by Terk Follos

To read part one, click HERE

by Caroline McCarty

The actuality of it all is that we are nowhere. We are in our brains. We are in our thoughts. We are in our universe within the universe that we think and know to be what is real. But the universe is also in us. We are the universe. We are part of all of it and all of it is a part of and all of us.

He reached to the table, abstracted a paper from his pack of 1.5 inch Zig Zags and plucked a substantial mass of tobacco from his pouch. Rolling the new cigarette he noticed for the first time the cool, light breeze drifting through his hair and across his face from the direction of the oceanscape spread before him. The sun was low, appearing to emit an orange glow as it’s rays traversed the many layers of atmosphere and ozone, spreading purple and pink hues across the scattered and distant cloud cover.

He hadn’t realized he was at the beach. He thought he had been on a patio deck in New Mexico just a few moments earlier, but he held no surprise at this sudden change of scenery. He now knew All and the thought that he could travel on a whim, or cross into a dimension where the polar caps had melted and New Mexico was now a coastal state did not alarm or perturb him.

It no longer seemed abnormal that he was a pinnacle of the complexities of the universe, of matter, of existence, and of himself. He was only he, and the pathways on the plane of existence were no longer linear, no longer round, not anything, not nothing.

He sat back to his original relaxed slouching position, his back now resting comfortably against the springy rubber weave of the beach chair. He brought the newly rolled cigarette to his soft lips and pulled from his pocket the golden Zippo that had been given to him by a now insignificant friend from a distant world within him. The sight was magnificent as the gleaming orange globe finished it’s traversion of the sky and rested in it’s nest at the edge of the calm yet very much living sea. It would come back in another day, in another lifetime, in another lane of rushing stimuli designed to confound and distract the minds of stimuli driven creatures.

Had death come? Was this limbo? This place, this consciousness, this plane of existence, seemed too certain to be space between all questions and their congruent answers. This space he occupied too inexplicable to be nothing, yet too tangible to be anything.

An unexpected and sudden flurry of emotion rushed his temples and every hair on his primitive figure stood on end. A shockwave of sensation passed up through his spinal cord and seemed to squeeze past a blockage in his neck, residing there momentarily like a million needle pricks, neither unpleasurable nor unpainful. This array of stimulation motivated him to stand and dig his bare feet into the finely ground glass and rock landscaping the expanse of the cliff lined alcove that opened to the ocean like a gaping mouth.

He paused, starring into the infinite visual expanse stretching up and before him. The sun, now a sliver on the horizon, gave way to the ever growing spread of speckled starlight.

Without thinking, he stepped out of his flowing garments to bear the elements in his frail, organic, confining, human form. One step, followed by another, set the stage for what was to be the greatest escape from the physical he had ever, could ever, would ever, fantasize to graze the comprehension of.

He was sprinting. Beach pushed the boundary of the ocean’s lapping and foaming surf. Every step forward seemed to simultaneously spread every grain of sand. The effect was a never ending sand that bedded an unchanging distance between himself and the ocean, regardless of how fast or how far he ran.

Then, without knowing, without thinking, he leapt towards the stars. The thought held for an instant that he would break escape velocity and propel himself into the cosmos, but, alas,he began to arch back downwards with what physics would say is a gravitational pull from this planetary mass. He put his arms before him and linked his hands at the thumbs flattening his palms and fingers to create a spear with his body. Tucking his head he felt the endless ocean conquer back the space taken from it by a sudden reversion of the expanded sand grains. As the sea caught him, he slid into it like one raised in water, like one never separated from water, like he was the sea and was now merely assimilating a long since separated bucketful with unconditional kindness.

There were systems at work. There were biological balances creating together in unison at the rate of life. From the sea creatures of enormous proportions in the depths of his contoured container–unseen by the oblivious, self-centered land creatures—to the one celled Amoeba vying for nutrient, every creature was separate from one another only in the nature that individual white blood cells are separate from one another. The totality of their individual purpose significant only in its purpose to assist and propel the continuation of life as a whole within the confines of this oceanic basin that he now was and was now he.