Stranger in stranger lands

March/08/2013 By Emmanuel Goyer

The clock showed 8 PM Or would it be 9 PM? I haven’t changed the Clock for a long time.
Those who invented time move the hours as if they had power over it, as if it really followed some constant pattern. Nonsense they do not understand that there is no time.

I walked through the crowded streets. Like every day. word they use to count their existence.
Day and night, names used to describe that the sun shines and darkness hides us.
They are blind, if they could see that we are a reflection of light and darkness, they would understand that we put names to try to explain things that scare us.

Some people vibrate with happiness and others shudder with sadness. Tomorrow it will probably be the opposite. Always complaining about the past and longing for unlikely futures. Fools, if they stopped thinking about such things, maybe their eyes would look at the present and they could finally live.

It was just what I used to do, was that me? No, that was someone else, and he used my face.

I’m hungry, always have been. Before I was hungry for knowledge, now I just need food to keep that knowledge alive. Tell me, did I need it as much as food? The cat I was talking to didn’t answer and kept rummaging through the garbage can. Surely he was hungry too.

«Mommy, mommy, what’s wrong with that man? He looks hungry»
A girl shouted when she saw me pass by.
«Stop fooling around and hurry up, we’re going to be late for school»
The mother answered.

Of course only innocence has eyes to see reality.
Those who have already lost it only see ghosts in the streets, ghosts like me. So blind and crazy.
I ate, of course I ate, one of those common hamburgers with a giant yellow “M” on the box. One of those that scream eat me, even if it’s garbage, not only cats eat garbage, a dove whispered to me.

There are always onlookers throwing coins at ghosts like me, trying to bring them back to reality.
To their reality, who told them that I wanted to return? Here I found a freedom and they cannot see me as I see them. I can see them with such clarity that they hurt my eyes, I really look at them not only from above, and I can distinguish all the colors that make up their soul. In their reality, only in the dark do they reveal their soul, and only some want to see it.

I kept walking aimlessly, did I ever have a direction? I once thought I had it. No one has it.
Suddenly a Smell of books, knowledge, art. I followed my nose and ended up in a bookstore, somehow I felt like I came home. Was I ever a writer? I do not know. I’m just a stranger in a strange land, I told myself. The past does not exist, only the present, and in this present I am surrounded by old friends. Tears come out of my eyes without permission, tears of joy, of reunion.

I read, of course I read, I immersed myself in a story by a writer that sounded familiar to me.
Every letter, every word, every paragraph and every page filled me with life. I felt free, curiously the writer spoke about the slavery that our mind was capable of creating for us.

I remembered dreams, I remembered comforting rooms, I remembered ink, I remembered pages, I remembered joys,
I remembered sorrows, I remembered love. Who was before? What am I now? What do I want to be? Did I follow my dreams? Fight for my goals? Did I ever laugh? Did you ever love? Worse yet, did they ever love me?

All those questions returned to my head, as if once tired of being awake day and night and dead tired,
they had hit the floor of my head with no possibility of waking up. Now they finally wake up from that lethargy.

I heard noise around me, someone was shouting something at me; “Get out of here” “I’ll call the police”
“You’re listening to me” “You have to get out of here” Only one woke me up. «Put that book down, please,» said a very pretty girl who had approached me. A memory hit me like a bullet straight to the heart.“ Put down that book once and for all, don’t you see that it’s destroying you? It’s destroying us…” They were words she had said. She…

I ran out of the library with memories like chasing knives cutting through parts of my mind and parts of my heart.

Knowledge, pride, power, money, fights, misunderstandings, shouting, confusion, despair, abandonment, pain, alcohol, drugs, streets, alleys, rain, oblivion…
A summary list of what I had lived and hated being. In the streets I had killed my senses, I had killed everything except my thoughts. But I kept them away from my past.

I remembered that only the present existed, who had taught me that? The cat? Dove? That old lady who always talked about God? Myself? Either way, it was true. I still had a present and therefore there was the possibility of a future.

I looked at the clock on the church tower… I smiled, it was just 8 A.M.