Falling

Falling through reality -- an introduction.

Imagine that you take out the garbage early one afternoon and the trash truck has just emptied the garbage bins and then twenty minutes later when you go to your parking place to run an errand you discover your car is blocked by the trash truck that is just arriving to empty the trash bins. "Surely," some one will tell you. " you are confused -- You MUST confusing two different events." Surely someone will be concerned for your sanity if you insist that is what happened... but what if you have a witness who heard you say the bins were empty and then twenty minutes later hear you say you cannot leave because of the trash truck?

What if your life occasionally turns in new directions because of "impossible events"? A growing list of improbable synchronicity piles up becoming a thread and then a theme in your personal history. You wake from vivid dreams that have nothing at all to do with the world in which you live: The death of a goddess, The teachings of a master manipulator of Reality, that assassin, a song about a bar for losers set in dream-time...

A number of years ago, I like many millions others watched on live television the surreal acts of terror at the World Trade Center and the horror of its aftermath. It was too much like a disaster film from the 1970s and yet all too horribly real. Nearly a year after the fall of the twin towers I woke up one night and wrote a short fiction story called "Falling Through Reality".

It was like many other things I've written over the last 25 years-- totally unlike anything I have ever written before or since--  a "one of a kind" and yet its theme has gotten me to thinking about questions like: what is real? and what is reality?

The story was published in an anthology of CyberPunk fiction:  Alt.Cyberpunk.Chatsubo Anthology 2 Unfortunately somehow the unrevised proof was put into the final document which makes it nearly unreadable. 

I present it here in its proper, revised form as an introduction to this blog of fiction,  fact, dream,  nightmares and reality.


Falling Through Reality

There is a certain heritage in our family. We know when the time is near. You know what I mean.  It's small things really. Like donuts.

Like not knowing your own phone number. Like so many things. They all add up: someone's time is coming.

Now I'm not normally superstitious. I don't believe in the hand of fate but I grew up with this thing. At first I only noticed after someone was gone. As I got older, things became clearer sooner. I knew. Six, maybe ten days it would happen. Things would add up. Bingo.

Someone was leaving.

So what was I to think when funny things began to happen to me?

Meghan  came by the firehouse one night. Three A.M. and I was on the hot seat working the dead man's shift. We've always kept one guy awake. Why? Tradition. Dunno. We did.

She and I, we went and had a cup of coffee. Yeah, I know I wasn't supposed to do that, but we did. I did log the miles on the register so it was as legal as it could be and we had a cup.

We talked for an hour. I could talk to her forever. She was that kind of girl. Met her at that coffee shop. Guess she liked me a lot too. I was going to give her my cell number but I could not remember what it was. Silly me.

I kissed her for the only time that morning. It was as sweet then as it is now oddly bitter sweet. I left her there and went back to the house and made myself another cup of coffee.

I fell asleep at the breakfast table. When I woke I found the guys had left me a dozen donuts. Well at least I thought there were twelve until my eyes cleared of sleep. Eleven.

There a twelve men in our crew. I asked my crew chief. Charlie told me that they'd wanted to leave me a dozen but they'd only had eleven.

Like I said, its small things.

I walked across the commons to the rectory of St. Andrew's. Now I ain't religious. The only time I go to church is to see somebody off.

Another sign.

I knocked and told the housekeeper I'd like to talk to a priest. He came, limping and scowling. Father Murphy was like that. Notre Dame was playing someone, I guess, but he warmed to the subject soon enough. I explained about the things I told you and the things in our family history.

Finally, I said to him, trying to keep my voice even, "So what I'm trying to ask is 'Is this just a fluke of some kind or do these things actually mean something'?"

"A fine thing indeed." He nodded and looked at me from under his bushy brows. "Yes, He does give us signs and wonders if we have eyes to see them." He replied in his faded Irish brogue.

"What if the signs were to point to the see'er of the signs as to, well, be leaving this life real soon?" I asked, my voice anxious.

He pulled on his chin and frowned. He looked at me. There was sadness in his eyes. He knew now too. He said softly, "Then I'd be making peace with me fellow man and makin' it easy for them." I nodded and got up. I thanked him for his time and apologized for disturbing his game.

"It's all right son, they were losing any way."

I walked out on to the commons. I took a slow breath of the still the air. I looked at the signs. I remembered many things. Murphy's law came bubbling up out of my sub-conscious. I muttered an 'Oh, shit.' under my breath as I trudged back to the firehouse.

I was 'on-shift' until Wednesday. It was going to happen soon then.

I went back to the fire house and joked with the guys and helped make dinner. They went off to bed and I sat alone drinking coffee and reading the leftover Sunday Times.

Monday passed and I made a point of talking to each one of the crew.

Making peace. Telling them each in a way they'd only understand later that they were a great bunch of guys to work with. I'm not sure they understood then.

It was no surprise at all to me when they woke me early on Tuesday.

It was a big one. An airliner had crashed into a building downtown.

You know the big pyramid shaped one. The skies over the bay were unusually clear that day. As we raced through the streets towards downtown we could see the fire leaping from the upper floors unabated.

The smoke was like a monstrous Efrit reaching skyward. Its face wrought of destruction and unholy fire. As I looked it in the face, I saw the signs. The impending doom.

We arrived and forced our way through the chaos of debris and the innocent running away in terror. I must have been the last one assigned to go up. Dunno. Not important now.

I looked around. I could see things so much clearer now in the falling ash and debris. I knew what was coming. I can't say if it was a brave thing or a very foolish thing not to run away. I guess I stayed because I believed I needed to be there.

I went into the building and up the fire access stairwell. People were coming down in a steady stream. Some were injured. Some were glassy eyed. Some were clear and sharply in focus. Like a book, I read their fates. It was coming easier to me now.

There a dead one. There a live one. There a crippled one. We climbed in silence. Water from the fire sprinklers running down the steps.

Smoke and acrid air filled my lungs. Somewhere near the top, my cell phone rang.

"Hello..." I said through the roar of the demon that had broken into the world.

"Uh, Sam? I'm sorry I must have dialed the wrong number..."

It was her voice. She did not have the number. I never gave it to her.

"Wait! Don't hang up." I cried over the noise. The Demon was getting louder. Coming for those of us that foolishly remained so near it, I suppose.

"Don't say anything. I don't have much time just now. I never had a chance to tell you the other night. I love you. You'll have a good life. Things will work out for you. You'll see..."

About then the building shook. The phone went dead. Those of us that were standing there knew it was coming. The pain lasted only for an instant.

I woke. In smoldering rubble. I thought for a while I'd survived, I mean, where i' been. The pain was great, my head hurt, and I soon slipped into unconsciousness.

I woke in  again triage. There was a big hubbub. Some politician was making the rounds. The sea of people parted and a single man approached. He took my hand. My vison was blurred so I could not make out his face.

"I hear you're going to be ok, son. We're proud of you and your courage. Take it easy. We'll find the ones that did this to you and your fallen comrades."

"Mayor Chan...?" I heard a reporter ask.

Mayor Chan? No one of Chinese descent had ever been Mayor of the City.

I was in shock but now even more so. I guess I was the poster boy of the moment because he held an impromptu news conference at my bedside.

The camera's videotape rolling. The photographer's strobes flashing as the Mayor spoke.  The political stuff went on and on.

Later I asked a nurse who the man was that had stopped at my bedside.

"I guess that can be expected. You've had a major concussion." She replied as she noted something on my chart.

The nurse continued, "Mayor Chan has been mayor in the city for the last seven and a half years."

I'll say I've had a concussion. Shit. Murphy. Oh shit.

Much later the crew from the firehouse came in to see me. I looked at each of them. They were my crew but I did not know them. It was spooky. All of their faces I knew but I didn't know them. It began to sink in. The medical staff soon pushed them out of the room and I slept again.

But what about Meghan? In my dreams I could see her crying looking for me.

I woke and she was standing there next to the bed. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

"I thought I had lost you..." She broke down.

I remembered the kiss Meghan had given me. I realized this was not the woman that had kissed me. She was a stranger. I looked at her and knew she was not my Meghan and yet she was. I had not really gotten to know her. But maybe I would. Something told me I might have the time here to do that.

"Never that babe. Never that." I muttered.

She left and I stared at the ceiling. She wasn't my Meghan. I dreamed of her crying hopelessly. Her hands clinging to the chain link fence surrounding the crater of shattered concrete and steel. I wanted to comfort her. I could not.

The dreams of Meghan mourning began to get to me. I drifted away from the 'here and now' Meghan. Every time I was with her, the dreams of her weeping came to my mind. I decided it is better that to be alone for now.

I slept and recuperated. I endured the physical therapy. Months passed. As time went along, I decided to change my line of work.

My mind  keeps coming back to that day. The things I saw. The demonic fire reaching into the sky. The things that happened. My fate. Since I've had a lot of time on my hands, I've reflected on what I had come to understand.

Reality isn't a place. It's not a fixture. It is not a hard, clearly defined thing. It is something we fall through. We move through it even though we don't feel the motion.

We fall through time and space and places and people like a pebble dropped in a pool. Our lives and actions rippling out, expanding through time and space into other places that sit side-by-side with our own.

I read somewhere once that there are many worlds like this one side by side. Let me tell you it is a strange thing to see them that way. The folks that supposedly know say it is impossible to do that. I have days when I agree with them.

I've doubted my memories of things and wonder if I am just crazy but the dream of Meghan's tears snaps me awake sweating at night.

I know this is not my world or my life.

Everyday I was reminded of the "history" I had inherited from the person I replaced.  Every day has brought me subtle reminders of how different this place is from where I came from.

It is really hard to understand the things that I lost and the things I've gained in coming here. I wonder if this is the only time this has ever happened. I wonder too, it if might happen again. I try not to think about that.

How did I come to be here?

The only explanation I can think of is that maybe sometimes when something horrific happens, you know, like what happened to me on that clear day in the City... Well, maybe the pressure of the event is great enough that things, sometimes even people, can fall through into other places.  Into other streets. Other houses. Other lives.

Maybe sometimes we can leave whispers of our passing in those other places.

Think of these words as one of those whispers.

*** Fini ***

Afterword:

Someone had the idea that the events we observe in the world is the "sum of all the probabilities" involved in the event and the "most likely" is what occurs. Other say that all probabilities occur but each in their own reality.

but what if....

that is what this blog is about.

Reflections on what has happened, what is,  and what may be Reality... from a slightly skewed perspective.

So who am I anyway?

Does it matter?

Okay, okay you really want to know?

I am:
... not a saint -- far from it. So no I'm not particularly nice but then I'm not looking for trouble.
... not social-- so no I'm not on Facebook and never will be... and am barely on g+
... an autodidact without a college degree who is a "General Specialist".
... a healer of technical things by "laying on of hands" [works about 60% of the time]
I fail psi card guessing games which is to say I can't tell you what the next card is to save my life. [I am under the impression I show a significant inability to guess cards to the degree that it is statistically significant-- but hey I've never been formally tested so I could be significantly wrong-- after all we are generally wrong about our selves when performing self-assessment]

I don't have an axe to grind nor a make-cash-fast spiel though I won't object if you want to give me cash I won't stop you. [small, untraceable bills please].

A fellow who has had diagnosed mental health issues in the past

I'm a poet,

a writer,

a dreamer of all too real waking dreams [some of which I will share here]

a songwriter / lyricist, [of nothing significant in over 40 years to anyone except maybe my two year old grand son]

a recovering network administrator [there are no 12 step programs to recover from luser spaced management],

a fallen mystic,

I'm not a skeptic nor a believer... Reality after all is not necessarily something set in stone...

I'm an ex-convict who died in prison a long time ago and rose after three days [really!],

I'm a fellow who some how knows some famous and nearly famous people [but everybody does don't they?].

I'm a cranky, grumpy 60 year old man who has been unemployed for nearly three years because times have changed and I haven't and find I am "unwilling to play the game" any more... which makes me a liability in a corporate world made of meaningless buzz words.

I have discovered I am maybe too much like my late father [He was a gentle SOB (southern.  ornery.  bxstxrd.) ]

I'm not looking to create a buzz nor rain on anyone's parade.

I don't need a fix or to be fixed.

I am a Jew by Choice [or did it choose me? got a whole separate blog about that... [here: http://hagedi.blogspot.com/2006/07/opening-first-page.html ]

I'm not John Titor nor do I want to be-- one does not need a time machine to fall through reality.

So I will post upon occasion... or not.

I bid you welcome... and good journey.

©2014 by j.h. crook.
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