A Piece of Work

A Piece of Work

Jordan Di Nocenzo, News Editor

It could have simply been the rain, but I lost my footing and slid down the mud-caked hill. First it was my ass that got completely soaked from the slippery hill, but next, it was really hitting the bridge of my nose on the grassy floor at the bottom of the hill that struck me the worst. It was the pain that swamps your brain and digs into your teeth, leaving you blind and dumb.

To recover my sight was the biggest problem, the mud in my mouth would have to wait. The wind in the rain made all of my naked frailties suffer in exposure. My tumble down the hill had ripped my sweater and the crotch of my pants, stemming down slightly to my left leg. My shoes were long soaked and I was dead. Tired of trying.

The night was pitched, but I could see the field come into view now. It looked to simply be flat grassland, now a bit overtaken by large pockets of puddles, slowly streaming there way to one another. The sky was heavy and stooped over the earth, fast and slow it did its work. Corpulent raindrops fell down as far as I could see, hazing the little lights moving out on the horizon ahead. Each light containing its own aura reflected by the rain… moving, passing, turning, gone. I knew those light’s belonged to cars on the surface, on the inside they could be a way back into town.

My weekly hike took a turn when en route to a new trail, my battery died. Out of reception, and the day running over, I thought might I just be able to make it back home in time before being caught in the hills for the night. So, I locked my car with a note on the inside of the window letting anyone, if anyone, know about my circumstances.

And at the present, I know I know, for better or for worse, that I am alone. Behind me the slippery hill I sparred with, a few gracious miles of grass ahead of me, but simply myself and no one else right here. What did I have to show for other than a few contacts on a broken phone, a wallet with an expired license and pocket lent too small to provide any comfort.

All I had were my thoughts. Ideals, morals, beliefs, my motives. Who I hated, who I loved, they were here with me, but all inside of this head. Moving in and out between each other, and oftentimes intermingling. To all of these people I have made an impression, shown them who I am, but to them. Collectively all of these people are me, but purely reflected in what I am? What do I have?

Do I have man? Is this born sex my sole grasp on anything that is me, or is it yet another painting made by somebody else that I must blindly follow. These borders on the paintings shown to me can only allow me to fit so few things. So, if I move out of this painting, is it mine then? Is that what I have? To choose to make the brush my hair and the paint of my blood, to draw my mind and body on the canvas of my choosing.

Or is it my mind that I really should be debating. If I have got something it ought to be a mind. A fat lumpy mesh of flesh and fluid. Thoughts, actions, and feelings are stored in there, in my mind, my very own!!! Each of these are categorized and filtered every second, every heartbeat, ‘till the very last one, allowing me to word all of my world. These words from English build my life, they are what I have. Now is this not me?

These English words have grown from their Latin and Germanic roots, which in turn came from many Middle Eastern ancient languages like Sanskrit and Tamil, and then on. They developed with the Human mind and civilizations through time, meaning that these words of ours shaped through time, were not my words, but components to work off of in making sense of my own being. What I think belongs to the language developed by other like human thoughts, but not by my same thoughts.

With other’s words, I create the data that fills up my brain over time, this is who I am and what I am, a brain with a personality, going through time. This time is my marker for learning, for being in remembrance of every experience that has impacted the flow of data into my brain. But in questioning being alone, and what I really have by myself, it isn’t my brain that is controlled by the time that it is measured upon, it is the moment. I have this moment, and now this one and the next and so on, until I expire. Each moment is mine, a gift being delivered to my senses boundlessly, but time is delivering this gift…which is to be mine, but was not merely fashioned for me. It is woven between the fabric of space to create what we know as the 3rd Dimension.

What we know. Starting from one dot, to the line, to the full length, width, and height of our world. All of this is what we can manipulate, we can work with these dimensions, shape them and craft with them. With time, we are simply in it. Moving through it, in long, infinite, yards. I am a 3rd Dimensional being stuck in time, the 4th overall dimension. A force to be reckoned with, a master of all things in its path. But what is it that I could see above this time, a 5th dimension? Something that controls time and below?

If death parts me from my mind, will it release me from my time? If a transcendence followed that brought me above the measurements of time, would then I have just moved to the next dimension, so aptly titled 4th Dimension? Now I am just another being trapped in another Dimension, until death do us part. What will be of my transcendence? Will my being really move on to a biblical Heavenly holy land where eternal peace shines down upon thee? Or will science truly catch up with me and replace the grace of my mortality, leading me to decompose and lend my corpse to the next cycle of energy, and so on. Nothing to remain of my memories or my name, who I am, my identity. Is it then, after death, that I truly am alone with nothing but darkness. A void, nothing in nothing, further than alone, lost. Forgotten.

Talking of death in the cold rain ran shivers through my entire body, I had almost forgotten. This way ahead was home.