Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  I felt a shutter go through the forest. It was the signature of Lewis’ plan. Out of all of common thought, it was only I who had spent hour after hour with Lewis. Could he accept everything at once without being driven over the edge? Could I protect him for three days if he chose to see and feel every element?

  Regardless of what would finally happen, he was about to change himself and this area of common thought forever. That ripple of change would be passed from one territory to the next through an overlapping effect which could go on for distances beyond my understanding. Did he know the possible outcome of his decision? Not on the outside, but deep inside I could feel the heaviness, the knowledge. Subconsciously, Lewis carried common thought with him always. His love for the lives that clustered in common thought, his care for their ultimate well being was there, almost unreachable, but there all the same.

  At the right spot on the stone fence, Lewis clumsily climbed over it by first sitting on the fence, then by swinging his legs to the other side. The easel loosely shifted from side to side. The rocks were cold and rough against his hands.

  Underbrush had taken over the thin path which once wound through the woods, making the trip more difficult. The easel got caught more than once on a vine or bush, and he had to twist his body into contortions to unhook it. So, he dragged and pulled, tearing it from the loose grip of whatever vine or bush it got caught on next. Eventually, the easel was torn from the pack and Lewis plucked it off a briar bush. His walk instantly became easier without the constant tug from the easel. If he had thought to bring a machete, the walking would have been easier, but then he couldn’t have chopped senselessly at that which he meant to have communion. Nonetheless, it wasn’t long before the white oaks, maples, and scattered birches stopped and the white pine took over, at which crossroads, the underbrush all but disappeared and the forest floor became the solid mat of red needles. The sound of the run rose loudly in his ears, as though it came from the end of a long tunnel. The wind changed from a rustle through leaves and branches to a whisper through the pines, its soft fingers barely touching each needle, which acted like a reed, spreading the soft music of wind through the enchanted forest.

  Lewis lowered his backpack when he came to the right spot. The ground was soft, the air fresh. His hair was tossed back and forth as the wind ran along the ground, back and forth, around the trunks of trees. The air seemed a little warmer in the clearing, warmer than the rest of the forest, not warmer than the direct sunlight in the field. He unpacked his gear and placed it orderly over the ground. He assembled the tent near the rock he always leaned against, which still sat in the same spot it had occupied all through his childhood, teens, and young adulthood. He breathed deeply, trying to capture his life in a breath of fresh air and the company of familiar surroundings. But his life was not to be recalled so easily. Only the present stood before him, like a barbed wire fence leading to an open pasture of golden wheat. Lewis looked around. Small amounts of sunlight dropped, in rays of yellow, onto the red needles making new colors and new shapes. As always, he plugged the images into his head, tried to pull something profound from them. Getting nowhere, he resolved himself to setting up camp.

  Eating utensils clanked against the easel, the easel thunked against a stone, cans tinned against cans, and the sleeping bag plopped onto the ground and the tent flapped loosely when the wind blew. The music of activity rose from the enchanted forest, hollowed by the dense canopy of pines, and echoed through the forest like a song. The song of Lewis. His mobility doing what plants could never do, and he, totally oblivious to it.

  Once set up, Lewis opened a sketch pad and began to work. During the walk there, he had decided to record a before and after sequence. He reached into himself as deeply as possible, closing his eyes, opening his mind, working to include the sun, the way it crept along the ground, changing shape as it changed position in the sky. He took notes, using the corners of the page, and his own shorthand. He recognized that there were missing elements. There remained a boring, mundane slant to his perceptions. He struggled to bring up more than was inside him at the time. On some pages, he extended his work into a skewed vision, trying, artificially, to find what it was he had lost. After finishing one piece as far as he thought he could go, he’d tear back the page and begin another. He leaned against the rock, drew in the brook, and the tree where the raccoon had come down to speak to him, then turned, shifted to another angle and drew the forest where he’d come in from, sketching in the fading path, trying to get the idea of past and present together in the way it had grown in and in the spreading of recent passage. Lewis sketched five pages from five points around the rock until he folded the sketch pad shut.

  He had been sitting on his rolled-up sleeping bag to keep his butt off the cold ground, but his back was cold, and when he stood to put the sketch pad into the tent, he felt a shiver go up his back. He let his shoulders roll with the shiver as it approached his neck, then ran down his spine and across his shoulders dissipating its energy. He already wore the extra sweatshirt he had brought. It would be a cold night, but not so cold that he’d need a fire. For the remainder of daylight, Lewis made sure everything was in place, double-checked each item. He ate an early dinner consisting of cold beans, two granola bars and a cup of water. He expected to pull out of common thought long enough to eat meals, to urinate, and to assure he was still alive, but nothing more. Further, he had decided to first drop into common thought at night, while he was tired, so that he could let go easily, so that he wouldn’t be tempted to rush home if anything seemed amiss.

  Lewis waited as the sun fell and the dark crept into the clearing he called the enchanted forest. He got inside the tent when there was almost no light to see by, not even the shadows of tree trunks. Within the absolute dark of the tent, the brook sounded louder. His concentration shifted from the visible to the audible, Noises from deep inside the woods began to interrupt his solitude. Twigs cracked, leaves rustled. He heard scratching, something running through treetops, and birds landing and taking off. In his head, he converted sound to image, created imaginary animals to make the sounds he heard: squirrels, opossums, owls, animals that were part squirrel and part raccoon, part deer and part fox. He let his mind go. When he felt tired enough, Lewis closed the tent flap, all the while listening to the zipper’s loud screech and noticing its effect on the animal sounds, its effect on the sound of wind lowering itself from branch to branch in the pitch black trees, which had as good as disappeared. Lewis was left alone in an empty, black space of nothing but sound. He contemplated turning a flashlight on to get his bearings, but rejected the notion almost as soon as it arrived. Slowly, he undressed in the cold and slipped into his down sleeping bag, pushing in until the top was all but closed around his face. The sudden cold of the material quickly warmed to an almost hot temperature. The cold air, only on his face, felt refreshing and real. He was secure. He was safe. It was time to lower himself into the unknown.

  CHAPTER 21

  CONTROL HAD BEEN LEWIS’ GOAL while at the hospital, complete relinquishment of control was his new goal. But shaking loose the control he had gained was no easy matter, not even under the circumstances he had created for himself in the haven of the enchanted forest. Like a bather climbing into cold water, he lowered himself a little at a time. First, just as the night had removed sight, he accepted only sound, but not the sound that was present prior to his descent, instead he listened to sounds far outside hearing range, external sounds relayed through internal contact with common thought, contact which allowed him to use other ears, so to speak. Just as a person falling off to sleep will suddenly hear a loud, real, sound from an impending dream and wake up, only then realizing the sound was not from inside the empty room, so it was with the sounds Lewis heard, which were outside his natural hearing range.

  He followed these sounds: squeaks from field mice, chattering from squirrels and raccoons, snorts from deer. He followed the sounds to the edges of common thought territory, passing h
is concentration from tree to tree to bush like I’d never felt him do before. The deftness with which he moved was amazing. He wanted to explore everything, every tree and bush and vine, but it was impossible. The sheer numbers made it so. When he got to me, he lingered, felt the grooves of my bark, the crotch of a branch, touched leaves and heard them flutter in the light breezes. Amazed, from the top of my highest branches, he gazed, his first use of sight that night, at the multitude of stars overhead. His elation, his pure joy at the spectacular array, heightened the emotions of all of common thought. Already, before the first hours were up, I sensed a passing along of experience from our territory to another.

  As though he were an actual form, a spirit in many senses of the word, Lewis climbed from me to the forest floor. He roamed, if that word can make sense while he remained physically inside his sleeping bag, the forest and the field. Now that he was deeper into common thought, and still very much in control of his journey, he opened his mind’s eyes, and ran with raccoons and opossums, foraged with the deer, flew with the owl. He began to experience the forest in its entirety, difficult as that was to do. An owl swooped to catch a screaming field mouse, and Lewis felt the flight, the surged adrenaline of the owl, as well as the fear in the mouse, and the pain, almost to the death, of the field mouse caught in its talons, the bite to the back of the neck. Lewis left quickly, and fell, fell onto the sensations of a couple of ruckussing squirrels. He entered animal common thought as easily as plant common thought and again experienced what they experienced: the sudden racing of heartbeat, the sexual urge, the primal need for food and copulation almost like two equal forces constantly tugging against one another. With his next step, Lewis let in more sensations rather than focus on only a few. He extended himself to both ends of common thought territory. He was with owl and squirrel and deer, simultaneously. He felt the increased understanding of nature, of every tree, bush and vine, every weed and blade of grass. Like an avalanche, the whole of common thought opened up in him as he opened up to it. A bombardment of color, shape, emotion. Death, life and all aspects of both. Anger, lust, even envy, burst like a super nova inside his opened mind.

  Close to his center, I could feel him struggle. His own heartbeat quickened. His eyes burst open in fear, then closed for the same reason, then they opened in excitement and closed once again. He became a part of the forest, the field, each animal and plant all at once. Deep inside, he was separating, in a furry of fear and astonishment, collecting, translating to color and shape, every emotion, sound, sight, touch and smell. It all came in too quickly, control had been lost, just as he had wanted. But was it what he needed?

  I stayed inside him, as close to his center as I could. His tiredness was meant to make it easy to accept common thought and difficult to escape. That was his plan. But, his fatigue also made it easy for him to misunderstand what came at him at machine-gun speed. His ability to focus, to concentrate on any one activity, any one sensation, was tremendously limited. Finally, it became difficult for him to remain in common thought. Even without mobility, the mere acceptance of so many sensations was an act which took much energy. Lewis’ own energy quickly began to wane. He had allowed too much to happen at once. His inward struggle to accept, accept, accept, drew life energy from him. The act of being a part of birth and death simultaneously, of experiencing the quirks of plant feelings as well as animal drive, took its toll. After he began to lose his grip on the onslaught, like a man dozing off during a lecture, he began also to join together unrelated feelings. The twitch of a leaf was associated with an opossum scratching a flea. A dying mouse was associated with a white birch near the corner of the stone fence. He became confused. The notion that he was having a relapse dropped into his mind like an egg drops from a tree and empties its contents against a rock. Lewis imagined himself losing control and, therefore, began to join his imaginings with his misunderstandings. The combination quickly became horrible, quickly threw much of common thought into a sort of panic. Remember, common thought had accepted Lewis, too. Together, Lewis’ creation of new images, his own fear, and common thought’s sudden panic, produced an uncontrollable menagerie of horrifying images, then fascinating ones.

  Internally, Lewis struggled to get free, tiring his consciousness even more, causing even more confusion. He thought he had gone completely mad. That was his strongest thought, but I knew the difference between his madness and his imagination, and this was not madness. Somehow, he was willing all that was happening to him.

  I tried to calm common thought, tried to pry Lewis free, and failed at both. The two were too well connected. For longer than I could have imagined, he held on. His imagination flourished, bursting from horrible to wonderful, confused in its own fatigue, until eventually, he could hold on no longer and literally collapsed into sleep. To common thought, the sensation was that of a constant tug-of-war, and suddenly one team, Lewis’, let go of the rope. A quick shock of release, a falling, then complete relief fell over the forest.

  Lewis, in sleep, played the experience over and over, sorting it all out like a mathematician sorts out a complex problem, or a biologist discovers a new DNA molecule, amidst his dreams.

  When morning came, Lewis had only gotten a few hours sleep, but the sunlight striking the tent and placing a soft glow over his face, and the birds chirping in constant song, awakened him. His body felt hot inside the sleeping bag, while his face was moist and cold, as though dew had settled on him and turned to a light frost. He opened his eyes and, even through the canopy of the tent canvas, could tell that a low fog was present outside. The hollow sounds of morning in December crept in. When he stirred, bones cracked. He felt stiff and uncomfortable. The ground, even with the sleeping bag mat to protect him, was hard and lumpy. He dropped into common thought and said good morning, a long and low echoing sound throughout the territory. Then, he pulled away, testing his control. As he tinkered with the morning chores of changing his clothes and cooking breakfast on his Coleman burner, I pulled back to rest, entering him for superficial thoughts and feelings, just to keep in touch. The tent had been warm inside, so when Lewis unzipped the front and let in the freezing night air, he shrunk back quickly and put his coat on before going outside. Patches of fog lifted from various parts of the forest floor around him, creating an eerie, Wolfman Verses the Mummy, atmosphere. The morning was noisy with bird chatter. Although the sun brought light into the area, the canopy of pines and an accumulating cloud cover diminished its effects. The pine needle carpet was damp and tree trunks sparkled with moisture. Over the din of bird noises, the run occasionally made a loud gurgle, but then returned to its more constant tinkling sound. Lewis observed the thin barrier of ice which had set around a few protruding rocks in areas where the run water lay still, little alcoves of water where, in spring and summer, you would find minnows and pollywogs by the hundreds.

  For breakfast, Lewis mixed instant pancakes by adding water to a plastic container filled with powder, and then shaking it for several minutes. The cakes cooked up satisfactorily and Lewis ate them with butter from a squeeze bottle poured over the tops. Afterwards, he ate a single granola bar from the half dozen packages he had packed for the trip. It was drier in his mouth than he thought it would be. Before turning off the burner, he warmed his hands. He rinsed the pan, plate, and fork he had used, in the run, then laid all that equipment aside.

  Picking up his sketch pad, Lewis relaxed with his back against the rock as he had the day before. As he worked on one sketch after another, there seemed a certain ease within him, his attitude towards the sketches had changed, even though the work itself didn’t progress beyond what he’d done the day before. This morning he didn’t try to extend the sketches by skewing the images. He sketched straight from what he saw, straight from the visual part of nature open to anyone. He stayed out of common thought while he worked, finished up, and threw the sketch pad inside the tent.

  Rubbing his hands together to warm them, Lewis walked around the clearing, among and arou
nd trees and bushes, he leaped over the run, walked around for a few minutes, and leaped over it on the way back to the tent. As his body warmed from the exercise, the low fog lifted, adding to the cloud cover. By noon the area was darker than it had been in morning. By the time Lewis ate lunch and cleaned up for the second time that day, a light snow had begun to fall, and a soft, constant wind had arrived to whisper sweet thoughts to him.

  Why he did not go into common thought after breakfast, which had been his original plan, I do not know. For some time, I assumed he was not going back, that somehow, during sleep, his mind had decided it was not worth it. After all, during his morning sketches, there was an undefined sense of resolve about his work. That resolve could have been to remain out of common thought and to accept what talent he had as it was. He could paint the rest of his life and do well without the frantic genius he had once experienced. He still had great ability to recreate nature. But if that was his decision, why stay in the woods? For inspiration?

  I must say, I had no grounds for any of these thoughts. Lewis had closed his mind to me for the time. I could only reach immediate sight and sound, traces of emotion.

  Soon after the snow began to fall, Lewis ducked inside the tent and into the warmth of the sleeping bag. He propped his head and back up as high as possible, then dropped, filled with renewed energy, into common thought.