She sat with one leg folded and the other stretched out on the edge of the cliff, looking at the distant, snowcapped, mountain peaks. She felt the still cold air around her one moment, and the next, she forgot the sensation. The sun was positioned at half a right angle on her from the east. It was eight in the morning.
* * *
“I woke up from the dream thinking I was about to kill myself there. I don’t know exactly why I was about to do it; but I remember feeling very sure I wanted to do it. I was sitting at the edge, and I wanted to slip down into the valley. I’ve never felt that way, not in a dream, not outside of one.”
“It is said that the contents of one’s dreams are often thoughts that one suppresses consciously, in one’s waking hours. It is mind’s way of telling you that it needs rest.”
“But dreams are certainly more random than relevant. I’ve had so many dreams that don’t even make basic sense.”
“The contexts may be random, but your behavior in them is never so.”
“But how can behavior be significant in a context that is completely absurd in the first place?”
“What counts is how you choose to react to the situation, not what you’d like to believe the situation made you do.”
“One exercises choice in one’s dreams? Look, every time I make a choice, I remember doing it.”
“Sometimes, you make choices subconsciously. It’s not a controlled act.”
Momentary silence
“Are you trying to say that I want to kill myself? Because that’s a controlled act and I’m quite sure it’s not one of those things I’m going to do and then not remember later.”
“No. I’m trying to say that there is something you need to deal with, and you’re avoiding that.”
* * *
She sensed the occasional vehicle passing behind her. She perceived very little of her physical surrounding. She couldn’t see the bottom of the valley; it was translucent white from the mist. She inched closer to the edge. Her legs were now hanging from it. The rest of her was firmly placed on the sturdy, natural rock plate. Her eyes were fixed at a height. She had looked down only once, indifferently. She thought to herself, I don’t want the strength of this rock beneath me, of the mountains. I want immunity from this planet.
* * *
“I know something today. I don’t want to die… I know what it is. I want release from management.”
“How do you suddenly know that?”
“I was sitting and wondering how I’d want that dream to end. So I imagined that I inch closer to the edge of the cliff. But I absolutely surely don’t want to let go, you know. Instead, I draw strength from the rocky earth below me, the strength to think again, to rethink.
“So… all you needed was to feel strong?”
“No… In fact, I wanted to give the strength up. But the unyielding force of the earth, not even an inch away from death, was what helped me realize that in the first place. That it wasn’t weakness that’s driving me insane—”
“—do you believe you might be crazy?”
“I dreamt that I was going to kill myself. That’s not sane to me, now… But I remember feeling weak through the dream, and the next morning. I was thinking weakness was the reason. But it turns out that it had nothing to do with me wanting to kill myself in that dream.”
“Then what has?”
“I wouldn’t be talking to you if I knew that.”
“So you do really wish to find out.”
Momentary silence
“I do…”
* * *
She was walking in a crowded street down in the market area. She has learnt to walk without feeling a sense of time or change around her. It is a familiar street and it takes no real effort to walk. It happens mechanically. The experience is only that of an ever-growing latency. It is like falling into a profound torpor while being continuously in motion.
* * *
“I might be losing control. If it has to be so, I don’t want it to be a process. Not an elaborate transitional period of struggle and conflict. Either on this side, or that: I can’t be in the middle. That’s not my area. It never is.”
“What do you mean by your area?”
“I mean, I’m not a person of conflicts and confusion.”
“Does conflict bother you?”
“No! I don’t mean it that way. I understand conflict and why it may occur. But my being has no space for it.”
“Do you wish it away? Or is it really non-existent?”
Momentary silence
“I wish it away.”
“But you understand it. Then you should probably deal with it?”
* * *
“The world I imagine… and the world that is…”
“Please… complete that thought. It’s important.”
“…they’ve been similar, recently…”
“In what way?”
“They’re… somehow… closer.”
“But you do know that they are different, that they are separate, no matter how close they might appear to be.”
Momentary silence
“Of what significance is that?”
* * *
The world she imagines isn’t any less real than the world that is. In a way – and she knows this for sure – the world that is, may or may not be real. The world she imagines, on the other hand, is surely real, because it is in her imagination. One knows one’s imagination better than one knows what one perceives… because they are the one who created it in their imagination. It exists. And so it’s as real as real can be.”
* * *
“I was thinking that, in a way, what we take for granted as real may not be real.”
“What is your idea of real?”
“The existence of which one can be certain about; with all our limitations, we can be sure of some things, you know. Those are real things.”
“Is it so important to be sure that you must accommodate the concept of real in such parameters?”
“What’s the point of anything if one is not certain about anything in—?”
“So purpose, now, is important too…”
“It isn’t! But… It surely helps you keep going…”
“Is that your purpose? To keep yourself going…?”
Momentary silence
“I don’t like how you sound.”
* * *
A sense of ease emerges from the overwhelming amount of discomfort in her. She enjoys the brief feeling that follows every failure in her daily life. She lost her way back on the street today- the street she thought she knew like the back of her hand. She didn’t remember what she ate when she was drinking water after lunch this afternoon. She smiled to herself, not in amusement, but because she never felt more natural before. She was finally able to start giving up contemplation. She could float in a free chain of thoughts again. There were no obstacles. She was finally free of them and she was finally certain.
* * *
“I don’t think I need you anymore.”
“Alright.”
“Yes.”
“And that also means you needed me all these days.”
“I did.”
“May I ask how you don’t need me anymore?”
“The conflict has been put to rest…”
“By?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have I been of help?”
“Yes!”
“So we put it to rest together.”
“No… you always resisted that. But that’s what helped.”
“How did it help?”
“You always showed me certain possibilities about my own thought.”
Momentary silence
“Too… burdensome to accept them, was it?”
“Be direct in what you say.”
“I was bringing you closer to your thought. And now you don’t want me.”
“Yes… I don’t want you.”
“Alright”
“Hell I don’t want you!”
* * *
She could feel the music physically, as an aeriform layer surrounding her skin. She was sitting comfortably on the floor. She knew that she had been angry. But at the same time, she had never felt more at peace with herself. She no longer had anyone to push her out of her real world. When she closed her eyes, she could sense the ease and effortlessness of being. Everything around her was coherent. There were no small bits that wouldn’t fit. There were no wrong sequences. There were no mistakes, there was no negativity. And the best part was that people here were happy, a little strange in their ways, but they all looked satisfied to be where they were. She smiled at nothing in particular, but it turned into a soft, brief laughter. She felt a little cold from the music. She got up to get a jacket .Instead, she walked around her house for an indefinite while and enjoyed the feeling of not noticing how much time had passed by. Time— was a long-lost experience…
* * *
“Am I imagining this bliss or is it real?”
“If you’re imagining, it’s surely real, isn’t it?”
“Why are you here again?”
“I don’t know how, but I changed my mind. You were right about everything…”
“Right about what? What have I ever told you?”
“Nothing much. But you look good now… really comfortable.”
“Yes I am. And I’m glad you understand that... I’m quite glad.”
“Yes. Tell me if you still ever need me.”
“I will, I will… although I highly doubt it. I don’t believe, you know, that I might need to talk to you… but thanks. I’ll…I’ll keep that in mind. Yes.”
Momentary silence
“I’ll be around.”
* * *
She hadn’t spent a thought in days together. She didn’t need to. She had stopped going to work since what seemed like another century. She remembered it when she didn’t have the money that morning to buy shampoo. She loved washing her hair. She loved the feeling of cold water running along her hair. She probably spent hours in the shower, but it felt good. It is what she had to do anyway. She didn’t do things she didn’t have to. Only the ones she really had to: like go for long walks and return completely exhausted, but without losing half a breath. She never felt sleepy at night. Nights were her days. Night was what the universe really was. Days are simply an illusion. It’s an isolated source of light, the sun. Generally, the background is dark in the universe. But every single thing in the universe is special. She could solve every problem without any mental calculation. Dilemmas and doubt self-destructed themselves in her proximity. Every once in a while, she would talk to a stranger on her way to a place where she ate her meals daily. They would always smile at her, sometimes shy away, but they never felt like strangers. They all looked familiar in a way. She felt connected to them. She could say she loved them. Once, as she was walking home, the last thing she remembered was smiling to a stranger on a street who’d smiled back at her. It didn’t surprise her to wake up in her own house the following afternoon. She was sure she had only forgotten what had happened in the “time” that had elapsed. She couldn’t possibly be wrong about it. And in all probability, there really wasn’t anything worth remembering after the stranger’s face. What surprised her, though, was the clarity with which she remembered the stranger’s face. Her memory was generally patchy, although more like a beautiful piece of artwork; it had sudden, bright black holes that were like blind spots, impossible to discover. The holes were growing, and she fuelled them with all her heart. Days together were going by, perplexed by her indifference. She never observed herself, but she smiled every time she forgot what the previous moment had been like. Because every moment was a new one, every moment was a new life. The music played with her mind beautifully, again. It eased her to a point of perfection.
* * *
She was standing at the edge of the cliff. She took a clean look at the surroundings. She scanned every bit of space on the circle of her vision at the eye level. She closed her eyes and knew she belonged to this land. She bent and lay down on the rock plates, embracing the land with her freely flowing feelings and thoughts. She felt a rush of power building within her. She felt the sun's rays falling on her at an angle.
* * *
“Whatever are you doing here today?”
“I just thought, maybe… you’d like me to be around. You look really good, really happy.”
“That is true…”
“Can I help you with anything?”
“Could you just help me out with... Here. Let me just move a little, so that you can help me move from here... Yes, right about now. Let me get up, first. Yeah, I want to run, you try and make sure that I…”
“You want to run?”
“Yes… I… Will you make sure I don’t end up… you know…”
"Of course..."
She lifted herself up from the ground and stood up. Her solitary figure looked important on the edge of the cliff. She walked away from the cliff. She was bursting with a fresh force for life. She looked around and smiled. She drew a trajectory in her mind with a simple estimate. She closed her eyes to draw energy from everything that was around her, including her immediate past, which was a distant place for her by now, and including her near future, which had never existed in the past so many days.
“Don’t let me sit down… okay… I need to run. I feel so good.”
“I can feel it, I won’t let you bend.”
She ran with all the life left in her and turned the force within into a new experience, a threshold, one she had waited for a right time, to welcome. She ran with immense speed. The rocky surface underneath her bare feet felt shockingly cold. Cutting through space for that brief segment of time was praeternaturally peaceful for her. With great kinetic force at the edge, she took off. It was an impulsive leap off the cliff.
Permanent Silence
The fall was deliberate. The last impression taking form in her mind as she was freefalling was that she eternalised her happiness.
