Skeptic Spirit

He walks around in a garden of rotten grass and black trees calling it life. Deep down his soul is craving for something to move him, but leaving this garden would be much too intimidating… Oh dear, what have they done to him!

He invites the woman to join him in the garden, and for some time it seems almost as if there is hope, that life itself is not dead in his world. Then she starts asking questions about the grass and the trees, the intoxicating, addictive air she must breathe. And he tells her, that everything is the way it should be. She accepts his reality for some time. She starts viewing his world as one above the laws of nature, one she must learn more about.

When she comes home from a day in his garden, her head is heavy and confused. She knows where she has been, but all the evidence she has are a pair of dusty shoes and a low from the high. She desperately wants him to feel joy. So the next time she meets him, she brings a flower and plants it in the ground, hoping it will be accepted. But nothing seems to grow in the land of rotten grass. It turns brown, then black, then forgotten.

There is one tree though. She knows not what kind of tree it is, and it is mostly black, but some few leafs have shown – something is growing. It keeps her sane it keeps her from truly accepting his world as held above nature. Because if this one tree can have green leafs, surely the rules of nature still apply on some level. It also keeps her sad. Sad that this world of his could be full of life but isn’t, sad that she cannot ignore it. 

The moment she realizes there is little life but her own in his world, that any seeds planted are planted in vein, she becomes as vital to him as the flower she planted. He thinks of her, if he accidentally trips over her weeping body, but his mind is set on new women to bring in new flowers. They, too, will wither, but for a moment there they will look good.

The woman is not the victim. None of the women he invites to his garden are victims. As soon as they remember the rules of nature and leave the garden for good, they will feel joy again, stronger than ever before. He won’t. 

When I left his world for the last time, I took with me a branch of the growing tree. I put it in a glass of water and now it has roots. I still don’t know what kind of tree it is, what it will become, but it has life. When the roots are strong enough I will plant it, nurture it, see it grow into something by the rules of nature and from the essence of life.

I will watch my tree grow, I will keep talking and give a smile to the girls with dusty shoes.

My fingertips touch the letters on the keyboard, and for the first time I sense it. Consciously. I’ve been clicking my way through the usual sites all evening, finding nothing. Nothing I was looking for. Perhaps because I don’t know, what I expected to find. I just know, that what I found was of no importance to me this evening.

My fingertips pad the letters, as if I knew what to write. As if I actually knew how to express myself. I make a lot of expressions, even now, but I can’t express my self. I can only sense, and I am overwhelmed. 

My fingertips make errors, because I am forcing them to notice, what they are doing. I notice what I am doing as well, and yet I can’t interfere. I am withdrawing, and I must not prevent myself from doing so. 

My fingertips are connected to my hands and my hands to my arms. I can only move my fingers, I am paralyzed. I am driven by the desire to express myself, but my mind creates pathways for denial. I can’t.

My fingertips long to feel.

But I can’t.

Once upon a time there was a witch. She wasn’t just a normal witch, she was also incredibly bad at it. But she was the only witch in town, and since none of the townsmen were skilled in witchcraft and therefore didn’t know any better, they would gladly hand her a loaf of bread or a self dead chicken just to get a bit of insight about the future.

That she could give them. The premonitions were always accurate, and they were always pleasant to hear. Because it happened to be so, that the witch had inherited a real deal magic crystal ball. She didn’t really do anything except telling the people what she saw. And what she saw was the truth, or at least the part of the truth that people wanted to hear. If a peasant came to her, asking about the crops, she would do the obligatory overly dramatic spell reciting and hand gesturing with no actual effect, and then she would look into the crystal ball. She would see a field filled with the greatest crops in town, and that would be her answer. Only, the crystal ball would not show petty details, like if the peasant on his way home would be smashed by a loose bull, making him incapable of harvesting his crops in time. 

But as long as the premonitions she did say were accurate, the witch could not be held accountable for the bad things. She had a really good thing going there.

Fall came, and the nature growing alongside the small river was showing off it’s intense red and orange colors, letting her know that in just a few weeks, only the naked trees would be there for her to admire. This morning, it was almost as if it mocked her for her incompetence. Of course, it could also just be a matter of perception. After all, she did feel kind of stupid, having dropped the crystal ball onto the stone floor, where it cracked and split into two equals. Now both lay on the table, and she didn’t really know what to do about it.

She had tried tying the two pieces together with goat skin, but after a little while, it started smelling funny, and when she didn’t react to it, the skin caught fire. Now she had a hole in the table, that would have fitted the whole crystal ball, had it actually been whole.

She decided to take a walk along side the river. She noticed, that the water level was the lowest it had been in a long, long time. Actually, she didn’t really know if it had ever been lower, because she usually didn’t notice stuff like that. But this day she did, and that lead her to believe, that she would have noticed it before, if it had been this low before. She felt low too.

Back in the house, she found the chair and collapsed on it. She kicked off her boots and rested her head in her hand while almost trance like looking at the crystal half balls. The cat jumped onto the table and she started cuddling it half heartedly. Then she remembered the river, and started talking to the cat, with an alarming intensity, asking it what the hell was going on with the river. The cat ran off, but she didn’t notice. The crystal half balls had started showing images again.

Both showed the winter coming and the river covered in ice. Both showed how the ice would melt again in spring, but where the left showed the river ever stronger, the right showed dried out muddy holes, where the river used to be. She couldn’t deal with it and went to bed.

The next morning she was so sure yesterday was just a bad dream, that she burned her hand on the coffee when she had to stop walking just to grasp the sight of the table. She decided, that she still couldn’t deal with it, and so she went back into the kitchen, found her tarot cards and started building a card house instead. 

Eventually she had to get back to the table. She convinced herself, that if it still worked, no harm had been done. She decided only to look at the left crystal half ball, because she figured that the ball had always showed nice things, so this had to be the most accurate one. Besides, the right was mean and unpleasant, and she just couldn’t deal with it. So she put a scarf over it, and focused only on the left. The left crystal assured her, that when winter had passed, her river would still be running strong and voluminous. She settled for that answer, it gave her peace, at least for a little while.

The winter took on in strength, and soon the river was all covered in ice. In fact, it seemed as if it was actually deep frozen. She fetched her axe and tried to make a hole in the ice, but it was too thick. This was not, what the crystal half ball had predicted. She was convinced, that the images she had seen, showed water running beneath the icy cover. She concluded, that the river was wrong and she took her axe and went home.

The next morning she was sitting at the table, asking the same question over and over again. What would happen to her river, she asked. And the left crystal half ball would show a springtime strong river every time she asked. After a couple of hours, the half ball disintegrated into a cloud of dusty rubbles. Now, she considered herself screwed.

A mental hangover was well on it’s way as her shivering hand removed the scarf from the right crystal half ball. There it was, the image of the frozen river, the premonition of the dried out mud hole. It was going to happen, she realized. Not only did the right crystal half ball show the truth, it showed it merciless whether or not she wanted it to. She knew, and she also knew, she had known all along, but since there was an alternative, she had gladly taken it. Now she was forced to realize, that when springtime came, the river would no longer pass by her house, and there was nothing, she could do about it.

But still… She knew.