red currents

Friday; September 29, 2006 2:13 PM

It is like floating in a liquid, some sort of amniotic primordial cordial in a red semi-darkness. except you know you are in the world. There is something more of that womb-like feeling: time is elastic, every instant lasts forever, or near forever and after ages of something beginning to happen it is quite a surprise that it does finish and conclude. I remember the admonition, 'do not go towards the bright lights' and smile. There are none here, everything is diffused and soft and warm -or perhaps not exactly warm, it just has no temperature. I am not sure whether I can float, or perhaps fly is a better word -but I find it difficult to think in terms of words, in terms of representation. Things here just are themselves, not something else.

Maybe I can navigate this world. There are features, passages and ridges and turns, I could learn them and come back here. But I don't know whether this particular location (if it is a location: more on this later) is significant or important in any way. I don't know whether what I can see is all there is to this world -it could be that those passages sort of wrap around and bring myself here, to this starting point again. This is possible, I can see strange mirror effects at the end of the distant tunnels. There is only one way to get to know.

Maybe I'm wrong. The tunnels are, for one thing, far bigger than they seemed from where I started. Then I realise, at some point, that there is a shadow moving in a distant tunnel, visible through the semi translucent walls of the gallery I am in. It is only a passing fleeting impression, something familiar but terrifying, for some reason. Not sure what is the worse thing, to be alone here... or not be alone.

I can make out more of the figure in that other tunnel. If I strain my eyes I can see a figure similar to myself, similar clothing, similar build or so it would seem from here, similar long hair. But now I see another shadow, a bigger one, terrifying even though I can not clearly make it out, blocking his way. He's plucked clean out of the small boat -if boat it is, that he is in, and disappears into the larger shadow, eyes and mouth wide open in s silent distant scream. Then I see in the distance, through the walls of yet more tunnels, another, similar figure on what looks like a small boat... further on in the tunnel I can see something lying in wait...

Then I realise that I am on a kind of small boat, which flows down the current of the passage even though I'm not rowing or steering it and I can feel no current. And I think I know, as I approach a bend in the tunnel, what I will see next. And I try to scream but no sound comes out....