I follow the tree roots down.
They are my guides.
And I am their star pupil.
It all speeds up and slows,
interchangeably wreaking havoc on my linear location.
Longitude: somewhere between order and chaos.
Latitude: somewhere between clarity and dementia.
The exit to this templar tunnel is growing near, approaching slideshow style.

I am through, and below me vast landscapes stretch into unnerving distances. Like a superhero I can see for miles, in the pale limelight allure of transient shapes.

The color.
All the clearer.
A glowing glimpse of the sublime.

A human covered in skulls
and feathers

I glide to the surface, on the edge of a lake, in the middle of a savanna, the shade of one sapling, grown like bonsai, shelters my arrival from the metaphysical monsters—the lizard people, always laughing, laughing, laughing—to the west are crimson peaks, I feel the underground magma moors, jagged mountains, in the east a rainforest roundabout, curving north, dying at the teeth of rock, helicopter overview, all stemming from the form I’ve taken.

A human covered in skulls and feathers.

Landing, I alight upon a smooth stone, sitting, watching the rippling endless waters to the south, entering a meditative state, spreading myself thin. Butterflies energy bathe on the rocks all around, fluttering my fickle nature, I touch one, it smiles, I wave.

I grow it bigger and go for a ride.
With permission of course.
It likes me.

I climb on back—furry tufts, enlarged, can be made into handlebars—and we are flying out and over the sea, inland and inlaid, sparkling like a signet, jewels of jubilation, refracting my recollection. I ride higher, giggling, as we skydive steeply towards the water, pulling up at the last second and skittering across. I stand up and leap with all my might, my friend fades farewell, and I am under the blue shell, suspended in syrup, swimming without sound.

Like a superhero I can breathe underwater.
Maneuvering through seaweed.
Aquatic acrobatics.

Approaching:
The Piranha’s Pariah.

Pure poison filaments for bead eyes

For an appointment, you see, his teeth taunted me but did not daunt me, stand and delivered, or slip and slide he slithered, and flopped like the fish that he is. I know you, bull male, defender of the keep, the atrocities you who bestow wrath upon the weak. Pure poison filaments for bead eyes—I am no match for your animosity, but on my side are these hands and their ability to shoot balls of white light into the iridescent ilk you call creeping crawling brethren. Prepare for battle, ready the battalion, I am going in, maybe to die fighting, still dignified. The outcome is unexpected—rays ripple, tearing apart the scaled slivers of meat, served steaming in the summer. Thus accomplished, I enter into the underground rivers leading to peripheral paradox paradise.

Resolution:
The threat vanquished.
Foe destroyed.

Here in these murky mud banks, decorated with oddities of the deep, the cold sets in. Shivering in the backlash of this parasite’s demise.

In the now vacant cavern I find a strange plant, moving against the grain, sparkling blues and violets, voluptuous vapor trails, bubbling as if breathing, calling out to me, beckoning me to approach with the comfort of a mother. I pluck one leaf and arise to the refracted light sliding around above me. Approaching the open air once more, my winged companion nowhere in sight, I hover above the surface, pulling the land toward me in my mind, the plant matter clutched in my fist. Concentration cracked, I begin to float upwards, in an uncontrollable ascent. My check is balanced, and before I am whisked away, I free fall, crashing back into the land of blowing grass.

I move towards the tree where it all began.
Soothsayer, visionary substance.
Nestled in its shadow, I open my hand.

Be one with all things. Overcome all fear.

Before my eyes, the peculiar livid leaf moves of its own accord, dancing in the air to my left, rearranging molecular susceptibilities, generating the composition of a wizened woman, her eyes eldest, her face smooth as silk, hair all gray, but shimmering, crinkles in the corners of lips upturned in a smile. She turns to look at me, resting a hand upon my back, in reassurance of friendship.

Tears well up in my eyes,
the warmth of her touch melts my heart.

Speaking slowly, her gaze trained upon me, her comments come in the form of a slow harmonic tone, beaming in
via telepathy.

“Be at peace, here in this place. Be one with all things. Overcome all fear.” She strokes my hair. “Tell me what troubles you, child.”

My head falls onto her shoulder, cradled, safe in her arms.

I don’t know her extrasensory tactics,
I voice my thoughts the typical way.
Simple speech.

“WWwwhhat is thissSS?”

“Search my soul little one, you’ll learn the answers there. More than you can imagine.”

Hands grip the sides of my face, pulling me to confront her stare. Portals leveled, granting me passage, view-screens for interstellar travel, propelled through space on overdrive, galaxies spiral stellar nebulas, planetary nurseries seeking the counsel of constellations, fingers inching onward, groping gravity, blacklisting black holes. I am a wave of light, vibrating at a certain frequency, like a radio signal, the wavelength can change—expand the visible spectrum.

This is beyond infrared, beyond ultraviolet.
Beyond x-rays, gamma rays, microwaves.

This is the uncharted territory, abode of alien entities.

I’d cry out if I could, against the concept of defining reality on the basis of five senses. How many more levels of experience are out there, how many states of awareness, unfathomed by our kind? Small specs of stardust, running around like we own the place. Such a funny thing, the roll of mammalian metronomes marking out disgruntled disdain as a pillar of existence.

The births of Universes unfold—big bangs, the disassociation of ego in an intelligent expansion. An attempt to gain knowledge ending in collapse, lessons are sorted out before the next attempt at growth.

I am a part of this evolutionary process.
Part of a living being, breathing,
going through systematic cycles.

A thought in the mind of god—another word, another symbol used to label the unquantifiable. Meant to condense complexities only the daring try to unravel. Everything is relative. One book, one lifetime, one set of metaphors will never explain what any of us are doing here in the first place.

A thought in the
mind of god

I see creation and destruction, life and death, interchange before me, pitting themselves against each other, asteroids crashing into planetoids, good and evil, it’s all just a point of view. On a larger scale, balance is always maintained, dependent on probability, as each action divides time, fracturing into another possibility in an endless sequence of outcomes, fueling metamorphosis.

Everything is defined through its opposite.

Zoom out, further than the edge of everything, and you can analyze atoms, more anchors for energy, placeholders of string aspect ratios. Here, this god is constructed of an infinite number of smaller gods, with smaller gods inside, all building larger gods inside larger gods, no end in sight, and yet each piece is same as the whole—one unified consciousness with trains of logical reasoning grappling for control.

Picture perfect pulsating, patterns too large to predict, slipping past the event horizon, the death and rebirth of a cosmic Christ, one that doesn’t subscribe to denial, totally in tune with its shadow side. Know thy enemy. Embrace your opposition. They feed you, or you them. All will perish, consumed by the symbiotic nature of spirit.

Each individual death, a collapse, before rebirth.