A man, A mind, and nothing else

I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough. - M.C. Escher.




Walking down the path, he couldn't feel his legs - they seemed to be walking their own path. Like those times when you've walked so long, but you're walking further, and you seem to be moving on your own accord. Floating, with no sensation; lost, in thoughts and considerations and fantasies that distract. He found there to be no destination that he had in mind, nothing to look forward to. There was only the walk; and a strange restlessness that pervaded his being, marking his thoughts with an urgent need to be elsewhere, doing something of true import and meaning, stretching beyond the confines of his narrow life.

He was in a featureless place, and there was nothing but the path, and nothing to occupy his senses. No breathtaking sights; not even sights that might cause him to continue watching. All there was a dark sky, starless and cloudless; flat ground.

And the path - paved in gold, and with yellow milestones that passed, with no indication that there was any destination that they were heralding. No numbers. No guidance, and no points of reference.

He dreamed within the dream. He dreamed of lives of meaning. Of companions of learning, of whispered conversations in the moonlight with glasses of wine with friends and lovers of things that had come and gone, of the structure of the universe, and the structure of the human mind. Of whether there was only what one perceived, and not what truly existed. The reduction of reality to electrochemical impulses in the brain. Of the nature of a reality where there was no pain.

Pain, acting as a guide. Basic instincts which keep you from harm. What would happen without them, he said aloud to his companions. How would you know where you were going? One of them laughed, swigged the blood coloured spirit in his hand, and said - you could measure the distance travelled with the blood you leave behind. The lack of pain would deaden you to the monotony of existence. Pain makes you strive. The hallmark of a tedium that owns you is one that causes you no pain, not until you're caught. And there is realisation, and a thought that salvation lies only on the other side. And you just keep on walking. In the hope that you are still whole when you get there. For even if you are on your knees, and you're submitting, you might just escape.

Suddenly, his little fantasy faded. He was back on the path. After some minutes of walking, his gaze shifted downwards. He noted without much surprise the sharp ground that he was walking on without footwear. The world exists, he thought, without the brain realising a lot of it. Without pain, it would realise less. The only way to truly know existence was to see the blood you leave behind. He turned his head to see miles of red behind him. His bleeding feet, torn; with chunks of flesh being cut by sharp rocks. Yet, there was no sensation, and no escape.

There was only the walk.

He began to whistle jauntily, as his big toe fell away. Life would only be on the other side. Perhaps it was fatalist, but he might as well try and make it there.

----------------------------------------------------

He awoke - slowly, as if he was coming out of a warm bath. A slow emergence, a heavy brain trying to emerge through the clinging fog.

Another day. He had to face the nightmares.