Crafting Reality (Part One)

“Flourescent strings, we were connected. Incandescent skies, neon signs, empty
homes, lonely highrises, cold and anonymous crowds. We dive in, dive out,
but somehow move nowhere. Neither here nor there, as they say.”
-- John Dillanger

***

The night was breezy and comfortable. Any other author would describe it with a welcome and familiar appeal, as so many have done before. But on that night John felt mischievous. He grabbed a set of spectacles from a drawer cluttered with scribbled and abused papers, obviously worn from age, and stared at the fresh paper before him. He craned his neck to catch a sudden gust from the window to his right, window shades fluttering in the romantic way you so often see in movies.

Any other author, he thought, would take into consideration the waves of shades, the cool breeze on his bare skin, sitting nude at a table, the only object occupying the room, dead center under a meager twenty-five watt bulb. Not this author. No, he was far more creative than that.

And so, pen lifted, back arched, he pushed his head toward the paper, its vast landscape reaching past the horizon, the stars lighting his white path as though his direction was of divine origins. Pen to paper, man to earth, it all seemed natural. Wild, even. He was running through fields, a bull chasing red, a fly zooming toward a fly zapper, a man running toward a woman. He was home.

He thought he would write about solitude, about the poor travels of an insignificant and inadequate man, that tale of all men, the ultimate allegory. But the white below and ahead and behind and to the side shattered any preconceived notions he had of his glorious content. No, the endless clichés of solitary nights and romantic agonies were not in store for him. Divinity provided for far more grandeur than that.

***

John stepped down. He was completely surrounded by white; from the depths of the landscape all he could perceive were white plains. Kneeling down to touch the ground, he felt nothing. His hand traveled as far as humanly possible, as though no ground existed below, and yet John was standing, fairly steadfast save for his normally awkward composure.

John felt he couldn’t just stand there. So he walked forward in the hopes that he would reach a final destination, but in truth he realized that his hopes were no more realistic than the hopes of a toddler crawling toward the sun. Nothing existed.
So after several hours, John decided to give up on a task that he knew was futile from the beginning, kneeled to the ground, and thought.

“This is probably a dream? Ow, that hurt. Very realistic dream…”
And so he contemplated for a little bit, fairly trivial, getting more and more thirsty, hunger eventually compounding his suffering. John scratched his head, fantasizing about cascades of water pouring from all directions, effortlessly flowing in and out of his body.

“I want a lake, a river, a fountain, a faucet, a cup of water, anything!”

The white John was so familiar with began to contort, change colors, mold into shapes, erupt and deflate and inflate and finally produce a result. Shades of green and blue fizzed and popped and boiled, and finally streamed from the eternal whiteness. A few minutes later a lake, a river, a fountain, a faucet, and a cup of water appeared before him, all on varying vertical levels. A monstrous river the likes of which he’d only imagined was at his feet. He kneeled, cupped his hands and poured its liquid on his parched lips. This was water, without a doubt.

***

John’s hand ached. He dropped his pen, letting it fall to the floor, and glanced at his paper to see what he’d written.

Nothing. The paper was completely blank. He was surprised in a dishonest way, as though he’d just started to believe his own lie, and then, when the time came, his belief never materialized because it was, after all, a lie. It was more disillusionment than surprise, but he convinced himself otherwise.

The once comfortable breeze transformed into a numbing hurricane, icy and detached. Under the meager light from the weak bulb above, John’s ghastly profile was surprisingly intimidating. Surprisingly because John was a timid guy: he had few friends, not much money, a menial job at the local hardware store and an empty, lonely, but warmly familiar home. He would often sit in the center of his single, furnitureless room he called home and digest thoughts (he rarely ate); he would often claim that contemplation was his favorite hobby, and always made a great effort to put his thoughts to paper. Everyone who read his work was left largely unimpressed, but somehow he still managed to take great pride in his writing, forever replying to the intimidating question “so what do you do?” with the usual “I’m an author, but have a job on the side just until I get my big break.” He knew, although he’d never admit it, that it was the other way around.