I am beyond life

Yet

Not dead.

I am beyond death

Yet

Not corporeal.

I do not breathe.

I do not hunger.

I do not thirst

And

I cannot touch.

Yet

I can see

And

Hear

And

Imagine

And

Will.

The Transcendence:

The curved is straight; the straight is curved.

Substance is void; void is substance.

The end is the beginning; the beginning is the end.

Being is life and not-life.

Five dimensions:

Up and down.

Left and right.

In and out.

Relative time

And

Absolute time.

The dreamed, dreams; the known, knows.

Through a glass, not darkly, my life is presented to me… raw, uncut.

I have witnessed my death a thousand times.

I have savoured my small victories.

I have ached over my losses

And

Cringed at my foolishness, my cowardice.

To live for me you must live for yourself

For

I am you and you are me.

The dreamed, dreams; the known, knows.

In glorious Technicolor and frozen like the default frame on a video clip I see a man attired in bus uniform of average height, broad shouldered with short auburn hair walking briskly.

He is at the point where West Street meets Spencer Road, and the early morning sun has cast of him a long shadow.

The man is me

And

It is weird.

The dreamed, dreams; the known, knows.

It is the exact midpoint of my life for I am twenty-seven years, ten months, three weeks, three days, eighteen hours and twenty minutes from my birth

And

Twenty-seven years, ten months, three weeks, three days, eighteen hours and twenty minutes from my death – a lonely death.

I can use my will to fast forward or rewind my life, to zoom in and out. I can hear all that I said and all that was said to me. I can relive my dreams… my nightmares

Yet

Nothing prior to my birth or after my death is revealed…

*

A figure stirs under the blankets and rolls towards me. I zoom in on the features: Roman nose, grey goatee beard, large brown eyes now watery appear frightened. A grey pallor has replaced the lightly sun bronzed complexion and a thin film of sweat now covers the skin.

The figure naked, overweight and flabby throws off the covers and staggers desperately towards the door. His right-hand flails out for the door handle but falls short as the body crumples towards but never quite reaches the floor.

*

I do not know the cause of my death - coronary? Stroke?

I do not know how long it would have been before my body was found.

I do not know how many would have wept for me - or for how long.

*

The one lesson not learnt:

To live your dream is to live the dream, the dream dreamed by the dreamer.

Oh, that I could live again…

I transcend the metaphor.

I transcend the Transcendence

And

The glass through which I see, not darkly, yields and melts away…

*

I feel the warming rays of the early morning sun upon my face as I walk briskly to work. I am twenty-seven years, ten months, three weeks, three days, eighteen hours and twenty minutes old.

I stop, slip my diary out of my jacket whilst observing curiously the phenomena of a rapidly fading shadow of a man emerging from my chest before travelling a few paces and dissolving into thin air.

I take out the pen from my top pocket and scribble in the inside cover:

To live your dream is to live the dream.

It is all clear to me now…