The Belltower: Part 2

While walking through the patch of forest north of the monastery, James considered the implications of the monk's words. He felt his own being as what it was; a separate corporeal body his spirit suspended and directed in space; a dynamically interactive being in a realm of intricate and vibrant surroundings; and each life a resonant bell that tolled its own language and attuned to the languages surrounding it.

He was content to stride through the cathedral of living bells, augmenting their song with one of his own: a hummed melody remembered from childhood and days where nothing could go wrong. And his purpose gradually became clear to him; it was to protect this place and these people from harm, and to do so for as long he could bear the burden. He would do so for the rest of his life if need be. And what a vibrant life it would be.

The Belltower: Part 1

James of the Security Insurance Conglomeration felt bored. The day was long, his beat was short, the town a freakfest; violations within what he called the compound were rare, and usually only concerned drunken behavior or the occassional noise violation. Why they even paid for that law was a mystery to James. It seemed a nagging contradiction to expect the residents to maintain what amounted to a vow of silence when several times a day they rang those bells.
Those bells... a monk had shown him the view of the grounds as seen from their belltower - the single largest piece of architecture for miles, excluding the church itself. The view had been breathtaking and enlightening, until the monk had smiled and coerced a pair of uncomfortable yellow sound dampeners on his head. Then he had turned and casually pulled a central red cord without warning or preface of any kind. The pure energy and power of that two ton bell resonating from the tongue's beating penetrated him to the center of his being. He felt his entire feeble organic frame vibrate to that bell's frequency, each organ, tendon, and bone aligned by the force of that unrelenting sound.
Later, in the quiet dawn, the monk agreed to speak to him in hushed tones: he had harbored the fancy that a bellringer's task was one of the greatest blessings any person could be asked to perform. He explained that standing before the ringing bell gave the stander the smallest taste of what it must feel like to be exposed to raw truth; every fibrous stretch of one's being reverberating to match the unalterable and undeniable truth, whether it could stand its power or not.
"Such physical power is how the Lord manifests truth," the monk concluded. "Whether it be storm or a quake, whether it be a bell or a soft snow, God's language is all around us. So the question is this: when all things come to an end and you must stand in God's belltower, will you be able to withstand His resonance?"

To: Lost Children

Snippets of conversation get caught in the cobwebs in my head, and they flit about in their ethereal silken garments like moths. I see them in my mind's eye, and their beauty gusts hurricanes up from the dust to realign the mental chaos into worlds of wonder. In these places, I watch the lost children meet; echoing words we shared, delight we found, dreams we dreamed, and the joy of our minds made manifest; from their mouths comes new beauty, and their words form new intricacies in the world around them; each mouth producing delight in its own language, and the languages meeting in the air to complement one another; each detail bringing the lost children's minds closer in beautiful counter-melody. They rest from their creation, each facing a smiling face touched by years, eyes meeting eyes filled with the wonder of the unknown and beautiful, yearning for its discovery.

The thread between these places and these children from the now to the future falls out of my sight; not forgotten, not lost, but unknown – just as lost as the unknown we could find together, walking side by side. Sometimes I stand there alone, and the colors fade into memory, the echoes die, and I can only see one child. Her narrative changed before theirs began, and the hurricanes have lost their vigor, starved of their tempestuous energy. The dream had faded.

In the absence of the dream, I walk through the detritus of my mind, picking up wings and webs to remember; the dream had died at their fading, and I compare the moments they represent to the moments that killed them; her happiness in alternative paths does not destroy them, but renders them dormant in the recesses of my cluttered mind. My past joy salves the pain at this loss creates; I retrace the thread to new places and hope they may bring a shade of the glory of that lost child's grove.

But there are times the vision and view change. The camera pans, and we see the girl; smiling and joyful. The camera closes in, unrelenting, and her eye is magnified: there, in the recesses, another thread reaches out into the darkness. My mind sees its journey out of view, and wonders if it leads to the present; that mind-not-manifest, that present-moment instance of the girl's mind to come; her presence in the grove relies so much on the connection of that thread, since this thread is built on the moth-silk seeding the world of the grove itself.

And then the worlds of reality come to snatch away delusion: the thread is lost and broken – her dream is not of the grove. How could they be the same, when both minds have such intricate structures? The grove is a place I've created, a place of wonder and delight I've built.

Curiosity leads to curiosity, and my mind's eye follows the actual thread I've found, woven not of silk, but of unyielding iron; the grove is beautiful, but the children have changed. I see my face there, but idealized and passionate. There: the pedestal. There: the girl – the broken pieces of her own pedestal in her hands; I watch as she builds her broken pieces into his pedestal, carefully raising it higher and higher; as he rises, his face distorts into something I cannot recognize as the boy's, a face I cannot see myself in.

And then, a hovering phantom: a crimson-wreathed figure emerges from the edges of the grove. Slowly, the calamitous presence pulls itself forward. With a thrust, the girl is flung back. With a turn, it has placed the pedestal in its sights. The boy is intrigued and entranced, and peers into its face. The face transforms - another girl, but more beautiful, fairer, and disguised by a shroud of mesmerizing red flame. And the boy falls, allowing an opening for the flames to melt away the pedestal into a vaporous hiss.

Still within that parallel grove, I look at the boy's face. It has warped into something so unrecognizable as to be inhuman – he has begun to disintegrate, and the pieces fall through the grass and disappear; the boy is gone.

The crimson figure stands, and lifts the chin of the girl. She sits as the crimson girl's burning reflection makes fire of the tears in her eyes. I turn again to the crimson girl – there lies the silken thread of my own mind making the connection – I begin to follow it back into worlds I know. I begin to leave the grove, but as I do, I see the teary-eyed girl grow cold. Her eyes freeze over, and her hands draw the wintry chill about her like a cloak; the grove goes silent, and I take my leave.

I follow the thread through meandering pathways into a little brightly lit place; there, a smiling girl sits with pen and paper in hand; boxes litter the ground around her, and beneath our feet lies the discarded remnants of thousands of cleverly painted potteries, and she laughs as they tinkle under my clumsy feet. Behind her, the horizon flashes and the scene quavers; one minute, the scene is bright, and the next it darkens to reveal the pottery as trash and filth; she grows grotesque; but the next minute – and the next, and the next – the smile returns.

I feel a joy in this place, but it is not the grove – I remember its hidden wonders with fondness, but even they cannot compare; these girls are different, the places are different, the moments and joys and wonders are different; this is the next best thing when dreams are forgotten, and I enjoyed it for what it was: a place to rest and be content. Even now, I know that my wanderings will include the smiling-girl-with-moments-of-darkness, but the grove holds more wonders for me now.

I take this girl's hand and pull her with me – her face grows worried at the presence of her crimson doppelganger, but I continue on: next, the pieces left of the pedestal boy; I carefully grow them into a mockup representation of what they used to be – he comes along too.

Back in my grove, the boy and girl turn their faces away from each others and look in our direction. Slowly, I place the pedestal boy beside the boy from my grove. I place the smiling girl next to the crimson phantom. And I stand beside the girl of my grove. I turn and look into her eyes; emotion obscures her face from my view with tears. In this moment of distorted clarity, the paired figures confuse into three distinctly complex figures.

The smiles sadly, turning back to the boy she knows. Her face expresses the understanding they share; the understanding I have not yet found. As I watch them continue on, away from the grove to new places, they look back. Their faces change from one second to the next; I cannot know if he is me, or she is her any more. As they recognize my thoughts revealed, they look at each other and smile happily.