You are in a dark, musky space. The air is warm and calm. You hear the echoes of a soft sound. Slowly, faint lights emerge and dance around you. Your hairs tickle from a draft as you catch a whiff of sweet perfume. Does it feel familiar? It should. It’s a place you have been countless times before. Perhaps you don’t remember. Perhaps you don’t remember, because you have never been here with me. Probably, you have been here with others. I’m certain you have been here by yourself.
It’s a strange place for me. Tell me just what is here. What is that soft sound; is it high like a hiss or deep like a thrum? Or is someone whispering? I cannot hear it. I know there are dancing lights, but how many, how bright, and how do they dance exactly? I cannot see them. There is a draft, but is it on your neck or by your feet? I cannot feel it. The perfume is sweet, it seems, but sweet like candy, or like a flower? What flower? I cannot smell it. You can.
Do you really find the air warm? I feel cold. It’s too dark in here. I can feel the hairs tickling on the back of my neck as I pine for something to grasp hold of. Won’t you take my hand? Tell me it’s safe. Tell me I won’t be taken and shut away. I know so little of this space, but you must know it well. After all, every little thing is here because you put it there. I am just a visitor, and I often worry I am an uninvited guest. I am afraid. Will you help me?
Hmm. Hold on a minute. You’re just the reader of these words. I am their writer. Everything on this page is not yours, but mine! Perhaps I am not so powerless here after all!
The ground is shifting beneath your feet. You’ve become unsteady. A piercing wind gusts through this space, frigid, with specks of ice that sting your delicate skin. You hear wood creaking and cracking and splintering. Try to hide if you like, but there is no escape. The dancing lights flee as a roar approaches from the darkness. Lightning breaks the sky, because, yes! You are out in the open air, upon the brow of a tiny ship alone in the midst of an ocean! Heavy curtains of rain pummel the deck and mix with the spray of the sea. Flashes of lightning ignite an expanse of churning crests and troughs which shift and turn the ship beneath your feet, and although you are desperate to hold on to the rails, they are slick and wet and so again and again you slide across the deck. Salt drowns your mouth and burns your eyes. Another gust whips across your face, and with it, you hear the sail on your ship rip off the mast before it leaps and twists in the air and falls, crumpled, into the water. The sail vanishes after you see it drift over the crest of an undulation in the fierce waters that surround you.
Do you think I’m done? I am not. Because now, as the lightning flashes, you can see a fountain of bubbles rising and falling on the slope of a great wave. What is it? You’ve no time to wonder, because a monstrous sea serpent has burst from the water. The sheer immensity is undeniable as its head disappears into the roiling clouds above. Lighting rakes its glossy black scales to no effect. Do you fear it? Do you think it will try to kill you or eat your pathetic ship? No, I can tell you for certain that it cares nothing for you. You are just a speck of dust in its mighty realm. The surge that it had created rushes forth, and before you can do a single thing it is upon you. You are thrown from your little boat, plummeting into the foaming sea as your ship is rolled and then crushed under the oppressive weight of the wave. And you? Well, you are plummeting into the dark water, splinters of wood churning and rising as you sink like a stone into the depths of my ocean.
Where are we now?
The water has dampened the sound of crackling thunder and dissipated the flashes into flickering beams of light that billow like curtains. Bubbles, silt, and detritus sweep and spin, reflecting the light, and create a swirling sparkle. Below is the darkness. Above is the storm. We are suspended here, together. I wonder what will happen next. I really don’t know where we are—someplace new, I think. The water is so opaque, filled with the bubbles from above and silt that has been churned upward from the depths. I know what is out there, but I can’t see it.
What do you see?
Before, I was sure that we were in your mind, because I heard your voice, and the only things that existed were the things that you imagined. But then, I realized that I was hearing my own words, so I thought that we must actually be in my mind. Now, I’m floating here with you, and I realize that I’m hearing you speak my words. So then, whose mind is this?
Floating down from the storm above, there are the debris of my memories, my thoughts, and my feelings, but among them there are others. The surging currents from the storm have churned up shadowy forms from the deep. I don’t recognize them. They must be yours. So, I think we are in a place that can mix the imaginings of both me and you, a place that’s not so concrete as my mind or yours, an incredible place that is created and destroyed within the span of a story. I’ll make some room for you if you can do the same for me. Come, let’s turn the page together this time.
The swirling silt has become a heavy mist in the air over a street. The dull roar of the thunder has become the distant passing of cars on a highway. The flashes of lightning have become the flickering of a lamp post, casting a halo in the fog over a bench, and upon that bench sits a gray-haired man. He wears a leather cap, a hoodie and jeans and a pair of sneakers with one of the laces untied. The crest of his brow casts a shadow over sunken eyes which cling to bags, and the corners of his mouth droop downward in a weary frown. He is crouched forward with his elbows on his knees when he looks up and sees us. Startled, he stands, and disappears beyond the flickering light and into the mists.
Now this part is very important, although it is quite unusual to talk about it at all. There was something about this man that was strangely familiar, although you cannot place it. Perhaps he looked vaguely like your father. Perhaps his face was the face of a man you have seen every day, but never really noticed, on the bus, or in a passing car, or selling magazines and candy in a small stand in the street. Perhaps, even, when you caught a glimpse of his tired eyes, you even saw something of yourself. I don’t know! I’ve not met your father. I have not walked in your shoes as you go about your day. I don’t even know what you look like. I may even be long dead.
So, it is impossible for me to say what is oddly familiar about this man, but you, on the other hand, might just figure it out. While I am stirring the currents with the words that I write, it is your thoughts, your experiences, your worries, your sense of humor, and your wandering interests that churn up from the ocean depths. In this way, every reader, on every read, imagines a different man, and so, this transient connection we have discovered in the space between two pages is truly unique, for every reader, in every moment, and in every corner of the world it may reach.
But, we barely know anything about this old man, really. Where is he going? Why is he dressed this way, and why did he leave? I’m not really sure, are you? Take my hand, and I’ll lead you after him, but wherever we go, be sure to tell me what you see. I’m listening.
kind of a psychoanalysis , but of who, the writer or the reader?