Art of Evlampia / Ginger Dragon Bones

Written by Alexander Greco

August 26, 2020

Evlampia, an alumnus of the magazine, is a Russian artist who mixes the morbid, the horrid, the haunting and the beautiful. Her artwork presents dark, dream-like visions of animals, figures, creatures, settings or objects, many of which seem esoteric, uncanny or possess a mystique. This will actually be the second article I’ve done with Evlampia, the first article having been published about a year ago, and it is as much a joy to write about Evlampia this time as it was with the last article.

While it may in part be due to a language barrier between her and I (or perhaps misaligned expectations on my part), Evlampia has at times seemed like an opaque and elusive individual to talk with, which only adds to the mystique of her work. Nonetheless, Evlampia is a sweet, thoughtful individual, dedicated to her craft, and her artwork, though at times morbid, dark or uncanny, carry with them beauty, feeling and love.

Since our first article, Evlampia (@ginger_dragon_bones on Instagram) has continued creating and putting out artwork on a regular basis, sharing the contents of her mind and notebooks with a dedicated group of admirers who love her style and tone (including myself).

With a few exceptions, Evlampia’s art is mostly black and white. Most of her art is made with ink, though she uses graphite and/or paint in some of her pieces. The pieces she does make that include color other than black white usually only add red, though there’s an even smaller number of pieces with more than black, white and red. That said, Evlampia has been experimenting with more color lately.

“I tried adding new colors in my art. They didn’t really fit in. Still, my favorite colors are red, black, and white. It is always interesting to put yourself in new conditions.

“I try to combine tenderness with cruelty in my works, not in the drawing technique but in the idea itself. Regarding technique, the combination of rough strokes and fine lines frustrate me. I’m always trying to find new details. Some of them take root and move from one piece to another.”

There are a number of themes, series or styles Evlampia has maintained since she began posting her art. There are a few figure-series she’s developed, which either possess recurring characters or themes. She has a series of animal drawings, which are all done on a parchment-like paper. These depict various animals on a starry background that are dripping with some sort of black fluid. Other creations of Evlampia’s include strange, nightmarish creatures, dark, surreal scenes, or other miscellaneous and ominous creations of a nocturnal mind.

One series of Evlampia’s figures that has been around since she first started posting her art have been a male and female duo. These two are often depicted in nocturnal settings, sometimes alone and sometimes together, are shown fighting monsters at times, and are almost always wearing iconic dragon-skull masks.

Other newer series of figures include a yoga-pose figure, a series of bat-like figures accompanied by various internal organs, and an “insane” series, featuring a figure with black pants and red fur coat. These figures develop a wider cast of characters and ongoing themes in Evlampia’s work, and help explore more elements of her style.

“The Surgery series was completely accidental. I drew a brain, then a heart, and so on. Why is the bowel worse? Lungs? They are also indispensable for our bodies.

Yoga got its name because of quirky poses. Only yogis are capable of such tricks. The red yoga mat is included.”

Other than her color schemes, Evlampia’s style does vary a bit from piece to piece and series to series. Many individual pieces, particularly still-life’s that usually contain skulls, bones, flowers and insects, fall more into realism, and are impressively detailed. Other pieces depict more surreal and fantastic visions of otherworldly creatures or settings, or near-hallucinogenic spectacles of violent elegance and tenebrous epiphany.

However, there is a consistent balance in Evlampia’s art between the uncanny, eerie or disturbing with images that are intriguing, beautiful or sweet and nostalgic.

As one example, her animal series depicts animals dripping in black fluid, oftentimes with other macabre or fearsome details included, but the animals are also made in such a way that they remain cute, beautiful or in some other way likeable. They are not presented in a way that repulses the viewer from them, despite the macabre style of Evlampia’s work.

Another example would be her organ series, where a fox bat-like person accompanies images of internal organs. The animal-person alone has a darker style to it, with a pitch-black body and a face that only possesses white eyes and no other visible feature. The organs are starkly displayed in all their grotesque unmasking, serving as a reminder that we humans really are quite disturbing machines once you look beneath our skin.

Still, the animal-people have a sympathetic and cute quality to them, on top of their mysterious, ominous visage. They are both foreboding and welcoming in appearance. The organs are neatly and cleanly displayed, almost like organs you might find in a text book or on display in some anatomical museum, where their strangeness and the shock of seeing them is made safe by the environment. In addition, they are displayed inside circles, like frames or windows, encircling them almost protectively like you might protect an insect collection behind glass; and each piece includes some form of vegetation, like leaves, grass or vines.

Similarly, another animal, the “circle of death” series, uses circles in every image. This second series of animals depicts zombie-like critters with rotting flesh and exposed bones, all of which are paired with a large, red circle, oftentimes set like a halo behind their heads. There are the disturbing elements of zombified animals, but they are still beautifully depicted, and the circle adds a sort of symbolic meaningfulness to the animals.

Her ongoing series with the male and female figures act in the same way, where there is a sympathy towards the characters and the relationship between the two. While there are many mundane situations the two of them are depicted in, they are also often put into violent or ominous situations.

Beyond this, and beyond the recurring styles of Evlampia’s different series, there are a variety of individual pieces that stand out quite distinctly in Evlampia’s artwork.

In one of Evlampia’s pieces that includes additional color, she has a squid or octopus paired with red flowers and orange leaves. There’s definitely an autumn-color scheme going on here, but there’s also a neat parallel between the flowers and the movement of the octopus tentacles. These are both paired by the shared red and orange colors the flowers and octopus have, but also contrasted by the black-and-white colors of the octopus. The shapes of the plants and the octopus similarly are paired together by the flowery, spreading design of both, but then contrasted by the more fleshy, aquatic shape of the octopus vs the vegetative, terrestrial shape of the plants.

The colors give that same foreboding sense we might feel in autumn, as the world grows colder, the nights longer and darker, and we begin to watch things die. That paired with the strange, alien shapes of cephalopod appendages creates something eerie and strange. However, the limbs paired with the flowers takes this eerie, uncanny imagery and turns it into something as beautiful and elegant as it is foreboding and haunting.

In another colorful piece, this one of the male and female characters, Evlampia shows us the dragon-skull-wearing protagonists of much of her art investigating some fleshy, surreal landscape full of otherworldy vines and vegetation, bloody, bulging masses across the floor and walls, and many other small details that set this near-psychedelic scene.

This nightmarish space would normally repulse most people, maybe even drive them mad if they were to ever find it in real life, but Evlampia’s characters seem perfectly at ease exploring this landscape, which makes the viewer at ease as well. Evlampia’s “fairy tale” world is presented like a happy invitation to gleefully explore new curiosities, rather than a depiction of a nightmare we ought to recoil and flee from.

I think this contrast between terror and dread, and beauty and warmth we can find in Evlampia’s art is epitomized in a painting she made of a woman with various animals: birds, wolves, a hyena. The colors are like the shadows and the moonlight at midnight—blacks, inky indigos and pale blue-grays. The woman is wearing a horned skull on her head, and she is surrounded by predatory animals, except for the raven, which perches on a branch like a living omen in the dark. Everything about the scene ought to elicit some level of fear, dread or revulsion. And yet, the darkness of the image is accompanied by something comforting.

The cool blues relax and calm as much as the excite. The animals seem to be in no way threatening to the girl, who stares at with a calm expression and peaceful eyes. She somehow seems both all-knowing to the threatening and dark world around her, and also perfectly innocent and at one with it. We are entranced by this midnight world, and enveloped in nature and the wild.

Still, these descriptions of the unity of threat and comfort in Evlampia’s art doesn’t completely describe her art, or the emotions and thoughts Evlampia’s art elicit inside you. This might be because words aren’t the right language to describe the deeper waters and darker forests of Evlampia’s artwork.

With Evlampia’s work, it’s difficult to really pin down specific themes or ideas behind her art, and Evlampia doesn’t delve into these too deeply in conversation. With her artwork, it’s more about feeling what she is showing you. It’s about getting lost in the tentacled tangles of unconscious creatures and denizens of a dreaming landscape. It’s about empathizing with the characters she shows us, or feeling the emotions of the animals and the contrasts in colors, textures and images.

Evlampia shows us a world pulled up from her unconscious and from the landscapes of her thoughts, emotions, daydreams and perceptions of the world around us.

Evlampia said this about her male-female-duo pieces, but I think it reflects quite a bit of her work:

“These are just fragments of my life and the life of my friends. Perhaps, you can also find a fragment from your life in these drawings. These are human emotions. Almost all of us tied a blanket as if it was a knight cloak. Here it is – the emotion when we did it.”

There’s almost something like a veil around a lot of Evlampia’s work—a veil like the veil of darkness in the woods at night, hiding the secret comings and goings of nocturnal beasts; a veil like the shroud of leaves, the hide of bark or the skin of grass and dirt hiding the secret societies of plants and insects; a veil like the stony face of rocky hills hiding the caverns and tunnels behind it.

The key is not to try pulling this veil out of the way, tearing at it with your hands, or prying at it with logic or theory, but delving into her artwork and exploring the visions and feelings she depicts for yourself. Explore the midnight fields and underground forests with knowingness and innocence, and let Evlampia’s art show what she was feeling and seeing when she made it. That’s the beauty of her work, the quiet things that suddenly become as loud as a symphony when you quiet your own mind.

“The unconscious is something that we once gave up, intentionally and accidentally. This happens under the influence of society, mostly. Everyone is dependent on the opinions of others and all strive for personal satisfaction. The approval of others is a joy for us. Therefore, everything that does not find a response, praise, or some kind of approval eventually goes out of our lives and turns into the unconscious. In some secret desires, in magical creatures, in the Treasury of our brain. Sometimes they go for a walk.”

I asked Evlampia a bit about her moniker, “Ginger Dragon Bones”, trying to see if I could pull back the veil a little here, and she replied with this:

“Once upon a time, there was a prince and he went to rescue a princess from a tower. The tower was guarded by a dragon, of course. He didn’t get to the princess. The dragon had a fire inside that made the dragon’s bones red hot. This sight was beautiful and terrible at the same time. Prince took the dragon, leaving the princess to rot in the tower. And they lived almost long and almost happily.

“The End.”

As with all of Evlampia’s artwork—all of its beauty and cruelty, all of its tenderness and terror—make of her story what you will. Don’t pry at the veil, delve into it.

Though I’ve only talked to Evlampia over the internet, she comes across as a very sweet person, and she is certainly a talented and incredibly imaginative artist deserving of your time. And despite the wild, fantastic visions depicted in her artwork, she seems like someone you’d want to have a conversation with over coffee, or go on a quiet walk with to discover the extraordinary details of an ordinary world.

I asked Evlampia a bit about her life and where she lived—mostly because I’ve never met her in person, and, despite being an admirer of hers, I don’t really know much about her beyond what I’ve talked with her about and what I can find on Instagram. She told me this:

“There are no unexciting things. There are incomprehensible ones. They will remain incomprehensible until you want to understand them.

“There won’t be enough time to find out everything.

“There is a saying, ‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.’ In my subjective opinion, my life is pretty standard. Yes, it is not limited to the usual route from home to work and back, but without circumnavigating the world, red carpets, skydiving and other standard attributes of ‘interesting’ life. Instead of this there are yellow-headed wagtails on the lake at 5 am, there is a delicious ginger coffee boiled for my arrival, there are night walks and observations of the tow truck taking incorrectly parked cars. All this is happening daily and right now.

“What is it like where I am?

“I am in balance. It’s like being on a tightrope over a precipice. But sometimes it’s like being on the seashore.

“Every bit of life is important. This is a lot of emotions that teach us something, lead us to something. They help you understand, make choices, and become aware of something. We make mistakes, try new things, meet people, break up with them, spend time apart. We are bored, we are happy, we are sad, we are angry, we are mad. All these moments are very important, whatever they may be. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad.”

If you want to check out more of Evlampia’s work for yourself (and please do), you can find her on Instagram @ginger_dragon_bones. There, not only can you view her artwork, but you can also contact her about commissions, prints and other merch. Please give Evlampia’s art a look, and, if you enjoy her artwork, give her a follow.

The Art of Evlampia: Ginger Dragon Bones

Written by Xander Greco

June 29, 2019

Wolves, ravens, dragons and rabbits, eyes in the dark, beasts in the deep and blood on a baseball bat: the citizens and denizens of Evlampia’s art form a story of mystique and nostalgia, of fear and tenderness, of survival and belonging, and of making the most of life in the madness of a nocturnal world.

There’s no strict mythos to her corpus of art, but Evlampia’s work contains many overarching themes, communicated by many recurring or similar symbols from wordless thoughts and echoes of dreams. While Evlampia uses her art to reflect the reality we walk around in every day, it maintains an arms-length distance as well, just how the night is a shrouded reflection of day, and dreams an irrational reflection of waking perceptions

“Ginger Dragon Bones is tender cruelty. This is what we can see every day and do not notice. This is what everyone feels at least once.”

Evlampia is a Russian artist who creates primarily black and white art, which often borders on morbid and surreal. Her work is drawn from emotions of old memories, feelings from our experiences, and the thoughts and perceptions in our heads we can’t quite describe with words. Using a wide array of symbols, and a unique style that boarders on macabre and dream-like, Evlampia’s pieces capture those inexplicable emotions, ideas and perceptions, and the stories that surround them.

X: “Could you tell me a bit about yourself?”

E: “I have 3 cats and a dog. I love animals and wildlife. I wouldn’t limit myself having 4 pets if I could.

I don’t like people, fish, and liver.

I love coffee and ginger.

I am happy.

Perhaps this is the most accurate description of me.”

X: “What are some of your inspirations for ideas? Any artists you particularly like? Any music that inspires you? Any books, or movies, or anything like that?”

E: “You know how it is. You’re talking to someone and some of their words stick to your mind. Words are lacking the shape, picture of their description. They are lacking emotion. So you’re only able to draw it.

“I don’t use other artists works as an inspirational source. They have their background, I have my own.

“The same with music. The same song can cause different emotions when placed in different contexts. Our inspiration lives in our brain, not movies, books, music, and other creators.”

X: “What are some other things that interest you outside of art?”

E: “Nothing. Anyhow, things that interest me related to art. I take pictures, prefer reportage photography. I read various literature: Pelevin, Gaiman, A. D. Foster, Castaneda, Tatyana Tolstaya, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, etc.

“I prefer blues, rock, and classical music. Make tattoos, get tattoos. I attend live music shows of my friends and other musicians.”

Evlampia’s style incorporates heavy shadows and solid black fill, a variety of shading—though in particular she uses a mix of hatching and stippling—and often uses a dripping, oily or bloody effect in her art. Though much of her art is black and white, several of her pieces include other colors, particularly red. Many of her pieces incorporate surrealism, whether it’s the depiction of some nighttime horror, or of an otherworldly creature, while others delve into the controlled chaos of abstraction.

X: “How did you get started?”

E: “How does everyone start? Draw circles and stars on notebook margins. Then your drawing spreads beyond the margin lines. Takes up the entire sheet then. They draw on school desks, then someone tells them that they are good at it: ‘Go ahead!’. I never had any of that. No one said anything. The only comment was from the art teacher when I was 11: ‘Don’t draw these torn lines.’

So, I started to draw on margins, notebooks, school desks, asphalt. Then came A4 paper, A3, A2, the walls.”

X: “How did you develop your style?”

E: “It’s still developing, from picture to picture, from detail to detail. I add color to some of my works, or lines which are new for my technics. My style does not stand still. It constantly evolves, absorbing new knowledge.”

X: “Where do you come up with these almost nightmarish ideas?”

E: “From my life. From my head. I’m looking for inspiration in what’s happening around me and my friends. What happens to the world formed into ideas for my works. I think if I had dreams, they’d be like this. I don’t think they look like nightmares. Conversely, many of them nice and innocent.”

Throughout her artwork, Evlampia uses a host of imagery, with a common thread of skulls, bones, nocturnal settings, and magical symbols. Several of her pieces are somewhat gruesome and dark, but many of them maintain a nostalgic or childish quality to them, while others are more fantastic and dream-like. A common theme in Evlampia’s work involves what seems to be a father-daughter pair (or perhaps older brother, younger sister, or something similar).

The pieces pertaining to this father-daughter pair, or an analogous pair, seem to involve the vanquishing of monsters, and the protection and mentoring of youth. It also seems to involve the relationship of different generations; the good and the bad of that relationship: the kindness and the playfulness, the protective and the stern. Both figures in the pair wear skull masks, which give them a sinister appearance.

However, these are only masks, perhaps worn to appear as frightening as the monsters around them, and, despite their appearance, there’s a deeply human bond between the two. The art that portrays them feels like a portrayal of everyday life—the joys, boredoms, fears and loves, and all the in-betweens.

The occult or magical symbols that Evlampia uses giver her work a sense of uncanny mystery, making her artwork seem more esoteric and foreboding. However, despite the typical stigmas or preconceptions of such symbols, and the sort of mainstream ideas we have of magic or the occult, Evlampia uses these symbols in a more personal way to further develop the sense of emotions from moments of our past.

X: “I also noticed you include a fair bit of occult, magic, and alchemical imagery, as well as astrological or celestial imagery. What is the importance of this sort of imagery in your art? What is the importance of occult practices and astrology in your own life?”

E: “For me it is impossible to depict emotions and feelings without resorting to this imagery. They will look vulgar and not authentic. By adding something different, I give the opportunity to tell and compose stories of these emotions: ‘Look how I feel. Feel what I’m seeing.’

But real life is real life. These magic images have no significance in my own. None at all.”

In Evlampia’s works, I also sensed a deep connection with the natural world, though this connection is often tempered with imagery of the modern, industrial world. Throughout much of Evlampia’s work, there are animals, or animalistic chimera-creatures, and natural, plant-filled settings. In several of the pieces with the father-daughter pair, the foreground is grassy or rocky, often with a tree, with a distant city in the background.

In this piece, the “setting” could be in the woods, or in some other natural environment, and has a tree reaching to the black moon at the center of the piece.

Along the inside of the circle are various images, symbols and objects, including a person sitting in a swing among the clouds, a person laying on the ground, gazing up at the sky, and a hand emerging from a pile of pills, holding one of them between their fingers. Among the stars in the sky, there’s a hot air balloon and a space probe.

At the top of the circle, someone is hanging from a noose. They look like they could be standing on the tree, or falling into the dark moon at the center of the circle. Maybe they would fall into space—maybe they want to fall into space—but they’re held down to earth by a rope around their neck.

Try as I might to analyze Evlampia’s work, much of it remains ambiguous. When I asked Evlampia about what some of her pieces might mean, or how they relate to her view of the world, she opted to maintain this ambiguity.

E: “My works are the sound at the moment when you heard it. I caught a moment, an emotion, a touch, a look, a memory and put on paper what has emerged in my consciousness. I don’t overlap my images over the world. It would be a lie, a distortion of reality.”

E: “My pieces have no names. Like I said, my works for me as my feelings applied to paper. So I never gave a name to my works. For me it is redundant. I also don’t really like to talk about the meaning of my works. I’ve noticed that many authors who give a special meaning to their works, they turn out to be those who have nothing to say on closer examination. Well, this is just my observation. I wouldn’t want to be among them. Imagine that the artist died. Give the meaning to my works on your own. Or don’t. Or you can just follow me on Instagram to like my pictures along with your friends’ pets. I don’t mind!”

Bearing in mind the source of inspiration for much of Evlampia’s work—from the moments of emotions and feelings we have from memories and experiences—words might not be able to describe the meanings of her work. How do you describe the meaning of something that emerges from a deeper place in the psyche than language and articulation?

X: “Why do you enjoy making art?”

E: “It’s sublimation. It’s meditation. It’s discovering the world, or rather worlds into myself. It’s opening myself up to the world. I show what’s inside me and the way I feel the world. It’s the way to stop time or kill it. When I’m drawing it captures me. I put my feelings and experiences on paper. When I look at my old drawing, I remember what I exactly felt at that moment. For me it’s important. My works for me are like magic lantern slides with my conditions on them.”

X: “Does your personality match the style and tone of your art?”

E: “Yes, totally. I think I must explain. Everyone sees what they want to see. Someone sees nightmares, fear, and horror. Someone sees tenderness and innocence. I feel that the mood of my art precisely represents my personality.”

Art in a lot of ways is like a Rorschach test—an inkblot. Whatever rests in your unconsciousness—whatever demons and angels of psychological patterns reside there—get projected onto the visual patterns you see in art.

In addition to her pen-and-paint-and-paper art, Evlampia works as a tattoo artist. Here, her personal art style blends into her professional style.

X: “I noticed you do tattoo work. How did you get started in that? What sort of tattoo-work do you normally do? How much of your personal style emerges in your tattoos?”

E: “Since childhood I dreamed of tattooed sleeves. Over time, I fulfilled my dream.

“At some point, I thought, why not me? I can do it too. I’ve been putting it off for a long time. Close friends pushed me out of my box so I started with a good helping kick.

“Regarding my style, I would say that 90 percent of my tattoo works consist of it.”

Though Evlampia’s style is unique, with her own brand of symbols, imagery and combinations of techniques, what really defines her work is how personal it is to her. Her art emerges from a deeper place, and expresses ideas that might not be possible to express otherwise. Who she is bleeds out onto paper, and seals itself into the skin of people she tattoos.

Though her and her artwork’s ambiguity might not immediately reveal a cut-and-paste definition of their meaning, that same ambiguity preserves the memories and feelings they come from. Articulating their meaning with words might detract or alter their original form, and might detract or alter what the observer sees when they look at Evlampia’s artwork. Instead, they remain free to be what they are in Evlampia’s mind, and free to be what they are in our own minds.

X: “Lastly, what is your favorite piece of art, or favorite pieces? And why?”

E: “I don’t have any favorite pieces. Every one of them is a part of me.”

If you want to see more of Evlampia’s artwork, you can find her on Instagram @ginger_dragon_bones. The artwork in this article only barely scratches the surface of what she’s made. If you live in Russia, or find yourself visiting Russia, and you want one of Evlampia’s signature tattoos, you can message her on Instagram to set up an appointment.

Autonsitor

Written by Alexander Greco

May 3, 2019

My travels have taken me to the Maelulos Forest, in search of the Autonsitor. How do I describe either of these? How do I describe what drew me here? How do I describe what I actually believe I am doing here?

I had been drinking with wily company in Sairn, the City by the Sea, and listening to weathered travelers tell half-remembered tales. Something was in the air, you could smell it above the hops and the pipe-smoke—you could feel it like a static in the air. Yet, it was approached with caution. The Maelulos would be mentioned, and there was a quiet, knowing look in everyone’s eyes. Then the conversations would be diverted—consciously or unconsciously—to something else.

After a story about whaling and battling leviathans off the Garvreil Peninsula, I asked, “What’s the Maelulos? I keep hearing you all mention it, I’m curious. What is it? What’s there?”

Everyone looked at me. I had been quiet for most of the night—laughing yes, jabbing a tease and asking a few questions, sure, but I hadn’t directed the conversation at all until now. A woman who had been a traveler and a woods-woman for the first half of her life, and then a farmer’s wife until three years ago. “You’ve never heard of the Maelulos?” she asked, “The Maelulos Forest?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not from around here.”

“You don’t have to be from around here to ‘ave heard o’ the Maelulos,” a thick-bearded man piped in.

“I’m from far away,” I told him. “Worlds away.”

The bearded man gave me a long look, then the woman spoke up and I turned back to her. “The Maelulos is a forest in Sha’Haro where the Aether spills over into the land. It’s—“

“Aether?” I interrupted.

“What?” the woman asked.

“Did you jus’ ask what Aether is?” the bearded man asked. “How foreign are you? How do you not—”

“Just get on with the story, Freirdei,” a second man—a tall, wiry man with rough stubble—interjected. “We can’t give ‘im physicka lessons tonight, give ‘im directions to the Uni’ if he doesn’t know.”

The woman sighed. “The Maelulos is a forest in Sha’Haro—its own forest, isolated from all the others by miles of plains on all sides—where the Aether… Think of… It’s magic, it’s part of magic, but smarter people than I—or anyone else here—say its more. It’s a part of the fabric of everything, we just can’t see it. They’ve been trying to measure it like electricity or like brain-waves for years, but they haven’t yet. It doesn’t work the-“

“Freirdei,” the thin man interrupted.

“Right,” she said, “the Maelulos. It’s… It’s like walking into a dream. Things aren’t real there the same way they are here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The fabric of things is torn there, or perhaps it’s that it blends together there. What separates the physical dimensions from the Aetheric dimension, it’s not there—the borders begin to blur. It glows with colored lights, but there’s no source of the light. There’s things there—there’s things that happen there that can’t be explained. It’s like a dream and an ocean and a storm all at once.”

“But… it’s a forest?”

“Aye,” said Freirdei, “in the easiest of words, it’s a forest.”

“Home of the Autonsitors,” said the thin man, “the only place in the world they live.”

“Autonsitors?” I asked.

“The Lords of the Maelulos,” said the bearded man.

“Not the Druids nor even the Veritasians dispute it. No one owns those woods but the Autonsitors.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They are not a ‘who’,” said Freirdi, “they’re beasts.”

“Beasts’ doesn’t do them justice, Freirdi,” said the thin man, “they’re equals with the Dragons.”

“Well, what are they?” I asked, “What are these beasts, or whatever they are?”

There was a small silence. I could see in all three of my companions’ eyes that they were searching for words. The bearded man spoke first. “They make bears look like puppies.”

“They’ve got these tusks,” Freirdi began, “they move like a tiger, and-“

“You’ve never seen a tiger,” said the bearded man.

“Fine, it moves like a mountain lion, you can’t tell me I ‘ahven’t seen those. And it’s got a wolf’s maw, ‘cept its teeth are as long as your forearm.”

“They’re ferocious,” said the bearded man, “they’ll let you into their forest, but you ‘ad better not disturb a single leaf.”

“It sees things,” said the thin man, “that’s what’s important. Something can be big, something can have teeth, and something be fierce, but the Autonsitor sees things. It knows things—like the Dragons, an’ the Elves know things. They spend their entire lives in the Maelulos; their entire lives with those eyes of theirs.”

“That’s enough,” said the bearded man, “let’s-“

“’Ave you ever seen its eyes?” asked the thin man, turning to his bearded compatriot. “Have you ever seen it open its-“

“That’s enough, Pater,” the bearded man said to the thin one.

“Aye, enough,” said Freirdei, “tell us about Korsik,”

The bearded man stared at Pater for a long moment, then smiled slightly. Any tension slowly dissolved as he spoke. “Mah favorite story,” he said, “don’t know why I’ve never been back.”

More stories were told for another hour or so. All the while, the static in the air still hung. I would listen to it ringing, and I would begin to imagine the Maelulos. My mind’s eye would wonder to the Autonsitor. And every time, I would catch Pater looking at me. I’d catch his stare for a moment, and he’d seem to smile with the crease of his eyes. Then he’d look away, back to whoever was telling the story.

Eventually, we all grew tired enough to call it a night. As I was walking up the stairs of the inn, going to my bed, Pater stopped me.

“Are you interested in the Autonsitor?” he asked.

“Interested?” I asked.

“In finding it,” he said, “in going to the Maelulos.”

I stared at Pater for a moment, silently rolling the thought over in my head. “Yes,” I said. I was.

Pater smiled.

In the morning, just as this world’s star—the Sozl, I believe they called it in this country—rose above the horizon, I boarded a train—engine #64, just as Pater had told me to. It wasn’t a long journey to Sha’Haro from the southern hill country of Veritas. Pater had given me a map to the Maelulos, along with some directions and words of advice:

“Stay on the roads. Don’t journey into the forests—it’s the Druids’ land. Once you enter the Mael—the plains surrounding the Maelulos—keep your eye to the Rais [their word for East]. You’ll eventually see the Maelulos from the road.”

Once my train arrived in Sha’Haro, I began walking down the Vahn’Ozl road to the South. For a long time, there was nothing but forest. The first night on the road, I slept just off the side of the road, though I didn’t go any farther than the nearest tree. On the second day, around noon, a merchant came by with a horse-led wagon and offered to let me ride with him. By the end of the second day, we had made it to the Mael.

Night was falling, so we camped out in the grass a few yards from the edge of the road. When I woke up the next day, the Sozl was just beginning to rise on the Mael. It stretched on for miles and miles—a seemingly infinite stretch of grasslands. The merchant and I took to the road again, and by the afternoon, I could see the Maelulos to the East. It looked like a normal forest, though we were still miles away.

An hour or so later, when we were parallel to the Maelulos, I told the merchant to stop so I could get off and go on to the forest. He looked at me for a moment as though I was insane, then nodded and slowed to a stop. He didn’t say anything while I got off and collected my belongings, but as I was about to thank him, he interrupted me and asked, “Are you sure?”

I didn’t understand the question at first, it seemed taken out of context, but then it clicked, “Yes, I’m sure,” I said, “thank you for the ride.”

The merchant nodded and grunted something, then went on his way.

I began walking across the plains toward the Maelulos.

As I near the Maelulos, it seems stranger than when I had first seen it, and with each step it seems to grow wilder—less constrained by any words an individual might craft for such an occasion. Within a mile of its edge, the Maelulos has become a storm of green arms reaching up into the sky. It is comprised of trees, yes, but not like trees I’d ever seen. Not trees of our world, nor trees I’ve seen in other parts of this world.

Maelulos, the Glowing Wood, Pater called it. I am closer now; the Sozl is falling onto the horizon behind me. The forest begins to emanate soft, blue light. The Sozl is now beyond the horizon. All that’s left of it are deep reds and violets exploding into the night’s deep indigo.

I am approaching the edge of the forest now, despite the fall of night. Pater told me the Autonsitor is an animal that never sleeps, but it only walks through the Maelulos at night. By day, it exists invisibly and universally in the leaves and vines and branches of the forest, and in the flowers, seeds and fruits of the forest.

The light blue of the forest is now becoming infused with every color imaginable. Yellow lights like wil-o-wisps dance between shifting boughs of the sprawling, monolithic trees. Indigos of the night sky seem to drift and swirl about with the green of glowing leaves, and echoes the sky blue glimmer permeating the air. Currents of orange, wild violet and burnt red swim between trees like autumnal whales swimming through the forest’s depths.

At the threshold of the forest, I see red fireflies dancing in the air with white moths. In the distance is a great bird—it looks like a giant shoebill, or some monstrous crane. Its feathers are grey shadows painted across snowy fields, and its eyes are yellow gems with piercing abysses cut across them. Fish as large as my head are swimming through the air—possibly propelling through the invisible “Aether”.

The static from the night I first heard of the Maelulos seems to return. Something hums through the air. A ringing brushes across my body like a cool breeze. Why am I here? I wonder. The question is like ice running across my nerves. I couldn’t answer it. My same words that fail to describe the Maelulos begin failing to describe me, or my motivations. I couldn’t tell you why I was here. Could the Maelulos tell me why it was here?

The static and the hum and the ringing grow, drowning out my thoughts until all I hear are the shapes of the trees. All I can think are the colors of the air.

I’ve entered the forest now. My grip on reality begins to fade here, or perhaps there’s simply less reality to hold onto. Less than fifteen minutes of walking—as far as I can tell—and a mouth formed from tree roots and loamy earth opens up, and from its lips fly flocks of birds. They all chirp with distinct melodies in a unified rhythm, and their small, ringing noises form a chaotic yet beautiful and haunting song—a composition that was easily far more complex than even the Elvish symphonies could produce.

Further into the forest. I don’t know how far I’ve walked. I watch a deer bite the air—nothing in the air, it bit the air itself—and tear a hole open. From that hole, a rabbit, a crow and a moth, each the size of my chest, emerge. They all walk together through the forest.

I want to follow, but I realize I’m watching them from above. I realize I’m standing in a canopy of branches and leaves. I thought I was standing in grass and earthen debris, but I realize I must climb back down.

A giant earthworm emerges from the ground. It rises up into the air, then splits into seven. These all become the boughs of a tree, while the part of the tree that remains unified becomes the trunk. A black beak the size of sailing vessel crashes through the forest and plucks at the tree, but pulls a worm from the ground.

I look up to see the crow again. I realize the worm was not giant, and the beak was not the size of a ship. I realize I had been staring at the ground, watching the earthworm, and my eyes had only been inches from the ground. I am sprawled out across the ground, covered in dried leaves and dirt.

The deer, the moth and the rabbit are here as well. I stand up and follow the four animals. As I walk, I seem to be traversing through a tunnel of leaves, boughs and museum exhibits, though I couldn’t tell you which displays I saw. All that stayed constant, all that I can really remember, were the four animals.

So, I come back to my first question, how to describe the Maelulos.

I couldn’t say the Maelulos is a forest anymore. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t begin to describe what I see.

As I step into a clearing with the four animals, I watch a small star—one of the wil-o-wisps—burst into a spiraling flower stock that hangs in the air. The bud of this flower opens into an endless pit of sunlight and fire. What I thought were seven golden petals begin to move, and I realize they are seven yellow bees standing on the edge of this fiery pit. They lean in and pluck seven strings from the inferno of sunlight, then fly off into the forest—weaving the seven strings throughout the trees and bushes and limbs and creatures and colors and lights.

But even that doesn’t describe what I see. How do I describe this? How doI describe an object I hear with my body? How do I describe a thought I see with my hands? How do I describe a sound that I feel in my thoughts? Because that’s what I saw, a storm of perception wrapped inside of a single event.

From this clearing, we follow one of the bees as it weaves through the trees. Flower to flower, wrapping a curving vector about the forest. We step inside the hollow of a tree. The tree was no more than three feet thick from the outside, but suddenly we’re walking through a dark hallway carved into the tree, following this bee. We come to a small, circular room, with a hole in the floor. From the floor comes a golden light.

The bee flies into the hole. I look down and see three naked women—one with white hair, one with blonde and one with copper hair. I couldn’t say if they were beautiful or ugly, I couldn’t say if they seemed clean or unkempt, and I couldn’t say if they were happy or furious at the arrival of the bee. They were like oil paintings in the air, their features were crisp yet distant, and I wanted to climb into the golden light to be with them.

From yards away, they might seem perfect. Examining them inches from my face, I might see the Truth. But, from right here, I only saw confusion. I only saw the ideal and the material meeting in the middle, and blurring like rivers of opposing thoughts crashing into each other.

The animals kept walking, and I followed.

We move past the golden light, and onward across this hall through the dark. For a moment, I wonder if the darkness will swallow me, if there will never be an end to it, if I will ever return. Then I see a light at the end of the hall. Now we’re walking out of the hallway, into the forest once more. The descends from the air above us, still carrying its string, and we follow it once more.

How do I describe this?

The Maelulos is like an estuary of what is and what could be. It is where the briny depths of life’s oceans mix with the meltwater of snowcapped epiphanies. It’s where reality doesn’t have to be real anymore, and the thoughts of ours that can never be step foot on solid ground.

I tell you this, I tell you what I’ve seen here, and now I have just as much difficulty telling you what has drawn me here. How do I tell you what pulls me? How do I tell you what strings tug at my joints? How do I tell you what thoughts I followed to find this forest?

Like the search for something you’ve seen once and forgotten. Like the investigation of a dream lost to time. Like you’ve been following a map you didn’t know was in your hands, hunting for something you never knew you needed. How else could I describe it?

It is unknowable, ungraspable and undefinable, yet it is so real. When it brushes up against you in your dreams, it feels far more real than anything you’ve held in your waking hands. When you dance along the edge of reason and the irrational, it embraces you like a star embracing the empty vacuum surrounding it.

This—whatever it is; whatever unknowable angels dance through my head—has drawn me to the Maelulos.

And so I tell you that I search for the Autonsitor, but I tell you also that I search for more. I tell you I hunt for the Autonsitor, but, if you knew the Autonsitor, you would understand what I truly hope to find.

The four animals and I follow the bee on through the Glowing Wood.

We are walking in a space where reality seems to have calmed down once again. I can think again, I can look around, and I can see myself as an individual nested in reality again. Then I hear it. A roar, a howl, a cry—something I’ve never heard in my life, yet it couldn’t be mistaken. The Autonsitor. I hear it from deep in the forest ahead of us, but then I watch as the bee flies into a river, still carrying the string. The four animals follow. I hear the cry once more and hesitate, but I know—for whatever reason; the same reason for why I must search for the Autonsitor—I must follow the four animals into the river.

All of the animals and the bee immediately submerge beneath the water, unafraid of its current, and unafraid of having no air to breathe. I step into the water, and it’s freezing. I walk in as quickly as I can, though I don’t have the same disinhibition as the animals and the bee. The water is up to my waist, then my chest, then my chin. I take a long breath, then submerge my head into the cold water.

On the other side of the river’s surface, I open my eyes and see normally, as if there were no water. Everything around me—the plants, my clothes, the rabbit’s fur—all move as if they were underwater, but I don’t feel the water itself, and I find that I can move normally, as if there was no water. I sip the river into my mouth, and find that I’ve sipped in air. Cautiously, I exhale my breath, then inhale normally. I can breathe underwater, or under-whatever-this-river-is.

The animals and I walk across the silt of the riverbed, following the bee. I glance down the river to either side of me and see fish, but not normal fish. They’ve all got heads of various animals—elephants, tigers, monkeys, goats and snakes—and their dorsal fins were made out of arms, while their tailfins were like long trailing flowers.

As we walked across the riverbed, I watched each fish pick up a stone with its mouth, then carry it to another fish. Two fish would meet with each other, and pick the rocks from each other’s mouths with one of the hands on their dorsal fins, then go to pick up another rock and meet another fish. Eventually, a fish would have every hand of its dorsal arms full of different rocks of different shapes, sizes, colors and origins, and they would find some safe place along the riverbed—either a sunken log, the roots of a tree, or a bush of reeds—and lay down to set every rock in a pile around it.

I watched this for as long as I could, but then I saw from the corner of my eye that we were approaching something. I turned forward, toward the animals and the bee, and I saw we were nearing the bank of the river’s other side, except the bank was opening up like a dark mouth—the same mouth I’d seen the birds fly out of earlier.

Together, the animals and I follow the golden bee into this earthen mouth underwater. The riverbed swallows us into its dark silt. We are walking, though I begin to lose feeling of my body. I know I move my legs, though I don’t feel them move. Maybe it’s too cold to feel anything. A part of me wonders if I’m dead. It seems foolish, I acknowledge that, but it seems to make sense as well.

Warm light shines from ahead. Soon, we are stepping through a tunnel of soil and clay. Ahead, I think I can see buildings where the tunnel opens up. They’re buildings made of metal, I think. They’re buildings made of tree roots, car frames and engine blocks, and a mismatching of many different bricks—red bricks, cobblestones, fired clay, cement blocks, and so forth—I think.

Eventually we come to the end of this tunnel. There is a city, I can see it fully now. There are people here, I see them now. They are like geometric shapes painted into the riverwater-that-isn’t-water. Their faces are squares and triangles, and circles inside of circles, and their bodies are gaunt rectangles, hobbling trapezoids and tall, thin triangles.

We pass the first two blocks on our left and right. Then the bee flies into an open doorway. We follow it, take a staircase to the basement floor. Except the staircase keeps going. And going. And going. It enters my mind, how long has the bee been pulling its string from the flower? How many paths has it woven through? How many paths have the six other bees woven? It enters my mind that—

But we’ve come to the end of the staircase. It empties out into a vast underground—a cavern. A cavern, with doors everywhere. The animals and I follow the bee through one of the doors. There’s sunlight down here, though I don’t know from where. We walk into a hallway, and it leads to endless hallways streaming with sunlight. Hallway after hallway—how many places has the bee’s string woven through by now?

We step out to a dark, midnight beach—the sunlight stays in the halls behind us—and we behold an ocean ahead of us. I wonder how there can be an ocean when we’re already in a river. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. But I know there’s a ship waiting for us just offshore. We’re swimming in black water now. My legs are treading air, and my head is underwater, but we’re moving. Now we’re climbing the sides of the ship.

The animals and I stand on the sides of the deck. The bee wraps its string around the masts, and ties a knot around the bowsprit. The bee is pulling now on the ship, pulling the ship through the ocean. We sail for hours, it seems like, across charcoal black waters. Above us, the sky begins to crack and shimmer with color. The sky becomes a wine bottle green, cracks of light barely escaping the underground sky.

In the distance, I see a massive black shape converging to a point above the horizon. Eventually, I realize that this is our destination. We crawl across the water. As time passes, I see phantom shapes find life in the air. I see mice run across the water. I see the ghost-forms of foxes dance in the dark. I see tresses of pale vines climb through the air and disappear.

Then I see the moon come out. It means something. I don’t know what it means. It’s telling me something. The still image of the moon opens an invisible mouth and speaks. What is it saying?

A sudden jolt, a crash. The ship has hit land. The animals begin walking toward the bowsprit. I follow. I end up walking faster than them and make it to the bowsprit first. I climb down from the side of the ship, and my feet touch solid ground. The ship begins to move. I turn around and see the bee pulling the ship away from the coast, the animals still on it.

For a moment, I wonder if I should try climbing back aboard the ship, but I know it’s too late. The ship has left land. It’s gone. I watch to see if the animals turn to look at me, a part of me wants to wave at them, but they don’t.

I turn back.

I am standing at the summit of a black mountain, I realize. I am standing at the summit of a mountain made from the darkest substance I could imagine—something beyond charcoal, something beyond simple shadow, something wholly un-seeable—ore of a black-hole, perhaps, mined from the cosmos.

I know I must begin climbing.

There are rocks beneath my feet, and stones against my hand, but there is no seeing them. Far above me, at what I assume to be the peak, I see a faint light. Hand over hand, I climb this un-seeable mountain. As I do, I feel the pressure of the water I’m in grow stronger and stronger. It grows until I think I feel a hand gripping my entire body, and I wonder how much more I can take. Above me I see the light still, so I go on. Hand over hand, I go on, until the pressure is so great, and the light is so near that I am nothing but a war with myself. The pressure grows, and the light comes closer until I am nothing but collisions of thoughts.

Then my hand finds nothing but water—thick water, which squeezes my hand in a crushing grip. I reach down, and I feel a rounded, pyramidal point where the mountain must end. Above me, there is a small point of light. Then, above me, there is a call.

Above me, I hear a long, trailing keen. If a single saxophone could howl like a wolf, roar like a lion, screech like an eagle, and still croon sweet, blue lullabies in the quiet of the night, it might sound like this keen. It might sound like the call of the Autonsitor.

From the top of the mountain I have climbed, I breach the earthen ceiling with my hands and pull myself through the dirt, back into the forest. The abyssal pressure is gone. I crawl into the hollow of a tree, and turn the bark’s door handle. I crack the door of the tree open just enough to peek outside, into the woods.

There, it stands. The Autonsitor.

It has the body of an ashen-furred lion, except it stands as tall as an elephant at its shoulders. Its head has an elongated snout, like a wolf’s. Thick tusks emerge from its mouth, bent backwards beyond its shoulder blades. Its back is covered in twigs, branches and thick tree boughs all laden with deep, green leaves. It looks just as Pater had described it to me.

I step out of the hollow in the tree and step into the forest. I watch it, and wonder what the Autonsitor is doing. It seems agitated. It seems confused. This wasn’t what I had expected. Sure, it looked like a creature of beauty and elegance, but not in the way it moved.

Lumbering about as though it were in pain or scared, the Autonsitor walked further into the woods—it’s head moving side to side as it did, searching. I follow after it. The woods have seemed to congeal into a less frantic reality here. It is no longer shifting between reality and dream, but rather seems to be one or the other. Whichever one it is—whichever of the two that the forest has chosen—it seems to be holding true.

The Autonsitor stops in a clearing. I come to a stop several yards outside of the clearing. The beast looks around, then its eyes become fixated on something to its left. A song is playing somewhere in the forest, and it gets closer and closer. The Autonsitor begins to open its mouth. A flock of birds—the source of the music in the woods—comes flying directly at the Autonsitor. It opens its mouth, and they all fly into the beast’s mouth.

I step forward to get a better look. The Autonsitor tenses up suddenly. The odd panic in the creature’s body seem to peak. Each movement of its body is quick—its head jerks to one side, it’s legs move to reposition its body, its back arches, ready to lash out. What’s making it so agitated?

It turns, and I see its face from the front now. It has two light blue eyes—the same color as the light permeating this forest—then a single, closed eye at the crown of its skull. It is sniffing the air and turning its head slowly to scan the forest. Its eyes stop on me—it sees me now, I know it does.

For a moment, all the Autonsitor does is stare at me. All I can do is stare back. Then, step by step, it begins to move toward me. There is no running away, so I don’t even try. I just stand there and stare back into the beast’s eyes. It comes to a stop only a few yards away. My fate seems indeterminate for a moment. Then the Autonsitor rumbles and closes its eyes.

The eye at its crown opens. It is white, with a black center.

From this black center, I see seven bees holding seven strings crawl out and fly into the forest. The Autonsitor stands motionless now as the bees fly all around me, wrapping me with their string. Is it looking through its white eye now? Through the black pit at its center? Through the eyes of the seven bees? Is it searching for something? And what does it search for?

The bees wrap me entirely with strings, and I let them. They form something like a chrysalis around my body. The strings cover my face until I can see no more, and then they all melt into my skin, melting me with them. I open my eyes again, and I am floating in an endless, white space, with spirals of color spinning all around me.

Then, the spirals coalesce into a single circle. The circle shimmers. It becomes a mirror. I look into it and see photographs of myself. They are photographs of me from the day I was born until the day I die. They are all layered on top of each other, yet transparent, so I can see them all at once, and so they form one face. In the reflection of the mirror, I see a mirror behind me.

I seem to have no body here, so all I see are two mirrors reflecting each other infinitely, and all the photographs in between. I am just an ethereal body here, watching these two. I move toward the first mirror, and try to push myself through the glass.

The mirror is like a liquid, and my body—whatever my body is—moves into the mirror as though I am emerging from water. My body breaks through the liquid surface of the mirror. I stumble out of it onto grass. It is nighttime. No. I see light on the horizon, it must be morning time. All around me is grasslands, plains—the Mael.

I turn around, and I see Maelulos just behind me—the edge of the woods calling for me to return. But, I know I must leave, though I don’t know why (I assume I must leave for the same reasons I came here, whatever they were). I turn to the horizon, and watch as the Sozl rises above the edge of the horizon. A new morning is here, and I must travel on. I turn to look once more at the Maelulos.

At the heart of this forest is a great animal, searching for something. It turns itself into an instrument. It turns itself into a telescope that scours the surface of pebbles. It turns itself into a tool that navigates from flower to flower, color to color, life to life—a tool prying at the night, prying at the forest, prying at its reflection.

Perhaps one day I will return to the Maelulos.

Perhaps one day I will lose myself in the Maelulos.

Perhaps one day I will find myself still wandering through the Maelulos.

What It’s Like

By Alexander Greco

April 20, 2019

I began coughing immediately.

“Kmpfff! Nnggk… Kmpff-kmpff! Oh, shit—kmpff­—shit, that’s—nngk—strong.”

My friend laughed. “It’s not that strong, chill.”

I kept coughing. “Damn—knpff —I don’t know. Feels pretty—nkguhh—pretty fucking strong.”

My friend started packing their things. “You’ve never done it before, how the hell do you know?”

My coughing dwindled down to a few precarious remainders. “It doesn’t feel like it’s not strong.”

“You’ll be fine,” my friend said, then stood up to leave.

“You’re going?” I asked.

They stopped and looked at me. “Yea, gotta study tonight.”

“But we just started…”

“You just started.” My friend smiled impishly. “Have fun.” And then they left.

The door closed, and I was left alone with the occasional cough and the ringing city-silence for companions. I was left alone with this burning in my chest, and nothing to do.

Nothing changed, I didn’t feel weird at all, and there was no anxiety or fear or paranoia that I noticed. My throat burned like a smokestack in summer, although that was a weird way of putting it. I was just normal me.

I stood up walked through the house to my back porch—back to the place I like to sit, when I smoke my cigarettes and watch the sky—and there I stopped and looked at a tree.

The wind was grabbing at it, and pulling it up into the sky—leaves were dancing like birds on a leash, careening through the air in frantic spirals. All throughout, little gestures and handwaves of cardinals bearing gold and jeweled—

I blinked. Woah. I think it was starting.

I sort of took a moment to feel myself. Yea, I felt it now. It was here—something, whatever it was was here. Clouds of thunder cracking across muscles and tendons, and I could feel great webs of sensation tracing lines of being through my body. Thoughts, people’s faces and their words, them speaking things into my own thoughts that walked around, all toward some epicenter, some place we were all coming to.

“Oh, shit, woah…” I tried to calm myself down. I didn’t feel bad, but… this wasn’t what I was expecting. I cleared my throat. It felt dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My eyes, my head, and my neck throbbed in a weird way. It was like a headache, more like a head-hum that vibrated church bell ringing and summer-sun radiation from dilated blood vessels carrying a fluid jewel.

God, what was I saying? No, I wasn’t saying anything, I was thinking it. But… I wasn’t even thinking it, it was like I was visiting some other place in my head, some other place where I was only halfway in the real world.

I stood up.

Water. I needed some water. I walked inside the house.

Water, I need water. Some water.

My hand pulled a glass from somewhere in the kitchen, then the faucet was on and water was filling the glass.

What am I doing? I wondered, what am I witnessing? I’m watching myself pour water into a glass, because my throat is dry and my tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth. Yes. Yes, I can see myself doing it—I can watch myself pouring the water out, yes, I can see myself being a person who’s mouth is dry, that’s what I’m being. Look at me, I’m really going after it. Huh, it’s full. And I’m drinking it. Oooh, I can feel myself being a person who thinks this water feels so good. I can see myself being this fucking baffoon, standing glassy-eyed and confused with a glass of water. And for a moment, for a snapping fraction of a second, I was terrified of what I saw.

But then, it was gone. And what I saw… All I saw was reality, wasn’t it? Some form or fashion of it.

And I think that water did help.

I moved my tongue around my mouth and swallowed. And everything felt fine. And here I am, standing in the middle of this room with a glass of water.

I looked around. Was this what it’s like? I wasn’t expecting something like this. It’s not bad, it’s just… It’s strange. It’s not like normal reality. Everything becomes something different.

I walked upstairs with the glass of water. I felt a little wobbly as I walked, but I had no difficulty making it up the stairs, or opening the door. I walked to the bed, and sat down. And I felt… strange… but I felt fine.

What would I do? I wondered.

What should I do while I’m like this?

I looked above me, almost out of some arbitrary instinct. I looked first at the ceiling fan, and then at a spider crawling on the ceiling above. I wonder what it would be like to be that spider? I wonder what it would be like to crawl upside down, clinging to the heavens with eight arms, and gazing at the strange earth beneath. And to this spider, for all it knows, this room might only be a pocket dimension nested within the greater, outer dimension of the sky.

And maybe for all spiders across all of the world, all houses are all pocket dimensions that the giant and terrible humans reside in.

Wow. Why did I think that thought? I wondered. Why did I walk down that road, tread the neuronal pathways that—

Stop!

Why am I treading anything? What am I doing? What is happening in my head. Oh, god-fuck, what is happening?

I inhaled. My chest hurt. My lungs I think. Hadn’t quite recovered. I filled my chest and felt my aches.

And then I exhaled.

I felt myself deflate and the emission of my body escape. We’re never not gasping for air, like fish with legs that convulsively suck air from their environment before puffing it out. We’re so strange… so strange…

And this. This was strange…

What had my friend given me? What was in that? Was that… Was that stuff real? Was that stuff… laced? What was it? How well did I really know them? And how did I know that what my friend had given me was good?

Was this what it was like? Or was this what it’s like to be poisoned? Was this what it was like to die, gasping for air? Oh god, was I the fish that I heard? Was I the gasping, dying, drowning thing retching clammy carbon dioxide into my ears?

I stopped and listened. No. I was breathing normally. My chest did hurt a little, but that drag had burnt much more than a little.

Jesus, am I really being paranoid like this? What am I doing? What am I saying to myself, in my head. Where am I going, and what am I hearing in those places—who is saying it?

Am I saying it to someone else? Is someone else speaking to me? Where’s the voice coming from? What is this thing in my head? It’s like there’s this place I keep going. It’s like Wiggin’s game that he kept playing, over and over and over again. And it’s like this dream he steps into. And that’s what this is… I keep stepping into a dream, then stepping out again.

NO. stop.

A shower. I need a shower. It’s already late in the day. I’ll take a shower, then I’ll go lay down and sleep for a while. I’ll go sleep. I’ll go rest. A good long rest.

I stood up. Just take a shower. A nice, warm, relaxing one. Go turn on the water.

I did.

Get the water just right.

i did.

Turn the knob in the middle, make the shower come on.

i did

And then I stepped inside, and let the water come down on me. It was warm, very warm, and nice, so nice. Yea, this is what I needed. I needed to melt away in the water. Melt away with this cascading tide. One glass wasn’t enough, I needed to be taken back. This was a strange attempt at something, but I’d already lost it.

They’re marching away, aren’t they?

I didn’t turn the bathroom light on, I realized that now. The door was slightly open. Through the doorway, light streamed through into the steaming pocket of dark space. And through the doorway, I watched them all march away.

All soldiers of lost anxieties, and all dark thoughts resigned to death in the name of the Father, the God Emperor, the Wise King and Tyrannical Ruler, the child the man the elder. All violent tendencies, survival tactics, and insecure, rat-like thoughts of teeth-bearing. All marching with the turning of the season, all marching with the tune of a relaxed heart and deep breath, all marching with the swords I’d armed them—with anger as ore and wit as a hammer.

I watch them all march away.

I lean on the wall like a bent and tired titan leaning against a mountain in the twilight. I watch myself lean there, and I am gone from myself. I hate myself, and I love myself. I know myself, and am ignorant of myself. I slander myself, and defend myself.

Outside it’s a whole other world. Outside it’s something else. There’s me, and I’m watching myself through some hole in the sky, but I am still inside this box of perception. I’m still inside this shower, though lean through a window in another dimension, and I can only peer out from my small, dark corner and wonder what world lies in the Outside.

The Outside of everything I can see in this given moment. The Outside of my knowledge of what is and isn’t. The Outside of the reality we can rely upon­—the snakes and the poisons, and the padding and the sharp corners, and the stories and notions we lean upon as a crutch—that exists solely as the abstract and the unknown.

That which lies outside the shower. What is it? Why am I afraid? It’s just the city. It’s just people. It’s just buildings. It’s just roads, and maps, and streetlights, and storefronts, and Google maps with directions and reviews and recommendations and related links, where your vision becomes a splintering windshield after the collision of the world-on-its-bicycle-riding-in-front-of-you, but you’re going too fast to stop.

I rinsed, shampooed, rinsed again, then stood in the shower for a long time. I’m just someone sitting here, thoughts racing, and I’m just watching myself. I’m watching the sensation of wwater falling on my skin. I watching my feet making contact with the slippery bathtub, and the scant friction raging against the skin of my feet is saving me from chaos. I’m watching my eyes stare at the walls, and stare out the doorway. I am my senses and my thoughts—a tunnel of perceptions and conceptions, brick and mortar made of my beliefs and my fears and my tactile reality.

Eventually, I stopped the water.

I couldn’t actually tell you how long I was in the shower. I don’t think it could have been very long, but it seemed like each moment had been packed with something extra. Every second got its dollars-worth from me, and every arc of thought was some chapter from a confused adult’s picture book.

Jesus, calm down. Calm down, calm down, calm down.

Step out of the shower.

I did.

Towel off.

i did.

And then I wrapped the towel around my waist and walked into the bedroom.

Sit down on the bed.

i did

And I sat there, calmly exhaling and inhaling. Or was I inhaling and exhaling? I don’t know. You couldn’t do one without the other. Just like there was no crest without a trough, there could be no breath without a sigh, no excitement without relief, no relaxing without tensing.

And I sat still. I hoped my mind would sit still as well. I hoped to hold onto the reigns long enough to get a hold of these thoughts that may or may not have been my thoughts. A place in my head that may or may not have been a place in my head.

“Shhh… Calm down… Relax… Chill…” I spoke to myself—the calm part of me speaking across the table to the anxious part of me.

My calmness put a hand on my anxiety’s shoulder. This is just a ride, my friend. We’re on a roller-coaster, and you can’t put your hand out to grab the rail and stop it. Just go with it, lean into it. Push yourself into the stream, and see where it takes you.

We clinked glasses together in a bustling room of quiet luxury.

What if it’s like a superpower, I asked my dinner-companion, but you just don’t know how to control that superpower. What is it then?

I guess it doesn’t have a name. I guess this thing, you can only explain what it’s like. So, people call it “getting high”. I didn’t feel high. I didn’t feel up. I didn’t feel myself in any direction but inside and outside.

But then I looked down at myself, and maybe I was high. I looked through some window up above myself, and saw myself sitting on the bed. I could almost see the thoughts forming in my head. I could almost see the small storms in my consciousness. Was it “me” that was getting high?

I was just two eyes watching my real eyes watch the world. I was just two ears listening to what my real ears heard. I was just two hemispheres of a brain, thinking about what my real brain was thinking about. I wasn’t high. I was inside. I was in the trenches. And I was through a window.

I was outside of it the same time I was on the inside.

I turned and looked out the window.

I was through a window, standing outside. I was through a window, standing with everyone else out there. I was through a window, imagining what thoughts must go through everyone’s head.

I was through a window, watching everyone else evaluate what reality was focused through their eyes. They get this moving photograph, and they base all their life’s decisions on it. Forks of lightning deciding instantaneously which path to take through the air.

One person passed by the street, a single lighthouse of consciousness that hummed from down there to up here, and I felt so alienated and comforted by that light. What ships have sailed and coursed through their mind that might find safe passage with me? What secret galleries have they kept locked from the world around them that I might be allowed to see? What underground vaults of thoughts and memories might be buried in that person—what might they have forgotten about?—and what windows have they slammed shut and drawn the blinds on?

Has the world gone dark for these people? Has the world gone dark for me?

In the great Outside, that great, external dimension I only peer at through windows, the city street has become an empty runway for self-imagined nightmares. The street-lamps stand like industrial guardians—guarding a dream of peace and order, and civility and modernity. The buildings peer down on this lonely traveler, cameras and sensors and cellphones and narcs, judging and waiting for something inside this person to burst forth.

And if I watched long enough, I might watch some poor citizen—perhaps “high” like I am—exhibit the non-canonical, non-conforming, non-civilized behavior that would have them dragged away from society. We don’t like sickness here. We don’t like strangeness. We don’t like outbursts of inhuman humanity. We want cookie-cutter civility, and we want each step to be taken like an American would walk them.

If I stepped onto that street as I am now—if I left my small pocket reality of insecure security—the whole world might collapse upon me in injustice and disgust. If I stared too long at a single brick in the buildings, those buildings might reach out and pull me into their iron bars and shatter-proof visitation windows.

What would anyone who’d ever cared for me think if I was seen on the Otherside of civilization? What would anyone who’d ever cared for me think if I was displayed in the iron-law zoo for dangerous animals? What would anyone who’d ever cared for me think if they saw me cowering in my cell—all at once a threat to society, a quivering, anxious child, and a spiteful, festering golem of tar-black resentment for the Outside? That world, that world I can’t encroach upon, that word, that word that dictates “our” reality and “their” reality.

And to anyone that didn’t care about me, would I just be a statistic to them? A number they’ll never know, but they can guess at. An animal in an encyclopedia they can’t understand except with pictures and Oxford definitions. I will be an animal and a number to the rest of the world, an aberration of humanity that can’t be equated for in the algebras of our Social Contracts.

I looked up from the street.

I looked all around the city, for as much of it as I could see, at least.

But we’re all animals, I thought.

We’re some aberration, hiding in our caves, in our pocket dimensions, and peering out of windows with eyes peering out of eyes.

It’s a big city.

How many other people out there are “high” with me? How many other people are walking the streets, though we’re sitting on our beds, or at our desks, or in our living rooms, looking through the window and walking like projections in the Outside?

How many of us deserve to be locked away behind iron bars, simply for falling apart on our own time? How many of us deserve the blockade and the humiliating social spectacle of a medieval witch-burning, simply for our insides bursting into our own protected pockets? Would you lock me away for my messy little world, so long as I kept the streets clean of my sickness?

So strange that we fear the Outside, when it’s the Inside where the unknown dwells. Am I what the street-lamps fear? Am I what dirties the street? Am I what erodes the social fabric?

Or am I just an animal, self-contained behind eyes behind a mask behind a window?

Or am I just high?

Lay down, I told myself.

I did.

Close your eyes.

i did.

And now, sleep. Rest. Dream. Revive.

i didn’t

i couldn’t

not like this

But in the dark, and behind my closed eyelids, I went somewhere. I went to that other place, that Inside place, that reality in my head. I didn’t dream, but I walked through my thoughts, my memories, and my self, almost as though it was a dream. I didn’t sleep, there was too much noise in the silence and too many bright colors in the dark, but god I’d never felt so relaxed. I didn’t revive or recover or rejuvenate from the day’s toils, but sometime around 4 AM, still awake in my head in my bed in my room, still watching from behind a window behind a mask behind my eyes, I think I died. By the time the sun disturbed the silence, what had died had still not come to life again.

And that’s what it’s like.