I Am Become a Garden: Destroyer of Worlds

I wake up in a garden of time

The horizon falls into itself

Reclusive enough to fold into a shell.

And Collapse.

The snail that carries the garden of time isn’t much for conversation, He, of ageless expression and judgement buried deep within his eyes. To carry the weight of it all, he asks for nothing more than the occasional pat on the back. Shelly he should be known as, and what exactly he stands on top of isn’t really ever known.

Shelly is a good enough looking fellow, for a snail I suppose, no chin to speak of, two very gently hanging eyes. Which on a younger snail might be as focused as spears. He looks down most of the time, but looks at what was most mysterious of all. I looked for ages and all I see is maroon darkness, endless darkness, perhaps the eyes of a tired old snail reveal more than my own will ever reveal.

The fruits of the garden of time are well… numerous… Not quite sure how to put into words, never had my eyes seen such relentless amounts of food. Enough to feed a void till the end of the cosmos. At every corner that you might see there will be a source of food, stacked and placed almost by design. The most bright and plump produce laid at the most convenient height for grabbing. Rows and rows of peaches, apples, oranges, fruits I couldn’t even dream of let alone name. Endless pyramids of produce.

“Where should I go first?” I asked Shelly. He looks up for a moment, movement which melts all time away, wrinkles from his neck reformed for the first time in possibly eons,

“To face gardens horizontally is to fall into one branch, it may go on and on and on, the branch sufficient to follow until the stars long face away, it is only a matter of an end insight that betrays you.” Shelly said with the voice of ocean winds.

“That means nothing to me Shelly, but thanks.” I began to walk into the garden. My eyes follow a stream down and around and back around. To follow a linear plane of this stream is an impossible task.

The streams in the garden are endless and infinite, a super positioned tangled string of rushing white waters. To look at it for an instant is to stare into an endless loop, an ever continuous stream of flowing water going in every direction at once. For a few seconds it appears to be full, to be complete and takes the appearance of a bubble of pure light, like a droplet of cold water skipping along the surface of a hot skillet. For an instant becoming a perfect sphere of water, almost plasma, before collapsing back into the chaos of its perpetual motion.

No grass grows in the garden of time, something about the soil must only allow a microscopic infinity level of moss, it expands to the horizon and back. A tree line dense enough it could be mistaken for a wave. They danced, the trees in the garden of time are dominant and boundless, and so they dance.

The Dancing Forest is the only place within the garden of time where the stars are visible, the sky above other parts, engulfed within the darkness of itself. The constant blast of ever occurring light from every direction causes the sky to be blacked out most of the time. In the Dancing Forest the trees move continuously and rhythmically, the constant light emitted from their opal tree bark is unfocused and shot into a frenzy by the movement of the trees. Making the entire forest rather difficult to travel. Like walking deeper and deeper into a kaleidoscope, praying for the middle to exist.

Bewildering as this may seem at first, looking up, straight up and keeping one’s eyes focused at the most north point in the sky above the forest. The bubble of celestial light, a corona of existence above the ground of which has always, and will always prove a stranger to me. The sky is at least visible to my eyes, unlike the void below, so the sky above can be used for navigation in the garden of time.

This of course presents the task of decoding the subtleties of the evernight sky above the garden. Sharpen porcelain, perhaps the dancing of trees lights below, or a rave of star light beyond the visible, I cannot imagine the process for such a sky. Clouds of light clashing, waving, rushing across the sky. Celestial columns of extravagant green, electric blue, and sometimes the shyest hint of purple. Skating, crashing, collapsing, never disappearing; pure, free, light.

Follow the skylights north, moving along the ground horizontally. Deeper into the garden, the trees, growing closer and closer, almost extinguish the sky, burring with translucent leaves, refracting even the brightest of celestial light for eternity. Absorbing every photon of light, perverting it past its event horizon, stretching and collapsing the undying divine light. Energy is taken, and released. Visible Colors do not matter, the system bleaches all, to the purest of whites, or remain in this prism. Eventually the equilibrium brakes, as you walk deeper into the forest. All light, infinite consumption, met by an infinite void of reflection, The place where light above, the light of the forest, and the light below, all overwhelm each other, the only place in the garden where darkness can exist. The overwhelming light creating a shadow in the blind spot of the garden, I call this place, Charybdis. This prism of a void, whirlpool of light, I’ve lost more time than I thought could exist in here.

The emptiness of this place, quiet, absolute nothingness. It’s peaceful in a way, no histories or memories survive here, the mind finally at peace, or quiet at least, for a moment, at last. There is no discernible way out of here that I've found, not a reliable one anyways. Each time the abyss simply rises above the clouds, and one can simply walk out. Resting here is not advised, for even eons melt into the whirlpool of Charybdis.

Lighting a torch is futile, anywhere in the garden but especially here, the flames, from any torch creating an aurora of dead light, no visible light emits from the energy used, but the fire burns on.

Alone here, surrounded by the collapse of time itself, eternities crawl by, an instant stretched endlessly. Tranquil, the stillness of this place is comforting. A freedom available only in a muted patch of reality. Timelessness and stillness, perhaps a nap, or a life.

“How Long Have I Been Here?”

“Who said that?” I asked into the endless darkness. My solitude is broken by an empty aimless voice.

“When did i get here?” The emptiness asked in my voice.

Being here, in this void, alone with my thoughts for eternity wouldn't be unpleasant, but to speak to myself… too dreadful to bear. So the light at the end of the tunnel presents itself to me. And the shallowness of this place becomes as clear as it itself is opaque, A two dimensional fault within the infinite state of the rest of the garden.

Engulfed back into the lights, pulled by the drag of gravitational fog. At the other side of Charybdis the light of the Dancing Forest is out of focus. The sky, and celestial bodies fade beyond reality again.

Light pirouettes continuously, melting it back into a plasma state. Endless swirls of liquid light spiraling in perfect unison. White waters of celestial light refracted into white light, at first it seems like a perfect circle but, nearest to The Fault line the light breaks away and falls into the emptiness behind me. A light falls, the light growing bluer the closer to The Fault it gets, rapids colliding and collapsing into en-

“I can't remember my first memory” the void asks…

Moving on.

I continue to walk away from The Fault, and eventually the tree line ends. The further and further out of the forest you get, the “older” the trees become.

I watched an ancient tree age millennia by the instant, it’s once vibrant solid bark begins to crack and grey. It is at once newly born and aged to dust. Looking straight at it you can watch the tree visibly age, but from an angle the spectrum of its life is revealed. All stages of the tree's path, the rings of its insides projected into existence by light, void of time. A line up of bygone years. Walking towards it breaks the sequence and then closer the trees grows, the thinner and more slouch the tree becomes.

I watch as it dies a silent death, the timeless tree falls down without protest. Standing still, until gravity and the crawling sands are too much to bear. Falling at the edge of the dancing forest, without making a sound.

“When did I start to forget” I can still hear The Fault, Light years between us collapsed by sound.

“Everything”

“To forget everything”

I walk past the fallen tree, and walk deeper into the garden, the road is long. As one walk down the path, the physical borders of the electrophysical and electromagnetic world begin to dissipate. My skin, the leaves behind me, the path below, the trees in the distance, all begin to melt together, the lines dancing against each other, pulsating...breathing.

I watch as my fingers turn to oceans, melted away by the seas. My wrist becomes the mountains on the horizon. My hair, my cyan hair, waterfalls that fall into the night sky, rapids creating deltas of stars upon my head. I could feel the bitter cold of the universe, and the endless heat of the sun above and inside my head.

I find myself on the bridge to nowhere, it ends suddenly. I only hope I don’t melt into the shadows.

As I fall.

I wake up in the garden of time

The horizon falls into itself.