The floor below me shifts; it dips and pools, it solidifies itself so it may melt again. The charming aroma of cedar wood in the air accompanied with sweet breads and blood, pushed around by a chilled wind. This is the place you go to be nowhere. This is the Nothing Place where all things come to be freed.
There are inhabitants who tend to the highly volatile land. These spirits sprout horns from their heads and spikes down their bodies. Their faces swirl and twist into grotesque shapes. The trees and the skies follow their example, perpetually contorting themselves into other gnarly, beastly things. Colors cycle like someone has been trying to spin the color theory in a whole new direction but now the wheel will never stop!
No two things are ever the same. If you could even define a singular object, the inhabitants would all cease their play and applaud you!
I spin myself counterclockwise. If I do, then maybe things will slow down for a moment. I could find their trick! I take a step forward, but my body accidentally goes backward. I throw my arms out to catch my fall, but they are fixed at my sides as I tumble into the clouds. I knock my head and shoulders on dancing chimneys and into blobs that can almost be birds.
I land on the brick path just outside this Nothing Place, I roll onto my back. Squishy bricks comfort my sore back. I breathe in deep, a taste like sulfur mixed with candy in the air.
I came here to disappear. This place would turn me into something attractive, I had thought. Now I feel as though I am slipping downward into an icky molasses. Could it be that I am actually rising out of it?
How do you know when you are going forward when your path is always obscured by something else? How do you know that you have fallen when there is no one who has come to help you up?
This fantastical array of ecstasy and madness welcomes any and all. It will pull you in and you won't even notice! This is the realm presented to us all dressed up and cheery! It is unbreakable and yet it has been tamed. Tamed, so that we may never know the sweet, sweet smell of yeast and wood and sugar. So, we may never discover that everything- everything, is fluid, dangerously beautiful and tragic.
There is a natural perfection, an organic standard of reality. Of which, we have ripped up and bent out of shape so we may have an ounce of control for ourselves and over others.
I tumble down the road toward the Nothing Place. I pick up speed as I go down hills and come to an abrupt stop inside a cave. The cavern is adorned with pretty black lace; candles lit the way further in. I follow a thin decrepit red carpet into the hungry mouth.
I emerge from the other end.
The cave entrance has crumpled, and the mountainside shushes me. I turn away from it. I walk at first and then I sprint. I don't stop until I reach a forked road. I think I hear the inhabitants whispering to me through the winds from the Nothing Place. I obey them. I trudge forward. The road has its ups and downs. It is littered with caltrops and quicksand. There are angry cats and hungry vultures who hunt mercilessly here.
I feel the swirling force within my hara.
I trudge forward.