From a Distance

As time passed he could only put it upon himself to feel lost. For three years his life was set in stone, and then it was changed, it became the first line of a tragic novella. And he loved every moment of it.

He expected to spend eternity searching for the world through books, finding solace in only the words of the dead, the gone, and the lovely. He expected life to be spent through a film of rain and ash, the washed away and the burnt out. And he missed all of it.

This new magic inside him was a bittersweet thing. It filed him with a kind of knowledge that makes you feel as if you know every secret of the world and as if you will never know anything at all. He had the power to create balls of energy, of light, of presence.

Often, he used this power to litter the street with a veneer of music, music you could feel, melodies you could taste, and notes you could see. They played upon the eyes, strange as music is not often thought of as seen, but his music always was. It displayed the brightest of colors that had the tendency to look faded, and the most extraordinary display of contrast that instilled a feeling that everything would be all right even if it was sad.

And as he painted this music along the sidewalks and across the buildings, he watched as those around him felt undeniably changed for the better. The music that was always new and never reused always merited a smile, and unfurled the weight of worry from their being.

But he also had the power of a double-edged sword. He had the unreal vision of beauty where others were blind to it. But he also had the burden of sensing all that was ugly in speech, intentions, and beauty itself. And where the treasure of finding hidden beauty was truly a gift, there was always ugly to match and eventually overcome every ounce of beauty found. And so reality was born.