I haven't written anything in a very long time, but I want to start getting back into writing again even if I don't really have any regular posting schedule. At any rate, here is a story I wrote after asking my family for a prompt. My inspiration comes from both my cousin's suggestion (the mistyped lyrics to "All Star") and my new favorite movie
Everything Everywhere All at Once. Enjoy
Somebody once told me the years are going to roll me. From my experience, that has been a crock of shit. It has been over ten years that I have been a rock atop this mountainside, and no amount of weathering or rain or time has moved me in the slightest. Ten years. Has it been ten years? Time has no real meaning for a boulder. I’ve seen at least 6 clutches of swallow eggs in the nest on the crag above me hatch and fly away. I think those swallows only lay once a year but who knows. Are they even swallows?
I honestly think the lack of internet access or books has been the most difficult thing about this kind of un-life I have been un-living. You would think with all the beauty of nature that I could learn something but observation really only gets you so far from a scientific perspective. I can perform no experiments, no thorough research. All I can do is observe, all I can do is to be. What kind of rock even am I? I will be honest and say I never paid very much attention to geology. I don’t really know that a category of form really matters all that much in the end. I will say that my 360 degree field of awareness is rather intriguing. I observe the mountain and the valley and the sky and the dirt upon which I rest all at once and all the time. I have observed things grow and die. I can sense things crawling, sitting, or defecating upon my person, but feel neither cold nor heat, pain nor fear, and I am, as I have said, immovable.
I read a book once about a situation like mine. A donkey fleeing a lion foolishly wishes himself to be a rock while holding a magic pebble. The pebble rolled away and it was only when his parents placed the rock on his back that he could wish himself back again. If only things were so simple for me. It started as a wish too, of course. Of course it did. It always starts with a wish. You would think with all the movies I’d seen, all the books that I’d read, that I would have known that wishes were dangerous. But I couldn’t have known that it wasn’t enough for me not to wish on the wrong kind of stone, not to make wishes of genies or monkey paws or women in the woods. I needed to be fearful too of those who would make wishes about me.
If you asked him, I’m sure he would say that I stole his heart. “Eventually women will always steal your heart,” he would say. I suppose from his point of view he was entitled to turn me into a rock for all the harm I had done him, then. Nevermind my feelings on the matter, nevermind my point of view, nevermind my intent. Nevermind that NOBODY DESERVES TO BE A FUCKING ROCK, MICHAEL. Men are dangerous, my mother always said, powerful men more so than others. I knew he was a powerful man, but I didn’t know he was capital P powerful until it was really too late to do anything about it. In a world of science and facts and books, nobody ever suspects things like magic can be real. I mean, I had always hoped it was. Don’t you always have a little hope that things are a little magical, a little more than the mundane? Whether it was aliens or fairies or wizards or elves, since I was a girl I imagined that something MORE existed in this world and that something beautiful and powerful and meaningful would happen to me. Perhaps I would be tasked with a great quest in a kingdom in a wardrobe or told that I was the heir to a magical treasure. Being turned into a god damned rock was not on the list, but really beggars can’t be choosers I suppose.
For want of anything better to do, I have spent the past few years pondering the nature of magic and what it means for its existence in the world. Surely there are others who have some measure of magical ability besides my ex boyfriend. Surely there must be some kind of authority or oversight committee or council of elders or whatnot who would frown upon people being turned into rocks willy nilly, you would imagine. There were times I dreamed a passing owl was really another wizard in animal form and he would recognize me as not being an actual rock. He would turn me back to the human woman I was, whisk me away to a castle where we would reveal all of Michael’s crimes to some very aged old man, maybe Merlin himself, and he would be stripped of his power and I dunno… also turned into a rock. Fuck it, I’m not very creative. Some days I still hold out hope that such a thing is possible. Other days I feel that this rock life, this un-life, is all I will know until whatever self still exists has devolved into madness. If other magic people do exist in this world, as I am certain they must, then they are obviously as incompetent as any other people in power.
It’s funny but in the beginning I didn’t even mind so much. I know that’s a strange thing to say. But the truth is, in the very very beginning there was of course the terrible fear and the anger and the confusion, but that later led to a kind of peace and happiness. I have no need to eat so I don’t need to buy or hunt for and cook food. I have no need for shelter so I don’t have an apartment to constantly clean. Nobody perceives me so I don’t need to make my body look a certain way. I don’t have a job I need to go to every day, so my time and my mind are entirely my own. The lack of responsibility, lack of societal expectations and rules was an intoxicating freedom for the first several years. For a long while I thought I might be able to learn astral projection or be able to attain nirvana through meditation, but, alas, I suppose I am no Buddha.
Still, I find myself in meditation most of the day, thinking on the nature of existence in a way maybe no one in history has before. Perhaps if I ever return to my human self I will be able to impart a kind of wisdom that people will find profound, but I dunno. If there is a god I haven’t found him. If magic is for something more than causing harm I haven’t seen it. If being this rock means something more than just the outcome of a petty man’s rage then I haven’t discovered it. The self is a collection of thoughts. I think, therefore I am. Real original stuff. I would write a book if Descartes didn’t get there first. Who knows, maybe he was also a rock.
Long ago, a lone hiker stopped and rested on me. This isn’t a particularly well trod trail I am on so visitors are few and far between. He was the first person I had seen in many years and I surprised myself with how excited I was to see him. This was at the time of my confinement when I was certain the key to happiness was to eliminate all attachment and believe my rock self to be superior to the human I had once been. It was a coping mechanism, I later realized. A way to deny my own profound sadness. The real truth was that I missed being a human and being around other humans desperately. I luxuriated in the sensation of the man’s backside on my rocky surface with a kind of ecstasy that you could have called sexual if you could attribute such feelings to a rock. The man, thinking himself alone, began to mutter to himself about this and that as he sat and ate a bag of trail mix.
“This fucking trail is too damn steep, he began.
He was an older man, which surprised me. Mid 70s with a wiry muscular frame.
“I can’t be doing trails like this anymore, I don’t think,” he said, “The years have caught up with me. I could have fallen back there and then what?”
For a while he just sat there on me looking off into the distance. But as he rose he gave me a little pat,
“Years are gonna roll you too someday I’d wager.”
I always wonder if maybe he knew I wasn’t just a rock. I don’t think I’ll ever know.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if I did roll down this mountainside. If the rock self breaks into pieces would I have awareness of all the parts? Could I exist in different places? There is this forest I heard about called Pando that is all the same tree. Like it's just clones of all the same tree, a whole forest of one. Were my rock body to be broken into a million different pieces would whatever exists of my soul be in all of them? Or would I die? Can I die? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that. Would I just be dust in the end, then? Would my consciousness become the whole world? If there is a heaven, would I go to the heaven for people? Would I have gone to heaven anyway? My parents were in their 70s when I left them. Maybe Mother died today. Or was it yesterday? Maybe if I die I will see them again. Or maybe they will never know their only daughter is lost to them forever, dust on the wind.
I think if I really tried I could do it. Roll, I mean. It isn’t as though I’ve never tried to move before, but I wonder if I really exerted all my influence on one task, if I really focused all of my energy, I could will myself to roll. Maybe what was holding me back before was the fear of rolling, the fear of not knowing, the fear of death. I don’t… I don’t know if I fear death anymore. I don’t know that I exactly welcome it, either. I don’t know if you could properly call me suicidal, but 10 years as a rock has made me… apathetic I guess. Well, no, that isn’t exactly true. It’s made me curious, or at the very least it hasn’t taken away my curiosity. Maybe I’ve learned as much as I can in this form and whatever comes next whether it is millions of pebble selves or death or even just getting stuck slightly lower on the mountain it would be something NEW. I think I’m ready for it. There are no wizards coming to save me, there are no magic spells. There is just me and this mountain and my own force of will. I will. I will? I WILL. Ok… I will. I will. I will I will I will. I…
I am.. I am? I am?? Ok I am. I am actually rolling. What the fuck? Ok. This is a very odd sensation. Obviously I have no inner ear so I have no experience of dizziness from that perspective but the sensation of moving around and around is incredibly disorienting. I can kind of perceive the bottom. It’s getting closer. Fuck maybe this wasn’t a good idea. I don’t know. God dammit, I don't know anything. Maybe this was not the smartest plan. No. Stop it. Stop second guessing. I willed this. I did this. I have my own magic and this is my magic I made myself move. I am in control of my own destiny. I know myself. I am me. I am a rock and I am me and I am not a rock and I am not me but I know myself. Whatever happens I did this. Whatever happens I took control of my own future. I’m getting closer to the bottom. Fuck fuck fuck. Ok. Here we go. Here we go. This is it…
After several moments of darkness I realize that… I could still realize. That wherever I am, whatever I am, I still have some perception of self which is very good. Ok. Self. Thinking. Descartes. Awesome. It is dark. Why is it dark? I started rolling during the day, was it night time? No, it is still hot outside. It couldn't be night. Wait. Hot. It was hot. I was feeling that it was hot. I can sense the temperature of the air. The air. The air I was breathing? I am breathing. I take a deep breath. I have breath. I have lungs. What else do I have? The darkness. Hesitantly I open my eyes. My eyes. My eyes, my eyes, my eyes. And I see. I can see. And with my eyes I can see my hands and my legs and my self. MY SELF. Me. I’m me. I’m fucking me??? I’m… I start to cry. I cry and I cry and I cry. Then I run under a tree because its fucking hot and I realize belatedly that I’m naked. But I’m me. I have life. And I have purpose. And he will pay.
