1 The Song

It all started with a song. Don't ask me to remember what song, it is long in the past, but I can tell you it was about space. What a concept, space. There are so many facets to the word and even though they are all different, somehow they are all the same. The space between now and then for example, is no different than the space between here and there.

I get distracted so easily. Let's get back to it shall we? I was alone, as I so often was in those days. Not that I'm not alone now. But back then there were people around, it was just different okay? Don't ask questions. I was alone, unnoticed, living my life. I loved music, I loved parties where the music gave an energy boost to your heart and made a subwoofer of your lungs. I lived for those parties...

Distracted again. Never mind the parties, those are not what is important. It wasn't a party when things changed, it was a lonely night. Something truly mystical transpired. I sat at my desk at work. I worked late in those days as well. I was working a little later than usual but not so late that commerce threatened imminent closure. I sat at my desk scrolling the municipal bus times trying to plan my route. I was going to a take a different bus tonight, to a place I'd never been to.

Music was playing in the background and that song came on. The one about space, the mind, and longing. The lyrics entranced me almost instantly with their starry, spatial, astral physics. The world slipped into an unreality. The computer screen strained, its colours warped as if a giant magnet were placed next to it. The words and numbers that were displayed on the screen shifted, reframed and became unrecognizable. Digital runes.

A new temporal space opened like a tunnel spiralling into or out of my skull. A hazy floating daze swept me out of the chair. The hallway stretched on and on sliding telescopically into infinity. Along the walls were the same symbols that the bus times had morphed into. Runic etchings that looked thousands of years old and modern, digital at the same time.

I met him online. We chatted for hours through direct message. When I say hours, I mean hours. My back was always sore from sitting hunched over my keyboard frantically trying to type the next message, my heart pounding a punk rock tempo every time the three little dots flashed indicating a message was coming, that he was typing.

I was sliding along the hallway, but not of my own volition. The floor was like a moving walkway at the airport. I went numb, gooseflesh bubbling up all over the back and sides of my neck. "Did you make it to the milky way to see the lights all faded?" piano keys tinkle all around echo like dripping light all over the hallway as it shoots farther and farther into the further. Letters and numbers shifted and changed into various languages recognizable and not, into those alien runes and binary. The lights and the sounds grew and crescendoed, then faded into background noise. It all cycled and cycled.

He couldn't sit still. He was a traveller. Even when he was around his mind would wander. Part of me loved that about him. Because, even though I had him, I still had to chase him. This was when people were around. I wasn't so alone.

Suddenly I glanced up into the onyx ceiling where a red digital clock flashed overhead keeping pace with me. I had to catch the bus. If I missed it there wouldn't be many other chances. The song hit the chorus,

"Tell me

Did you fall from a shooting star

One without a permanent scar?

And did you miss me while you were

looking for yourself out there?"

Waves it rolled out of the quivering plant leaves, the static in the T.V. and the radio. It rose up through the floor into my feet and vibrated along the bones of my legs into my guts, radiating outwards. What does it all mean?

I was no longer in any place I knew. The world was gone and this song was echoing in everything all around me, "did the wind sweep you off your feet? Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day..."