Cerebral Hotel
Did I kill someone purposely or inadvertently? Where is the remainder marks on my hands or how about the detectable smell of blood? Could I have accidentally consumed some of the blood? Maybe I should examine the taste of my saliva. Is it always this rich in sodium? Or is that the taste of blood?
The questions brimmed in my mind then gave clearance for new questions to overcome me. Always, the question would not stay rooted because they were always cleared away like cafeteria trays in a school cafeteria. Those tables had to be emptied, like my mind, to give away to new things. Though, the new things were different angles or interpretations of the same omnipresent fear.
Of all places, I was standing in the middle of a crowded aisle way in a conventional grocery store. The blood smell did not linger here. It sure lingered in my mind though. There a thought in my head remained that suggested that I might have killed someone earlier this morning before making this dreaded trip to this grocery store.
Hopefully shoppers were not looking at me curiously. Could they have known about the murder I just committed? Essentially, it was a murder that was lost on me. Yet, couldn’t they smell the blood scent that I seemed so unsure of?
When my ruminations over the possibilities of the committed murder ended, I found myself staring at a disorderly shelf of red Folgers canisters. Ironically, they had the color of blood and perhaps then were a divine message that guilt was inescapable. God could have mystically arranged the shelves while I was swept away by my racing thoughts. He wanted me to awaken from my thoughts to see the blood symbolically covering the Folger containers.
If coffee was somehow comparable to a human being, you could say they were a bundle of exhaustible energy. Coffee’s caffeine transmitted short term energy bursts to lethargic humans. Humans have that transmitted energy for a fragment of time till it is depleted. Then the human returns to a heavier state of lethargy. Basically, this coffee was God flashing the “red arrow” sign that I had killed someone.
Presently, there was bound to be some emotional baggage in my mind’s packed motel. It tended to occupy the lower levels because they were an immediate threat. Yes, I was picturing my mind as a overcrowded hotel with some sumptuous décor o n the main levels. I tended to sparsely furnish the higher levels of my mind because the thoughts that had to be attended to were a hand fold. Come on, aren’t hotel foyers always overly decorated to give the hotel secretary some serenity when the guests became taxing.
I barely checked the upper levels of my mind’s motel. They were normally unoccupied or detestably dank. No thought ever wished to go there unless they wanted to remain unchecked. From my latest electricity bills, the electricity was unworkable in those rooms because they have been neglected for so long. These thoughts found this unsolicited quiet to be great for grounding themselves in the hotel.
Maybe, in the abysmal darkness of these upper rooms was the limp body of the man or woman I murdered. I couldn’t check on the body because the tragedy of it was too much to handle. Therefore, it slinked away into this undisturbed darkness and rested on the fact that I was far too cowardly to check in on it.
I was uncontrollably afraid of confronting this questionable reality. The whole nature of killing someone filled my mind with venom. This revulsion gave me some peace due to the raised notion that the whole possibility of the body existing could merely be a complaint from one of my more paranoid thoughts.
While in the midst of rechecking every room on the lower level, someone knocked me from this hotel dream. Leveling myself back to my ever-present reality, I saw a concerned woman with smoothened black hair smile down at me. Normally it would be up but I was knelt on the ground and peculiarly studying the red Folgers can for the sign of Christ.
“Excuse me, you look positively shaken by something. I know most people don’t normally pry into anyone’s affairs. But, I just had to. You look frightened by something. What’s wrong? Unless you are afraid of the Folgers coffee being not purely organic.I often worry about the possibility that my coffee may be produced by slaves. Yes, there are still some people who think Licoln completely got rid of all slaves with that Emancipation Proclamation. Except, they are completely ignorant of the fact that there are slaves making our shoes, clothes, underwear, contraceptives, and everything they hold dear. This coffee might be slave produced. Some poor little, malnourished Guatemalan children may have picked too many Cocoa beans just to make this commoner’s coffee in plastic that contains lethal substances… Oh my, I’m sorry for prattling. My mind just never seems sure of anything. Except, we’re all doomed if we do not consider the pressing reality that slaves are responsible for our disposable products.” The lady herself looked shaken with fear. Her scarred, frail hands were jittering with intense anxiety. While, her oval face quaked with the rhythm of her nervous hands. On that fear stricken face, her pale blue eyes seemed to exponentially increase in size at the realization that even this store could very well have been manufactured with slave-created materials.
Inexplicably, she was wearing a pair of Oshkosh Bakosh overalls fit for a toddler. Underneath was a tightly wadded white shirt that was pressed tightly against the fading denim of her overalls. Even her whole form seemed to be shrinking with the fear over all the innumerable dangers present in this store. To her, this store was probably a nightmarish mess of proof of the continued existence of slave-manufactured products.
Could my death fear be as disconcerting as her own fear? Maybe these fears were overblown constructs of deranged minds? They always say great minds think alike. But, if this women and I had our minds fitted together, we would be one explosive mind filled with raging anxiety.
I stood up suddenly, and dusted off the grocery store dust. “Even if most of these store products are indeed slave produced. Haven’t you thought to yourself of the possibility that you could do something constructive about it. Try making a blog that educated people about the matter.” When offering my suggestion, she was aglow with a newfound optimism. Her anxiety did not completely stall because there was still some shaking that remained. But the worst trembling tapered off a bit when her feared vision of her ethical passions was compounded by advice.
“Sir, I don’t know even know you. But I highly appreciate your help. Even if its useless. I’m a tired woman who has already been through too much to try to be productive in this life. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll continue wandering the aisles in fear.” She scrutinized me one more time with searching eyes and then grabbed hold of her abandoned cart. With a sharp shove, she carted herself away from me and left me to the vision of my inner hotel.
This time, upon returning, the whole top floor was pitched in darkness. Confounded, I tried to force my mind to return at ease to the foyer. Curiosity about the death held me in place. I breathed through my nostrils then out through my mouth. “Whoosh!”My therapist told me that this breath was part of bringing your mind to a meditative state. Yet the fear always careened my thoughts off the roadway towards this mythical land of mind restoration.
Those therapists always spouted out the same trite with that impressive psychological jargon. “Oh yes, your problems will be completely rectified with this rendition of the theatrical breath. Just breath slowly through the nostrils and count to five in a sing-song voice. Then let the breath escape you through your mouth.”
They always spoke mightily of this procedure as if it were full-proof. In my experience, you intake air and feel a sense of artificiality by imitating breath. Breaths are naturally undetected. We are breathing while we are in the midst of present affairs. Even when unaware, our breath seeps out of us and fills our vessel without our detection. Why does the psychologist want me to waste my breath to perform one?
Perhaps, the sacred breath was a symbolic idea that granted one the possibility to trick their mind into believing in peace. Don’t religious people perform religious ceremonies to deceive their minds into unleashing a great sense of ineffable peace? None of these ceremonies are needed when we can just accept the mysterious mechanics of our ability to live and sustain life. It’s the mysteries in the world that offer us peace that not everything has to be conclusive.
Maybe, I didn’t need to conclude that the death I was rooting out in this darkened room happened or did not happen. Because, anywhere in this mind hotel, I could only be certain about the beliefs I held in a creator of this structure and the hope that this structure carries a purpose for its existence.
In terms of the death fear, the murder may reveal itself when it seeks to serve a purpose in life’s fabric of mystery. I cannot be the one who expends my energy to constantly think about these dark areas of my mind. These things might even be a product of my imagination which I always thought the upper rooms of this mental hotel to be.
For an eternity, I could search them and find nothing of any value. My imagination could keep continually restoring the images of probable murder. I could infinitely smell blood that leaked from a corpse that might occupy these rooms. Or, I could forget about it and only smell something which did not carry a name.
No; I’ve decided to close the doors to the upper regions of my mind and I opted now to sink to the level below. In this area, there were doors of countless rooms. Each of them bore a name of a certain virtue or some other abstract idea in the world. I sauntered over to the door marked “love.”
The door had an elegant knob that was fashioned by an artisan with deft hands, and the material of the door was made of a tasteful dark wood. Inside, the lights turned on automatically and revealed an eclectic mix of different types of furniture. Some were modern and others were from antiquity. No matter the type, I kept my gaze fixated upon the welcoming flames which burst from the fireplace. I knew instinctively that these flames could never disappear.
Upon the chair was a shadowy figure with an ambiguous gender. Maybe he or she had a set gender. I never really paid any attention to the gender. If I was more attentive to gender then the figure’s gender would be established. Instead the figure remained obscured by an indiscernible sheet of black.
“ Don or Dawn, that is your name, right? I don’t know why but I’m starting to feel great love for you. In stories, would this not appear to be contrived? Unless I have a contrived sense of love.” I spoke with a strange sense of confidence. Therefore, my voice was abnormally audible. It was not disrupted in anyway by fear.
“Yes, I know why you came here. Because, you are anxious about the answer to some question. The answer is No.” the enigmatic figure’s voice was melodic though also strong.
“I didn’t happen to kill anyone.” I yelled excitedly.
“No, you never did. You are far too encumbered by the fear of killing someone in the first place to kill anyone. You mostly are preoccupied by the fear that murder might be a requisite assignment in order for you to remain moral in the world’s eyes. The world views you as cowardly because this is the room that you are enamored with to the point where you do not belong in the world. I’m the one that you love so greatly that you do not even recognize my body. I’ve had some real nutty people come here once and they immediately shaped me into their sexual fantasy. You know,the types of people who think they know about love but usually they kill love because he is too gracious or peaceful. I think their idea of love is more earth influenced. They envision me as a subordinate and ravage me without any thought to my being. Mind you, there are some who actually have sex after taking careful consideration of me. They’ll shape me thereafter into either a male or female, regardless of their own gender, and peacefully make love to me. Now, I have had some who were overcome with guilt after that because I was their same gender. During their whole penance ceremony, they still possessed hidden love for my form.” He/She continued to speak in a lyrical voice that also was strangely solemn at points.
“Why do I see you as someone without gender?” I asked.
“Because, you are far too in love with the idea of spiritual love, platonic love. It’s the love that your philosophers spoke so highly of. Didn’t Aristotle anatomize love to include that love as being the core of love? People abhor you because they’re confused by this love. The religious individuals throughout your life have even detested you because they might even fear it out of their confusion. Their condemnations always include some mistranslation of the love that you always feebly describe with human speech. In their minds, your love is a perversion because it is far too moral. Most of those religious people restfully relax upon the fringes of that love. They only pretend to have that love in their occupancy when they deprive it from others like you. “ He/She offered up a detectable smile, a smile that was so perfect that my human mind could not register it in my limited mind.
“Are you merely my idea of love or do you happen to my vision of God? I mean the lovemaking bit could not figure into a concept of God. Therefore, I deduce that the entire thing has to be an idea in my head.”
“What or who do you find me to be? I’m only some figure in your mind?Or you could be talking aloud to yourself? Somewhere in your past, you did say something about being a nut-case.” The figure casted an amused smile. Still blanketed with shadows, the figure stood up from the luxurious, blue recliner. An imprint of the weight of his/her tangible body remained in the cushion. While the figure itself stood over me while I sat down in the green chair.
Then the being enwrapped itself about my body. Heat emanated from my thin body much like the heat of sexual passion. Except, nothing on the outer surface of my body seemed to bear any sign of that sexual passion. Weirdly, my mind seemed to be placated by the being’s comforting presence. The passion was that sort that presented itself by the dredged memory of something strikingly beautiful like a sunset or a picturesque landscape that was undefiled by human inference.
“Your fears or your inner fears only show that you cling strongly to the idea of a God. This fear is the plausible effect of seeing this God that you love be used for pain. How many people have been killed unmercifully or demeaned through use of this earth-bound God? Your God doesn’t destroy people or environments. He is not the destructive God of apocalyptic creed. He’s the one that is seen partially in the examples of your thoughts of beauty? He or even She is the one that dwells in the most poignant scenes of literature. How many Sidney Cartons of literature is there that cause recognition of some deeper form of love? Or more appropriately, they awaken some need for this type of true, unconditional love? No, not the love that holds grudges or vengeance. Your God is not the vindictive God that safe keeps every person’s sins to use against people. He/She especially does not focus himself upon petty sins that are not really sins. He/She appreciates love of all kinds unless it carries malice. The love that has infidelity or objectification is not even involved with love. Some of your fellow humans have this obscene notion that God discriminates love by anatomy. Only your believers force those constraints on them. He wouldn’t bother him or herself with them when the virtue of true love is the most important piece.” The figure was talking internally through my mind. In actuality, he was talking within the “me” that was sitting in this dream. I was lulled and reassured by this figure’s ideas. Some piece of me thought that these ideas were intrinsically a part of me. I just did not recognize them till now when they were forced out of my request for love to enter through my mind or the hotel of my mind.
“What if these ideas are merely illusions to coax me into disbelieving the fear that I did really kill someone? Yes, I love and accept your ideas. But, they are far too grandiose to be housed in my mind. I would like to love you. But, I can’t because there are so many other areas of my mind that are far greater in number than you.” I suddenly felt overcome by the fear that this entire vision was a complete spoof. It was a comedy designed to mock my attempts to discover and form some idea of love. Real love or imagined love just manifests itself to keep our minds from becoming too depraved by the truth that nothing really existed. The Existentialists were right; there was only the existence seen through the poor state of my mind.
“I may be dispersed from your mind. But, you know that this supposed faulty vision holds great truth. It’s so vast and wonderful that your mind refuses to allow its completeness to stay. No, your mind must just ignore it until its ready to come back to receive more of its truth. My beauty, I must go. Someday you’ll see me reflected through the eyes of someone else. You’ll know the same approximation of the beauty I have with me now. Because, you’ll always be peering into your lover’s soul far more than their bodies to the extent where they are no longer just animals but something different. Something that disproves that lame idea of ourselves being created out of nothing. Those abstract truths cannot be explained by this “something out of nothing,” invention. Where in the nothing, was there that something that concocted the idea of a something? You’ll remember this fact and keep coming back to me because that other idea is absurd. When tragedy or pain happens into your reality, you’ll be choking me with your necessity for me. In that interim, like now, you’ll know that there is meaning in this world. It just cannot be completely understood with the inexperienced mind that is seated in that head of yours. For now, I’ll leave you to your anxiety and your attempts at trying to force that atheistic stuff into your head just because you are the type that has to analyze everything thoroughly . “ the figure’s voice was wrapped with love as he or she stopped talking and faded away without any gesture of departure. The room completely dematerialized before my eyes and slowly the whole hotel itself did the same.
Awakening from my stupor with bleary eyes, I blindly took in my earthly surroundings. Here I was in the same mundane supermarket with the same task that was unfinished because I was too busy thinking. I could not remember any of the exact details from the thoughts. Some primitive need overruled and it wanted me to pay attention more to the body and less to the soul. It craved the food that was surrounding me. For now, it did not care whether it was either organic or produced through slave labor. Irrationally, it begged for food and it did not care about the ethical consequences of attaining it through immoral means.
Wait, was I worrying about the fact that I might have killed someone in my unremembered past? That is complete balderdash. Only my anxiety ridden mind could have distracted me from my caveman duties of finding food. I always wondered if those cavemen were as artless and primitive as those scholars thought them to be. Oh well, the scholars always view these things as conjecture, while the public at large consumes it as incontestable truth.
Did my mind finally have a rumination that did not contain any nonsensical things like the thought I might have killed someone? I’ve temporarily recovered myself from the clutches of the foe of anxiety. Now, I’ll have to worry about my mind producing that fear that my very existence may very well be a figment of my imagination.
Again, I allowed my mind to wander freely again. The same philosophical disputes ran again through my mind. People did not look at me strangely though there were two boisterous voices that were arguing in my mind.
As I finished the dreadful task of grocery shopping, I thought once more on the idea of love and the mysteries of the abstract. I knew after this grocery store trip that there could be many or few grocery store trips before the ultimate end. For once, I craved the journey in between and the attempts to partially answer the questions about the mysteries of the world. Just for a minute more, I could rest in the soft, pillows cushions of the seat of true love. In this moment, other people around me seemed to rest too and think beyond the malice and vengeance of this world. Within this frame of mind, there lied a certainty that that our moral dreams were visions of something truly indescribable.
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