The first time I saw it, I didn’t know what it was. A gash yes, but I didn’t know anything about what was beyond or through, and recognizing that I knew nothing about what was beyond made me realize, uncomfortably, that I knew nothing about what was near. Like a tear in tarp, I was forced to consider what lay beyond it, or whether I was above or beneath it, or whether above and beneath were concepts that applied. It’s funny how concepts are challenged by magnitude. It was that way. Was it the outside struggling to get in, or the inside struggling to get out? What did the fabric consist of? And of all my central questions, this plagued me most: why was I only seeing it now?
First the matter of the inner and outer. I recognized it as a thinning fabric (not that I really knew much of it, since I’d nary given it thought). But I did not see an inner and outer. I saw sides. This side and that side, and immediately that choice in perception equipped me a certain comfort in power. I was not trapped as I had thought I might be, but rather on a side. Thus, there was not the automatic feeling of powerlessness at being shorn from the remainder of something larger. I was part of something large itself. It was simply different.
Next (and maybe this can be called an effect of mirror) I became aware of myself in a way I had not been before. Seeing a bit of the farness, through the gash, made me aware of myself, like watching into a mirror. I existed, had existed, and would continue to exist, in conjunction with the other side, but also independent of it. If that side merited a kind of importance, then why shouldn’t my side also merit importance? If it contained value, why shouldn’t I contain value? It was only now that I wondered about the creatures from that side, and whether they were like me.
I surveyed my surroundings and realized I was in a dark room, perhaps in a house. Where my first impulse may have been to flick a light switch or to feel about, I only stood, as if at first awakening. I did stare at the gash for a long time wondering whether guts were pressing from that side to this, or this to that, only because my intuition had decided this was a factor in deciding details about the sides. Their differences.
Then the veil itself. The hanging tarp-like item which stretched endlessly through space and time (as I now saw it). It was between us (whatever its purpose), for us to share. Commonality for the two sides. Like a placenta or intestinal wall, it was of both sides, except that it (I was now certain) contained neither. This was an ambitious cerebral leap, but I knew it to be true. And since it contained neither, I now wondered with renewed interest about its purpose.
A loud knock happened somewhere in the darkness and the room tilted. This was strange. If I was in a room stressed by the rules of physics, I would have been knocked over, or stepped backward to keep balance. Instead, the room turned about an axis and I was the axis. I felt wind and movement but stayed unmet by physical motions. Now I wondered for the first time about the construct. My side could have been a room in a house, or it could have been a compartment in a space shuttle. I didn’t know.
Because I didn’t know, I experienced a brief bout of panic followed by minor urgency. Escape. But where to? The other side, I supposed. Now I peered again, and saw through the gash, streaming errata shooting past like falling stars: moments from my life. I wondered what that meant. It began a kind of nervosa.
I was able to approach the gash and look through. I saw some of the most painful, barren moments of my life — moments unobscured by distraction. They were harsh, but beautiful in their harshness. When the fast-moving errata finally slowed, I realized these were the greatest truths, in no particular order, from my life. The meat of my experiences, undressed and unadorned, were on that side of the thinning veil, while I was over here. Somehow, I was separated from what I valued most.
When I next looked behind me, I noted an incredible sensation. One that can only be characterized as the opposite of substance. Meaninglessness perhaps, or trivium. A light turned on, illuminating a room, the light came out a square window. Intensely white and false. Disingenuous, if light can be such a thing. I became aware, through sentience, that this place had once mattered but was an illusion all along. On this side of the wall was illusion, and on that side reality.
It wanted in. I knew that at once, but it stayed put. Something about the wall. Even though there was the gash, a force prevented reality from joining me. So, I lived here, separated, with all my illusion. The things I was made to believe in, which were fast dissipating. All the experiences I had been made to think terrible things about, were over there, in the beyond. Because they were plain. Walks with my grandfather in the rain. An umbrella which had blown into the street. A time when a lover walked away without a word. No one was there to bear witness. These events went unseen, unnoticed.
Experience as an act of creation. To live is to experience and to experience is to create. Reality: what happens just before the intellectualization of the world.
Suddenly I know why I have gone with pangs in my belly for so long. I know the answer to my feelings of discontentment, my emotions of wantonness. Lack of fulfillment. I have kept the insubstantial here on this side and put my substance over there on that side. So, this is the context of my reality. This the truth about my architecture.
I stepped toward the gash. Thrust my hand through. Like jelly. Viscous. And swam. My body filled with warmth. Drawn toward it. Pulled near. Inextricably. And the hunger filled my belly. Now I know my hunger. How long had I been going with this starvation? How long had I been eating paper? Air?
I put my arm through, and it resisted. I pressed through with one arm until it tore and gave way, then I put through my other hand and arm and head. Now my head was on the other side. This was like being born. A rebirth into another dimension without dimension. Another fracture in the fabric. The wall assisted me through. Cilia. It was alive, making contractions that brought me to the other side. Tunneling. Tunnelllllling. Then: ground. Feeling blind.
I blinked awake. My eyelashes were gone like this meant something. That I would no longer have to make my way through dust and red particle. Like my eyes no longer needed protection. I looked down. My hands were no longer foreign objects I could see through. They were more solid. This is transfiguration, I thought. Pushed through to the other side.
I asked myself how long I’d been asleep. Then I asked how many other walls of consciousness just like this one. How many rebirths?
Yes. Yes yes yes. Darkness again. Only slightly less dark. My hands again, only slightly less translucent. A room again, only slightly less insubstantial.
Experiences kept around me: a time I held a girl’s hand. A first kiss. My mother pushing my head against the car window. I looked over. A wall. A place where the wall was thinning. The makings of a gash.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.