Screens

From Sanity Slipping

I finally saw it. Not that I had been actively searching for it at that particular moment. I had always known, though. Somewhere, deep inside, it all seemed just a little too perfect, a little too hackneyed.

The intense, perfumy Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. Taking a deep breath, I could always distinguish it the moment I opened the door. I was at a little coffee shop on a busy street in midtown, where I loved to sit unseen in the shadow of a huge colonial window and watch life flow by. The shop was on a busy, non-stop street with cars all rushing in the same direction. 

I would hide there behind that glass screen for hours, spying on the pedestrians who passed, stopped on the sidewalk or came into the shop to order in that highly complex coffee language they use. Some of the people were remarkably regular. 

There was a metallic table with a circular top just outside the window, and around it, four chairs. A sixty-something homeless man in a brown and blue plaid shirt usually claimed the table from about ten in the morning until one. He never bought coffee. He just sat there in front of a cheap, plastic chess set, intimidating those who passed with his superior mental intellect. Sometimes he played a friend or businessman and sometimes he just sat there, talking to himself. 

Across the sidewalk sat another metal table, near the street curb. It was smaller and had only three chairs. At least once a week, I’d take that table, where I’d be closer to the cars that whizzed by, so I could see inside them.

So I’d sit there, studying the scene as the traffic rushed past. Sometimes I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me, but every once in a while, maybe every four hundred cars or so, one would go by without a driver. I was sure of it. It was like a glitch, I guess. But it always happened so quickly and randomly that I had never been able to point it out to anyone. I had never even told anyone about it, until now. There were cars that had no drivers!

You probably think it’s weird or I’m weird or my eyes are bad, but after what I discovered, it was just the tip of a huge iceberg. I had even started taking a disposable camera with me, though so far I hadn’t been able to prove anything, until today.

The coffee shop was narrow, not even twenty feet across. The interior was modern, its tile floor, walls and ceiling colored in warm, earthy, coffee shades of brown. The baked goods counter and beverage station were in the back, allowing for tables and chairs going back fifteen feet in the area to the right of the entrance. It was the kind of place you just never wanted to leave. My regular table was right inside the window that covered the storefront, and I always sat facing the street.

So just this afternoon, a remarkable thing happened. I was sitting at that table, staring out past the sidewalk into the traffic, while waiting for my coffee to cool. The screeching tires called us to attention. And then, to everyone’s surprise, we all saw a car speeding down the street the wrong way! All of us stood there, gasping in disbelief, our eyes running ahead of the vehicle to predict the inevitable collision, but it didn’t happen. And even more disappointing for me, when the tan Chrysler veered over to the far curb and stopped, I realized the car had a driver.

And yet the incident was hardly remarkable compared to what I saw next. In all the confusion surrounding the misdirected driver, I noticed a certain “homeless” fellow at the table near the curb. He was watching the car like the rest of us, but he was doing something strange to his watch, not to mention it was just a little strange he even had a watch in the first place. He was manipulating the dial, pushing buttons or typing something the way techies do with the computer/cell phone hybrids they carry.

It was precisely the slip up I had been waiting for, the kind that usually got corrected in short order. You catch a mistake, someone realizes you’re onto them, so they change it. You know how it is. You know how we all count the steps each time we go up a flight of stairs to make sure the number hasn’t changed? You know how once, maybe every five hundred forty flights, one stair is missing? And you’re onto them, but just to make sure, you go back down the stairs and count the steps again. Only this time, the missing stair has been mysteriously replaced. So in the end you can’t prove anything. You even start doubting your ability to count, so you don’t tell anyone about it.

Or you lose something and look all over the house and can’t find it. Then you remember exactly where you left it and when. So you go back and look in that place, a place you already checked three or four times. But because you remember its location so precisely, when you go back and look again, it’s suddenly there. And you know whoever is doing these things has to be really watching you and everyone else. But how?

That’s why I was trying to catch an error before they could correct it and maybe prove their mistake to someone else. If enough of us could see these anomalies, I thought we might be able to put our heads together and figure out who’s behind them all. That’s why when I saw the homeless man, reporting the incident about the wrong way driver to someone on his wrist watch device, I knew I had a singular opportunity to unravel the mystery.

Leaving my coffee and newspaper, I went right out the door to the table on the street. In the last moment as I approached, he sensed me and furtively dropped his arm. I looked at him, studying his yellowed, guarded eyes. 

His brown hair was long, fuzzy and dirty, with tangled portions of grass and leaves on the left side. His face was grimy and unshaven. His clothes were filthy and were literally attached to his body in various places. He wore an old brown trench coat, its ragged and tattered hem trailing below his knees. His pants were the soiled bottom of a pajama set and his sneakers were black canvas high tops with worn through rubber soles.  He smelled like the stale ammonia combination of urine and BO. He had two teeth in his top gum and four on the bottom. And his breath was fetid; it smelled like rotted meat soaked in cheap wine.

I smiled at him and extended my left hand to shake his so that when he extended his, I saw the watch was still there. He was trembling because he knew I was onto him. I grabbed his forearm with my right hand and turned the watch toward me. On its face, it seemed like an ordinary watch.

“Nice timepiece. Where’d you get it?”

He snatched his arm from my hand, intentionally spitting as he spoke.

“You don’t know me! You don’t put your hands on me!”

I worried that he would run away. I thought if he did, maybe I’d never get another opportunity, maybe I’d never get so close again. Thus I smiled to reassure him.

“I’m sorry. I was just admiring your watch, that’s all.”

His eyes darted toward the intersection, ninety feet away. I could tell he was looking for an escape route, so I stepped between him and the street corner.

“Can I… I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee. Yeah, a cup of coffee and maybe something to eat.”

I extracted my money clip and peeled off a crisp twenty.

“Get anything you want. Just bring me a medium sized coffee. I think they call it a grandé.”

Not surprising, he hesitated. I watched the wrinkled corners of his eyes as he squinted, trying to read my face. I figured he knew I had him. If he remained true to his role as a homeless person, he couldn’t possibly pass up the offer of free food and money. I eyed the conspicuous worn brown paper bag on the table. I had seen him putting something in it earlier.

“You go on. I’ll watch your bag.”

He took the twenty, but to my utter disappointment, he also took the bag.

“No offense, but I just don’t trust anyone with my stuff.”

He drew the bag to his bosom, patting it.

“And I got some real important stuff in here.”

As I stood at the table, waiting for this homeless impersonator to return, I was reminded that the huge window at the front of the shop was indeed a screen. Because of the way the summertime shadows played on the street, it was a one way glass. From the inside you could see everything on the street, and yet from the sidewalk and street, you couldn’t see inside the coffee shop, though there was a huge window.

I tipped toward the entrance and peered in, spying the smelly man as he ambled toward me and the door.

We sat when we got back to the table, and I admit I was a little miffed because he said he somehow forgot to order my coffee. So I probably scoffed as I watched him wolfing down the bear claw pastry and the chocolate cream cheese muffin while drinking his coffee. And I realized he hadn’t even bothered to wash his grubby hands as he sucked the cream cheese from his fingers. In disgust I began.

“So what’s your name?”

He was grunting like a chimpanzee as he finished the last of the pastry.

“Sam. It’s Sam.”

“Sam what?”

“Sam Beckett.”

I was sure I had heard the name before, but I couldn’t remember where. 

“Is that your real name?” 

“Real as yours. Why?”

As I leaned toward him, he shifted his weight in the chair and opened his legs, setting off a dense and invasive wave of crotch funk that brought water to my eyes.

“My god, that’s foul. Never mind. What, what are you doing here?”

He swigged the coffee, burped loud and wiped his mouth with a dirty shirt sleeve.

“I’m sittin here, waitin. What are you doin here?”

“I saw what you did with the watch a while ago. You were sending a message to someone. Who’s on the other side?”

He raised his left forearm and tilted his wrist down, examining his watch.

“What’re ya talking about? Are ya crazy? How could I send somethin on a watch?”

“Because it’s not really a watch, and you know it. Come on. How does it work? What do you tell them about us?” 

His remaining teeth seemed like corroded, peg-like tusks in his swollen pink gums. He had thrown his head back in husky laughter as he tried to throw me off the trail.

“You look all right, but I believe you’re kooky. It’s just a watch. See.”

Upon closer examination, I realized it wasn’t a watch. It was a Rolex, and not one of those cheap imitations you can buy from a dark, gold chain wearing guy in the Target parking lot. It was real. I could tell by the smooth, fluid movement of the second hand.

“If I’m so kooky, what are you doing with a Rolex, a real Rolex?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t know what it is. Some guy just come up and gave it to me yesterday. People give me things. I don’t know why.”

He was lying. I knew he was lying.

“So what’s in the brown paper bag? An inter-dimensional transponder? A monitoring device of some kind?”

Defensive, he pulled the bag from the table into his lap.

“Never you mind what I got in my bag. You ain’t seein it.”

He stood.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m leavin.”

I grabbed his wrist, hard.

“No, you’re not leaving. And you’re going to tell me what’s goin on, one way or another.”

He tried to wrench his wrist away, but I held tightly.

“Look, I’ve spent all my life trying to get to this point. You guys are good. So far you’ve always managed to stay a step ahead of me, but now I’ve got you. I will not be denied. So you might as well sit down and talk to me.”

His eyes squinted in anger as he threatened.

“Reason I’m on the streets—I am crazy. I’m crazy Sam!”

His eyes widened suddenly as he let out a banshee like scream, drawing the instant attention of startled people even a half block away. Fortunately, I knew what he was up to and reacted quickly. In deliberate fashion, I seized his brown paper bag as he looked away to gauge the reaction of onlookers.

The screaming immediately stopped.

“My bag! My bag!”

I turned my body, giving him my back, as he assaulted me to get the bag.

“It’s my bag now.” 

He traced my eyes as I focused on a police officer with a froth topped frappuccino who watched from the other side of the screen. He was standing just inside the exit, trying to figure out what he was viewing. My voice held a warning.

“If I tell him it’s my bag and you’re trying to take it, who do you think he’ll believe? And worse, I’ll ask him to arrest you for assault if you don’t sit down right now.”

Unable to discern whether or not I was bluffing, he looked from me and then to the cop before acquiescing. Sighing aloud, he sat, his gaze training on the paper bag. Whatever was in it, he couldn’t go back without it. I’m sure they were affected, but tears swelled in his eyes.

“Can I have my bag back? Please, Mister. It’s the only thing I own. Why are you doin this to me? I’m just a poor old man.”

“Or so you’d like me to believe. Look Sam—if that is your real name—all I want to know is what is going on. You don’t have to tell me everything. I just want to know how it works.”

Sam paused as the police officer slowly passed the table.

“How what works, goddammit!”

“Who’s on the other side? And how do they change things over here?”

He was obviously doing his best to protect whatever person or agency he worked for, and I understood. I wondered then how often their spies and operatives got caught, and if there was a mandatory default protocol relating to interrogation. With that in mind, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to trust anything he would tell me. The only leverage I had was the brown paper bag. Evidently, it was very important to the man. I figured it was possibly his only way back. Without it he’d be stuck here.

I studied his words and manner carefully as he attempted obfuscation.

“Man, I swear I don’t know nothin about no other side. I’m just Sam. I swear!”

Five, ten years ago, the vehemence in his slurred speech would have been enough to make me doubt myself; the soured apple wininess would have been enough to make me abandon my pursuit. But I had seen too much.

Screens—they’re all around us, and most of us never consider for once what they are. Just think about it. What is a screen? By practical definition a screen is anything that functions to shield, protect, divide or conceal, such as a smoke screen. So how much is being hidden from us as we rush blindly toward our graves? What we see we believe, and that’s where most of us fail. We should never trust what we see. None of it is real.

Your television has a screen, but more importantly, it is a screen. We seldom think about it, but there is always someone on the other side. And those hidden someones control every fraction of every second of the time you view that screen. Do you know who they are? And have you ever thought about what they want?

We all know television isn’t real, don’t we? When we see a person sitting in a living room on television, we realize that the room is just a set that bears only a superficial resemblance to a living room. We know it isn’t real, but somewhere along the way, we accept it, in our minds. 

And the television villains—we realize they’re just reading lines and bear only a superficial resemblance in real life to the characters they are portraying. We know that directors and editors have gone over every inch and frame of the film or tape and have spliced something together that bears only a superficial resemblance to what the cameras shot. But after watching for a while, the television is a screen separating our reality from a separate, though accepted reality.

And then there’s the television news, once again shot on sets that are representative though not real, spoken by glorified television actors. The words we hear are not the newsperson’s words. Rather, they’re written by professional writers to achieve specific results. The footage and the news photos we see are merely a fraction of the footage and photos available, but those particular images are presented to fabricate someone’s premeditated version of a reality. The television news is no more real than the reality shows that pretend to be news, and yet people accept it. Most people will never recognize the television screen.

In the same way, our movies in theaters appear on screens, but they are actually partitions between our reality and the projected reality of those on the other side of the screens. Those someones are there. We all know they are there. We read about them. They think and exist on the other side, making the movies, creating the deceptions presented on the screens. And what do we do? We rush blindly down that one way street. We pay billions of dollars a year to maintain that screen, never taking the time to re-evaluate what is before us.

Computers have and are screens, but what is visible to users is deceivingly simplistic, considering all the programs, processes and sub-routines running underneath whenever the device is turned on. And yet because of computers, at least some of you are beginning to conceive the possibility of someone being on the other side of the screen.

King Solomon understood screens. Through a lattice at the window of his house he watched the tragedy of a young man smitten with a low-down woman as it played itself out. Often when hidden at my table inside, as I peered through the colonial window of the coffee shop, I recognized the glass was framed in a lattice like fashion. I witnessed tragedies; I saw flirtations, affairs, break-ups and reunions from my place of concealment. So windows are most definitely screens, existing between parallel realities.

I’ve said all this to explain that I really wasn’t being mean to Sam, or whoever he really was. I just knew there was more to Sam than the obvious. And I’m not suggesting that all people who seem homeless are spies for someone on the other side, but I know at least some of them are.

It wouldn’t be a difficult deception, after all. If they wanted to know what was happening on this side of the partition, they could hire unemployed people for cheap and pass them off as homeless. It’s the perfect ruse. What sane person would suspect poor, homeless people, invisible for all purposes, as spies?

Of course they’d have to make these people seem homeless in order for them to fit in with the real homeless people. It would take some coaching. There would be some training involved. They’d have to put them in raggedy garments, but that wouldn’t be difficult. They could get clothes at the Salvation Army or from garbage bins and just dirty them up a little, and maybe tear them in a few places.

Making these homeless impersonators dirty and stinky would be the real challenges. I know the dirt on some of their faces is just make-up, make-up you could buy at any store. I’ve seen some of them wipe it off by accident. But I’m sure they have great make-up people on the other side to make the dirt and grime so realistic. I’ll bet most of you have never noticed the make-up jobs. 

And I figure the offensive odors these impersonators wear are manufactured in a laboratory. The operatives probably have an assortment of body scents to choose from: garbage bin, wet dog fur, stale sweat, rancid urine, smeared feces, menstrual madness and combinations of one or more. They are probably issued tiny bottles of the stuff that they carry in their pockets. They just take it out and spray it on as needed. We think the smell is real, but it’s just chemicals. So some of the people you think are homeless really don’t stink. You just think they do.

During auditions, casting coordinators probably identify and intentionally select actors with bad or missing teeth and poor dental hygiene. Sometimes the breath concoctions they come up with are really convincing, and sometimes I’m sure nature helps a little. But it’s bad breath spray, and it comes in tiny but powerful aerosol cans they carry around. The producers of the stuff are given a wide berth for creativity. The next time you go out, try and smell the breath of the seeming homeless and you’ll get chow mein vomit, necrotic gum rot, fermenting diarrhea, spoiled shellfish, stomach acid funk and a number of other imaginative flavors. As evidence, I submit that in every seventy-five to eighty-five homeless people, one of them has remarkably good teeth and lovely breath—a testament to poor casting. Check it out if you don’t believe me.

But the reason for the filth and the stink and the breath? It’s all to gross you out, to lead you away, to keep you off balance and self absorbed. In the end you’re so offended by these people that you never stop for once to think about what’s happening on the other side of the screen and what they’re doing to you. You make the manipulation so easy.

With the old man who called himself Sam, I wasn’t buying any of it. Oh he tried to play for pity. He sat at that table, shoulders slumped, make-up smearing, false tears rolling down his face as he begged me for the brown paper bag. But I was unaffected. I saw right through the lousy performance.

“Okay, I’m really getting tired of your whining, Sam. You have exactly one minute to start talking. If you don’t tell me who you’re working for and what they want from us, I’m going to get up and go, and I’m taking this little brown bag with me.”

I knew I had him when the panic registered in his eyes.

“Please! I’m a diabetic, and ya got my insulin kit in that bag!”

I admit I was amazed at the lengths they had gone through to train these people. It was a great line, but I didn’t fall for it.

“Yeah, right. A homeless diabetic with a Rolex. You now have forty seconds.”

It was a battle of wills. He was bluffing, and I was calling him on it.

“For the last time, who are you working for? Is it an agency? A government? Aliens? Who’s on the other side?”

I had him at the near breaking point. He was sobbing, profusely.

“I swear I ain’t workin for no one. I swear I don’t know what you’re talkin about! I just wanna go. Please!”

His histrionics were beginning to attract attention. Frustrated, I stood.

“Fine. You go your way, and I’ll go mine… with this bag.”

 He must have heard it in my voice. I was actually resolved to leave. I had evidence, after all. For the first time in my life, I had physical evidence.

The old man clutched my forearm, tightly.

“Okay! I’ll tell ya. You’re right. I came from the other side!”

So all my intuition, tenacity and determination were finally ready to pay off. There I was, at the verge of profound discovery. But I know what you’re thinking. You figure the old man was telling me something I would want to hear, just so I would return his tattered old paper bag.

That same thought crossed my mind just then, but something in his aspect convinced me otherwise. It was not just his eyes, nor his voice, nor his posture; it was something that came from deep within, from a force greater than he was. It spoke to me; it convinced me that he was telling the truth.

Screens should also be considered in the spiritual context, which supports the divisional definition of the concept. In that sense, screens make possible the division between good and evil, between Heaven and Hell, between God and man. They make possible the division between pre-existence and existence, between light and darkness, between salvation and condemnation, between life and the afterlife.

Because where does good stop being good? And what is the essence of evil? Isn’t it true that any willful or deliberate act committed by a person may be considered good from one perspective while evil from another perspective? Screens reference those perspectives. 

To a man sitting on the evil side of a screen, pure good appears purely evil. And to a man sitting on the good side of a screen, pure evil appears purely evil. Thus being on the other side of evil does not necessarily make a person good. Good exists for what it is, while wickedness exists within references and contexts. Humans have never been capable of distinguishing the difference between the two.

And to the originator of screens, according to written and biblical records, these divisions were of primary importance. Light came to exist, and being good, was divided from darkness. Firmament divided waters from waters and earth from the heavens. Thus these divisions, or screens, are the very essence of creation.

The tree in the original garden was a screen between choice and non-choice, between independence and subjection, between bad and good. The priesthood and temples stood as partitions between spirit and flesh, the Messiah a screen between God and man. Without screens, references and perspectives, good and evil are impossible.

So when this man who called himself Sam told me he came from the other side, I was acutely aware that his admission may have been counterfeit, but I was equally convinced that mere appearances could not be trusted. And only because I had spent the better part of my life pursuing the undiscovered country on the other side could I ask the truly discerning questions. By putting the right questions, I was certain I could distinguish between the truth and the lie.

“What is vision then?”

The old man bowed his head in thought. After about a minute, he stood erect and checked his watch.

“I need my bag. I ain’t got much time before I needa have my shot. Let’s talk inside.”

We sat at my regular table, just on the other side of the screen. The coffee shop was nearly empty. The employees were behind the beverage station in the back and there were two women standing at the pick-up counter. I knew why he wanted to talk inside. The late summer, late afternoon, brightly glowing sun had cast such an invasive eastward shadow that the window was dark. Behind the screen, we were completely invisible.

“Vision is the interface. It includes sight, scent, flavor, taction, audition, intelligence and understanding. This is why you mustn’t trust anything you hear, smell, taste, feel or see. They are merely routes inside your head.”

I knew it! The word “taction?” From a seeming homeless person! And then he said “merely!” I had all the proof I needed. He was definitely from the other side. Still, the central thoughts in my mind were: What did they want with us? What was the plan? What was real and what was unreal?

“None of it’s real!”

 He was talking to me, but his lips weren’t moving.

“You thought you wanted to know, but you were wrong. You really didn’t want to know. You were better off not knowing.”

Was he a ventriloquist? I couldn’t understand how he was talking in my mind the way he was. His face was utterly blank, but he was speaking to me. Speaking to me just as clearly as I’m speaking to you.

And then to my complete puzzlement, I looked through the screen to what was going on outside the coffee shop. The cars, all the cars on the street were driving backward. And the people were walking backward. Then they all stopped and began moving forward again. And then they completely disappeared.

I looked at the old man, who was presently smiling, seeming very satisfied. I grasped his hand.

“What is this? What’s going on?”

The cars had reappeared and were moving backward, but not a one was being driven by a person. The cars had no drivers. No, every once in a while a car went by with a driver, but that was one in every four or five hundred cars. It made me wonder if I had somehow moved to the other side.

 The voice continued, though Sam’s face remained blank.

You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.

For the first time I could feel it, the growing intangibility of everything around me.

You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Gradually, everything outside the window blurred; the rear area of the coffee shop blurred; the walls blurred so that all remaining was the clearly catatonic Sam, just sitting there.

The voice continued.

“You wished to eat from the tree of knowledge. You wished to know what was on the other side. Thus you are presently undone by the knowledge you sought. On the other side is the truest you. On the other side is your very soul.”

The hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stood straight up; I could sense a powerful presence; I could sense Truth. 

Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.

Sam’s mouth had fallen open; he was no longer breathing.

“On the other side is the likeness of God. You have sought to recognize screens, but you have failed to recognize the obvious. You yourself are the screen between your present vision and the other side. You, like God, are the creator of the universe before you. You are the screen that separates what is on the other side from your present experience, which is nothing more than an expression of your own act of creation. On the inside are the answers; on the inside is Truth; on the inside is the universe; on the inside is God. The inside is the other side.”

Sam actually died as the last words were spoken. He slumped, his body fell heavily onto the table, and he tumbled to the floor with a corporal thud.

 Here now is your only opportunity to discover the other side. It is a one-way journey. There is no return.

 And thus turning myself within I sought discovery, when to my pleasure I perceived a great light, shining brighter than anything I had ever perceived, with a brilliance like that of electrum. Without hesitation, I approached the light, and though I got nearer and nearer by infinite half-fractional depletion, I could never reach it. Eventually, I became lost in its glory.

Two weeks later:

This morning I ate a perfectly good half muffin and a morsel of a donut from the garbage container outside the coffee shop. Someone left an almost full cup of coffee on the table nearest the street, so I had that as well. I didn’t even mind the extra sugar in it. I’m wearing the same clothes I had on when Sam died, and I haven’t bathed since, but I don’t stink. At least I can’t smell myself.

When Sally, the pretty store manager, checked Sam’s brown paper bag on the table, all she found inside was a syringe kit and three doses of insulin. The county came and picked up his body. I heard from someone they donated it to a local college for medical research.

When I pass screens now and see my reflection, I hardly recognize myself. My face is gaunt and I have a frizzy, splotchy black and gray beard. I combed my hair and brushed my teeth the first few mornings, but out here I’ve found it next to impossible to maintain a daily routine. Food, sleep and warmth, after all, are far more important things than hygiene.

After a week, I finally got my own place. It is a three-by-five-foot clearing next to a building flanked by bushes—prime real estate out here. The dense vegetation serves as a natural barrier against rain and dewfall, which are killers if you’re sleeping outside. It is also a wind block and heat trap. I managed to find two blankets for added warmth. I carried them around during the day so no one would take them.

Just yesterday morning, another guy tried to squat in my place and we had it out. I had to physically threaten him to get him to leave. Then when I got home last night, someone, probably the same guy, had taken a huge crap right in the middle of the clearing. Politics, I guess. You can never escape politics. I had to sleep elsewhere last night and I did not rest well.

The funniest thing about the past two weeks: I see you at the coffee shop. I see all of you, rushing blindly toward the ends of your pathetic lives. You’re all in such a hurry, and for what? You stroll in, order in that Caffeinese language, gossip, rush here, rush there and rush out, back to whatever you do. You live such one-dimensional lives.

So the next time you’re in your regular coffee shop, stop for a second. Look around. Look for a quiet table in a corner next to a screen, and I’ll be there. Oh I might seem a little dirty and you just might smell me a little, but as you already know, I am not what I seem. I was on your side once, but I was brave enough to move over to the other side.

And if one day you grow smart enough to recognize that nothing in your world is real; if one day you grow curious enough to peer beyond the surface of your initial perceptions; if one day you grow bold enough to embrace the freedom of your thoughts, then you’ll come sit at my table with me, and we will talk.

In spite of my appearance, in spite of the filth and smell, you’ll reach for the fruit of knowledge and you’ll taste it. On the day you eat of it you shall die, but your eyes will become opened, and in your dying you will be like God!

Copyright © 2020 by Marcus McGee

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