I find myself wondering about the strength and integrity of human connections. People fade in and out of our lives, one day they may mean the world to us, the next they are gone, leaving us with only our memories. Is it possible to have a genuine connection with another person? Do we ever really share ourselves with our friends, our family, our lovers? The time spent with someone however brief, is preserved only in memory, if we don't think about them, or we forget, is this the same as never having met them? Or can someone connect with us on such a deep level that, no matter the distance or time of separation, they have an impact upon our lives as they have changed us in some way. We have taken them and internalized them, maybe subconsciously, so that wherever they may actually be, they are always with us. We hear their voice, and feel their presence. The relationship with them lives on, despite their physical absence. Do they feel the same, is this true for all people? Do we all exist in multiple forms, in different minds, frozen in our one perfect state, when, to this person, or that, we were their everything?

Insomnia

Once again I find myself unable to sleep. The old enemy is back. That familiar feeling, the slow creeping procession of the nightly hours…the dreaded silence of the desolate pitch. The room shifts around me, like some hefty beast stalking its prey, oh that it would pounce and devour me! Any release from this state, caught between two worlds, lost in a realm of silent noises and shadowy flights of imagination. I find myself witness to a strange conversation, two men argue over a lost prize, evidently they were to share the bounty, but have hidden it so well that neither can recall where it lies. A woman walks past a window, her head tilted to the sky, she stops and stands waiting as though she is listening, I do not hear anything. Images swirl through my mind like sand in an hourglass. Each one slips away, not to be remembered, merely repeated again, when the glass flips. I close my eyes, or perhaps they have been closed all along? The blackness prevents the comforting familiarity of my rooms’ shapes from disclosing themselves. I could move, reach for a light, a lamp or a candle, I could open the heavy curtain that shields the moon from view, but I don’t. Like the drapes I hang inert, suspended in a sea of blackness, unable to let either world fully lay claim to me. Up, down, front, behind, inside and out, all have lost meaning, just words, far removed from the cold semi-reality that grips me. Again I see faces, hear sounds. A group of people gather round me, their blank faces are unrecognisable, they chatter in tongues. I strain to hear their words, but all I hear is the slow and steady thud of my heartbeat…the blood throbs now in my ears, so loud it’s deafening. Nothing will stop it, god its getting louder and louder, I long for my heart to stop, for it to burst within its bony cage, or for some unseen weight to dash out my brain, anything to make this beating stop! I scream, I wail like a mad thing possessed. My howl reaches up to the stars and beyond, the primal fury of a thousand sleepless nights, the crazed anguish of that slow steady beating silence, the black, cold, creeping tightness of my endless night.

I scream until, exhausted, I collapse back into my waiting sheets.

I sleep like an infant.

Why we climb

A thousand hushed voices whispered through the trees, as the wind idly tossed their leaves around, creating a myriad of shadowed shapes in the tranquil gully. The ground was covered with soft, luscious grass, which danced in and out of the shadows. The light from the autumn suns had become long and slipped between the trees like liquid.
As she held her hand out in front of her, she couldn’t help but wonder at the silent beauty of it all. A river flowed through the gully and its gentle trickling sound soothed her ears. As she gazed at the canopy above she longed to be in an endless forest, where she could run free, exploring each tree in her own time, becoming intimate with them all.
It had been a day and a half since the council cast her out. Never before had anyone dared express such outlandish desires...trees were for shelter and wood to build, to take pleasure in climbing them seemed alien to them. She lay there and wondered what was so terribly wrong with what she had done? To her it seemed the most natural of things to climb and explore the trees, the canopy was the place she felt most at home, the only place she felt truly safe. How many times had she crept out at night to climb and watch the stars? When she was perched hundreds of feet up in the canopy, she felt somehow closer to them. She felt closer to everything, it was as if nature was welcoming her with open arms and embracing her with all the passion, beauty and mystery of a new romance. She never felt as alive as when she was jumping from branch to branch 500 feet up in the trees of the Great forest. How could that be wrong? All she wanted to do was make them appreciate nature the same way she did.
To her left there was a beech, magnificent in its size and stature, the uppermost tips of its leaves being over 600 feet above her head. Each one glistening with a fire-red intensity resembling living flame, as the branches swayed gently in the ever-present breeze. The pale blue-grey bark lit up like the pre dawn sky as the last fading rays of the suns shone upon it. This was her tree. She had named it. A secret name, a name that needed no words to be expressed, a silent name that screamed in her head every time she was close to it. This had been tree with which she had fallen in love, it drove her and challenged her, never making the climb too easy, or so difficult that she was overwhelmed. The tree was her as she was it. Any other description of their relationship fell short.
The suns were beginning to set and so she decided to once again climb her tree, to reach the top and sit, gazing in awe at the world beneath her, as well as the stars above. She was at the cross roads between worlds, on the very boarders of heaven and yet grounded in the world. And at that precise moment when she reached the top and the suns were being chased into darkness by the night, she felt as though she were the only person in the whole of creation. Not a single thing could make her move from that spot. She felt a connection to a knowledge as old as time. She sensed all things in the world and knew why. Her consciousness became the air around her; she touched everything on the planet and reached out to the stars themselves. Nothing could ever be more right for her, time stopped and her sense of self slipped away completely, she became one with the universe, she saw infinite worlds and possibilities, she witnessed the end of time, just as she had been there to see it begin. All was peaceful and still. Yet she knew this moment would fade and she wept because she didn't want it to, she found it hard to be trapped inside her own body, the connection, the oneness she had felt was gone and she was left alone atop her tree to replay the experience, except she couldn’t. Her mind wasn’t able to process her thoughts and experiences; instead she was left with the feeling of being profoundly changed in a way she couldn’t explain. She knew her journey had only just begun.