Uploaded October 2016 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Deep in the jungle, the rotting facade of my reality crumbles away...
Text:
I opened a door. The unattached frame stood deep in the midst of the jungle. I could see the midday sun filtering through the canopy ahead as I stepped past the threshold. There, ten towering figures, focused an unshakeable stare down upon me. Their fronds like giant claws clattered at their sides in the wind. A thought pulsed in my skull. A word suddenly stamped into my consciousness.
"Dig."
So I tore at the fallen leaves and moist earth with my bare hands when a thousand spindly shapes emerged and rushed up my arms. They stalked over my pores. The numberless predators: Ravenous. Their mandibles cut into my flesh and from the pinholes in my skin waves of stinging pain washed over me. I felt the figures speak:
"This is knowing."
And the insects dispersed, sought shelter under my clothes, burrowed into my skin--sated and contended by my blood.
I dug deeper. And a shaft of light shot up from the cavern I was making. It was a dirty, ugly light. Then it slowed. To show me the miserable particles it had goaded into taking its interminable journey. A hunching, huddled exodus coursing from a roiling pit I was too blinded to see. Then an acrid sulfur burned at my nostrils. The noxious scent screaming in my lungs. In my breathless frenzy, I clawed at my throat. My sight dimmed. Helpless, I was forced to fixate on the miserable thoughts I had goaded into interminable journey. A hunching, huddled exodus. The stream coursing from a tortured existence I couldn't escape.
My throat trickled a spot of blood into the soil. A tiny, black gem, infinitely faceted, at each point reflecting a neverending emptiness. They spoke again.
"This is hope."
I grew thirsty. Desperately thirsty. I dug and dug and dug. My cavern growing and widening, my fingertips bleeding, until I reached an underground pool. A warm mist drifted from the placid water. And there was a bloated white face just below the surface: bulging eyes in an unnerving expression of surprise. Staring from behind a clouded film of decay. The mouth was agape. The jaw falling away. The face looked so familiar, the line of the jaw so much like one I'd known. The nagging recognition gave way to my thirst and I put my lips to the pool, nearly locking in a kiss with the corpse. I greedily gulped in the last breaths of the drowned and as I agitated the water, the rotting jaw wrenched its way loose, sinking silently into the abyss until it was invisible. The figures above bent and swayed in a gathering wind.
"This is sacrifice," they said.
I gagged. The dank flavor of the stagnant water overtook me. I felt revolted and heaved saliva into the soil. The nape of my neck sticky with a syrupy sweat. I leapt to my feet with the intention to run back through the door, but it was gone. I was in the house I grew up in, and I could see my mother. She was in the kitchen, arguing with a man I didn't know. In her anger she began to look alien to me. She was gesturing wildly, her voice rising to a fervent pitch. She picked up a cup and dashed it against the tile floor. The clattering and splashing as it broke apart was so dim, so feeble against her shouting. It was then the man shoved his hand deep inside his own pocket and pulled out a small box. He opened the lid and showed my mother what was inside. She gasped. And covered her mouth. And went still. The color leaked out of her face and the deathly pallor made her look suddenly familiar again.
"This is regret."
I felt the words creep toward every corner of my body as if a thick venom were coursing through my veins. And then the man, the kitchen, and my mother's pallid visage faded away. But not before I caught sight of my mother's pale, white jaw.
I was alone in the jungle. I lay a long time next to a shallow hole and a mound of dirt. My throat ached and my temples pounded. A group of palms bowed subtly under the pressure of a hot wind. The last rays of a falling sun caught the top of a grass-thatched roof far off in the distance. It was camp. Then a millipede scuttled over the dense leaves and slipped down into the basin of a cup where it flailed and floundered in an oily sludge that had collected there. I faintly recalled a bitter flavor.
I wondered about knowing, and hope, and sacrifice, and regret.
You won't find god. Or enlightenment. Or an answer to a single bloody question in your life. The only thing you find is what you've been trying to hide from yourself. So I uncovered what's been gnawing at the fraying edges of my consciousness. And I didn't much like what I saw.
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Deep in the jungle, the rotting facade of my reality crumbles away...
Text:
I opened a door. The unattached frame stood deep in the midst of the jungle. I could see the midday sun filtering through the canopy ahead as I stepped past the threshold. There, ten towering figures, focused an unshakeable stare down upon me. Their fronds like giant claws clattered at their sides in the wind. A thought pulsed in my skull. A word suddenly stamped into my consciousness.
"Dig."
So I tore at the fallen leaves and moist earth with my bare hands when a thousand spindly shapes emerged and rushed up my arms. They stalked over my pores. The numberless predators: Ravenous. Their mandibles cut into my flesh and from the pinholes in my skin waves of stinging pain washed over me. I felt the figures speak:
"This is knowing."
And the insects dispersed, sought shelter under my clothes, burrowed into my skin--sated and contended by my blood.
I dug deeper. And a shaft of light shot up from the cavern I was making. It was a dirty, ugly light. Then it slowed. To show me the miserable particles it had goaded into taking its interminable journey. A hunching, huddled exodus coursing from a roiling pit I was too blinded to see. Then an acrid sulfur burned at my nostrils. The noxious scent screaming in my lungs. In my breathless frenzy, I clawed at my throat. My sight dimmed. Helpless, I was forced to fixate on the miserable thoughts I had goaded into interminable journey. A hunching, huddled exodus. The stream coursing from a tortured existence I couldn't escape.
My throat trickled a spot of blood into the soil. A tiny, black gem, infinitely faceted, at each point reflecting a neverending emptiness. They spoke again.
"This is hope."
I grew thirsty. Desperately thirsty. I dug and dug and dug. My cavern growing and widening, my fingertips bleeding, until I reached an underground pool. A warm mist drifted from the placid water. And there was a bloated white face just below the surface: bulging eyes in an unnerving expression of surprise. Staring from behind a clouded film of decay. The mouth was agape. The jaw falling away. The face looked so familiar, the line of the jaw so much like one I'd known. The nagging recognition gave way to my thirst and I put my lips to the pool, nearly locking in a kiss with the corpse. I greedily gulped in the last breaths of the drowned and as I agitated the water, the rotting jaw wrenched its way loose, sinking silently into the abyss until it was invisible. The figures above bent and swayed in a gathering wind.
"This is sacrifice," they said.
I gagged. The dank flavor of the stagnant water overtook me. I felt revolted and heaved saliva into the soil. The nape of my neck sticky with a syrupy sweat. I leapt to my feet with the intention to run back through the door, but it was gone. I was in the house I grew up in, and I could see my mother. She was in the kitchen, arguing with a man I didn't know. In her anger she began to look alien to me. She was gesturing wildly, her voice rising to a fervent pitch. She picked up a cup and dashed it against the tile floor. The clattering and splashing as it broke apart was so dim, so feeble against her shouting. It was then the man shoved his hand deep inside his own pocket and pulled out a small box. He opened the lid and showed my mother what was inside. She gasped. And covered her mouth. And went still. The color leaked out of her face and the deathly pallor made her look suddenly familiar again.
"This is regret."
I felt the words creep toward every corner of my body as if a thick venom were coursing through my veins. And then the man, the kitchen, and my mother's pallid visage faded away. But not before I caught sight of my mother's pale, white jaw.
I was alone in the jungle. I lay a long time next to a shallow hole and a mound of dirt. My throat ached and my temples pounded. A group of palms bowed subtly under the pressure of a hot wind. The last rays of a falling sun caught the top of a grass-thatched roof far off in the distance. It was camp. Then a millipede scuttled over the dense leaves and slipped down into the basin of a cup where it flailed and floundered in an oily sludge that had collected there. I faintly recalled a bitter flavor.
I wondered about knowing, and hope, and sacrifice, and regret.
You won't find god. Or enlightenment. Or an answer to a single bloody question in your life. The only thing you find is what you've been trying to hide from yourself. So I uncovered what's been gnawing at the fraying edges of my consciousness. And I didn't much like what I saw.
facebook.com/sahergalt
patreon.com/sahergalt
twitter.com/galtmusic
