After the Flood - Chapter 10 Going Quantic

Last night, or sometimes during the following morning, when I awoke from my dream, I remembered, in a daze, that I had somehow discovered the effects of quantum physics. Of course, it was a funny thing, because I never really wanted to discover or even experience the effects of quantum physics, but I inadvertently did.

So what now, I soliloquized as the sugar melted in my coffee and my brain was being sterilized by cigarette smoke.

I was fazed, with a sense of frenzy running up and down my spine. But I had the slight suspicion that I was dragging something along. Didn't know, didn't care, wanted. I was full of wantonness.

It unfolded before myself but the feeling could not be shaken. There was an unfortunate feeling running beside the whole thing, and I was really looking forward for the time when that feeling would have passed. It unfortunately did not pass and I was understandably ruffled by the sensation.

Nothing to be done, nothing to be done.

For a moment though, but maybe for more than I was aware of, I was there, in the place I had always wanted to be. In the centre of it all, just walking about, stretching my legs, feeling the feel of things and the fabric of circumstance just like some merchant in an ancient bazaar.

Haggling as I went there was the slight realization that I had done this before, but then again it could just as well have been a gust of wind or some fleeting moisture.

Caring was not important anymore, I suddenly decided, but it was a bit late, not that late, but late nonetheless. Out of rhythm, slightly askew from the grain, maybe going against it all.

Ah, the race for meaning I said to myself. Moving along the path, just riding the wave to somewhere. No destination, just some bleached out coordinates on a slab of rock you left behind 1000 miles ago and at least you keep what is to be kept.

We forget, that is our little short-coming. Always we forget. Memory forgotten is a sign of old age.

Even that faded and it was all electric. Light twitching on lamp posts and the wires were swinging calmly, loosely against the wind. I felt the damp taste of metal wire in my mouth and the saltiness of it all almost scared me. Could not close my eyes. And then there was the fear. Always the fear. The game stopper, the spoiling of the sport - the fear.

They all have the fear. Lodged deep inside of themselves. Acting out like some jack-in - the - box madness, the retractable disease of sanity... I had grown tired, of things I had seen before. Tired and bored and frantic.

But then for another brief moment, I felt the symmetry and meaning flowed like wine in the dark, the sweet perfume of flowers that bloom in the moon light. Incense burning slowly at dusk beneath a gray sky.

I was morose and greedy. Greedy for more, given too little, expecting too much, paying for nothing and wanting everything back the way it was. Childish dreams and selfish desires, the playthings of my soul. Perdition as a pacifier.

It was getting too complex and it started to lose meaning. And then all of a sudden, under the flash of the moment, it all became clear. I was there. I had arrived. It was beautiful...