Anthology Complex (12 page)

Chapter 24:

ECHOES FROM THE SUN

There is a story of a group of people who have spent their entire lives
in an underground cave and their knowledge is limited only to what they can see
and hear, and then one day they are let out of the underground cave and for the
first time they see the Sun. They see powerful rays of light and trees and
birds and realize that there was so much more to learn. Maybe you know this
story.

At night, some of us gaze at the dark sky and wonder what is beyond what
we can see and what we can comprehend as human beings. Things like God and
Satan, if there is life elsewhere. Even if we are one day able to see and
comprehend these things, we will have to accept the fact that there is still
even more to discover. No matter how much you think you may know, you will
never know it all.

However, one might argue that because knowledge presumably has no
limits, it therefore cannot be compared or measured to or by anything.

One person might know that an object's mass plays a role in how strong
that object's gravitational pull will be and another person might not, but
because there is so much to know one might also say that regardless of how much
more knowledgeable the first person is than the second person, both individuals
are equally unintelligent. Or equally unintelligent. This is why a wise man
will tell you he's a fool.

There is a theory that a single cell can represent, or is, a universe,
and that a universe can represent, or is, a single cell. The basic fundamentals
of the idea are influenced by significance and perception. The human body is
comprised of cells that will help form a body part or an organ, and these parts
of the body will help form systems such as the reproductive system or the
respiratory system, and these systems will help maintain a functional organism.

Likewise, the universe is comprised with many similarities. There are
planets. Cells. There is a star with a mass that is great enough to have a
dominant gravitational pull and force these nearby planets to revolve around
it, such a system is called a solar system. Organs. There are many solar
systems throughout space, and the compilation of these solar systems form
galaxies. Body systems.

Furthermore, many galaxies form a universe. Organisms. A universe is
followed by an omniverse, which is all possible universes, and who knows for
how long this can go on, however if you tweak your perception, imagine that a
cell in your body is one universe. All these cells help make up your heart,
just like all these planets help make up a solar system.

If we were to shrink ourselves down to a size where just one of our
cells were more significant, or in other words bigger to us, we might find that
the place we are in follows the same exact standards as the place we were when
we were normally sized. With this in mind, is it logical to assume that
everything is the same? That without the perception and significance that is
constructed by the human brain, a single cell is the actually identical in
every property to a universe.

That even if you meet a giant who is a million times bigger than you, it
means nothing because there is another giant who is a billion times bigger than
the giant who is a million times bigger than you, and to him you are both small
and stupid just the same. And then you find out there is a giant who is a
trillion times bigger...

Anyway it goes on and on and on. Maybe this is all just the rambling of
a part of me that has lost its sanity as this has happened to me before, but
I've found that even in falsehood you can dissect some parts of truth.

Often times our dreams are never resolved. We might find ourselves
running through a storm but we never find out why. We might be searching for
our first class on the first day of school but we wake up before we see if we
find it or not. We might be parked in front of a house but we don't know what
or who we are waiting for, why we are waiting there and how long we've been
waiting there.

A long time ago I used to have these dreams where I was kept in solitary
confinement in a prison. In a cold, dark corner in a small piece of the
universe, I have to spend these days of penitence in a penitentiary.

Time goes by and I suffer. Sometimes a guard will walk by and I ask him
why I have to suffer, and he tells me that some of us are just meant to suffer
for the things we've done. Sometimes I ask him how I can make things right, and
he tells me that the only thing I can do is offer the people I've wronged my
suffrage.

The one thing I can't solve, the one thing I can't figure out about
those damn dreams is what crime I committed to be put in there in the first
place.

Two things that have always fascinated me in my life are warfare and
prison. Not necessarily the soldiers or the prisoners, but the idea of sending
one group of humans to kill another group of humans, the idea to segregate
certain people in compliance to a few rules on a few pieces of paper. The one
especially interesting aspect, or question, of war, is who exactly is at war?
You can have a war with several countries, several people or even a war with
yourself; a mental struggle.

The Civil War was a war where one nation fought amongst itself. Who is
at war, who is being imprisoned. Once a prisoner becomes institutionalized, once
they become so comfortable to the society within the prison walls, when you set
that prisoner free, you may actually be imprisoning him in the outside world.
Just like that piece of rock in space, a prisoner sometimes wants to stay a
prisoner. Maybe that's why most of them end up going back to prison after they
are freed.

On the news they say they caught the person who murdered that man not
too far from my apartment building. It was over some drug situation, and the
perpetrator is going to be locked away for a long time.

The victim was intoxicated at the time of his death, and the assailant
was caught and it is speculated that after being shown that they had forensic
evidence on him, he confessed and provided details about others in his
organization in an attempt to reduce his prison sentence.

One thing we will all come to realize eventually is that we will always
want more until we decide we want nothing. We are always waiting for our plates
to be filled, but even when they are there is always an empty side-dish.

We tell ourselves we'll be happy and content when we get that job. When
we fall in love and get married. When we have a house. When we have children.
The thing is it's never enough. It will never be enough. Not until enough is
enough.

Chapter 25:

THE MOTH EFFECT

I open the front door to the apartment building and the Sun's rays hit
me as if I had been in darkness for years. I notice that the plants are
beginning to grow, and I can only hope that they grow properly. I start to
think about how the Sun's rays, as powerful as they may be, how they don't
reach the garden, and how sad the zinnias that were there before must have
felt.

In the distance I see Mary getting out of a parked car with a bouquet of
red roses, and this image reminds me that it's Mother's Day, but I've never
figured Mary for a mother. Maybe the roses have nothing to do with the holiday.

Mary passes by me with a fur-coat that probably cost an animal its life.
Insult to death. I'd like to think that the animals that are killed for their
fur were primarily killed for their nutritional value. There can't be any
righteousness in killing an animal simply for its properties in appearance.
Only to gain in the selling of fur or leather.

I can also tell that she's drunk when she walks pass me, and that she's
not conscious enough to notice that her driver is yelling out her name because
she forgot something. I end up having to help her in that department.

Lynne told me that red roses symbolize love and romance. These red roses
remind me of Maria, but in particular, they remind me about two dreams I had
about her a couple of years after we met. Maria and I both worked at the same
place, and often times we would end up working at the same times. I usually
walked to work, but one day when I was halfway there to work, it started to
rain. It really started to pour. Maria, who drove to work, saw me walking and
she stopped and gave me a ride to work.

We had been together for at least two years and then one night I have
this dream. I'm walking down stairs. I hear this woman sitting at the bottom of
a staircase crying. I ask her what's wrong and she looks up at me with big
watery eyes.

The scene shifts like dreams like to do, and we are inside of a house. I
look at her hand and I see a tattoo. I ask her what it is, and she tells me
it's a butterfly in the shape of a heart. I ask her why, and she says to me,
"Because it's through fate that we find our soulmate." I didn't have
as good a memory then and I didn't start writing down my dreams yet so I can't
remember the dream so well, but I can remember what she said about finding your
soulmate with the help of fate clearly.

The butterfly effect theory basically states that one event, no matter
how big or how small, can effectively influence the course of the future. One
question often associated with this theory asks if the flap of a butterfly's
wings in one part of the world can cause a natural disaster in another part of
the world.

I gather that her tattoo meant that regardless of how random or
senseless some things may be, coincidence has nothing to do with us finding our
one true love. Our soulmate. That we find the ones we are suppose to live the
rest of our lives with through fate.

The next thing I know, I'm lying in bed with the woman. Sometime later
there is a banging on the door, and all I can hear is the name Diane ringing
through my head. The woman gets up out of bed and goes to see who it is, and
it's Maria on the other side of the door.

A few months later after having that dream, I have it again, but
different things happen. It's the same woman in the same house, except this
time I don't cheat on Maria. I tell Diane that I have to leave, that I'm not
attracted to her flame, and she becomes furious, but before I go to turn away I
notice that her tattoo is on her right hand this time. It's plagued me for
years. In the first version of the dream, the tattoo is on her left hand, and in
the second version, it's on her right hand. That one little change.

Because of free will, it sometimes seems as if we all write our own
futures. There is a man who sets up dominoes to fall in a specific order in a
specific way. He hits the first domino. The beginning. Everything goes to plan,
and finally the last domino falls. The ending. He does this until he feels
confident that he knows what will happen every time. Now he sets them up again
the same exact way, but this time he gives domino number sixty-seven a free
will. He hits the first domino to start the sequence.

Everything goes to plan until it gets to sixty-seven. Sixty-seven has
removed from its spot and has wondered off, ruining everything. Now this man
knows that he cannot predict what will happen if these dominoes have a free
will.

I've just come back to my apartment building after visiting my parents'
home, a nice big fancy house that they left for me some odd-numbered miles down
the road. I go to that area once every few months because it's where I spent my
childhood. Everyone probably longs for their childhood in their adulthood for
reasons I shouldn't have to mention. Down the road a few blocks from the house
is the church we all used to go to. My mother, my father, my brother and I.

I didn't know it back then, but my father didn't believe in God. Or
Satan for that matter. Most people who don't believe in one don't believe the
other. He never said he didn't believe in him, but I know he didn't; I know he
went to church simply because it was the one thing my mother ever asked him to
do.

He was a good liar, he had everyone fooled. He had several different
masks so that you couldn't associate his face with his character or his role.