The Sleepwalker

Amr woke from a dream.

Its heightened rate of passing scenes was echoed as translucent screens flowing into the golden sunlit passage before him, blurring out bright moving colors - colors which fused with the dream-images to sometimes blot them out, sometimes enrich them. Cool wind blew, shaking at the suspended images, setting them into a timeless disarray finally lost when coherent reality flooded in. The last scene he managed to get a glimpse of sent through him violent ripples of deja vu, for it was so resemblant of the actual street ahead of him, with its pillared walkways and glistening hardened cow-dung tiles. When he finally blinked away the last few remnants of his fast-fading sleep, his eyes widened, and his face gave way to an expression displaying his shock. His eyes blurred again as dismay took over. I've been sleepwalking again.

He turned, and looked behind him. There was the fruit vendor, shrieking his odd call: "boort-aah-kul! Aayaaha! Boort-aah-kul!" Besides him was the shoemaker, who had charged him nine fils for a pair of wooden sandals. He remembered the transaction with some clarity, he remembered how the shoemaker had spat with disdain when he'd suggested a price of six fils. Further along was a tent he knew he'd walked through. If he went back there he knew he'd find the jolly man with an exposed hairy belly sitting behind a saffron milk counter, laughing at the japes of the mustached, reedy man next to him who would undoubtedly still be staple-fixing cans of sugarteak juice. Amr had purchased a can before the man had staple-fixed it, preferring to avoid the hassle of gnawing at it later with his teeth. The man had smiled, for every staple-pin saved meant a profit. The tent had a sorry lot of jambiya dancers - just half a dozen. Most tents of this size normally paraded over two dozen, along with other missing entertainers like snake charmers and scimitar weavers. He'd walked out of the tent, without pausing to gaze at the dancers who offered to slide a kukri into their ears for a dinar or two, his parched throat absorbing every milliliter of the sweet, cool sugarteak juice which he had drained in a matter of seconds.

Awake and afraid, he walked to a stall with a thatched roof - undoubtedly thatched with palm leaves, for the stall dealt in all kinds of products derived from desert palms - from woven mats and decorative stump-stools to hair oils and facial hair-removing gels. He paused for an instant, pointed at a stool and twisted his face into a tired semi-wince, looking at the shopkeeper. Looking at his garb and drained state, the shopkeeper nodded. Amr grunted as he seated himself on a stool embossed with glass pieces painted to look like rubies, onyxes and aliyas. He asked the shopkeeper for the date, and he just received some sort of guttural rumbling as a reply. This is obviously an Arabic culture, but certainly not what I'm familiar with. I've probably traveled half the world in these few weeks of distorted realities. If 'weeks' still means the same thing as it did during my last waking. It's physically impossible to travel a hundred miles on foot every night, yet every time I wake I'm a thousand miles from where I started.

The last time Amr was awake, he was on some kind of frigid, barren island, mottled with some reddish patches which he later identified as large crabs whose pincers really hurt. There was no one there who he could even approach to inquire the current date. Or the season, for it certainly was cold. For a minute he even wondered how he'd gotten there - he suspected he'd somehow mimicked a feat of Jesus, a particularly popular character from one of the Old Religions, by walking on water. Or maybe it was even colder then, and the water had frozen enough for him to walk all the way to the island. Later, when a shelf of hoarfrost had fallen on his head from a tall conifer, his mind had been brought back into enough focus to remember that there had been a boat. Yes, he'd arrived there on a boat which seemed to be a cross between a dinghy and a throne. He couldn't remember where he'd gotten there from. Or maybe he could back then. But he couldn't remember if he could remember it then, so, still seated on that most uncomfortable stool, he decided to let the matter rest.

And then, as it had done countless times before, his lungs caved in to this intense feeling. A feeling of great longing. An image of endless suffocation passed before him. He was in a sea, an unnatural sea. Green light dawned in a distance which stretched on into time. He longed to be submerged, but in that future miles away, he fought the deathly embrace of a thousand others. He smiled when teeth bit into the skin of his weeping self, and suddenly, when a hand forced its way into his mouth and his groin was punctured by a toenail six feet long, he fell into a deep slumber with his eyes wide open. Amr stood up, blessed the shopkeeper in the only Arabic he'd ever care to know, and walked into the dusty marketplace.

---

This is part of a story unfinished, a sort of preview to something greater.

The Endless Obsession

At this sundown I shall once more witness a fury, a passion, an embroidery of sparks and blazes and beams, upon a slowly-moving backdrop, constructed of those which define the heavens in their eternal guise of permanence. At this sundown I will laugh with glee, the purest and finest of glee which is felt in moments of awe. I shall bask in the rays of my Geminids, which fail not to entertain and delight with a natural simplicity that resounds through the night sky.

With the completion of our FM Radio Astronomy Project, which detects the scattering of meteors as they impact our atmosphere, right on time for one of the annual meteor showers, the Geminids, I readied myself for something I'd never witnessed before. A meteor shower in all its glory. I knew that tonight was just a glimpse of what is to come in the wee hours of Friday, but in all the honesty that so defines my character, I must say that I was blown into a state of such awe and near-catharsis.

A few friends and I headed to the desolate and dark cricket grounds on our campus, and set up our FM Radio Astronomy antenna and other apparatus. We had with us the astronomy binoculars we'd purchased together, and a camera with tripod. After the apparatus was secured, few of our watchers would exclaim in delight as the first few meteors of the Geminids struck the sky, while keeping a count. We then set up chairs back to back, forming a sort of pentagon with each person looking on to one-fifth of the sky, and gazed up. Meteors rained, slowly building up pace. We yelled ourselves hoarse for every single one, and in particular at the really slow-burning beauties which struck the sky on occasion. The count soon grew to massive, unexpected proportions, with meteors everywhere. We ended the night with a total of 127 meteors on count, and this was just on the eve of the eve of the peak day of the Geminids. Oh the triumph I felt tonight, there is rarely anything this sweet.

The most glorious moment of tonight was definitely what we called the 'fireball'. I was trying to locate the Messier's Object M50 in the constellation of Monoceros using the binoculars, when a huge red ball filled the apertures. It was so fast moving and sudden that I pulled down the binoculars, gazing ahead with my mouth wide open. A huge orb was plunging straight out of the night sky, and my heartbeat just ceased for a few seconds. The orb burned a bright bluish-green before extinguishing magnificently, nearly touching the horizon. For a minute I even thought that this was how we died! The moment left such a chill in me - a chill which couldn't be bested by even the frigid winds of 2 am in the middle of a lakeside cricket ground!

                                             The startrails of the night, with our observation group ghost-like with reflected light.

I leave you now with a song which I often characterize with eternity... and if the stars are not eternal, what could possibly be so? Selkies: The Endless Obsession, by Between the Buried and Me.

Unfading Memory

I sit there. Like Lyra for Will, I sit there. When I caught your eyes I said nothing.

"Does my touch burn you?", you asked. I fumbled for a reply. 

I relive two days in my mind, I wish to relive them for real.

"Before it starts, let's go for a walk." "No", I replied. "Don't regret it later." I contemplated for a few minutes. "Let's go", I said.

"I can't say this right", I said. "Wouldn't it be easier if you had your mask on?" "Yeah it would."

"I am the after party." Said some guy's t-shirt. We laughed at it, and said, "nice shirt!" He replied after a delay, "thanks!"

"You're too far away." I stumbled at the meaning, were you being metaphorical? Then it struck me you weren't, so I got closer. My hand around you, your head on my shoulder.

I caught your eyes, I said nothing. During the concert I cried, cried like Erik Lensherr did when he found his 'point between rage and serenity.'

You still are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Musings of a Tired Man

I want to smash my phone, sit in a room and paint nature's perfect creations. Connectivity is a double-edged blade. On one hand, you are always in touch with someone, on the other, you are always in touch with someone. Just today I was frustrated with how my internet wasn't working, how my phone was almost out of balance. It's obsessive, really, how connectivity controls our life. Whether its a portal to an plane of information, or it's a personal moment, contacting a single person, it is very crucial in our age. But picture a world reset. Picture all satellites going down! All wires wilting away! All beacons crashing down! Would we truly have lost something? Yes and no. It'd definitely slow down our daily activities, it would definitely cause entire corporations to come crashing down, but after that, would we survive? Yes we would. This near instantaneous contact with other human beings was never a part of our being! If it was so, we'd be telepathic, would we not? Imagine a world of being free, where your boss can't harass you, where your teacher cannot alert you at any time for a late night lecture, where your friends cannot bother you when you truly just want to be alone!

This is how I feel at times. Maybe how I feel right now. But humanity is a self evolving species. Unlike other species, we have no tusks for defense, no fur for warmth, no pheromones for communications. But we have the ability to make changes to our lifestyle. We've invented the gun for protection, woolen wear for warmth and various devices for communication. Thus we've reigned supreme. We can be every animal on this planet, and more! This is our boon. So when you're feeling let down, when you feel like smashing your phone and just sitting in a room and painting nature's perfect creations, think of this with pride. As much as I hate to admit it, there will be a time in a future not so distant when our entire minds will be shared with one and all to see. Think of this not as a bane, but as an asset of our ever-evolving species. So suck it up, and appreciate these stupid phones.

One day we may even evolve into a race consciousness, and that sounds scary. The next paragraph is going to be for science fiction ramblers like myself, so you can skip it if you will:

How would you like it if you were merely a cell in a gigantic organism called humanity? I'd be petrified right now. But oh the unity! Oh the invincibility of this being! I was learning about cells a few days ago, and this is the first thought that came to me: Cells are living creatures, disjoint, connected just by veins, arteries and other passages. We too are living things, with roads, canals and airways being our modes of connection. Cells use neurons for communication, we use phones. Our postal services could be the Golgi apparatus, our factories the mitochondria! So who knows, we could just be the second tier of a multi-tiered organism! Formed in the distance future, this would parallel how life started as unicellular organisms and eventually evolved into multicellular beings. Just think about this. Then read More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon and Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov.

Yes, I truly am in a most thoughtful mood. I'm also in a reminiscent mood. I leave you with these words from the song Rest Calm by Nightwish:

"Every little memory resting calm in me, resting in my dreams, smiling back at me. The faces of the past keep calling me to come back home, rest calm and remember me."

Good night, and sleep as dreamily as I do.

Emotion et al

Today I'm going to write of whatever comes to my mind. Firstly - the computer and internet. Take a step back sometimes, and look at your screen. No, I mean look at it - look at the frame, look at the objects besides it (a pen stand, a fruit basket and a handkerchief in my case). It's a window - to everything! Who'd have ever thought a century ago that amidst a bunch of pens and apples, a foot away from the nearest wall, is a window. A magical, mysterious window suspended by a hinge. You look from the back and you see a black surface with a logo on it, but look from the front and you can see concerts from around the world. You can read articles written by unknown people from around the world, as you are reading this one. Look away, look at your room. You may be in some dingy basement, or in a tiny 3m x 3m room in some hostel in some college, or even lying in the sunset, with red rays emblazoned on the shores. But look back at the screen, and you're in an entirely different world, maybe even in multiple worlds. Ctrl + tab, and I'm reading about the city of Constantinople on Wikipedia (another unappreciated website, by the way), Ctrl + tab again, and I'm reading Painting for Beginners. What I'm stating may seem obvious or unappealing to some, but just take a step back, and look.

- - -

Ikuinen Kaamos ('an eternal polar night'). Probably not heard of this band, but if you have, a pat on the head for you. This stuff is incredible @ the EP, or rather half-album, Closure. Listen to this stuff. It has emotion leaking all around it.

Speaking of emotional music, a lot of Japanese anime music is highly underrated. Just listen to Rain from Fullmetal Alchemist, or the violin solo from Sailor Moon. Very good stuff here.

- - -

Dan Simmon's Hyperion, one of the most readable books you'll find. This is science fiction at its best. The Canterbury Tales in a futuristic setting, this story is all about totally unmasked horror. While you probably won't be shuddering yourself, you can only imagine the bleak thoughts of the pilgrims who head towards an almost certain doom. Set in a time wherein a human hegira has taken place from earth, resulting in the colonizing of a hundred worlds. Hyperion, unlike the works of Isaac Asimov, quite shamelessly throws in a variety of alien life into the many colorful worlds, although humans still remain the only sentient species. Or not, if you factor in the mysterious AI that have escaped human control and now maintain a cordial relation with our race.

The entire setting of Hyperion is just so colorful and vibrant, although the story itself is bleak and depressing, that you immediately succumb to its wonders. And the pilgrims themselves have so much to divulge, each one being more mysterious than the last. From a tortured priest and an infamous soldier to a likable old father and a brawny detective, each character has his own tale. And each tale is ultimately linked to the enigma that is Hyperion, a world that houses the Time Tombs, structures that emit 'anti-entropic fields' and travel back through time. And guarding these tombs is an inexplicable monster - the Shrike - a demon of blades. Described to be covered in spikes and razorwire, this time-defying monster has known to kill anyone who ventures too close to the Tombs. Already interested? Go buy it, this is one book that is worth every penny.

Wink at the Moon

Rest in peace, Neil Armstrong! You gave me dreams, now shattered, in my childhood. I can only imagine what it must have been like, watching the Eagle land on television. I hope a manned mission to Mars will happen in my youth, that could be the highlight of my generation.

Colonizing Mars.. ah something I place alongside the classic ideals of World Peace and World Government - will I live to see this? I hope I will, and I believe so as well. Today has been lost for me in my old dreamscape of reading articles on terraforming and imagining myself on desolate barrens or amidst thick acid-rain riddled clouds in a floating city.

Sometimes dreams cannot be. I'll never see myself as the ruler of Earth at the top of a spire, the tallest in the world, sleeping in a glass dome, watching the stars. Normalize! I need to normalize my thoughts, to a level not too high, but high enough to be considered as an achievement. So what if I won't have my spire. I can always have a telescope. I can always have a home out in the country. I can work hard and make some difference to this planet. And in all this, I can be modest and quiet, as was Neil Armstrong. Gain not pride in doing something better than others, gain pride in doing it as well as you can!

Why do I speak of this? I am currently in front of a computer, procrastinating whatever work I've got on my hands. Why do I do this? Why am I still typing? I am doing so because in writing this for all to see, I wager a piece of my pride. I may procrastinate, but I shall not commit hypocrisy!

Imagine being someone as iconic as the first man on the moon. Wouldn't you want that? I would, and I pledge to work towards being an icon myself - an icon for what I stand for, if not for anything else!

Fallow

Forgotten azure skies

Over glistening snowburdened landscapes

White gives way to colorless purity

Which tears down the soil in its agile grace

Breathing life into the past

Where the valleys were green

In an untouched mastery

Of what was once right and

Of what was once whole

Behold a world

At last left in peace

Showing us its recovery

From a horrifying dream

And leaving us with a fond longing

To return and churn it once again into obliteration