perhaps you were simply feeling alone and needed someone to confide your growing anxieties to. whatever your motive, on the evening of friday, september 1st you contacted me by telephone. i was the old friend who had become more of a stranger in the four years since we had parted ways after graduating from the same university together. we had managed to maintain some contact after graduation, mostly in the form of an occasional email forwarding interesting tid-bits of news from national geographic, nasa’s space research, or the nuclear projects being developed in geneva, switzerland. however none of our contact had been particularly personal.
the following transcription is from a portion of the phone conversation we shared on september 1st. obviously, no actual recording of the conversation exists, and i have recreated the our dialogue from memory alone. nevertheless, i attribute much significance to it, given that it served as a point of connection in my personal involvement with you and the coming experiences we would share. for this reason i find it worthy of inclusion here. where i begin you had finished a rather brief summery of the vision you had been experiencing, although no other details had be given to me.
TRANSCRIPTION OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
9/1/2006 approximately 12:45 am
well, that is a weird dream. i’ve had a recurrent one too, it usually involves a house i grew up in…
it’s not like that though. i mean, i’m starting to know this dream now, like how it works or is going to play out. it’s not even like a dream anymore. it’s like a place i enter when i fall asleep. i mean, there is still a lot of it i don’t understand though.
ok. but since you’ve been staying at the hotel the last two nights you said you didn’t see it anymore right?
yeah. that’s why i needed to get out of the apartment. it doesn’t seem to follow me.
well, i’m not gonna lie, i’m finding this really interesting. but honestly, i think reoccurring dreams are far more common then you probably think.
i knew you would find it interesting. you always talked about this kinda shit when we were in school. i remember the papers you wrote, weird shit like this… lucid dreaming and night terrors and shit. i’m thinking this is not the same though. there is more going on here, i’m telling you.
(laugh) yeah, i remember those papers. have you taken any notes, or kept a dream journal or something? i’d be happy to read it over and give you my thoughts. i mean, i’m not an expert or anything.
i have written a little. i’d like to give you something to read over. but actually i had a bigger favor to ask. i need to go back to my place, i can’t afford this hotel shit for another night. i need to go back home, and i plan to sleep there tonight. not alone though. wondered if you would mind hanging out, just doing me a solid, just kinda hanging out and waiting till i pass out. you can take notes. you’re good at that shit
i see.
it would help me a lot. i just need to know this is happening, you know?
i understand. hell, i haven’t any plans tonight. i don’t work tomorrow either. also it’s been far to long since i’ve seen you, so fuck it, i’m in. you know, i’ve got one of those new mini cameras too. it’s digital and can shoot for hours. i can set it up. i also know someone who has an even better camera. i can call…
thanks a lot. hey, do me a favor and don’t bring the cameras and shit though. i mean, i don’t wanna make a big deal out of this, you know? i just need you to watch. i know that sounds creepy, but i just need another person to be there. i’m not trying to make a big deal out of this.
of course, no worries.
thanks. and keep this between us?
for sure. i would like to bring a notebook though. you remember how shitty my memory is.
notebook is fine, that would be great. and i’ll put some coffee on.
i’ll be needing that. thanks. alright then, i’ll be over in a bit.
thank you.
and hey, i’m really sorry again, for your loss, the whole thing with your grandparents. i am sure the investigation will sort things out and you will have some answers.
me too. thanks.
END TRANSCRIPTION
it was sometime past 2:00 am when i found myself in your room, my gaze alternating between the strange square shaped clock resting above the dresser and your lifeless body that appeared to have finally found sleep. per your instructions, i had not strayed from my position in the chair to the left of your bed. i was already dying for a cigarette. the effects of the coffee you had prepared for me were already wearing off. i wondered what i was looking for. i felt a sense of anticipation, but i didn’t know why. i had begun taking notes, doodling mostly.
you had been extremely vague up until this point in describing my purpose for being there. you had partially described the visions you’d seen in our phone conversation, but i had not yet seen your journal entries. i respected your wish and left my electronic devices off (i had brought my cellular phone and laptop), which by the time 3:00 am rolled around i stared at with longing, as if they offered some form of salvation from my restlessness. without my devices to distract me, i felt i had no ally in the battle i was now fighting with the urge to fall asleep. and i was losing.
i wondered what the hell was wrong with you. who calls a friend they hadn’t seen or had any meaningful contact with in years, only to ask them to sit by their bed and watch because they have had a strange (but not particularly outlandish) dream. who the hell does that? a child? a person disturbed? lonely? well , you apparently. there were far to many blanks for my wondering mind to try and fill. you were obviously sleep deprived. exhausted. and granted, i felt terribly sorry for you, considering the recent loss of both your grandparents.
in some warped way i felt that i was doing what a good hearted friend would do. though i confess, i suspected deep down that the entire story of dreams and visions were in realty the fabrications of someone who had simply experienced a tragic personal loss and was now finding their own means to cope or greave in the aftermath. perhaps, i thought, i could recommend a therapist, someone better equipped at resolving psycho-emotional issues. but now it was 3:30 am and i too had become lifeless, giving way to sleep. you had seemed alright, i estimated. you would be safe where you slept, and i would be there should you awake frightened or upset or whatever it was you felt when you dreamt of the two figures and the portal. i couldn’t stay awake for you anymore.
when i awoke it was half past 5:00 am or so. there was a furious series of thuds coming from down the hall. at first i was quite startled, jumping from my chair to fumble for the light switch. it wasn’t until i turned around that i realized you were gone. all the settings of your bed perfectly intact, with the expectation of your body. the thuds emanating from down the hall only seemed to be growing louder, more frantic. i made my way down the hall, following the source of the sound. by this time i was a bit panicked and my heart was racing. i wasn’t entirely sure if i was awake or dreaming.
your small apartment seemed infinitely larger in the dark. as i fumbled around for light switches, knocking over unopened boxes of belongings and displaced furniture, i found the source of the noise. it was the front door. the clamoring thuds (i now assumed to be someone kicking or hitting with fists) showed no sign of letting up. finding myself a bit aggravated at this point, i called out inquiring who was there, while i recall threatening to call the police or something to that effect. to my horror, it was your voice on the other side.
i immediately unfastened the sequences of locks and bolts that fastened the door and gently cracked it opened. i undoubtedly greeted you with a look of bewilderment on my face. you seemed completely excited, your eyes were glowing wildly and you repeatedly questioned me, “did you see? did you see what happened to me?” i felt quite confused, but more so ashamed as i explained that i had in fact fallen asleep against my promise. you were instantly transformed as you stared off solemnly. your spirits now crushed.
“so you didn’t see anything at all? i was there when you feel asleep right? goddamn it. goddamn it”, you reiterated.
i felt a compulsory need to repeatedly apologize (what for i wasn’t even entirely sure) in that i had somehow managed to fail you completely.
“well, you were certainly gone when i awoke to the sound of you knocking at the door”, i explained.
“well yes, of course i was,” you replied snappishly. “at least that much was observed. i’m sorry i flipped out on you. it doesn’t matter so much that you fell asleep i guess. one way or another you at least helped me validate that this is really happening. that i haven’t lost my fucking mind.”
“do you sleep walk?”, i asked.
“no. that door is the only entrance into this fucking apartment! the other is to the balcony. you couldn’t go in or out that way. it’s three stories down!”
“are you going to tell me how you did that then? that is why i was supposed to stay awake?”
“yes, that is why i wanted you to stay awake, to know what you would see. i’m still figuring this shit out myself.”
“all i know is that when i began to fall asleep you were right there beside me, sleeping soundly. there is something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there? this is more then just a dream about figures and bridges isn’t it?”
“yes. it’s a little fucking more then that.”
“ok, well i’m listening.”
“honestly, i didn’t want to just spill all the beans over the phone. i know you are a cynical person, and that’s why i wanted you here. but i couldn’t tell you everything, you would have thought i was fucking nuts.”
“fair enough. although i think now would be a good time to spill the rest of the beans. what’s really happening here?”
“i’m still trying to make sense of it myself. but i figured out a few things. something about this apartment. i didn’t have the dream until i moved in here, and nothing happened to me when i stayed at the hotel. something about this fucking creepy place. and it’s not so much a dream. its a portal. i think i’ve opened something, or found something someone else opened. fuck i don’t know. am i nuts? just tell me i’ve gone bat shit. i won’t argue.”
“i believe you saw what you saw. but these things have an explanation. i don’t believe you’re nuts.”
“yeah? seriously, the portal and all that fucking shit? you’re going to take my word for it?”
“no. i don’t think i have to.”
“what do you mean?”
“i feel asleep as well tonight. the vision…i saw it too.”
