☃️merry chrimist☃️ on Nostr: I saw a flower in my dreams and then I saw it on my desk. It's a small yellow one, ...
I saw a flower in my dreams and then I saw it on my desk. It's a small yellow one, with beautiful round petals, half-furled as if in premature bloom.
The next day, a few petals had folded out and inside there was a penny, shiny and factory-new. The date read 1947. I peeled back another petal. There was another penny.
As I worked, I would absentmindedly pluck off the petals one by one. Days passed and there was a small pile, with the oldest beginning to dry and shrivel, yet the flower itself was, if anything, bigger than before.
A month later and it was the size of an orange. Behind each petal the size of my hand, there was another slightly larger. Beset with curiosity I devoted hours each day to peeling, and when that seemed too slow I took a knife and started slicing. The strange blossom oozed sap where it was cut, but it never shrank. Every so often there came an iridescent wing or half of a wasp's leg.
In half a year, it was as large as my room and I could barely leave. Still I felt compelled to get to the bottom of the thing, the one secret in the world which was known only to me. Bigger and bigger still, with petals the size of doorways - and, thinking this, I knew how to continue. I pried one back and stepped inside.
It wasn't just yellow anymore. At this depth the yellow was washed through with faint traces of all other colors, arrayed in a way that hinted at order but never repeated. Amber-colored liquid flowed through veins the size of my forearm and guided me ever deeper inward, toward a revelation that I desired but could not understand, in the direction of roots which - it finally occurred to me - must be infinitely large.
Days of travel and nothing to eat but the petals themselves and their sweet lifeblood. There was no sun but I could see the colors. Vermillion-black, cyan-black, ultraviolet-black. Somehow I knew by touch that beyond the next petal there teemed giant insects, shrouded in scales like peacock tails, burrowing their own home into this neverending world.
And finally, after an unknown and unmemorable amount of time, the weight of the air was oppressive and the dark was blinding and I knew I had arrived to a point of no return. Below me I felt slick obsidian, glassy membranes layered infinitely, a diaphragm for a voice that had never said a word. Piercing it with one hand, I felt my fingerprints unravel, forming whorls and currents and finally five long threads, delicate and thin, drawing away and away and away, spooling out ...
In a moment of cowardice I drew my arm back from that inky pool and felt the stump where my hand used to be. During my entire journey I had labored under the assumption that it was possible, that everything I needed would be provided to me, because the flower was mine alone. Now I understood. My whole world was nothing but a drop of dew. Everything I ever did, ever was, would be incidental to the somnolent beating of a distant heart, incomprehensibly remote, pumping amber across contradictory realms, inexorable and ever-growing.
So I ran, as fast as I could, away from the glass pool, away from the place where my optimism died, away from the insects and the hidden treasures, away from the crystal halls, lit up by flowerlight, away from the promises which something had whispered in my sleep. My heart thudded with relief as I saw the colors come back - real colors, from real light - and my blood flowed again - real red blood - and the petals became ever smaller. The changes were barely noticeable, then rapid. Footsteps and spilled juice and dead beetles.
And one fine day, I saw the window of my room far in the distance, through a lotus blossom tunnel, crimson with traces of violent pink, a sunburst of negative space that spelled my liberation. Tumbling out, I caught myself on the corner of my desk and swept my old papers to the floor. In the corner of my room is a tiny red flower.
Everything is exactly as I had left it.
Outside my bedroom door, I hear voices I do not recognize, and they are calling out a name that I do not know.
The next day, a few petals had folded out and inside there was a penny, shiny and factory-new. The date read 1947. I peeled back another petal. There was another penny.
As I worked, I would absentmindedly pluck off the petals one by one. Days passed and there was a small pile, with the oldest beginning to dry and shrivel, yet the flower itself was, if anything, bigger than before.
A month later and it was the size of an orange. Behind each petal the size of my hand, there was another slightly larger. Beset with curiosity I devoted hours each day to peeling, and when that seemed too slow I took a knife and started slicing. The strange blossom oozed sap where it was cut, but it never shrank. Every so often there came an iridescent wing or half of a wasp's leg.
In half a year, it was as large as my room and I could barely leave. Still I felt compelled to get to the bottom of the thing, the one secret in the world which was known only to me. Bigger and bigger still, with petals the size of doorways - and, thinking this, I knew how to continue. I pried one back and stepped inside.
It wasn't just yellow anymore. At this depth the yellow was washed through with faint traces of all other colors, arrayed in a way that hinted at order but never repeated. Amber-colored liquid flowed through veins the size of my forearm and guided me ever deeper inward, toward a revelation that I desired but could not understand, in the direction of roots which - it finally occurred to me - must be infinitely large.
Days of travel and nothing to eat but the petals themselves and their sweet lifeblood. There was no sun but I could see the colors. Vermillion-black, cyan-black, ultraviolet-black. Somehow I knew by touch that beyond the next petal there teemed giant insects, shrouded in scales like peacock tails, burrowing their own home into this neverending world.
And finally, after an unknown and unmemorable amount of time, the weight of the air was oppressive and the dark was blinding and I knew I had arrived to a point of no return. Below me I felt slick obsidian, glassy membranes layered infinitely, a diaphragm for a voice that had never said a word. Piercing it with one hand, I felt my fingerprints unravel, forming whorls and currents and finally five long threads, delicate and thin, drawing away and away and away, spooling out ...
In a moment of cowardice I drew my arm back from that inky pool and felt the stump where my hand used to be. During my entire journey I had labored under the assumption that it was possible, that everything I needed would be provided to me, because the flower was mine alone. Now I understood. My whole world was nothing but a drop of dew. Everything I ever did, ever was, would be incidental to the somnolent beating of a distant heart, incomprehensibly remote, pumping amber across contradictory realms, inexorable and ever-growing.
So I ran, as fast as I could, away from the glass pool, away from the place where my optimism died, away from the insects and the hidden treasures, away from the crystal halls, lit up by flowerlight, away from the promises which something had whispered in my sleep. My heart thudded with relief as I saw the colors come back - real colors, from real light - and my blood flowed again - real red blood - and the petals became ever smaller. The changes were barely noticeable, then rapid. Footsteps and spilled juice and dead beetles.
And one fine day, I saw the window of my room far in the distance, through a lotus blossom tunnel, crimson with traces of violent pink, a sunburst of negative space that spelled my liberation. Tumbling out, I caught myself on the corner of my desk and swept my old papers to the floor. In the corner of my room is a tiny red flower.
Everything is exactly as I had left it.
Outside my bedroom door, I hear voices I do not recognize, and they are calling out a name that I do not know.