Numino Street (A Prologue to a Book I Ought Not Be Working On)

Prologue—Numino Street  

The City of New South Satar was the pride of the Empire. The Crown of the Expansion. Emperor Arulo III himself had taken to calling it his “Favorite Son,” much to the chagrin of his own children. Seated amidst the great flatlands where the sands became grasses, and the great forehead of land creased into anxious hills, enthroned upon the ruin of what was once an old northern outpost, the city would be the greatest ever built by men, said to rival even the Golden City of the Elves (though those who said it had never seen the city in question with their own eyes).

Some said that it would be even greater than the City of Kings itself, with a temple even to outshine Arulo’s palace. But when they did, they were sure to say it in whispers. It was widely known that Sursaku, High Priest to the Order of Unashka, was personally overseeing the construction of the temple, and beside him was the Emperor’s most powerful General, Coras Hadun, both reigning with iron fists. Thousands of slaves had been dragged from the battlefronts in the north and the east and lashed to chains in the quarries. They swung picks; they hauled stones; they died; they were replaced. In the loudest voices, on every front, it was proclaimed that this city would be the greatest ever built.

Already, towers were rising from the darkness. Streets of chipped stones had been ground to dust beneath bare feet. Walls, fifty paces deep, were heaving themselves towards the stars, dragged upward by the weight of the corpses who had died to make them.

The bodies had been laid into the walls. Their souls had been poured into the foundations. “Lives to strengthen the mortar; chains fashioned from the unblessed spirits to keep our enemies away,” So had said the priests, and nobody argued with the priests. In a year, more had been accomplished than anyone had expected.

Overhead, the moon whirring in endless battery, the spires ascended, crawling like some great titans out of the very earth, dark and lumbering, black against the stars. The streets rolled out like carpets. Carpets with bodies swept away beneath them. The seething winds broke against the walls, and left the streets breezeless. Barren. Scented with sweat and dust, painted in pale moonlight.

A single road, cobbled and winding narrowly through the buildings, had been named Numino Street. As the pendulum of time spun on, no one knew who Numino was, or why the street was named for him, and nobody really seemed to care, anymore. Because the street had another name, now: Kunroc. Demon Street.

There were two kinds of people who ventured to cross Demon-Street, at night:

Those who didn’t believe in demons.

Those who were not afraid of them.

The streets were almost always empty. But those who did go there—and those who frequented them, for whatever reason—could, and had been known to tell what few other men knew, when the night grew thick and the fires burned hot, in taverns or the still watch hours:

High up on that cobbled hill, there was a tree. Not like those little garden shrubs and bushes and sprouts of ivy on the rooftops, wrapped and combed and trimmed. Not potted. This was a tree.

Roots dug deeper into the ground than even the founders of the city had dreamed of clawing, deeper than the foundations and the secret passages of Sursaku.

Fingers reached higher, blotting and gouging at the sky and its twinkling eyes, reaching for the light. It had stood for two hundred years, nearly (or the stories of it had). Swelling and erupting with power, twisting itself higher, sinews straining and flexing to grow even more. And the stories agree. The tree breathed.

They could feel the tautening and loosening of breath, captured and escaping like a tide. A breath that swept through from no direction and all of them, simply there and gone, scattering hair and thoughts and words and stealing them away them.

The taste of the wind was the taste of agony. Anguish was its language and anger and sorrow were the words it spoke, as the tree grew. But no one could hear those words. Indeed, though the roots spread through streets and crawled up walls, no one could see the tree. Nor could they hear the creak of the wind through its branches. But some, when the moon hung right, as it had on that night, centuries ago, could feel it.

And the feeling resonated with a toll like madness and a torrent of tears. Those who stood on the right stones, and breathed in the wind as it splashed through the buildings, could sense its stab in their bones and roar in their stomach. A pain, rising in the chest, the pain of a broken heart and crumpled soul. It was a knife in the wind.

When all was aligned, the stars and the moon and the wind, some could hear the words in the air. The voice of a girl. An antiquated memory, a ghostly haunting, never allowed to sleep in the mortar, like so many others had.

The stones could not sense her voice; but the little scrubs of grass tingled, like the hair on the back of the neck. The stars themselves seemed to lean in to hear. Two speakers, two voices, but one set of footsteps. Some had stood and listened to those voices for hours, from the set to the rising of the sun, and hear many words stabbed at the air.

No one knew who the voices belonged to. No names, no histories. Simply Kunroc. This was the haunting of demon street. And the gravestone to this buried suffering was that great, monstrous tree, that tree that, when the moon was right, could drive men mad.

It stood like a warning, yet it taunted. It lured. It said come.

You who think you know fear, come touch my trunk. You who think you know pain. You who think you have acquainted sorrow. You who are not afraid of demons. Touch my trunk and see. 

And none came.

None save one.

Of Footprints (Of Sky-Riding, Soul-Encountering, River-Shaping, Trace-Leaving)

Hurtling. 

That’s the first word that comes to mind at the moment, to describe what it’s like. Riding the sky, on a craft that was surely never meant to leave the ground. Second place would have to go to the word jostling. Elbowing through the wind. Not the most graceful creature to have ever flown, but the largest in recent times, certainly.

Perched between heaven and earth. Bird-country.

Hurtling. Ears popping. Pressure building. Sky blurs past, mangled by whirring turbines; a never-ending cacophony of sound.  

Men were never meant to sit here. To see the sunset from this angle. To look down at the clouds. This is the throne of nobler birds; the courtroom of angels. And yet here we are. Ever the intruders.

Tormented by the words of thirteen hours of sermons from the week’s conference, and by the book I just finished, it is hard to let the mind relax. Because here, hanging in the hands of mortality, I am forced to wonder about the souls that surround me. The lives. The stories, all woven out of memories and characters I will never know. On my flights, (four) I have had the (risky) privilege of sitting next to complete strangers (also four).

To begin, a woman named Linda was excited to be on her way to Venice, Italy.

I don’t know Linda. I know that she likes to paint. That she reads novels about the history of various diseases (conversations get weird above 10,000 feet). That she has seen the Lord of the Rings, and thinks that I (presumably all young people) should travel abroad. And here, heaving and hiccupping through the air at 500 mph, I met Linda and had an hour and a half to talk or not to talk. To rub souls with a stranger.

Next was Jack. Young. Snappily dressed. He had none of the enthusiasm to be heading off that I did. He was on his way to a business retreat. Nice shoes, nice glasses, exhausted looking eyes. Few words. He looked like he was in the opening scene of a Hallmark movie, where (hopefully) he would wind up completely happy by Christmas (just speculating).

Then, a week later, Daryl. Middle-aged. Talkative. Wealthy. A man who specialized in getting casinos running and resorts flowing. A man who likes to drink, gamble, and find a sunrise service come Easter to spend with his children.

Carrie. Quiet. Even forgettable, in her mannerisms. Polite. With her glasses and her concentrated gaze out the window, there does not seem to be much to her. Indeed, she is certainly less memorable than the handicapped boy who spent the whole flight kicking the back of my chair and chattering with the stewardess. At least he earned a few smiles.

As lives meet, as they collide and react and alter one another, as they flitter in and away, I wonder how people can actually know one another. I touched four lives, and all that remains to me now are the details.

Linda’s excitement. Her simple clothes. Jack’s tiredness. His shiny shoes and five-o’clock shadow. Daryl’s 10,000 unchecked emails. Carrie’s slightness, her forgettable character. The scar that was too big on her left hand. Doubtless that is all that will ever remain, and eventually those will fade as well. After all, my life was not changed by Linda, or by Jack, or Daryl or Carrie.

Four lives. All heading off in their own directions. For a few moments, we shared a row of seats. We shared a touch of souls, for an hour-and-a-half. If life is a river, then these four people were nothing more than a stone to rub against. Not enough to break the path, or divert it, not to dam it up and change it.

Every day, we encounter souls. Today, in the airport, I have encountered thousands. I have sat with and counted myself as one of these hundred odd passengers four times, always different. But I don’t know them. They don’t know me. Chances are that they never will know me, or see me again. Lives and stories and dreams, all crammed into these bodies, all quietly (or not quietly) sitting around me. Souls. Souls with flavor. Characters in stories that I will never read.

But what if we could?

I am reminded of Russian roulette. A revolving door. As I sat in the terminal, I knew that any of the people on these tired looking chairs could be my neighbor for the next hour or two. Not much time. Easy enough to avoid speaking, and simple enough to avoid being spoken to.

That is one option. And the other is to wonder.

Wonder about the story beside you. The state of that soul. Who is this person? For an hour and a half, I had a chance to see. And I’m not sure if I did. But I learned their names. And for a moment, I stepped into the water of their river, encountered the endless flow of their lives. I witnessed one chapter. Not even a chapter; a page. A scene in a bigger play, whose characters I don’t and can’t know. But for a moment, I did get to see them.

Every day, we are witnesses to the lives and the emotions of characters in a greater story, to see their scenes and their chapters and maybe glimpse their hardships, or their joys.

Our stories converge with theirs. And, for that one hour (or however long we have), we have a window not only into their lives, but an opportunity to let them see us. We have an hour to make an impression. To prove what we are, to reveal a glimpse of our character. Sometimes an hour can change a life. Rewrite the course of a river.

You have an opportunity every moment of every day to be that person. The person who, whether or not your name is remembered, can change a mood or a day, if not a life. The person who meets eyes and smiles. The person who lends yourself and spends yourself. The person who didn’t mind giving up the window seat, or letting someone get in front in line.

One hour. One moment. One footprint in a river that will probably forget it at soon as it arrives. Impressions will be made whether you know it or not, and you have a chance to make them work for you or against you. Whether you stand out or blend in, whether you talk like Daryl or stare out the window like Carrie, we are all mingling with other stories. We have a chance to read and be read. We have a chance to change or save a life every moment of every day.

Perhaps this will help only to remember that, in the midst of the great cacophony of human souls all around us, in the great mingling of their stories and rivers, we have power. The power of influence.

So whether you are a cheerful talker, or a silent window-starer, remember that no matter how much time you have, you have that much time to make an impression. An impression that lasts longer than scarred hands or expensive glasses or foreign diseases.

We’re all characters. Be a character worth reading about.

Step into a story. Be stepped into. Shape and be shaped. 

And leave footprints. 

Just a thought.

February Syndrome

Winter. The longest eight months of the year. Or at least, that’s what it feels like. Every November, when the clouds roll in, when the trees give up their abundance, I have to admit a sort of happiness, a giddy joy crawls into my gut. Fall, in all its splendor, has ascended old summer’s throne. When the frost creeps in over the leaves, when it forces me to wear shoes, for a while there is excitement. There are hoodies in this part of the year; heavy wool sweaters and jeans, oranges and greens and reds. Pumpkin-spice candles that smell nothing like pumpkins; campfire smoke that sinks into your skin.

It means that you’ll be firing up the ovens for baking, and getting rid of the ice-cubes in your coffees. You’ll need it black, strong and warm to make it through the storm of silence that’s coming. It means cover up the grill, but we’ll make homemade pizza; it means split the wood, and, eventually sit back and watch the snow fall. It’s a signal to the summer lovers to bundle up, crawl into their holes with the other groundhogs and pop themselves full of vitamins. Put on your helmet and pads, like the guys making money on TV. Time to hibernate. 

Everyone loves fall. Most people even like Winter.

But nobody likes February*.

February is a mile-marker, congratulating you on making it this far. But at the same time, it’s like a warning. You’ll never make it. “News Flash,” says February. “Winter never ends.” Never? Some days it seems like February is right. Maybe the sun won’t come back. Maybe the clouds will be in charge from now on.

Maybe I’ll just have to get used to spruce trees being sharp. Maybe I’ll have to get used to icy mornings and slushy afternoons, mud and rain, and above all else the grey.

Grey. Lifeless grey, everywhere you look. Soul-sappingly Monotonous. It’s the monotony that does it, that pushes me over the edge. No green. No color worth mentioning at all. Cold, harsh, February; without life, without inspiration. It gets into you like a disease and leeches out the nutrients that should be on a one-way track to your soul. (Side affects of February may include: Grumpiness. Long stretches of silence. Increase of coffee intake without feeling any happier. Increased boredom, agitation, overall lack of inspiration and creativity, overwhelming depression. In short, February is a parasite that chomps into your brain-marrow.)

Cabin-Fever. Stir-Crazy. Call it what you want. I call it February Syndrome. 

It’s like wading through wet cement. Maybe you’ll get out, maybe you wont. It depends on whether you listen to the patches of blue, or the ocean of charcoal.

But here’s the good news.

(Spoiler warning)

February. Ends.

In fact, you’re most of the way through it already. Like a twilight that lasts for twenty-eight days, there’s sunlight on the other side. There’s color, somewhere out there. There’s a spring full of birds and a summer full of green grass. There is ice to put in your coffee, once you get there. A warm breeze to pat you on the back. Dehydration and sunburn; sweat and peeling skin. Lawn-mowing. 
Paradise.

For all the other groundhogs who may be reading this: you’re almost there. Just a little further. Tie up your scarves tight, if you want, or wear your flip-flops in protest, but either-way, February will end. It’s a tunnel, and the track runs through it, and it’s the only way to the other side of the mountains. The train keeps moving.

Until we reach the summer station, time to kick back. Turn up the Andrew Belle (always the answer) and pretend it’s not sad. Make another Americano, because you’ve earned it. Maybe a Latte, because you’re extra special. Tea, maybe, because you’ve already had three coffees today and its only noon. Maybe read a book. Maybe try to write one (good luck with that.)

Until February Ends,

-Jeff

*Proof: When the months were divided, February was decidedly the least favorite of all involved, and was therefore made to be the shortest. Which is also why leap years are worse than broken bones.
(Overall outcry has forced me to edit a previous statement: Apparently not everyone hates February. No, I don't know why.)