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This was once a song in poem form and a short story by me, but now I'm combining it with several other, major story ideas I've had in my life, to form a novel that means, literally, the world to me. I hope you enjoy it.
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My Quantum Dream of The Roman SwingChapter One
Welcome To Cairo
We are all a part of this river that runs within our life's. We travel through it's constant waves of subjection and objection and we all passively drift towards our own destinations in life. The actions and reactions of the past form into the future and push us all along in silence. It seems that for some of us the river goes quite quickly and for others the river goes quite slowly, with normalcy being the balance of it all, but sooner or later we all stop it at one point in our lives. We stop it all and look around us, at the world, at our lives, at the moment. There are some that stop more than others. There are some that don't care to stop much at all, but eventually, we all stop, despite those who fear it, we all stop and gaze into that wondrous mystique known as reality. Yet, it's holding on to it that becomes so difficult. It's there and then it's completely gone and washed away. The tide takes you away with it and your no longer aware. You eternally subject to it's force.
Time itself is an illusion. There's no such thing as a moment to the mind. It's the only thing that's faster than the speed of light. For, if the speed of light was faster than the speed of time, nothing would exist. Life would be a blur. Now, you may be able to capture a moment, but you can never return to it. The second we comprehend it, it's gone, as if it's running away from us, or we are running away from it. Or perhaps, we're running away from each other, and we're all going up stream as fast as we can, but some of us become caught, or lost in the rush, which can be different to all people. Different, because it's all within our individual minds and perceptions, but must exist as we exist. For without it, we're all disconnected from the flow. And there, is where insanity would take presence. The place for those who try and manipulate the river. The place for the disconnected.
When I was young, life was there, like BAM or BOOM. The sunrise wasn't a sunrise, it was a light and a warmth within your entire existence. There was no day without it. No matter what pain came, I could conquer it and make way to the new day; the new rise. There were no worries and no regrets. It was purity, because nothing was factual. Mystery moved me through adventures where anything could happen at any spontaneous moment. It was a ride of aesthetic ambitions and ceaseless imagination. I was a lucid dreamer of course, and I persist to be one, and this story is about what it means to be a dreamer, no matter what pain, what anguish, becomes revealed to us. There are some that choose to criticize my type of person, known mostly as existentialists or realists, but as John Lennon once said, “I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.” Up to this day that quote has greatly comforted me within my own believes. There are some that simply can not help but dream. We are born with it and when we forget about it, darkness floods into us and takes us under the river's many fathoms, where the current has the strength to kill anyone vulnerable. In truth, a dreamer inevitably lives a life at war with their self -- and there is nothing like it.
I myself, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but only lived there for a very short period of time. Enough time for my school's to establish me a waste of time and an over-active dreamer and for my mother to die from an over dose, which I didn't even fully understand, at that time. Besides that though, I had really loved her and I don't think I'll ever stop missing her and the tranquil aura that never failed to glisten around her. She was the most beautiful person in the world to me. Her long, brown hair had smelt like fresh strawberries picked straight from the fields, and her eyes would shift from baby bue to hazel in the light, sometimes combining in a mixture of earth and sky. I remember, she use to take me to the country and play, “
Georgia On My Mind,” by Ray Charles, and we'd drive for hours listening to the sweet, sad music, smelling the hundreds of scents and watching the scenery fade by in thousands of greens and golds. She'd roll down the windows and the fresh air would swarm into the car in a blissful fragrance like florid showers, she'd sing and I'd dance to her angelic voice. Those were the good ole' days, but sadly, they hadn't stayed long. Soon, it was time to leave Atlanta and my beloved mother behind, to go somewhere new, somewhere I had never been before.
Me and my father had made this journey when I was only six years old. He woke me up one mourning in a hurry, basically ripping me from the sheets of my bed, which was the living room couch, and throwing me into our old truck. I didn't know where we were going, my father wouldn't say, but I was hoping it was somewhere far away from the gray walls of Atlanta. I wanted to go to a place of green and gold and stay there forever. I knew it was where my mom was, if she was anywhere at all. My father knew it too, somewhere inside of him he knew her presence was still breathing, either in the country, heaven, or some other dimension, unknown. We could both feel her, because we were connected by a force stronger than any other; love.
I had fallen asleep on me and my father's slow ride away, which is the only kind of ride you can get in the south. You could drive a mile and feel as if years had gone by. Not everybody respects that about the south, just like people seem to neglect all the space full of open sky and fresh air we have in the south. It goes well with the ride, because you get to take in all the surroundings and view the magic of nature. You get to see the purest enchantments of our world. The city is all the same, perhaps the south is too, but there's a soul in the south. You can hear it sing or cry, feel it whisper or whistle, see it dance or sway. Men can't create souls. No matter how hard they try, they can never make the city alive.
When I had woken up, we were on a long, black road, that a road sign had called,
highway one eleven. There were large oak trees on each side of us, towering as if forsaken gods reaching up into the dark skies, and every couple of seconds there was a break in the woods, where a trailer or a shack, or sometimes a house, had calmly rested, often followed by fields of many kinds; corn fields, cotton, tobacco, and of course, the livestock of the farms, cattle, horses, goats, and much more that were in the tall, red barns. I sat up on the leather seat and looked up at my father who was staring down the road and far beyond the road and even far beyond the starlight above the road's thin horizon. He was after something in the distance, more important than life and perhaps, more important than I. Whatever it was, it was becoming closer by the second, you could see it in his restless eyes and the way he gripped the tattered wheel. My lips opened, but I paused in resent, swallowed deep and continued, “Daddy, where is it we're going so far away from home, so late at night?”
My father let go of the steering wheel and hit it with the callused, right palm, of his shaky hand, and he said, in aggravation, “Why do you ask so many god damned questions, Jason? You're just like you're fucking mom, always asking questions!”
“I'm sorry, daddy. I wont ask anymore questions.” He nodded his head in frustration and kept focusing on the road. I knew he hadn't meant what he had said. He was just after something and I hoped, for the sake of his sorrow, he would find it soon. I didn't want to admit it, but I had seen the same look in my mother's eyes, and I could feel that she died because of it. I thought that, maybe, she never found what was in the distance, which is only partly right.
As I gazed out the window, it wasn't long before I saw a white and red sign on the right hand side of the road, that read, “Welcome to Cairo, Georgia's city of hospitality.” The sign itself had made me feel at peace, like we were traveling through a very safe and good hearted place. It said that everything was going to be okay. However, I hadn't know it yet, but we were doing a lot more than passing through that hospitable town known as Cairo, Georgia.
My father had been pressing on the gas and reached seventy in his ford, pick-up truck and wasn't slowing down, but speeding up at full momentum. Dust swirled in long streams of clouds behind us and for a second, I felt as if we were flying. I loved it when my father drove fast. It made feel alive and somewhat, criminal, like a cowboy or a mobster from a movie or a book. On occasion, I'd pretend we were evading the police and I'd close my eyes to picture the chase. The cop would spit his chew out the window, cut on his lights and begin the pursuit. Then I'd tell my father to go faster and I'd load the gun while he drove, speeding and spinning circles and taking short cuts and jumping rivers. When it came down to it, I suppose my parents never talked very politely about the police, so I never worried much about them. At six years old, I was already enjoying life, leaning with a foot over the edge, which scared most adults that I had met, especially my teachers.
When I looked forward into the distance, I saw lights grow closer and closer up the road. Then we finally reached them and we were at a place called, “Gator's Country Store.” It appeared as if any normal, run of the mill gas station, only larger and more, “hospitable,” by appearance. My dad looked at it and saw the pay phones outside and immediately slammed on the brakes and drifted into the parking lot, spraying rocks into the air and across the highway. I held on tight and gasped in relieve as we parked safely in a parking spot in front Gator's Country Store.
My father told me to stay in my seat and behave. So I sat there quietly, watching him rush over to the row of pay phones at the corner of the store. I wondered who he had to call, who would be home so late at night, but I knew the question would anger him. Ever since mother had died, he wasn't very happy and it wasn't long before I tied that with the trip itself. Perhaps, we weren't going back to Atlanta, I thought. Perhaps, we're going to stay in this beautiful country town called Cairo, things are going to get better, and I'll be with my mother's presence, in the land of green and gold, forever.
Inside of the store, the lights cut off and a spirited-looking lady; a brunette, walked out with a slight limp in her left leg. She locked the glass doors which had lottery stickers, beer and cigarette advertisements, and a bunch of other random adverts posted all over them. When she walked by the car she looked at me and waved with a jovial smile that made me happy and made me feel safe, like the sign had done before. I waved back and she continued to smile and got into a white Pontiac and sped off on that same, long, black, Georgia road, that we had come in on only moments before our enlightening encounter.
Once she was gone though, it felt cold and dark in front of Gator's Country Store. The trees were rattling in the wind and it smelt of something unusual to me, at least, back then it did. It wasn't long before I could hear a faint wrestling of sounds. It was coming from the driver's side of the truck, so I slid over and rolled down the window to listen, and what was a faint, wrestling of sounds, had become a faint, wrestling of screams. Then, across the road and to my left, a screen door slammed opened at an old wooden house, and a woman was tossed from the wooden steps by a shirtless, tattooed man, with a Budweiser beer bottle in one of his dirty hands. The woman's torn, over-sized shirt, was covered in spits blood and she was crying in the fetal position. The man stepped over her and began to yell, spitting in her dazed and petrified face, “What did you do with the shit, you god damn piece of shit? You took it, didn't you? Huh, You fucking slut?” He kicked her hard in the stomach with his steel toe boat and she yelled out in a violent pain. Birds flew from the trees and dogs began to bark, as if the animals knew our evil, even better than we did.
“Johnny, I-I-I didn't-” She spit out a tooth. “I didn't-” He wound his leg back and viciously kicked her in the stomach again and told her to finish her damn sentence, but she replied by spitting out a stream of blood onto the wet, muddy ground she had laid on. Then he grabbed her by her dirty blonde hair and kicked her even harder, and she screamed out like someone would in torture or in a horror movie. I saw my father wince at the sound by the pay phones and so did I, but he wouldn't face the ruthless scene that was happening so near to both of us. No, he was still in the distance, still after whatever it was that chained him.
“You dumb, whore! You never learn, do you?” He had stopped beating her and you could tell there was something furious in her eyes. He knew it and she knew it. Somehow, she was aiming to retaliate in her defense and he was waiting for it to come and she knew he was waiting for it to come, but human pride can never be fully sustained from tyranny. So, she said it.
She partially opened her lips and said something that I couldn't make out, a whisper or a murmur, and that's when he begun to beat her with the beer bottle that he was holding in his hand, taking out his anger, as if she had taken his soul and thrown it into the flame that he burned in. Even when the bottom of the bottle had broken on her head, he continued to beat her with relentless hatred. It wasn't long after that before she was in a pool of her own blood, with streams of mascara streaming down her sombre complexion and I was cowering in my seat, crying like the wimp my father had hated so much.
I soon heard loud laughing in my retreat, a very maniacal laugh that echoed like torment in the air, and decided to look up from my position of cowardice, back out across the way, to see what was going on with the monster and his victim. I knew they couldn't be reacquainted and that there was a force that moved the evil within him into madness. When I looked, the blood soaked woman had crawled in distress, all the way up to the middle of the road, but the man had stopped her from going any farther than the dashed, white lines, on the cold, black pavement. He grabbed her ankles and continued to laugh at her attempt, demented in his cruel, inhuman demise. He had kept her to where she could struggle, but could go no farther. She reached out in beseech to me, to my father, and as all humans do when there's nothing else to turn to, god. But she was incapable of breaking the void, like a bird on a rope that was trying to escape from the poacher, there was nothing left but the utter hope of a miracle that never came.
My father got back into the truck and sat down in the seat as I quickly moved back over to my side. He looked at me and said, with a calm, monotoned voice, still staring into the distance, “Welcome to Cairo, son. You better man up, because this is going to be home sweet home for awhile.” Then he put the car in gear and began to pull out. I didn't have anything to say in response, I didn't even ask why he didn't help, why I didn't help, I just kept watching her reach out into nowhere as we drove off down that long, black road, they call highway one eleven, where the river took her under and let her slip away in the rubble of lost dreams.
