THRESHOLD of REASON

They say that for a child, the world is wide open and that possibilities spread out before him like the universe. Yet, at a certain moment in his life, as he looks down the long, straight road that crosses what appears to be a bleak and empty landscape, he just might consider that maturity has had a heavy price...

Or not.

Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

(Gen. 4:22)

1

Once again, that night comes to mind in all its chilling detail. A crystal clear nightmare, even if I still can’t begin to understand it all. Home, sweet home. Home is were the heart is. There’s no place like home ... the thought of another mindless evening of blurred thoughts and compelling images actually prevented me from refilling my glass; I’d already had more than enough and now worked torpidly on my last cigarette. Finally, thirst drove me to the kitchen, when something finally snapped and the world was yanked out from under my feet.

This had happened once before, when I had seen my whole life as a blinding odyssey of repetition ... ominous, horrible repetition of the most tedious, mundane aspects of my life: dishwashing, fetching glasses of water, going to the fridge, sitting on the toilet and my evenings alone in a faceless suburb. All of the ‘filler’ in life had been reveal to me at once; I was suddenly sixty years old and the great truth of it all rose menacingly from some prophetic horizon ... in shock, I began to laugh as the images turned to blackness, and then faded back to the dull white walls of the empty kitchen. I had known this to be a Truth. A Truth that at first panicked me and shook my solid grasp on reality, but ultimately did not or could not change my life. A profound vision that should have burned like a bush fire, reducing all the deadwood of my life to ash. The nonsense, the apathy, the indecision, it should have burned this all away and left a man charged with life! Renewed for battle! Transformed!

But it didn’t.

This time, however, when the dark waves unexpectedly wracked my mind, dragging me back into that turbulent sea of revelations, I knew with body and soul that I wanted to go, wanted to surrender myself to the tide of fate and the deep blue of unrevealed truths, to desperately follow the vision where ever it took me ... I was hungry as I stepped into the kitchen, hungry for more than just sugary snacks. Of course I was alone, but a fleeting sensation warned me that other eyes watched. Turning around, a swelling globe of force slammed into me, forcing me to grab for the doorframe. I missed the doorframe. And while stars popped and flares of yellow, green and blue zigzagged across my mind, the icy waters of the flood tide swept my consciousness down to its fathomless depths. Spinning around and around, from far, far away I heard the sound of breaking glass.

As the rushing black waters subsided, I found myself not on the kitchen floor, but on a road traversing cold, windswept fields. Pretty detailed dream, I was thinking, when I felt the wind raising the hairs on my neck. The scent of damp, worked earth filled my nose. But that would be impossible if I were still in my kitchen? Skeletal elms, grey asphalt and surrounding fields of tilled mud lay flat and bare under a view that surrendered to a horizon of vague, misty greyness. Was it the emptiness that gave me this feeling of being watched? Twice more, I spun around. Nothing.

No, there had been something. The memory still remained crystal clear ... sinking through the blackness, I became aware of the sentinel. Out there in the expansive universe that had swallowed me up, I had glimpsed at twin golden orbs -- blinking, sentient eyes.

Standing for what seemed like hours, the twilight deepened and the wind blew harder. Which way? As if in answer, a fonder memory came to mind. A question had been posed at a picturesque waterfall en route to a mountain summit: Did I want to follow the path to the top, or the path into the valley below? I regarded the joyful waters of the mountain stream, spreading down the rock face and disappearing into the rich green canopy of the shrouded forest below. I thought about the apparently wrong answer I gave. My friends, gazing up into the clear, blue sky at the grey mountain peak above us, openly questioned the relevance of my existence: What? You don’t want to go to the top?!

Now, looking out over the unchanging pancake of a Dutch polder, I thought the time might be ripe to consider my own existence without the aid of mountains and valleys. Actually, the depths of a green mountain valley remained vastly more interesting than a bald peak with a nice (ok, stunning) view ... to be lost in emptiness or lost in infinite detail ... I now stood lost in the emptiness, and the exquisite detail, of my own dream. The asphalt was still here, I reminded myself. Dream or no dream, I turned around once more to set out for home, where ever that might be. I smiled when I considered that a child presented with the same road would have a hell of a good time going either direction ... he would have lived ten lifetimes on the way home and experienced another ten at home in bed, dreaming of still more possibilities. And I just considered this dream, this twist of fate, this deception, this trick meant to beguile me with a vision of truth and tempt me out into the freezing night air ... I just considered it hell.

"Actually, it’s Limbo."

The voice spoke without sound, that is, I didn’t really hear it. Of course it was a trick of the night wind. But then, in the furthest corners in my mind, I saw again the flash of gold. Spinning once more, the same round, opaque eyes blinked heavily before vanishing. Insanity, I thought, banishing the ghosts of my impaired perception. Grunting in anger, my hand felt for welts upon my head, obviously sustained from my fall to the kitchen floor ... okay, from the asphalt road.

No bumps.

The soaring elation, that had carried me here on the wings of the promise of a truth revealed, continued soaring up into the darkening, purple sky without me. I felt like a cheated fool on a road that traversed infinity. Except for the road and the lane of trees stretching in both directions, I didn’t know what else I expected to see. I tried to remember just what reality might have slipped between picking up my glass and stepping into the kitchen. I was getting ready to go out into Holland’s Godless City without much gusto ... I drained my glass ... I started towards the kitchen ... I remembered being distracted by something very important (so important that it was promptly forgotten) ... then the blackness came and the dizziness and the accompanying sound of breaking glass. And now I was expect to believe this? A polder, with its flat, empty fields and rows of trees waving in the wind under a twilight sky? A convincing dream landscape, anyway, I shivered, suddenly feeling the bite of the cold. While being swept away by a vision was not entirely unfamiliar or unexpected, there was something different about this dream. It was the kind of dream that would, at any moment, become a nightmare.

The moon rose, waxing full, its dull blue light broken by flowing ribbons of cloud and the swaying trees. Haunting shadows danced over the road and fields to the music of naked branches clicking in the wind. The cold gloom on this barren late autumn evening painted a perfect picture of overwhelming emptiness. I still had yet to wake, I thought nervously, actually pinching myself several times to no avail.

"Time to move!" I ordered myself. As I saw it, there was a fifty-fifty chance of going the wrong direction ... or the right direction. Perhaps it really didn’t matter, I pondered, looking up at the rain leaden clouds as they swept menacingly closer, blotting out the moon, and then the faint starlight. I admit, I expected it all to fade away or vanish in another wave of dizziness at any time. My refrigerator, an ugly and virtually useless East German ‘box’ had not returned, neither had my house, the tacky glass coffee table, the familiar view out the kitchen window ... I was quite alone and quite out of my mind. At least I knew I would never miss the fridge.

Four-hundred and thirty-seven (times two) trees later I stopped. Before the front of the gradually worsening storm, I began to first walk and then jog into the deepening night towards the crossroads. The intersecting rows of trees ahead on the left and right were not getting any closer. Indeed, they could even have been moving further away! And as if that wasn’t enough, looking over my shoulder, I watched as the rolling and boiling cloud mass descended into the tree tops. I stood there and felt the weight of its retained water pressing me into the asphalt road like a spring frog under rolling rubber.

Had I ever heard the sound of low clouds sweeping through the naked boughs of elms in November? Hmm, I thought that I hadn’t until now and suddenly I had a nagging desire to thank whomever was responsible for this glimpse of nature, this epiphany of meteorology, and ask 'Can I go home now?' But walking there between the lane, I realized that this unspoken request had already been repeated hundreds of times. It would remained unspoken, too. I refused to believe that I had been singled out and thrown randomly into this madness. Asking for the madness to stop seemed to admit that it was real. If the ‘why me?’ dilemma wasn’t frustrating enough, for the life of me I couldn't find any Great Truth in either the polder or the ‘man versus nature’ experience of the storm ... nothing except the emptiness.

Calming myself in the worsening storm proved to be impossible. I could run back against the wind and the thick, icy raindrops, totally exhausting myself with no guarantee of any new or improved circumstance, or, I could leisurely stroll on and just see what happened. That’s funny, I thought, as I couldn’t even stroll when I was high ... although I might have found the descending clouds cool ... At six-hundred and four trees, the clouds finally engulfed me. The thick blackness eliminated even the treetops which offered only a modicum of protection. It was pointless to continue. Stopping to rest with my back against a wet tree trunk, I felt the heavy mist work its way through my already wet clothes.

"Shit," I swore to no one in particular.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Shit?" I cautiously repeated.

I remembered suddenly feeling the urge to giggle (call it rather, nervous laughter) at the startling sound, at that low and magnetic voice cutting through the roar of the gathering storm. I spun around to check the other side of the tree. Nothing. The clouds swirled black and thick with moisture. My eyes filled with water the instant they opened. Practically blinded, I still strained to see what could not to be seen.

"If you really must, please do so, though I can’t imagine how you’ll wipe," the masculine voice spoke calmly, in a tone that bespoke a man who waited for a train that he knew would never come. Someone was right beside me but I couldn’t see a damned thing! Intrude on my nightmare? He is responsible! my mind cried in fury.

"Who’s there!?" I called out into the swirling clouds.

"Joop. Guide, Harlequin, Dignitary and Court Herald to the Keep, City and Lands of the Second Region of Infinite Nothingness."

"Oh," I whispered, my open mouth filling with water. Anger lapsed into confusion as I embraced the tree as though it was the mast of a sinking ship. Who the hell would be out here on a night like tonight ... and be speaking rubbish so ... so correctly?

"Did you get all that ... or is the mist now swirling between your ears? Please don’t make me repeat it," the voice stated drolly.

An asshole, I thought as much!

"Ahh, where are you standing? For that matter, where are we standing?" I inquired with as much bravery as I could muster, shielding my eyes and staring defiantly out into the blinding storm cloud. Beyond being merely soaked, I now felt the rain running freely down my back and spiraling down my legs filling my shoes ... perhaps the rain truly was filling my ears?

" ... asshole ... " he was saying.

"What!?" I couldn’t see if the bastard was grinning or not.

"Well, that’s about the best answer to your questions that I can give you ... a dark area that is used all the time, but is rather embarrassing to mention in meaningful and polite conversation; actually, it is quite neutral and serves an important function, but otherwise, is not really worth mentioning. Except that you are tottering along the rim." His voice remained calm and even, despite the menacing rumbles which signaled the addition of lightening to this storm. Damn, I muttered under my breath, typical. What had he said about being on its rim? "What?" I yelled back over my shoulder.

"You are safe for the time being so please don’t be alarmed". Oh, good news, I thought. I suddenly didn’t feel like talking anymore. Mentally, I prepared the lesson I had learned from this wild dream … one which I would dutifully record in the morning if I ever got up off the kitchen floor again. I knew now, for instance, that rain was really wet and that a simple tree could forestall the advent of madness.

Combined with the emptiness, there was the silence. Even as I pressed my back to the tree, listening to the howling winds, thrashing rains and advancing lightening, there was silence. I really had lost my mind. I must have collapsed on the kitchen floor and lay dying. Was there not supposed to be a pleasant journey towards some sort of light or something? I wondered, still feeling the cold water running down my back and over my chest and arms and flowing out over my shoes. This was real.

This was ridiculous. "Do you know where I can get dry and maybe get something warm to drink?" I asked.

"Of course. Let go of the tree, turn to your left and take four or five paces ..."

end of chapter one