This is one of my thing stories...
I threw it away, then days later I picked it up again and carried it around in my pocket. It was the only pocket without a hole in. The thing was heavy, and large as a police road-block; couldn’t put it down, or lose it, and I couldn’t think of anyone to give it to. It was the only pocket I kept my valuables in, but this wasn’t valuable to me, dangerous yes, illusion making yes, relatively small, the colour of shining delight, soft, yet too hard to bend with my fingers, esoteric in its attraction; a Pandora’s box. It was something unforgettable, burning a hole in my pocket. It had taken on the warmth of my body and I could always feel it at the bottom of my pocket. I wondered if anyone else had the same problem.
It was no use, I couldn’t take it any more: it made me paranoid, careless, forgetful. It negated my clear thinking with dreams of darkness. It undid all my resolutions in the space of mere moments with a feeling of unreality passing for something more; filling my sighs full with moon-dreams, and nights spent walking nowhere, and days full of rooms so empty: so full of nothing, feeling there’s something somewhere, always somewhere else, and it’s never enough.
There’s always one more stone to be overturned, always one more thing to go through, always another room, that, though it is filled full of me, nevertheless needs filling with someone or something else that is never there; only a hope-dream, stashed amongst the detritus of the carrot that never fails in its delusion to the braying mind that has no concern in that place that is outside, of the one that is called Maya, the illusion, the goddess so many seem to worship, though some walk straight on a path that cannot be seen in the kingdom they breathe, beside the doom that has no ending, hand in hand with the terribleness spreading its wings from my pocket, that vacuous place filled without a freedom; but the hand that grew daily more claw-like plunged to the depths, and possessed the circle of the snake and grasped it and threw it far away; but far away was not enough to lose it; like all desires upon the wheel it comes back again, and again and again until the lesson has been learnt or all life has been spent.
Then a man I came upon told me: “When you see the desires come: duck.” So I ducked out of sight but the desires found me, it was the wrong sort of duck, for I’d ducked and dived into dives of the mind, that place that originates all desires but one; and I came to see them growing so huge, all my horizons were filled with them, a sinuous cord attached to my pocket; clacking in high heels across a hard floor towards me, looking in my eyes for more, and waiting for that place of warm abandon at the darkness shore of all I could ever want. I could not see my hand in front of my eyes I was so blind. I abandoned all sense in the sense of despair, for the thing in my pocket was dragging me down; it owned me.
And then I remembered, it was not there, I’d hidden it somewhere safe: within a feeling that I always could go back to. So I grew patient, for I was very drunk with it all and needed to be clear to figure my way forward. So I travelled to a dew laden hill and watched shooting stars until the dawn came and hid them all. As the sun came up I put my hand in my pocket and felt all my bad dreams return; for it was my imagination that had given me a false sense of security; it was still with me in my pocket. I prayed for someone to take me out of it, or it out of me, to show me the door to escape it, but all I could see was the nightmare wrapped in a face that looked so much like mine.
I stared at it wishing it would go away, vanish. Then a band played and something soft touched me. Lumbering around a corner in my mind came a pair of dark eyes, faceless, insipid, carrying a bag of perpetual desire, reaching for my soul; I screamed and jumped right out of myself.
“Get away from me,” I cried. The eyes walked into a back room of darkness to wait, and sniggered. I knew they would return. I reached for something that wasn’t there, grasped only air, a cloud of nothing; I’d thought, hoped, perhaps grace would save me, but I was wrong. I wrote a poem to try to make me feel better; music was very loud, pounding from some place I did not want to go to. I walked, to try to find a place where I hadn’t been sighing, but it was no use, all doors were packed solid, full of desire; and I was bursting to get rid of it, that thing that showed me all my desires and said I could have them.
In the end I gave it to someone in the crowd of a very crowded place I came to. They said thank you, thank you, many times, but I couldn’t laugh, I knew its secret, and if it made them happy, well, they could have it with my gratitude.
I ran then, just in case they tried to give it back; my heart pounding down crazy avenues. I ran past people full of shadow and the screaming sigh, that sigh I’d given away. Time flew by.
Then sometime around mid-night on the eighth day I made it home. Someone was making a cup of tea domestically, quietly; I let them.
Never did find out what it was I had in my pocket. Someone had pressed it upon me as the sun came up over a mystical place; they’d said: “Here, take this and may it serve you well.”
For years I’d run with that stone in my pocket, not even remembering the face that had given it to me. It looked just like something my mother used to wear, big and heavy, and shining full of desire.
I spend my days now in this empty room I’ve found. I keep the door locked of course, just in case, you never know who or what is on the other side of it. I write poems to keep myself company in the sleep time before the end. All is not hopeless, I’m sure somewhere there is a door I can go through to escape all these bad dreams of something trying to catch up to me to press upon me what I have tried so hard to abandon. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make it to somewhere that doesn’t have the desire of a gold ring.
Image from Pixabay
