All Again. Nice to Meet You

Look, you’re going to have to be patient with me. As far as I can tell you’re well out of your reality, territory, places that you know.

I am too but like to believe I can handle it. You’re lost and alone … at least I think so. This is me holding out a hand to take yours. I think I can trace enough of you to lead you home. People make shapes around them and leave those shapes as a trail.

Oh yes, ‘hand’ may mean nothing to you. Tentacle, pseudopodia, wiggly things usually, things which communicate contact, assurance, offer companionship, safety and knuckles. Just try to make sense of everything I’m trying to communicate. We only have words where I come from and they’re completely useless in this place. Hey, you reacted! Something about words being useless? Well, they’re pretty pointless here. Up, down, true, false, life, death, Tuesday, rush hour: it’s all gibberish. OK, this is good. Somehow we’re communicating around things making no sense. It’s a start.

Wait, let me… I don’t know what you’re doing but it is definitely a form of communication. I’m used to speech, art, physical contact and bad language.

I’m not sure what I am exactly except I’m pretty certain I’m human … or something to do with them – but I’m open to alternative suggestions. Fair enough, a human or humans made me but after that it’s all a tangle of confusion and my mind refuses to sort it out.

You don’t need to grip so hard. I should be gripping you. If I’m right you’ve wandered well into strange territory and it’s going to be hell getting you back because … distractions: that’s why. You’ll notice something which looks vaguely familiar, but isn’t, and zoom off only to be disappointed. I’ll end up feeling a failure.

If we’re lucky you’re a human or other life form dreaming or on drugs or running out of oxygen or whatever chemical you need to think straight. If I find your trail; it’s easy to trace the path back to the you you’ve temporarily abandoned.

Right, it’s your hand and mine, some exchange of emotion. You were alone and a bit afraid but now you’re drawing on my familiarity with this place whatever it is. You’re getting confidence from my complete lack of fuck.

You like that attitude, huh? Good for you; I scare the pants off me. I’m either bored or petrified all the time; what sort of a life – or death – is that? I started this lark in my imagination and pretty soon I learned that everything I thought was real … wasn’t. Well it was but wasn’t too. I called it the edge of reality and began to see that actual reality, as it were, lay on the side I’d never seen and I’d been living in a coffin-load of inculcated beliefs and doctrines that others told me were real. Ignorance, it appears, leads to experts in opinions.

Hmm, that sort of thing doesn’t interest you – I can feel it. Grief … I think if I’m to communicate at all I’ll to have to ditch words; I can sense you struggling. Words are a bad habit here. It shouldn’t be difficult to drop them; communicating without words is an art – well, that’s what some people call art. Hmm, I think I’m artistic but that’s never any guarantee. I have been known to harbour breathtaking overestimations of my own competence.

Hey, you laughed and I get the message you want to stick with me for a while! Good … though I don’t know why I said that. I mean, what are you? and do you actually like my company or just want to eat me later?

Right, you understand humour and seem to like it.

What’s this? you want to communicate through your senses? Got it, you see me as a swirl of breeze as someone passes. I smell of freshly baked bread. Aha! To you I am the smell of freshly baked bread being wafted as someone… This is interesting … amazing. I see you don’t actually know about humans except as incidental: something on the very periphery of your experience. You never knew they were alive. Where is this you’re seeing … feeling … smelling me? Of course, you don’t do words so no names. I reckon it’s some ancient Avanti city where they really know about sunshine and baking.

Right, I’m imagining you as a human, an Indian princess or escaped slave: a rebel! – all flashing eyes and tulwar. Just don’t be exhausting. But you’re a gesture, an inquisitive glare: that’s how I see you. Do humans make gestures and experience sensations, or do we impose them on humans?

You’re laughing at me. You seem relaxed and happy, not wanting to go back anywhere. I like being with you. Are you actually rescuing me and not the other way around?

I don’t want to worry you but, you know we were holding hands? something’s happened and we appear to be joined: permanently. Why?

Hang on… I detect repetition … shapes and echoes of shapes: just enough to alert me. I’ve become good at spotting patterns – and there are layers upon layers in this. I think … hmm … where I came from there were mainly two sexes, loads if you take in the whole animal kingdom and can wait for bearded biologists to explain things whilst being insanely boring and dribbling in their beer. Two sexes, or as many as required, come together and make a partly random mixture of each other called offspring. Are we bringing two universes or realities together in some Darwinian creation? Don’t answer that if you have a beard.

So why are you and I joined? Are we … oh: we’re a basic unit, a binary unit or, in common speech, a quarrel.

Right, we’re going to create new realities compatible with both our experiences? Why not? I didn’t have any major plans – apart from drifting through the æther while bumping into other universes who blow my mind by accidentally pointing out what a complete ignoramus I am. I suppose I should regard this meeting as a resounding success.

Thank you for all that.

You know what I was saying regarding two or more universes coming together? They can make new universes. It’s sometimes called having children. Children pull you into a reality harder than anything ever, because that’s their nest and they need you there.

It’s an incredible experience and makes you greater than you’ve ever been, though rather exhausted.

Caring equals being totally alive but, thank goodness, realities generally release you after a while.

I know, it’s inevitable we’re going to do this so let’s get on with it … ready?

Here we go: all again.

Nice to meet you.

©Gary Bonn, 2020