Chapter 1
Ghosts on The Bus
Sometimes I feel as though I can see ghosts.
Not in a crazy, out of my mind sense—I just truly feel as though the things I see are otherworldly. Each morning, I wake up, get prepared for another day of school, and board the bus to the campus. I bring the same backpack and the same notebooks with me every day, and the clothes on my back are not a departure from the style I’m accustomed to. The only thing that changes is the landscape outside the bus window; what populates the empty streets and arid skies are not humans and birds, but fantastical creatures and beasts. A single glance at a tree yields a whole interconnected ecosystem of six-legged rabbits and overinflated squirrels. Under the surface of the tree’s green leaves lies an orgasmic kaleidoscope of the rarest hues on the planet; the trees swirl around my superimposed rainbow as if they’re fish swallowed up in a whirlpool. Such is the case of my vision: the fact that qualities are subordinate to a thing holds true, but the multitude of physically non-existent qualities that things hold are splayed out for me to behold in the same way that a treasure hunter gazes at a lost tomb.
I am now halfway to school. The spaces around me are occupied by people, but the physical existence of these people -the fact that I even exist in the same environment or dimension as them- is as far from my active consciousness as Neptune is from the Sun. I force myself to tune into their conversation, and the resplendent sights outside of my window contract and blur into their physical form. They talk of the school day and their plans; they speak about their relationships and their families; they ruminate on their failures and their jobs. The words they speak revolve around their brains as the Moon does the Earth, but each phrase I reach out and grasp dissolves to dust between my fingers. What they speak of will fade from their own memory within a days’ time—their words are longitudinally worthless. I stare at them and see an incomprehensible web splattered across their face, a ceaseless parasite that draws from their blood and creates beautiful worlds within their thoughts. They do not pay any attention to this creature however, and they certainly do not allow others to perceive an inkling of its existence. How great would the world be if people were reduced to these insects! How beautiful would society be if it were populated with representatives of the deepest thoughts and dreams, and not by those who do everything in their power to hide it! I truly believe that the sole purpose of the Self on this Earth is to work as hard as possible to conceal the true fruit of the mind, to inhibit the realization of the most succinct visions and dreamscapes.
I am now one mile from school. The rolling landscape is replaced by the drab brick wall of the building, and yet I can still see glorious murals pasted along the solid barrier. How pleasurable would it be to exist like they do? To subconsciously conceal the treasure of my dreams with the uninteresting formalities of day-to-day talk? The condition of the average person in contemporary society is that of Pandora in the legendary parable. The moment at which the box is opened is the moment at which we’re born—we acquire facilities that permit us to dream, functions that allow us to superimpose a glorious world over the emotionless natural one. We unfortunately spend the rest of our lives instinctively shoving the box lid back in place, desperately trying to suppress the infinitudes of thought that we contain within ourselves.
I step into school, yet my mind remains on the bus.
