A Spyglass Rusted Shut

8/7/2019 A Spyglass Rusted Shut

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"A Spyglass Rusted Shut

Prologue : Of Comets & Dreams

To peer into binoculars and see a comet is to look ahead of your life and see

a dream.

Though we may hope to do so, we can never fulfill it. To fly towards the

comet and hug it would be to halt it's fall, turning it instead into an asteroid.

Similarly so, to reach your dream and obtain it would be to negate it, turning

it instead into a reality. In reality, touching a comet would burn your flesh

into soot and bones into coal. Reaching your dream would destroy yourself

just as well. You would have stopped being the version before, the 'you' that

was in wait for a moment now passed. Reverting the comet is also a self-

destruction, as you and the comet are the same. Like a meteorite streaks

across the expanse of night, you flicker across the earth for an ephemeral

instant, and both of you welcome back a clear evening sky in the wake.We look through the lens, into the heavens, and see ourselves on the

opposite shoreline. What's more, we wish on the glimmer we see. We wait

for it to be granted, and in wait comes moving forward. We are perpetual

motion machines, for motivation is in endless supply when that which drives

you forward is just out of reach. The design is even more efficient if that goal

is, for all intents and purposes, unattainable. However, no one can tell us

that it can't come, for the chance can only die with us, and in perishing we

lose any ability to know the chance has gone. Through this we are granted

the one thing we can receive in this life : eternal hope, or at the very least,

opportunity that is never dashed.

With age many lose sight of the sky. It is not because their eyesight fades,

for it does not happen when their eyes break, but when their binoculars do.

Their sense of vision is very much the same, but without the binoculars it

cannot reach outside that which is physically possible. So they settle their

outlook only on the world around them. For most it is a malfunction they

would've rather avoided. Regardless, by unsure will or by strong outside

force, everyone walks away from their broken pair, and the spyglass rusts in

their leave. For some there is a lasting scar. They look into mirrors and see

indents around the eyelids, and recall the device which would let them see a

comet which sparked above a hill.

To remove the comet is to remove something from inside of you. The dream

existed in thought, even though it never would or could take physical form. It

was a possibility we feel is robbed from us, yet it was only formed by means

of past, present, and future non-existence. Those who move on with despair

continue onwards feeling rather hollow. They live in false notions of

emptiness, until death reveals a true emptiness; a state without even the


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self. To stave this known eventuality they search, mostly in vain, for

remnants. Sometimes they discover shards of glass which shattered forth

from the rims. They pick up a fragment from the hilltop grass and peer

through it, and like before, the world seems to be a different one.

It lasts for a shorter while this time, as their view has permanentlybroadened. They see they are merely holding a tiny piece of broken glass,

and with this comes a larger perspective : the source that had filled them

with so much wonder was nothing but an object weighing no more than 2

stones. So they throw the spec over their shoulder and march back down the

hill, and in passing realize it was merely a gopher hole. They abandon the

version of them that exists up above, not knowing that they had been

forsaken long before by that same party. It was the comet that passed

quickly, and it was only the observer who lingered. Once they grow older

they see more comets, perhaps even storms of them, but they see them by

chance, and they're small enough to be suspect.

After all, they might only be bits of dust caught under the eyes. --Adam

Loofburrow"

Charles lifted his hands from the keyboard and let his eyes cease their flow

over the words on the screen. He idly sipped his coffee, fiddled with his coat

pockets and, after a thorough mussing about, retrieved a pen. With a quick

dash he marked out a sentence on the small note beside his laptop, which

read :

"Prologue : Of Comets & Dreams"

Up above in bold was a title, below it a table of contents.

"A Spyglass Rusted Shut

Prologue : Of Comets & Dreams

Chapter 1: ???

Chapter 2: A Quell

Chapter 3: A Duration

Chapter 4: A stagnation

Chapter 5: The Climb"

He returned to the monitor and tapped the keys beneath. When his fingers

weren't in motion, his eyes and lips were; gliding over the words from left to

right, speaking in whispers only his own ears could understand. If he came to

a questionable passage he'd read it aloud, with enough volume so that others


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could hear if they were so inclined. Depending on whether he'd delivered it

with confidence or embarrassed shame, he'd continue on or strike all of his

progress from existence. If a line were out of place, the lines around it were

also at fault. When this erasure occurred, as it often did, he would run a

hand through his greying hair and purvey the scenery.

As he looked to the Caff menu in the distance, he noticed a spectator in the

foreground. A small child had been twisted to an almost impossible degree

to watch him over the back of his high-chair. The boy's head was tilted to the

side, his eyes were dazed and seemed to wash over everything warmly, and

his mouth formed into an orb which coo'd. Charles waved at him, which

caused the boy to stir and beckon to his mother. Once she looked up from

her newsprint and caught wind, she pulled her child around by the shoulder

and smiled at Charles. It was humble, yet prideful, that to him sent a specific

message; "My child need not be forgiven, for he is special. His very presence

is a wonder, a gift I have shared."

He smiled politely back at her and returned to his affairs. At first he seemed

to shrink before the blank word document, but then his eyes began to drift

beyond it's looming monolith shape, through it, into a world of thought. He

slid his glasses back up the ridge of his nose, reached for the pen, and used it

to write on the back of the chapter outline, "Inspiration for some other story,

some other time : A small boy in a public setting looks across the room to a

man he may some day resemble. This man is writing about all the

foolishness the boy has yet to comprehend, that all those around him know

full too well,"

He suddenly became aware of the people beside himself, and made an effortto absorb the atmosphere, to breathe it in deeply like the ether. It was one of

business, with a hint of rush, one too frantic for need, be it his or theirs. He

flitted the pen tip a few strokes more, "Or maybe they do not understand.

They each put a sheet over a cage; The sheet is a smile, the cage is their

heart, and inside it is what they refer to as their sorrow. Yet their cage is

empty, because unlike the others, sorrow takes no physical shape. The only

thing that presides is air, and it is never trapped, instead it pushes in and out

of the grating. By putting a sheet over the cage they simply create a barrier,

one that will flutter and let them know when a wind does blow."

A waitress laid a plate in front of him. A welcoming scent and heat rolled

down it's mounds, pulling him away at once. Although not professional by

any means, the food looked appetizing, and had been plopped onto the tray

with hospitable charm. As he looked up the employee tossed him a

customary smile, which proudly displayed every tooth along her gum line.

Charles hesitated, then flashed a grin of his own. As she pointed to the back

of his computer, she spoke, "Been writing all day again, I'm sure you're


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hungry." He gave no reply but an awkward chuckle and a tip, which satisfied

his only obligation and sent her away.

Charles finished his meal and set his tray under the window, which now let in

the orange glow of a sunset. The notes he'd returned to were now painted

with warm hues, and his pen glinted as he moved it, underlining the word"flutter" with much care. The other words aroused less affection in him. He

stared at them harshly, incredulously, sometimes even with the look of

chancing upon another's vague scribbles. He flipped the paper over and

made one correction; the question marks beside Chapter 1 had been

scrawled out, and a new title had been set above. He replaced the pen in his

pocket, then with very little regard tossed the paper to the wayside. It landed

on his empty plate, the information therein condemned with the same

relevancy as that of porcelain stained with residual grease.

Slowly he laid his hands back onto the keys. For some time he did nothing

more than look upon them meditatively, until out of the blue they began totype,

"Chapter 1 : A Flutter"

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A Spyglass Rusted Shut