Catch ThirtyThree

Chapter Five (Re-Inanimate)

                  “My ignorance cast in the mold of all things absolute

                  I sustain forever my gaze. A stare fixed on the distant Oblivion

                  Resting in the inverted state of being dead, non-sensory matter

                  As all the earth, the wind, the fire, the sea behold and learn to pity me”

 

Bleeding from my arms, I awoke. I was not expecting to fall to sleep, yet it had happened. The entirety of the night was as clear as day; something I had not seen in months. The only times I ever saw daytime was when my neighbor, a quite kind old woman, opened the door to drop off groceries, as she knew I had no such time for leaving my house.  There was no time in my world for the smaller things—food, water, relieving one’s self—they were all infinitesimally tiny aspects of a life that I had long since lost.

I climbed out of bed and doused myself in the Axe cologne I had found lying on the sidewalk just outside my front door. It smelled like a new day, a new chance to discover everything I had not. I walked into the bathroom, spraying it as well. Long since being too poor to pay for plumbing and electricity, the toilet and bathtub had overflowed with vile liquids.

I took a towel and wiped off my arms. During the night I must have been clawing at myself, for there were long scratches up and down my flesh, and dry blood caked onto my fingers. I was still bleeding ever so slightly, and I knew that to taint my book would be folly.

As I threw the towel back on the blackened floor, I grabbed my notebook and proceeded to the kitchen, where I set water on to boil. It was early, and I had not had my tea. A shaman I encountered on my trip down to Peru when I was in my twenties had introduced me to the drink; it was powerful and opened your mind beyond comprehension. And it was simply a root! I had pounds of the grindings in my cupboards, leftovers from those decades ago. Now in my later age, I was not drinking it as much as when I was younger, but I knew that I would find the answers if I kept it up.

I sat at the cracked kitchen table, alone with my book in front of me, and I stared at it as I waited for the water to boil. It was such a beautiful creature. Amazing how it trusted me to enter it with sharp pen and mark it to be mine. But I’ve had it for so long it’s as if it’s become part of me. There was no human or animal I had ever encountered that had offered such a friendship. Together we were to find the answers of everything, throw off the covers that religion and science had shuttered the world with, and bring forth a new era of intelligence unlike anything seen before.

The whistle blew, and I snapped out of my trance. I stood quickly and took the ayahuasca grindings, setting them over a strainer that dipped far down into my cup, and poured the water in. I would let it sit for an hour before I came back to it. The smell of it made me light up in excitement. My body could tell it was on its way.