Spiders

Sitting on the couch looking at a fireplace 6 feet wide. Cast iron gratings with a polished steel poker and thongs and shovel. Smooth stone blocks make up the floor. A Persian rug is soft under my feet. Blue and red. Green and yellow. Black. Those are the colors of the foot tall spiders playing in the cold fireplace. I turn to look away, over my shoulder. I look at anything other than that clicking game those creepy pets are playing. Behind me is a different kind of room. The carpet is cheap and ugly. The kitchen is linoleum and Formica. I turn back and do not see a fireplace; it is now ugly cheap carpet and white painted walls. The spiders are no longer pets. They are coming. I grab a book. Its paperback pages feel soft as I swing it at a three foot wide dark blue spider. The spider backs off for a second as the green one takes its place. A hard crunch and a squeal as I swing true at the body of this much to large insect. Feet underneath me I jump on the black one and then kick the fleeing spider against the wall, where it leaves a stain. As I look up, triumphant at my victory over things that make my skin crawl I am not surprised to find myself in a forest. The wind whistles in my ears as I run past trees and jump over ravines. I am nearing a clearing. As I slow I close my eyes to enjoy the smell of a forest after the rain something smells different and I snap my eyes open. I am in a wooden walled room with leather chairs swiveling around to look at me. They surround a long hardwood table. I am sitting at the head, opposite the door. The door opens. Nobody says a word, but I know I am fired. I get up to leave.

One upon a time...

The sky was murky grey. The wind felt like a warm blanket as he looked out over the river. “Why am I here?” he asked himself. Just like the hundreds of other times he had been here, sitting on the grass looking out at nothing in particular, he searched for peace. Inside him feelings welled. His eyes stared to the horizon, but his mind swam deep in old memories. “Which of these can help me know what I am?” he thought to himself. “What am I meant to understand of myself anyway?” The questions rolled out of his consciousness.

Silence. He wasn't aware of the passage of time, or how long he had sat there without speaking. The sun had long since gone down and the lights of barges on the river moved like tiny reflections of the stars on the water. “I wish I knew,” he said finally to nothing. The question was already lost, but the answer was still important enough to vocalize, even if only to himself. The wish, the will to understand himself was still there. The determination to work out the how, the where and anything else that would be needed was where he always came up short.

A slow smirk crossed his lips. “Why does it matter?” The answer was a laugh. A small simple chuckle. Because it does. It couldn't be said any better than that. It does. Stretching his legs and running his fingers through his hair he roused his body from the position he had been in for uncounted hours. Blinking at the horizon he was surprised how different things looked from only a few feet higher. Perspective was a joke to him. A funny joke. His perspective was what he was trying to understand and it didn't seem to matter how many he tried to see things from he still didn't know what he was looking for. His only comfort was the belief he held that everyone else was searching for the same thing.

The dark streets echoed with his footsteps as he made his way to his bed. Sleep would be little comfort. Dreams always seemed to confuse the organization he had tried to give his thoughts. They seemed to have meaning and have some importance to understanding things, but what that was supposed to be he could not make out. Not for lack of trying. It seemed that the dreams were always an indication that something significant was just around the corner, but he never seemed able to round that corner while awake. Asleep he would wake when he realized there was something around the corner. Attempting to understand his dreams was always a temptation, but so far had never yielded anything but confusion.

The problem wasn’t that he was crazy. The issue wasn’t things that he could or wanted to change. The confusion was more like a haze surrounding his thoughts. There was something important that he couldn’t accept. Something was hiding from him in his own head. He wanted to know what it was, but didn’t know how. After all the time he had spent until this point he had come to the conclusion that it was himself. There was something about him, about what he was that he instinctively knew and yet didn’t know. “It must be something that will manifest itself to me when the time is right.”