NaNoWriMo Project

Day 2

A page of white

that's in the night.

So garish and grand

unsightly to stand

before my eye.

Oh why, oh why

I cry before the sky

Could this sheet not be

as black as thee. 

Then would the white,

but a puncture by trillions,

be sightly and beautiful

in its abundant rarity. 

So Michael scribbled into his journal. He found it to be quite a pleasing poem. It had rhyme enough to be cohesive, yet not so much as to be predictable. Moreover, the message, while present, was just incoherent enough to appear wise. He sat beneath the stars on one of the last few nights in Autumn when it is still a pleasurable pass time to do so. The chill of winter had yet to fully blow in; the accompanying early set of the sun, still a few weeks off. The stick of summer was gone and with it the crowds. The twilight was left to the dreamers. 

And so Michael was. As Victor Hugo is apt to remark, a dreamer is a distinct and wonderful and cursed breed. There is a dreamer in every man. Still not every man is a dreamer. The vast majority of us confine our dreaminess to the bed, or to lethargic seasons of "what if?". But a man who is a dreamer is content with nothing less than the infinite. He lives outside of himself. The soul, devoid of acts of will, utterly employs itself in the application of the intellect. Whether by exercise of virtue, or divine assistance, the man who is a dreamer, never tires of thought. Though most of us excite ourselves with occasional puzzles or fantasies, we are quick to admit we prefer the simple tranquility of quiet mindfulness, or numbness if we do not wish to shy away from the poor connotation of its true label. And is this not a state of being technology is more than happy to assist in subsisting? "To assist in subsisting" Why, how inherently contradictory? Only not so! For technology, though admittedly of a distinct specific matter, shares the general matter of numbness insofar as numbness is a product of technology. As a flame produces heat and is characterized by its nature of heat, could not then, numbness, a product of technology be associated in nature with the former? A question too lofty for the numb mind, and as I type this through that god-like mediator of technology, the Christ of our day if one were to be bold enough to blaspheme, numb my mind is, and dull my intellect, so we shall proceed. 

Michael was of the dreamer class, as was Aristotle and Tolkein and Hugo and all the names in between of the lesser known. And so Michael lived predominantly in his own mind yet utterly outside of it. He took pleasure in his thoughts to the same extent he hated his thoughts for their limited capacity. He loved art and yet despised its finite nature. As we all have a dreamer within us, we all can surely empathize with Michael on this. Who, upon hearing beautiful music, does not feel an aching deep within themselves? Who, upon reading a touching story, does not feel a surge of- what? This feeling we do not know- cannot categorize. It is a feeling imbued deep within ourselves from the moment of our conception. That desire for beauty. And truly that desire is the only thing of the infinite that we can offer. Desire knows no bounds even within the human. Is that not, after all, why we cry? Our desire, infinite, yet bounded to our finite selves, overflows itself in tears. That is why when we look upon light, which is the most beautiful, our eyes burn and tears stream down our face, conscious of it whether we are or not. 

Too much, too much! I must come down from this perch. A bird that cannot fly climbs pitifully up a tree, anxious for some taste of the flight its companions enjoy. I feel myself ascending thus, haphazardly, and toward the imminent doom of a plummet. I must descend while yet in view of safety. The sky is not meant for a flightless bird, nor indeed is it meant for man. What a marvel it is to be in a plane on a cloudy day. For then, one sees clearly what can only be another kingdom! The clouds roll out in their own landscape, forming mountains and hills and marshes and valleys. Man cannot walk upon it, oh no, he must content himself to be merely a viewer- a visitor. He climbs into the air with very much difficulty and is but a tourist in this domain. 

Michael's thoughts ascended and descended thus as he sat and looked at the stars. Occasionally a meteor would streak by, and his mind would be so excited he'd forget to breathe altogether until his vision blurred the stars together and he was forced to inhale. 

"I sit and stare," he intoned. "Into an abyss with all the bliss of heaven."

A wind flew through the trees, and with their leaves, they took up his song.

"I stare into, into,

that deep abyss. 

And unless,

I'm quite amiss,

I see my mistress

there afar.

Sitting above,

a lonely star. 

So I gaze 

and send a kiss

Into, into

that deep abyss."

As he sang softly, the trees whistled a tune with him. The scuttle of nightlife laid a bass to their melody. A cricket played strings. A brook fancied itself the harmonizer. Nature, the scientist knows, is confined to our planet. But to the dreamer, it is its own pocket of infinity. Micheal sank into this peacefulness- as even the dreamer must sleep. And there he came alive. 

(As I must hit 1000 words to hit the goal of the day, I must type and say a few things more. Though now I suppose you're out the door, if indeed you crossed the hall and stopped to read, this all, this all.)

Marigold walked through the woods as was her custom. In the twilight, it's much easier to think, as Micheal enjoyed. It is also much easier to not think, as Marigold indulged. The quiet tranquility of those just going to sleep, mingled with the drowsiness of those just beginning to awake, set an ambience of the in between. 

Marigold worked, as many who enjoy having a place to live and food to eat tend to do. But work is but work, and the mind oftentimes finds itself expended upon trivialities. So Marigold, a worker no longer at work, reclused to the forest. Her feet walked along and her mind rested, having dreams of its own quite apart from her body. 

Only the fireflies saw the two together apart. Perhaps a midautumn twilight's dream occurred. But as this is the word goal, and utterly theoretical, therefore up to the disposition of the reader as to is consequentiality, I leave it also up to the reader on how it shall be reconciled. Reader alone though I be.