Chester Fields (5 page)

For a moment, I had an urge to say,
oh forget it, let’s just talk it over in the morning
. But my logic and intellect prevailed. It’s funny; it seemed like I had barely sat at the desk and started to put my head down and it was like a big
swoosh
, almost like a giant bird of prey picked me up off the ground, pulling me into the air, and I was gone from the limits of my body. I sensed Chester’s presence intertwined with mine, and it was beyond fascinating. Chester was trying frantically to tell me to lighten up, or something. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay attention to him as I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that so many different kinds of curtains, or veils, were being lifted from all around me, even though visually I was in pitch blackness separated from my body. Yet I was still me. I was being penetrated and simultaneously bursting with massive shards of enlightenment and then it was like I weighed as much as all the matter in the universe, or a black hole, or something profoundly dense. I was falling; not like a parachutist, but more like something that was able to exceed terminal velocity. I felt Chester’s presence begin to fade, then rapidly fade away, completely gone, and there I was.  I knew. I had fallen, yes, just like he talked about.
That’s why I’ll be here forever.
It’s the weight of my essence as he tried to elude to. Of course, I understand now; it’s all so simple.

As well as he’d described it for me, it wasn’t even close. I understand this is not the joy Chester felt at the watchtower. This is different. This is emptiness. It’s eternity repeated over and over again. I‘m like a cloud, a vapor; a moving stream; a stream of … consciousness? Yes that is what I am. A feeling of doom comes over me, then hope. Can I somehow be rescued when I muse or fuse into someone’s mind? I can feel only the slightest pulls from the masses of energy that are all other things and beings, but those are fleeting...then gone. I want to go to them, to interact in some way, anyway. I keep asking myself can I go to them, all the while knowing the answer is no. I’m so terribly lonely already; and I so desperately want to feel, really sense, another’s . . . essence.  Someone, oh please; anyone. To feel any kind of connection to someone else; anyone! Now it’s easy to see the trouble of being here with just my thoughts, and only them. And I’m capable of so
much
thought. But the thoughts move so fast, and each one is crystal clear without all the static of everyday life. The static of stimulus; yes, that’s what it is. This is a stimulus deprivation tank times a trillion to the zillionth power. The static that normally goes through your mind from the brain just to maintain breathing even when you’re sleeping is more immense than one could ever imagine. Everything has now become so clear in my “mind?” without all that static. Incredibly clear. I’m guessing; no, I actually know; that freed from my body, from my brain, my “mind” is so much more powerful. But all that knowledge and thought is like, nothing. It just lies there, infinitely flat, with no stimulus, or impulse to drive it or use it. It just is. I am completely alone in an empty eternity. But, I still feel somewhat connected to my body or the remnants of my old life in some strange way. Enough so that I know I’ve only been here a mere several seconds, and I’ve already relived my entire life, over and over; countless times. In other words, my life has already flashed before my so called eyes, or I should say my mind, repeatedly for eternity. Each moment I exist here is eternity, again and again. Yet each time I relive my life, a little more of that feeling of connection to it, goes out of it. I’m panicking. I don’t know how I can feel panic when I’m a disembodied mind floating in the eternity of space, but I am. Oh, but I really do understand all that now, don’t I? Yes, I’m lying across and floating through, and spread out over the eternity of countless universes, there are an infinite number of points of singularity, universes both old and new; some before their big bang; some after they’ve expanded beyond infinity. It’s all part of this great nothingness. I am myself a singularity, yet I’m infinite as well! What will I do in here with nothing to do, and eternity to the power of eternity in which to do it in? How many zillions of times can I re-live my life in what would have been a week? Oh God, I know that too! Not that it matters. There is no time. It doesn’t yet exist where I am. Every thought I’ve ever had or will have takes place simultaneously. I can’t ever begin to get to an end with no time in which to start doing it in. There are no ends. There is no beginning. I don’t have a body, but still I’m heaving, weeping in agony; because each and every thought I’ve ever had has an eternity of its own to reflect on. Each thought is so broken up in one sense that it doesn’t even resemble a thought. It’s just there. Even though I always sucked at math, I know exactly how long in earth seconds it takes for my life to flash before my eyes here. And believe me, it’s a number that begins with a decimal point followed by more zeros than what could exist in the largest computer ever built. So many times in the moments I’ve been here, I’ve relived all my deepest regrets. How I hurt one of the most beautiful girls, inside and out, I ever knew in my life, my wife, when during an argument early in our marriage, I dropped the “F bomb” on her.  Obviously, I was the young tactless asshole, and apologized right away when I realized how much it hurt her. But the damage was done. The pain and hurt in her beautifully unique, bright, almond shaped, brown with flecks of green eyes, burst the damn that was the walls of my hardened heart. In fact every time I relive the moments I ever saw pain in those beautiful eyes, it somehow stings throughout the body I no longer have. It stings all across creation and throughout eternity. This empty, infinite, sightless void; that is my existence; that is my universe; aches for her. Oh, every celestial body weeps in agony for all the times I ever caused that beautiful woman any pain. How I regret all the times we sat doing our thing in separate rooms of the house, one of us reading, one of us watching television, when we could have been next to each other. Words cannot express how I long for her touch, the aura of warmth around her body, her smell, her taste, her thoughts, her words, her deeds, and her lying next to me before or after we make love, how much I miss her, and how much better I would be if only I could somehow know her again, but the memory of her becomes more diluted by the moment or better described as all at once because time doesn’t exist. Oh if I could only somehow pull myself away from this…hell. Yet at the exact same time I feel absolutely nothing, but the weight of eternity. Yes, this is hell. And it took going to hell for me to realize what love is, and that I had love, and that love is real. Chester was right about everything. Hmmm. Chester; it seems like an eternity ago since we were in my office that afternoon, and that’s because it was. But at the same time, my eternity has been less than the blink of an eye to you.

Now I understand that the sum of my profound pain; the sheer raw emotion generated in my loneliness, the frustration, sorrow, and the heartache that pines for the joy I once experienced; can only at best cause a minor ripple in the energy field that stretches across this infinite void. And someone receptive enough to such changes may pick up on it in the form of a fleeting thought, or idea. There’s no satisfaction on this end from any of it, that’s for sure. Even if the person receiving the idea is my wife, it doesn’t matter. So someone from another universe, possibly even my former world, who is open to creative impulses will connect with my ripple and receive my thoughts and feelings as though they’re their own. Maybe they’ll write a love song from a thought about my wife. Maybe they’ll even get the essence of what happened to me and write it as a story. Still, none of it will matter where I am. I am in and of an infinite void. Here, one doesn’t have to wait to become bored or driven nuts from the waiting, every moment here is eternity. I’m sure I went mad from it, the moment I got here. Oh, can someone please help? God, please, Chester! CHESTER!! Anyone; can you hear me? I have no eyes or tears, but I’m crying, weeping, I’m screaming;
I’M SCREAMING
!!  Please, let me sleep, let me die, let it stop.
Please
.