Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  I felt his presence almost immediately. I didn’t have to search for him, he was just there. Tired after driving all those hours, Lewis had already allowed common thought to swell around and through him. A meditative lull hung over him, yet inside, if you searched deeper, he was running, trying to keep up with the sensations bombarding him.

  In common thought, all of nature swarmed around with its own understanding, its own personality. As I think of it now, for Lewis, it must have been like having other people in his head trying to take over his thoughts, but there was more to it than that. Lewis also connected to animal common thought, and possibly human common thought as well, even though it was often pulled back and hidden from me. Inside him there was the strength of numbers, and minimal probing uncovered that the sensations and, if you will, pressures, of common thought were almost constant now, coming at him from all directions. All he had to do is open up and focus. But here, I could help buffer his reception. I had some control because of our bond. Common thought outside my range could be extremely harsh to him, like receiving many things at once and not having the ability to sort them out. Lewis, while driving home, had grown fatigued by the ever constant pounding of common thought. It was so strong in his mind that I thought of pulling back to let him rest, but decided my presence could do no worse, could actually help to protect and calm him.

  It wasn’t until he got home that I realized he had brought paintings back with him. As he unloaded them into the house, I could see in his mind what they were. Out of eleven large canvases, which barely fit in his back seat, three were almost identical paintings of the field. I recognized this as a cry for help, a cry for everything to go back to the way it used to be. Each of the field paintings had only minuscule differences, hardly noticeable. Still, the feel of each was different, although, none had reached what Lewis searched for. The other eight paintings were split, four nature scenes and four portraits, one of Brittany done from memory and incorporating an unnatural, or unrealized, longing. All of Lewis’ paintings had something extra, other than the visual, some you could almost smell or taste, every one had emotion and personality, as I said, even the three of the field had their own individuality.

  He took them inside, carefully setting them under and behind his bed to protect them, then brought in a suitcase from the trunk, and a bag of dirty laundry. He moved almost automatically, as though in a trance. What he saw of the house, felt, as he unloaded the car, kept changing. It reminded me of the episode near the creek bridge off the highway. Occasionally, abstract images appeared, with them fear and anxiety came. Lewis brushed the thoughts away, sometimes by physically running his hand through the air in a motion reminiscent of shooing a band of gnats from his face.

  Rather than take the bag of clothes upstairs, Lewis threw them in the laundry room off the kitchen. He rushed through the house and actually broke into a run when he reached the bottom step of the porch on his way out. By the time he ran past me, slapping his left hand over the carved initials, there were tears running down his cheeks. He leaped over the stone fence, fumbled and almost fell, but his hands stopped him and just as quickly pushed him off again, into a full run. Inside the enchanted forest, he stopped running and leaned against a tall, black-barked pine. The sound of the brook roared in his ears, the vibration of the pine, its life, hummed like an electronic motor under his touch.

  He breathed heavily, adding an uncomfortable roughness to his throat. He coughed and spit mucous into the underbrush behind the tree. Images, blurs of images, raced through his mind. The tree held him up, his fingers parked between ridges in the bark. He cried loudly, a defeated wail. His hand went up to rub the back of his neck. Kneeling, he placed his face against the tree. In a few minutes, his crying slowed. He was tired. When he calmed, almost falling asleep from exhaustion, I saw into his mind and realized what had happened. He had betrayed Brittany with a girl from his school, an art student. She was plain looking and odd tempered. She dressed loosely, talked about politics as much as art, and how art should be anti-political in that it should show alternatives. Lewis had no idea what she was ever getting at, and didn’t really like the girl. Then one night, in a light rain, she visited. I saw in his memory her matted hair and damp cheeks. He was nice to her and wrapped her in a blanket to fend off the damp and cold. He offered her a dry sweatshirt which she accepted. When he turned around with the sweatshirt, her top was off. She never wore a bra. He handed her the shirt and she took his face and kissed him. The odor of fresh rain, the feel of her cold face and breasts was still in his mind as clearly as it had just happened. He could have refused her, I saw it, and he thought briefly to do so, remembering Brittany, but I felt animal common thought well up in him. A different order of instinct took over. Human moral judgment was pushed aside as he took her in his arms.

  Now, kneeling by the tree, it was moral judgment that he was fighting with. He had operated from a different order, one which he’d been accepting into himself for many years now, but one which had not taken over, had not, until then, reared up with any great strength inside him. He fought it and accepted it simultaneously, performing a tug-of-war with himself. He first felt as though he had betrayed Brittany, then he decided that he had only done what he had wanted. Both answers were right for him, both were equally represented inside him. He could accept both with total indifference, that was plant common thought coming through: the inability to act brought a certain amount of indifference into the picture. Mixed in proper proportions, plant common thought was good and could help Lewis, but he accepted everything so fully and whole heartedly that one could not overcome the pain of any other. Each emotion stood firm with equal force, merely switching places in line, confusing his perception, discoloring his ability to ultimately decide which way to go. He cried as much from the battle going on inside him as from his assumed adultery. Images of Brittany and the other girl, Susan, pounded at the inside of his skull, indifference rising often enough to let him rest only for a moment, then the pain would burst from his eyes again, like a volcano.

  I wanted to uproot and go to him, would have even if it meant death, but I could not. I felt I had been damned to the soil by some impassionate god. My leaves began to wither as I willfully held back nourishment. Lewis was in great pain and therefore, so was I. As I pushed deeper into his mind, the only way I could touch him, I felt my root tips get numb, felt my branches sag. Never had anything so physical happened to me. At the same time I tried to will my consciousness into him, forgetting myself totally. The deeper I probed, the more my extremities became numb.

  Once I pushed that far inside Lewis, things changed for me. It was almost as though I was Lewis and not merely a player inside his head. I remember reaching up to wipe Lewis’ (my) eyes, the softness of our cheek. The ends of my fingers were dry from the paint, and scratched the corner of my left eye. The ground was cold, not because I was inside Lewis’ mind and it had told me so, but because I was Lewis and I felt it, felt it on my knees. As Lewis, for those few seconds, I became terribly confused, body parts moved, I sniffled, scratched, my face wrinkled. Thoughts and emotions and physical movements became one. A twitch of the lips, the way the hand lifted, all connected intimately to emotion, visual images flashing in lightning speed through his mind. I felt nauseous. I wanted to lie down but couldn’t. I couldn’t! Then, I left him. Snapped back. I lost consciousness for a few seconds and when I gained it back, felt the numbness at my extremities. A few leaves fell from my grip. The darkness of my bark became blacker. Nothing inside me felt the same. And worse, I could not move. I could not go to him, couldn’t even get inside his head again. I was exhausted, so I watched him from a distance. I didn’t want to get too close for fear I’d probe inside him again. Humans were complex, too complex, but Lewis was not merely human, there were also the effects of common thought running through him like a vein. He fought the added complexity with the already complex problems of being human, but often the many things in his head were at odds. I waited and watched, try
ing also to bring myself back to reality, let the nourishment flow into me.

  Lewis kneeled near the pine tree for a long while. His exhaustion finally let him stop crying for good. He sat flat on the ground, his legs stretched out and slightly apart, not moving. He leaned back against the tree and stared upwards. My first reaction was to get inside him and see what he saw, but I held back all the while wondering if any of the other trees, grasses, ferns were able to enter him without me, but as quickly as I wondered, common thought answered.

  I don’t want to get into the dynamics of common thought, but you need to understand that I was the contact to Lewis. There are complex reasons for everything, and just as humans question one another on the subject of God, I cannot be sure about all aspects of common thought. If I were to guess, I’d say the first contact is the one in control of contact, or the stronger one recognized, and I had probed continually those first days, placing myself further inside him. In reality, the way it feels, is just that we two clicked. I don’t know what philosophical implications that brings with it: perhaps that we were together in another time, that each human has soul mates which also cross over the boundaries into plants and animals. If I were to philosophize, in fact, I’d stretch that to include the deaf and dumb rock, the brook, fallen leaves... Do leaves belong to the realm of common thought while on the branch, then transfer to another realm, the realm of the rock, when fallen? Does any of this even matter? No, I suppose not. What matters here is Lewis, and that I am in contact with him, at least until I pull away.

  I watched him. He would have stayed all night if Jeffrey hadn’t come through the woods looking for him.

  “There you are,” Jeffrey said, breaking the silence.

  “I am?”

  “Therefore you think.” Jeffrey laughed at his own joke. “What is it, Lew?”

  “I’m tired.” Lewis still looked upwards, towards the partly cloudy sky.

  “When did you get in?” Jeffrey only walked close enough to be able to talk comfortably and not feel as though he had to shout, as though Lewis were a wild animal which might quickly run away if approached.

  “I don’t know when.”

  “You been in here a while?”

  “Yeah.” He lowered his head and looked at his brother. “Sometimes looking at you is scary.”

  “How so?”

  “For a moment I think I’m not me, that you are. That I’ve disappeared.”

  “Not a chance, Lew. Not a chance.” Jeffrey shook his head back and forth. “You are definitely a unique person.”

  “That could be because I’m not really here. Just a mass of extra thoughts. You came out first. Maybe I was just an afterthought. Still am. Wandering in every direction.”

  “Who’s wandering?” Jeffrey stepped closer. “You know, Lew, ever since we were kids you’ve known exactly what you wanted to be. Your whole life has been chosen. Mine’s been confused, not yours. If anybody’s wandering aimlessly, it’s yours truly.”

  “But there’s too much sometimes. Everything I do is so important.”

  “You’re a fanatic. It’s not all that important, you make it that way. You do that to yourself.”

  “No. It is important.”

  “Is it?” Jeffrey rubbed his hand over his chin, which could have been Lewis’ chin. He looked down at his brother, shook his head. “What are you doing here? I came to get you.”

  Tears filled Lewis’ eyes and he sighed long and deep. “I’ve cheated on Brittany.”

  Jeffrey rolled his eyes, raised his hand, and let it fall against his leg in release of energy. The loud slap got Lewis’ attention. “You fucked somebody and you feel bad?”

  “You don’t understand, without Brittany...”

  “You can’t paint. Bull fucking shit. I told you you were a fanatic. For Christ’s sake, maybe because of experience you paint better. You know about artists and all their lovers.”

  “Not all artists.”

  “Who cares? This is you! Don’t ruin your life over something like that. It’s over now, right? Put it behind you. If you’re still devoted to Brit, then nothing’s changed.”

  “You’re so logical.”

  “I’m studying business. I’m supposed to make sense.”

  They both laughed. Jeffrey walked over and held out his hand. “You’re my brother and I love you, but you’re also one weird son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Fuck you,” Lewis said while taking his brother’s hand.

  “Talk about Brittany, she’s at the house. Worried. That’s why I came looking for you.”

  “What’ll I tell her.”

  Jeffrey gave Lewis a look of disbelief. “Nothing. You went into the woods like you always do the first thing you get home, and you fell asleep. That’ll explain those bloodshot eyes, too. Maybe the drive was too much for you this time.”

  Lewis walked a little lighter. Things got better. Sometimes a loving brother is best. A tree is nothing, at best a mass of unconnected thoughts, not even recognized.

  Lewis and Jeffrey talked and remembered together, wondering if they could still get the kids together for a ball game. They decided they probably could, but didn’t want to. It was better just to remember them on the walk home.

  “You look better already,” Jeffrey said at one point.

  “Thanks for the help. I thought I lost it out there for awhile.”

  “Sometimes you need logic,” Jeffrey said. “Oh, and I looked through your paintings. They’re great. I wonder if you really need that school sometimes.”

  “Me too, that’s why I’m quitting.”

  * * *

  Brittany was glad to hear the news and quickly forgot her previous worries. She actually jumped up and down clapping when Lewis announced his decision. “That’s fantastic. Oh, my God. I can’t believe it.” She hugged him around the neck. Jeffrey smiled and was outwardly happy for them. Mr. Marshal shook his head and walked into the other room.

  Mrs. Marshal leaned against the counter for a moment, then pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. “What do you plan to do now, then?” she asked.

  “Paint.” Lewis said over Brit’s shoulder.

  His mother looked away, gained her composure, and turned back to look him in the eye. “You’re going to paint from your bedroom? I thought you were going to be an illustrator, get a job. How are you going to take Brit on dates, get a paper route?” She slapped her hand down on the table. Mr. Marshal heard the loud crack and came into the kitchen. Brittany let go of Lewis and stepped to his side, her arm resting along his waist.

  “I’ll be okay, Mom.”

  “Will you? How? You’re giving up college. How do you expect to get a job? Be a respected member of the community?”

  “Respected! Is that what you want? I’m going to paint. That’s what I do. That’s me.”

  “Hear, hear,” Jeffrey said, raising his hand as though there were a glass of wine in it and he was toasting Lewis.

  “Don’t egg him on,” Mrs. Marshal said.

  “I’m not. I just think he’s old enough to make his own decisions.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re next with this nonsense,” said Mrs. Marshal.

  “Never. But I’m not Lew.”

  “Thanks,” Lew said, “but the truth is I’ve sold a few paintings. A gallery near Philadelphia wants to show my work. And I’ll find work illustrating. I don’t need much.”

  “Neither do I,” Brittany said, then she turned away in embarrassment.

  “It’s true, Mom. I’m sorry you’re upset, but I’m not doing well in school anyway. All I care about is my work.” He looked to Jeffrey who was nodding approval. “This way I’ll be able to focus on just that, nothing more.”

  Brittany slid closer to Lewis, tightened her arm around him.

  “Well?” Lewis said.

  Mr. Marshal walked around behind his wife and placed his hands on her shoulders. “We’ve always been supportive of you two as individuals.” He smiled weakly, then went on, “We’re not a
lways happy about your decisions, this one for instance, but we’re behind you. Just remember that you can change your mind. If you decide to go back, we’ll help.”

  Mrs. Marshal looked up at their father and placed her hand over his and patted it once or twice, then nodded. “If this is what you want, Lewis.”

  CHAPTER 8

  LIKE THE SEASONS, the cycles of life, and the cycles of emotion, there are mental cycles which arrive and depart quickly and others which arrive and depart more slowly. Like the unwanted quest, they do not go by strict patterns and may arrive at any time, and in the midst of other cycles, as well. These swellings and ebbings overlap, making the simple mind complex and the complex mind even more so. Inside Lewis, where things turned and swirled together, storms thrust him into rages, and calms abandoned him to lethargy. There was a time, not long after he moved back home, when happy and sad were the same mood emotionally. He worked on sketching out ideas for paintings or worked on actual paintings almost continuously, running himself ragged into the late evening. A second gallery began to request his work and he began to sell to magazines. For the science magazines he was required to be more abstract, and that’s where confusion came in. He altered paintings by mixing human, animal and plant qualities. Eventually, he recreated the creek with legs from his earlier experience. Then he carried on by painting dandelions as their own universes, the pods rushing out like nature’s own big bang. But inside him, emotions had to be manipulated, colors altered slightly, shapes distorted. In order to continue his work, he had to maneuver around his own mind like the titanic in an iceberg-infested ocean.