Just a Feeling

                                                                                              01.16.07 (M/D/Y)

A Feeling: in no place and with no time

         The fields rippled in the gusts of wind as spectral clouds of dirt drifted by in the air. A knight atop a faithful steed in a dull suit of armor rode through the fields, through the hills, onward down his life's path. As the knight rode on he swayed gently with the wind. The air was full of little specks that whirled in the air like snow, clung to the ground in dunes like sand and raged every now and then like the waves in an ocean. Through the desert, thorough the snow covered plains, through the fierce ocean, the journey continued. All the while, as the landscape changed, a windmill remained constantly somewhere on the horizon turning lazily in the setting sun. As the sun departed and the darkness flowed over the landscape like a giant star covered curtain the knight rode on along the road of moonshine. The beam of silver light cast upon the desert had the solidity of reality and the beauty of delusion, yet it was neither. So the knight traveled for months, for days, for years, for hours, eventually reaching a dense forest in a lonely valley. Recognition flickered through the visor of the knight's helmet. He had been here before?

          Is this a place?
                            Is it a time?…
                                        Or is it, maybe, just a feeling?

        He had never been in this place although, perhaps, he had been in a similar one. He had not lived today, although he was not sure whether he had lived yesterday or tomorrow. As the knight pondered drifting among the clouds with the moon his steed trod further into the forest and into the pool of water that composed its center. As the horse trod steadily into the pool the ghastly demons of the mist scattered from under its feet and the glistening surface was unveiled. The knight looked down and there he saw the sky in the pool and realized how immensely deep it was. The steed was careful to step on the stars and so the pair did not fall into that bottomless expanse. When the water reached the riders hips the feeling of the cold liquid slowly swallowing his body incited him to lift the face piece of his armor and look down at the pool. There he saw his reflection and again a faint pang of recognition echoed through his head. That was his face staring back at him from the pool?

               Am I who I am, or am I, maybe, who I could become?
                             If I am different now then I was before then am I a different person?
                                      If not then what is it about me that does not change:
                                                  this something that makes me who I am?

Am I a product of the circumstance?
          of the blood that runs in my veins?
                        Am I a body,?
                                                      a mind,?
                                                                                        a soul?

        With that the horse and the rider disappeared beneath the surface down the staircase of stars: up to the sky, down to the endless depth.