Pale Fragments

shrooms

"Why do we glorify athletes?" I asked her one day, throwing both of us surprised from our metaphysical journeys through the realm of magic mushrooms.

We were in some remote part of Colorado sitting side by side on the lip of a river's canyon. There was an island in the center of two tributaries' intersection, and it seemed to me evidence of Platonic geometry (and Grace admitted once that she'd tripped with him in Eleusis many times).

It was my first trip.

I'd walked off on my own, though I'm sure she watched invisibly. I crossed a river, shoes slung over my shoulder, lanky legs coming out like a kid playing soldier (or perhaps more like a highly intoxicated individual who felt that way), smile and face opening, apathetically betraying my dilated pupils to the world. The cold felt good. The rapids pushing against me felt like my entire past life.

I jumped onto the shore. I'd done it! I cheered, turned, and saw a cliff face. I have no memory of how I climbed it, but I did that too.

When I got to the top I stepped on a baby cactus, which got stuck in my foot. I cried, cradling my foot and delicately pulling it out. I sniffed and felt a child again hearing my parents argue. Then I looked down, not yet seeing the Platonic geometry in the river, and instead seeing a body face down symbolized in the rocks leaning down from the shore. I saw myself there.

Then Grace found me, looking up the small cliff I'd climbed. "What're ya doin' up there bestie?" she said. "You alright?"

"No," I said, wiping my face. Then she came and sat silently, until I brought up athletes for some reason.

"Yes," I continued logically, "the human spirit is apparent in the work required to get where they are, the physical sacrifice, determination, whateverthefuck, it is all honorable in the individual athlete, as is any individual endeavor which utilizes those attributes. But in the end, still the only thing their incredible efforts have reaped is to become the best physical models of our species. All of this I grant. BUT if we were to live in a world where bears and eagles and lions and chimps even were sentient and able to participate in the Olympics, humans wouldn't ever even get bronze."

"You misunderstand the entire fucking point of athletic contests," the Goddess said, suddenly becoming (somewhat cartoonishly, and aware of it) angry. "They're not trying to measure up against the entire universe, galaxy, world, or habitat. It's about control, as most things are. You're wrong in assuming they're only about comparisons of physicality. It's about mentality, mashing meaningless intersubjective tribes together with a set of rules agreed upon by all parties, and then within those bounds, 'let's see who is the best in the universe!' And gambling. Any reason to gamble, yes. Any statistics that seem to ensure the future and our financial fate, yes please."

I laughed, pointing in her face, and then I began to weep, not in fear of her anger (for it was already forgotten by us both), and, smiling still, I beheld more clearly than ever the beauty in her face.

I won't describe the body in which she appeared to me any more than I already have. It doesn't really matter what she looked like, then.

If you have ever been in love in any kind of way, then you know the way your eyes focus, seeming to pierce through molecules, observing every muscle moved intricately on that intimate portrait of a face you subconsciously imitate, that face which exudes an ineffable light which, inhaling, will cure you of every pain--if you have seen a face like that, then you know what Grace looked like.

It was her turn for a random revelatory outburst magnified infinitely by 3.5 grams of a naturally growing fungus.

-

It's good to cry.

I was waiting for him as he walked onto the beach, confidently unsurprised as I threw another log on the massive pile. I'd created a clearing for us. "I want you to tell me your story," I said. "Get thinking. I'll have the fire started in a moment."

I only had about three hours of patience of leading the conversation with Anders on the beach after he'd awoken. I needed him to tell me, in his own words, what had happened. I needed to hear it from him, though I knew.

We'd talked shallowly about Xadrin for the last little bit of that time, and Anders seemed to forget his accusation that I murdered his brother. We were old friends, and he had nowhere else to go. It was comfortable, but I knew that if he didn't, well--

"Give yourself to the heartbreak!" I shouted (but will shout), stepping into the coals and stamping them about. "You loved her. You loved her! Anders, you loved her. Scream, scream, tear your heart in two where now it hangs by a single thread of hope of future Heav'n where you'll come together once again and love as you dreamed and felt you knew you would. You love her! It's done. Anders, she is gone. She is gone. Give yourself to the reality."

He only sits still staring, silence sonorous, into the crackling ash as though the flame still lived.

Then he says, voice tightening and deepening, struggling through the words as through a soldier making his way through enemy trenches:

"I saw God with her. I was with God with her. I felt like we were God. I don't understand. I don't know. I...why...?"

And then he stops, shakes, looks off, away, finds nowhere, looks up, eyes swelling, and then his rage is free for a moment, as a bull, beaten in the minutes preceding, is released through the gates towards one of his smiling abusers, finally free though completely encircled about and trapped, he howls, body trembling, trembling, trembling, and I just...I whispered, "Tremble, tremble, Anders, scream," and he could hardly hear over his own heavy, heaving, insane weeping, head hanging between his knees.