Thursday, October 30, 2008

Interlude 1

I felt it take over yesterday. I was at a stoplight in my truck, looking at my hands a weird sensation overtook me. My arms felt like long gloves and somebody else was putting them on. There was a faint tingling caress inside my own skin as the hands worked their way into mine. I start to wonder how far will this go, what am I supposed to do. Should I fight should I give in. All of the stories I have read and all of the crazy people I know flash through my mind. I realize that I am much too strong, or it is much too weak to do anything more. Unfortunately for me now I know that the FuzZ is much more. To speak its name is to take away its power. It shrieks as I call to it and recedes. I think that it is much too weak for anything, maybe.

What set it all off was a single phrase from my wife, "all alone." It was related to the lack of assistance I was giving her. That acted as the catalyst.

How many times have I written those words in fear, or simply cried them out always bringing more and more tears.

I assure you that is not meant to hurt you or be anything bad. "Why are you so upset?", she questions.

I have no wit in this arena at all. Totally worthless in this stage of anger, I have no chance to think of anything, but the FuzZ

Interlude: Return of the Fuzz

Just realizing the doorway, and I may be forced to step away. Will I be able to find it again?

Will I become the ancor which I sought, but the truth might be that I am not allowed a safety line into madness. Why should I be allowed to jump back and forth to keep me feeling safe.

Then my way is clear.

I become the ancor and I live what I saw those few days, that will be enough.

While stuck here I often wondered what puzzle I needed to solve so I can be free. There is something holding me back but I don't know what it is. Not aware that it would come to me I marched off hurridly looking for it and hidden inside my heavy footfalls I was unable to stop and listen and see. Sight that comes from energy. Able to see in, over, around and through all life when everything gleams and is magical for it's sheer existance. Then and only then is it appreciated and understood. That which overflows from one object to another creating a wave of relization and gives shine to life and the world aroundus. It is always there but very hard to hear.

If that is the case then I am now truly deaf.

The end of this world is near if I could only leave it. If I could go through the portal. If I could cut the ancor free. Once again overwelming saddness engulfs me and the pain is a burdon which I do not know how long I can bare. I have fought it for three years with only the love of my children to keep me up. I refuse to let them down as my parents did to me. I want their life filled with the security of love but how can that be? Still the sadness, still the pain. To go to the other world is a safe haven to pour out my energies there is a hope but, is that the way I want to live? I want to dissapear but I cannot. I would give everything up to flee except my children. I can feel the FuzZ enveloping my brain and I don't care anymore.

Knowing that the FuzZ has always been there waiting for me biding it's time. I was just too occupied with life to see it advancing. For some time I was ignorant and that was my bliss. It was always there. Insanity seems like a welcome releif to living a life like this but I would let my children down and that I cannot have. It is not that I am trapped by them but, I need them and it would be too painful to think about them missing me.

Wyh should I talk about anything else. Lets just say that it all sucks, my job, my socal interactions, feeling totally alone wherever I go, but I know I am not that special.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Chapter 2 Cotton Square mall


I started seeing the man who is not there about a month ago. He is always in the same spot staring at me when I make a turn and cross over the rail road tracks. I cannot see and details he is clouded in shadow. I only see him when I am driving on the tracks. Once I cross he is gone. He stands behind the rail road crossing barricade. Hidden by the steel framework he simply stares at me. I try and ignore him but his stare calls to me. I cannot see his face but I know he is staring at me. I wonder is this is another attempt of the FuzZ but this feels different.



I wake up from my dream and he was in it. I haven't seen the man at the tracks for several months. The lot behind the tracks houses an old textile factory that turned into a mall several years later. I never saw any of that all I see when I drive by on my daily commute to work is a huge brick building about three stories tall with a smoke stack out back. The parking lot is cracked and filled with weeds poking through trying to retake the forgotten landscape. In my dream I am a crow sitting on top of the crossing framework. I am directly over the tracks. I survey the land. Behind me is the gas station I pass everyday on my way to work just before I cross the tracks. Everything looks normal, just as it does everyday I pass. Random people filter in and out of the store, pulling in and pulling out in cars on their way. Turning around I look at the abandoned factory called The Cotton Square Mall. This is a dramatically different scene. I can see the man who is not there. He is real, all of this time I merely thought I was hallucinating. He is there and he is staring across the tracks looking for me just like always. The Mall is mostly decayed, the back half of the building is gone like someone just sliced a pie piece away from it. It looks like fire damage. There is no roof, all of the windows are gone. The smokestack that once dominated the skyline has started to erode onto itself and only stands about half of its former height. The weeds that have been taking back the parking lot have won the battle. Only a few patches of asphalt show trough a parking lot that covered several acres.

This view is all wrong. When I last say the Cotton square mall it was almost entirely torn down. Cranes, track hoes, and several other heavy equipment machines are making short work of this once all important factory. The vegetation strikes me the hardest. Everything is dry and brown. At first I think that everything is long dead but I realize that it is merely in a state of drought. Was there some horrific accident to this place to stop the rain? Or did we simply just waste all of the water away. There is no visible sign of life except the man staring across the tracks. He remains clouded in shadow covered in black amidst a landscape that is brown. Most of the trees that dominated this area are gone and I can see much further than ever before when I have driven past this area. I am filled with curiosity about this place coupled with fear of it being our future. It can't be this worlds future. The mall tells me that. This world has already deviated from that because here the mall is being destroyed and there it still stands. Is this where I am heading, a glimpse into my future, I must prepare.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Chapter 2 cont. The vision


I spend my days thinking about the place in my dream. I watch the Cotton Square mall disappear on a daily basis as it is slowly dismantled. I know that somewhere else the mall still exists. A burned out shell in a semi arid landscape but it it there. Every day that passes I feel these two places tear further and further apart from each other. I wonder why it is focused on this one spot. Was everything the same until they started the demolition of this building did that single decision spark the separation of worlds and create the desolate one I saw in my dream. That seems just too odd to wrap my head around and as I continue to look for dots to connect it all together. Dots that just are not there, I am not supposed to know. The more I think about it the more I feel that it is all wrong to think about it and I feel the FuzZ creeping into my mind.


Ever since they started tearing down the building the man at the tracks disappeared. I first saw him driving to work one dark morning. Like I said he was standing being the framework of the rail road crossing guards. Shrouded in a black Haze I really can't see him and figure that he is just a play of shadows. It wouldn't be the first time I saw something that was not there. I drive on to work. Day two: I completely forget about seeing him yesterday and then I see him again. I have the same initial shock and the same disbelief as yesterday. This time I credit it to a very specific play of shadows. I also come up with the idea that it is just somebody waiting for the bus, there is a stop just a few feet away. Nope when I look back to confirm if he is just walking to the bus stop he is gone. This goes on and on for several weeks until I am forced to admit that he is there. He is there all the time. He is always looking for me but just like me he can only see me for an instant each day. I don't know how I know so much about him or so much about all of the things that are bound to happen to me. I think it is the third part of me trying to warn myself on what is to come. What what was that. I don't even know how to interpret that idea. I can't help but to stop and listen. Slowly it comes to me I know who is the man in the shadow. It is me. I am looking for myself not in the soul searching way but I am physically looking for myself. I am over there and I don't want to be there anymore. I am looking for a way back, but how could I look at myself? How can I bring myself back from a place that only exists inside of my dream. I start to panic not like crap did that cop see me run that light but more like I wonder how I'll spend my free time in the mental institution.


I continue to see myself looking across the tracks for two more weeks. About the time they are tearing the building down and I start to feel the separation of the two worlds I stop seeing myself. I go back to dismissing it as a play of the lights. I have stopped looking for myself and I stopped trying to figure out how to help myself and concentrate on my sanity instead.

The Paper Tiger

"You are nothing but a paper Tiger," and without even knowing what that is I know that it is not nice and that he is right. A soft wave of relief flows over me knowing that my state of mind has a name. At leas the person I am here. Really I am two but need to be three. I am searching for the third.

I told Jeff the other day that I wanted the third to be in a room above an Indian Restaurant painted in faded purple smelling of rice and saffron. Leftover posters from old balliwood movies cover the walls, odds and ends that accumulate in a leftover room are stacked in different haphazardly around the place. I don't think I could pull it off. Other than that I have to disappear. If that happens I am only one, the one that is lost, and not three. I can't give up the other two yet.

Stepping right into the conversation I ask the mechanic, "What is a paper tiger?"

Randy now knowing that I am stuck to listen to him smiles and rocks back onto his heels and interlaces his fingers across his chest. His fingers begin to twiddle in that devious little way. "A tiger made of paper looks fierce but has no teeth." He smiles giving me a genuine insult that I simply take in.

I am angered at first but realize that he is speaking the truth. It is hard to be angry at the truth compared to lies. Stepping backwards and away I let Randy enjoy his moment of triumph as he cut me down. Where he finally came up with that realization I don't know but it rings true. I have faked it too long, but even a paper tiger will take a bite only to realize afterwards that it was useless. A tiger remains a tiger paper or not. We are turned into a paper tiger through lack of support and a fear of consequences.

I could return to a true tiger but there is not enough fight in me to do it. The relief of being named is faded. I already know this person. I want to be rid of the paper tiger but I am stuck. The FuzZ and the paper tiger are allies, they fight against me, on the team of my self destruction. With no chance of finding my third i am lost. I don't know what is keeping them at bay I only hope it is love. I am about to arrive and I am not ready and that is unbearable.

Followers