SIDE A A Portal Appears [11] I don’t have very many memories of playing with friends. I often wondered what it would have been like to be a regular, healthy kid. Seeing other children running around without care through my bedroom window was the closest I got to feeling normal. Watching them, it filled me with both delight and jealousy. When it came, what once was a window I could peer into for vicarious youth was replaced with a window into something else---but I didn’t know what. Its shiny exterior was rigid while the liquid interior wobbled and swayed. It seemed to be inviting me in. After a slight hesitation, I walked through what seemed like a lifetime condensed into half a second. 

Sea Lights [Shimmering] The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was the smell of street vendors selling different foods I had never seen before. Standing in awe, I took it all in as much as I could. The second was the expression they wore on their faces. Everyone looked to be rushing about, but not in the same way that adults did when they were just trying to get something done; their strides were vibrant and full of life like they had everywhere to be, but they were excited to get there. The feeling was contagious and everyone had become intoxicated by the sense of careful hope in the air. I was no exception. Water Temple

 [Silver Gardens] Their steps sounded different from mine, but their minds felt familiar. I learned about their culture and their passions by living among them as a member of their tribe. Even during a respite, they expressed their dreams of creating a monument that would complete their world. It celebrated what they saw as the source of life for everything on earth. When we had finally finished, their eyes lit up at the wonder that we had created with our own hands. The bonfire next to it lit up all the darkness away that night. Rest Area [Tranquil] After I had finished saying my goodbyes, I followed a path away from the temple into a forest. When I came to a clearing, my vision was suddenly awash with blue and white sparks everywhere. My eyes adjusted after a few seconds, and a giant waterfall came into view. The water flowed down into a small lake in front of me. I could feel the sheer enormity of its life force---it enveloped me in a warm embrace that was comforting and somehow familiar. If someone had told me that that’s what love felt like, I would not have doubted them. I wanted to remain encircled in its clasp for eternity. 

Sands of Time [Lifestream] Surrounded by what seemed like an infinite ocean, I found myself on an island with no recollection of how I had gotten there. Everywhere I looked, the gentle waves moved past each other---receding farther and farther back into the horizon over and over. I could see light in every direction and feel the reverberations of time within every cell of my body. I felt like I could breathe in the lives of everyone who had existed before me and everyone who will come to be long after I was gone. SIDE B A Portal Appears [24] Moving to the city had seemed daunting at first. Before I knew it, I had grown numb to its daily cacophonous symphony like a negligent mother to her child’s cries. I walked through life’s tragedies on my way to work from home and back every day without blinking an eye. I took the shortcut off Broadway into an alley that led me straight onto 10th Ave. It was a trick I learned that shaved minutes off my commute. But what awaited me there was something familiar that I hadn’t seen in a long time. As it had done all those years ago, it beckoned me inside. And as they had done all those years ago, my feet guided me into its embrace. 

Sea Lights [Fading] The streets no longer held much life in them. The vendors that once filled the air with the bustling joy had disappeared. All I could see was the snow that filled the silence. The abandoned carts were half-buried and forgotten while those who had remained carried on without the spark that once lit up the town. Water Temple

 [Gravesite] When I came to, I instantly recognized the monument we had built all those years ago. What I didn't recognize were the smaller monuments of its own surrounding it. Walking out to the lake, I saw what I could make out to be epitaphs to the ones who had once accepted me as their own. I could still smell the bonfire from that night in my memory. But I found myself standing alone in the dark with nothing but the reflections of the moon swaying in the water. Rest Area [Final View] The forest I remembered was nowhere to be seen. The luscious falls that once blinded me with their beauty no longer flowed. All I saw were dark pits where death roamed as it looked for any sign of life still left to hunt. But none had stayed---and neither did I. I traced my way back out as quickly as I could, trying to outrun the ghosts of the past that still lingered in their now unsightly frames. 

Sands of Time [Desolate] The path out of the remnants of the forest was marked only by silence. It was impossible to imagine that this was the same place that was brimming with life in the past. For a long time, I walked and walked---only to hear no sound but the ringing of an emptiness that seemed to clench my every being. When I arrived at my final stop, what was once an island had been shattered into tiny pieces of landmass that floated aimlessly. They resembled giant spots like cancer cells slowly rotting you away, leaving only a shell of who you used to be. Past the shattered fragments, I saw nothing but the edge of the universe staring back at me. Music by: Room 208 & Tower of the Sun Artwork: Hydra Void Story: WELTSCHMERZ