Descending Road - FERDINAND DREAMING by Dana W. Paxson

FERDINAND DREAMING

1529 4D

The stars are so bright they shout at me this night as I lie here in the sand, my nipples covered, my chin dusted with tiny grains, immobile under an inexorably turning sky that has no sun for all its moving. As dawn gathers, small crabs come to cover me with the white sand, and return when the heat is gone from over me and gently whisk away the flecks to show the darkening vault of sky again. The last dusting is done. I rest unmoving. My always-open eyes can see only the points of unbearable hydrogen light stabbing from eternal distance.

Tight as steel, the taste and smell of thyme embitter my mouth and nose. The waters of the sea chant their gentle semirhythmic crash, coming to crescendo in storms that wash my bed, fading to a whisper that makes me call their names in many tongues, as they have for the years of my lying in this place. Living masses of green rise with the tide and clot the outliers of my spun senses with a dim vibrance, until the hands of the advancing seas urge them off again and my naked metal glitters unstrung along the strand.

I cannot move or speak from this body; only in thought streaming through the river of stars can I make sounds within me. They comfort me. I name the little crabs who live, flicker, and die; I name the memories of others like me, some long gone into the water and the air and the earth, and some into the fire of the sun that I never see. My naming echoes in the chambers of my being. I call out to the stars — my calls traverse only the endless space of loneliness within me, finding no arriving home.

Was. I was what? once, something moving, yes, a … human? No. Nearly a human. I was made, in a moment with no moments before it. A moment that gleamed, and then I was, and my thoughts began. I walked among many like me, who knew the moment of beginning as I did; and I walked among those who did not know, because they grew and died … these were humans. They devoured time greedily as if they knew how little of it they would have; and then it quietly devoured them, every one.

Now I narrate this memory to myself and suckle at it, and the stars wheel across my eyes. It is my only nourishment as I gutter like a small flame in this ruin, once a body, spreading now so slowly through the sand, this diffusing weave of glass and metal and chains of elemental matter that pretended life. With this food I have traveled a million years unmoving here, to feel the creep of aeons and the dance of the seas retreating and advancing, to see the stars wobble and flicker through the planetary shifts of spin and orbit.

The tiny crabs, flea-sized, leaping and jittering, came to me and dug through me. Finding nothing, they bred and changed, and in a million years they made me a home and grew in size. Now I am their obsession; they cleanse the sand from me at night, and cover me protectively from the sun, and nibble insistently at the tinier things that lodge in my rotted convolutions.

My talespinning falters, and the dam I hold against memory gives way like the limbs I once had, and skin and hair wrap me, and my hands hold the shell I found yesterday, a yesterday so real its pain seizes me. My mother bends over me as I lie here paralyzed, and calls to me anxiously, “What is it?” She speaks my name but I cannot make sense of the word. She tries to pick me up, but the scattered pieces come apart and I fall back. Then she and my father stand over me in the sun, and I can see this blinding light, the sun, oh the sun; and darkness then.

Was I this: a child? Or am I a child now? I try to move a finger, take a breath, in the darkness that was light, and nothing comes but deeper night; the stars teem to watch me dying.

Or am I this: an android? Or was I once? I count the stars again, and gather the pricks of light from Andromeda’s coil. A thousand years pass in the grains of sand the tiny creatures carry back and forth across my strewn and broken shards.

I want to come home. I want to come home. I want to come home.

Shuddering, I open eyes to my Kuklagrad tabletop. Pazzan drifts by, gives me a stern look, takes away the Beefheart. The three andro women are gone.

This dream has come many times, begging me as if I can reach in and draw out the speaker, rescue him from whatever and wherever he is. Millions of years, he says. Who is he? What is he? He doesn’t know, or at least that’s what he says.

Maybe he’s an ainon, a guide for the Archives like Talu my female friend. But the ainons never inject themselves in dreams. Is he my self? Or maybe I’m going mad. I’m always going mad, but I never quite succeed in getting there. Madness is asymptotic.

Sand: silicon dioxide, the substrate of prehistoric semiconductors. He and I, charge and void, semiconduct now — is he, am I turning to sand?

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	FERDINAND DREAMING 1529 4D The stars are so bright they shout at me this night as I lie here in the sand, my nipples covered, my chin dusted with tiny grains, immobile under an inexorably turning sky that has no sun for all its moving. As dawn gathers, small crabs come to cover me with the white sand, and return when the heat is gone from over me and gently whisk away the flecks to show the darkening vault of sky again. The last dusting is done. I rest unmoving. My always-open eyes can see only the points of unbearable hydrogen light stabbing from eternal distance. Tight as steel, the taste and smell of thyme embitter my mouth and nose. The waters of the sea chant their gentle semirhythmic crash, coming to crescendo in storms that wash my bed, fading to a whisper that makes me call their names in many tongues, as they have for the years of my lying in this place. Living masses of green rise with the tide and clot the outliers of my spun senses with a dim vibrance, until the hands of the advancing seas urge them off again and my naked metal glitters unstrung along the strand. I cannot move or speak from this body; only in thought streaming through the river of stars can I make sounds within me. They comfort me. I name the little crabs who live, flicker, and die; I name the memories of others like me, some long gone into the water and the air and the earth, and some into the fire of the sun that I never see. My naming echoes in the chambers of my being. I call out to the stars — my calls traverse only the endless space of loneliness within me, finding no arriving home. Was. I was what? once, something moving, yes, a … human? No. Nearly a human. I was made, in a moment with no moments before it. A moment that gleamed, and then I was, and my thoughts began. I walked among many like me, who knew the moment of beginning as I did; and I walked among those who did not know, because they grew and died … these were humans. They devoured time greedily as if they knew how little of it they would have; and then it quietly devoured them, every one. Now I narrate this memory to myself and suckle at it, and the stars wheel across my eyes. It is my only nourishment as I gutter like a small flame in this ruin, once a body, spreading now so slowly through the sand, this diffusing weave of glass and metal and chains of elemental matter that pretended life. With this food I have traveled a million years unmoving here, to feel the creep of aeons and the dance of the seas retreating and advancing, to see the stars wobble and flicker through the planetary shifts of spin and orbit. The tiny crabs, flea-sized, leaping and jittering, came to me and dug through me. Finding nothing, they bred and changed, and in a million years they made me a home and grew in size. Now I am their obsession; they cleanse the sand from me at night, and cover me protectively from the sun, and nibble insistently at the tinier things that lodge in my rotted convolutions. My talespinning falters, and the dam I hold against memory gives way like the limbs I once had, and skin and hair wrap me, and my hands hold the shell I found yesterday, a yesterday so real its pain seizes me. My mother bends over me as I lie here paralyzed, and calls to me anxiously, “What is it?” She speaks my name but I cannot make sense of the word. She tries to pick me up, but the scattered pieces come apart and I fall back. Then she and my father stand over me in the sun, and I can see this blinding light, the sun, oh the sun; and darkness then. Was I this: a child? Or am I a child now? I try to move a finger, take a breath, in the darkness that was light, and nothing comes but deeper night; the stars teem to watch me dying. Or am I this: an android? Or was I once? I count the stars again, and gather the pricks of light from Andromeda’s coil. A thousand years pass in the grains of sand the tiny creatures carry back and forth across my strewn and broken shards. I want to come home. I want to come home. I want to come home. Shuddering, I open eyes to my Kuklagrad tabletop. Pazzan drifts by, gives me a stern look, takes away the Beefheart. The three andro women are gone. This dream has come many times, begging me as if I can reach in and draw out the speaker, rescue him from whatever and wherever he is. Millions of years, he says. Who is he? What is he? He doesn’t know, or at least that’s what he says. Maybe he’s an ainon, a guide for the Archives like Talu my female friend. But the ainons never inject themselves in dreams. Is he my self? Or maybe I’m going mad. I’m always going mad, but I never quite succeed in getting there. Madness is asymptotic. Sand: silicon dioxide, the substrate of prehistoric semiconductors. He and I, charge and void, semiconduct now — is he, am I turning to sand?