Mason – “he” – had taken a wrong turn somewhere, somewhere along the way as the cliche goes. A wrong turn – arguably his first – such things being unknowable. Yes, a wrong turn, as if implying that every step must be wrong or right – a binary of absurd proportions – a quantum calculation with impossible causality – for three rights make a left – and how could three wrongs make a right?
“Yes., three wrongs make a right” he proclaimed – interrupting the absolutely minuscule roar of the mesa. A roar of eagles, wolves, crows and bears – but infinitely small – like the noise of someone else wearing headphones in the library. Among this quiet roar, his words rung and wrung. He had gotten lost on the trail.
It was not serious – by all reasonable standards, he was safe, located in an undeveloped bend in the farmland that flowed through the valley so smoothly, unperturbed – the Valley of the Ancients – the Painted Hand – the temperamental cradle of civilizations past. The farmland nestled the valley delicately – as if an extension of the river itself – the river the spine, the farms the ribcage. It was in this undeveloped curve of the spine – a sprawling stage of sage – that Mason had taken a wrong step. It wouldn’t have matter one dime has it not been for this on fact: Mason had never taken a wrong step before. As such, his existential defense were absolutely nonexistent – his rational immunities, null.
He froze up and stopped, more like a hunted-and-shot deer than a deer in the headlight. He tried to remember his last step – and the step before that one but he could only (re)member the present. His whole inertia zero – the definition of living the present – no movement – stillness. Yes – – – he was.
Mason refused to take another step in any direction. Instead, he drew himself into. A circle in the red clay dirt – circumscribed, he scanned the six directions – North, South, East, West, Above and Below. From his new court, he could see three directions – but the only one he knew for certain was down. Up and down need no compass. Gravity and electromagnetism being rather disparate phenomenon. He could definitely see down. Intuitively he knew this must’ve been where he had come from – for directly behind him rose an impenetrable canyon wall.
So he was going down – the thought fell like the accelerator on a car stacked on cinder blocks – the engine missing for 20 years.Mason had stepped off the right path – and inn doing so – he had stepped out of himself. He had not managed to pack any memories with him before he made the leap between right and wrong. Like a “Christian Reborn” or a suburb-dweller hitting a bong of 10x salvia on a Rooms-to-Go Couch and then being coming said couch – existentially – Mason was existentially reborn,. He was nothing. Nothing!
He was a portrait of landscape – of flowering serviceberries bushes and runs of rabbitbrush – a forest of berrying juniper and piñon pines – a floor mat of Indian Ricegrass and prickly pear he was the quiet roar – he was the sun – out of site but ever-present – the third eye, the sun – he was the sun and the moon – chasing closer than they had been in 121 years – he was the rock – the most important four letter word – he was the breeze – he was he and she and it and their and us and we and them – he was nothing and as such, he became Everything.
For all intensive purposes – Mason was back in the animal kingdom – the Apple unbitten – Back with the field mice and prarierw cats – and the vagrants and the transients – four-wheeled shipping cart pushers – “at least a shopping cart will never break down” – Everything had whispered to him.
Mason was an animal that could only climb down – and down he fell – like a crow that flew so high – so so high they could see the curve of the earth – and mankind’s curve with it – the vast expanse of suburbia – the shock of realizing genocide – falling to the earth – rigid before ever hitting the ground. Mason could only go down. Gravity compelled and he complied. Down down down. The more he went down, the less down he could see – and when down became flat – surrounded by pine forest bluebirds – bluer than the bluest blue berry – he began walking in a straight line – stopping every 20 passes – looking back and forward – calculating Orions Belt – and proceeding straight with surgical percision.
So straight he walked – unchallenged. And once he was satisfied he had taken hundreds of right steps – he abruptly pivoted ninety degrees to the left – and took his second wrong turn. Now, he was Everything – and Everything is water flowing and oxygen and hyrdogen and hydroxygen and oxyhydrooxygen projecting volume – matter – and matter did not betray Mason – it led him safe and clean out of the forest and into an acre of ancient corn – unharvested for centuries – petrified stalks spanning generations – new ears bursting through the seams wherever they could – and through the ancient corn forest to an even stranger place.
A place with no trees – one rock – flat and smooth and level – a rock so did\fferent from the canyon – for it was entirely uniform in coloration – barring the yellow looses cast hauntingly like sunbleached shadows – and among this giant stone slab was a machine – well, it looked and functioned like an animal, but it was also mad eof uniform parts 0 and nature, other than water and sky, has no such thing. He saw other machineanimals sprinting by on the stone that connected the slab to a network of slabs- presumably slabs with other slab animals and so on. He walked over to the animal and saw himself it’s its glossiness.
Himself – Everything – a two legged creatures with two more short legs – not quite wings – but flapping regardless – and a stone that broadcast the center of perception – for when human eyes meet their reflection, there is simply no other conclusion. The two legger, half winger stone pedestal was covered in fake skin – again of a consistent and uniformity begot by machine – and in this skin – which he actually quite enjoyed and admired – he found a little machine with buttons that when piushed, spkke with the machine animal and made it bark – so he fed the little machine to the machineanimal – chucking it onto the slab, right between the animaleyes.
He then turned around and walked back into the corn forest – and in doing so took his third wrong step.