Alabaster
Today I busied myself about my industry, and my mind was in it. At the end of the day, my thoughts came loose of the workaday world, and I became relaxed physically and psychically. I let my mind be pliable and released myself to be touched and tossed by the flighty phantasms and spirited momentums of my subconscious. In this state, I now open myself to the images that will visit me and I commit to commit them faithfully here.
The ivory-skinned face of a green-eyed woman sees me. Her cheeks are full, but her neck is delicate. Her chin is round, but yields the necessary reversals of curvature that it does not overpower her reddened lips. Shadows fall on her modest forehead, but are gently guided to dwell between her slender brown brows and play dimly on the sides of her nose. It is straight, yet takes a bold angle of repose. It passes calmly yet assertively south through the landscape, setting apart soft cheeks to the east and west. In the far longitudes milky ears lean out gently if only to feel the breeze and catch sweetly spoken brief passions. Her jade eyes hold me directly as the beginning of a smile catches her lips. They sit slightly apart as if waiting for me to finish some witty sentence, yet she already anticipates the conclusion. I am not speaking, nor is she listening. Her image maintains its integrity before me, unchanging. Minutes pass, and as her eyes look into me unflinching, I am visited by images. They begin to work inside, while she waits outside. To what purpose, I do not know. I am enthralled, and the images visit me as follows:
As the sun sets warmly, orangely behind me I stand in a rolling, knolly green field of soft flowing grass. My shadow wanders among dale and hillock as lumbering clouds obscure and then remove from the path of the dying light. As I stand, lightning strikes the ground before me and does not cease. A single column of blinding searing brightness stretches from my feet to the heavens and I fall before it. I hold my breath so my lungs will not be scorched, but this is not necessary because I sense no heat. I remove my hands from my eyes because the towering fiery pillar causes me no pain to look on, though it is brighter than any light I have seen. I stand to my feet and See the Force of it as it reaches from lower to upper horizon of my sight. At this close distance I cannot perceive its breadth, so it appears as a wall of brilliance. I fall to my knees weeping as my heart unburdens before it.
The jade eyes call me back from between thickened lashes. Subtle knowing joy gathers in the colluding corners of her crimson mouth as she looks into me. She does not move, yet her expression is somehow galvanized by my ecstacy. I return her gaze weakly, mortally, but am completely disoriented. Her eyes capture me and I dwell, motionless inside and out.
In my suspension, I aware the sensation of falling. I possess myself and do not panic, but wonder the dynamics of my motion. Nothing is beneath me and I fall with increasing speed, but to what end? All is inky black, except the images that fly by silently. As I plummet, I pass the ghosts of people and places I knew in the distant waking place. The immutable icons of their forms sweep by, conveying only the briefest representation of their substance. My terror finds new birth and rises as I grasp at the straws of recognition, increasingly unable to know the familiar. The deathly serious nature of my unwilling descent dawns on me as I lose myself mile by mile into the abyss. Though I choke with fear as my mind unravels, I commit a single deliberate act. I reach back in my memory to the earliest days of my life. I recall a time when magic was possible, when so much stark reality was unknown, and adventure, mystery, and wonder reigned as the chief ministers to my soul. By the light of their counsel, I cease to fall. I once more stand before the alabaster face which marks no change in expression. Even so, her skin gets smoother as if it were a lake of milk, and her pupils become blacker and threaten to swallow me.
I choose not to continue, but I will carefully consider everything I have seen.
