The Trip

The Trip

"Kid, what is that?" I ask and I ask it almost too loudly for the room that we were sitting in. Several people look up from their business to see us sitting with cigarettes in our mouths and breathing out life. They shrug, Mr. Danger shrugs back and they resume with their obsessed movements.  

"It's here." He's speaking of the Thee. The thing we all seem to see at one point or another. A thing of cataclysmic perfection, and it imperfectly was there dancing before my eyes like a ghost of the past. It wasn't even christmas yet. I nod and act knowingly even though it scares me. I was always afraid of ghosts. 

The others look back to their occupations and I hardly notice, probably due to the dancing ghost, hanging before us. I exhale another plume and giggle at the in-comprehensive feelings of logic and emotion that whipped before my eyes. 

 

"When did it get here?" I ask, probably another irreverent question. 

"Don't worry about it, it's here now, besides, who can know?" He responded with the same calm voice and vernacular. 

"Well. Someone has to know, don't they?" I looked around the room as I almost whispered the questions. I didn't want to disturb the others, who were obviously concerned and focused on their various tasks. Some were moving objects back and fourth and others were merely just smiling while in their own respective zones. Was this what life was like? Were we, ourselves bound by meaningless tasks that held no fruit of labor? I thought not, but then again, it was my own thinking that observed this. Maybe I was wrong.

"Scott, it's not about knowing, is it? You already realize that. What is, is what is. That's all we can ever know. Look at what they are all doing? They didn't even notice it when it showed up. " Kid Danger whispered just as quietly. 

 

Another exhale, I watched the smoke twirl around and observed not only the wisp dancing, but I also noticed flickers of lights joining in. The others in the room, like the Daring Girl, who almost seemed to perpetually smile as she flipped a baton up and caught it over and over. She sat next to the cold firepit and seemed the opposite of oblivious to everything around her. She said not at word, but she didn't even seem to look at the baton at all. She studied the others, but paid no mind to me or Danger sitting next to me. We were as if we didn't exist to the others sitting around the lawn and rocks, all separate and all united in their disregard. 

 

Lines split away from the focus of Danger and I's vision. Colors swirled like glow-in-the-dark paint as they slashed the mundane air with more color than imaginable. 

  "There isn't a word."

 

"To describe this." Danger finished my sentence.

 

"Where do we go from here?" I asked again.

 

"Where else." He said, in a statement, rather than a question.

 

"Empathica." I ushered, and at that very word the others all froze. The colors seeped away into the air, and it paused it danced. We both stood and moved serenely toward the parking lot.