Freedom

I stared down at the valley below from my sanctuary of pine and oak. Something in the view told me I should be amazed by this, something said I should gape and continue to gape until I found a reason to go back home. The reasons for heading back were mounting, it was getting cold, the mosquitoes were killing me, but something in the view told me to stay, to stay and not to gape. Someone promised me that I would, at the end of this, be able to see clearly.

I had once read of a man in Peru who, while staring down at an expansive valley, had visions of events beyond his birth, he had been gifted a motion picture of all that had transpired in his life, and when he returned he spoke of an energy, an energy that bound all of us.

When I had read this I was sitting on my bed at home, very warm and cozy, and I began to visualize a mountain range, just like the one in his view, and I believed that very soon I would get there. The excitement of believing, that I could travel anywhere I felt like, still coursed in my veins. Rebellion was such a high while it lasted.

But here I was, reliving my greatest chemical reaction, after having arrived at the place in my dreams. All reasoning left me, and I felt like a child who was being deliberately ignored because he would commit the same mistakes over and over again. An icy breeze, much like the one felt in the wake of somebody leaving in a hurry, lapped at my beard. It felt tingly and ticklish and I reached out to scratch it, and I thought, if it is indeed discipline that I lack then I am done for. The curtain would never be raised, and I would never be able to see what I wanted to see.

From somewhere between my shoulder blades a mocking bubble had seemed to burst, it was making its way up my neck. When it reached the point where it felt as if I would drown in it, I sprung up, ran up the mountain and flew away into the twilight with my arms outstretched. I could not accept someone else’s reality, but at least I had tried.