Stansilav Kostarnov

THE WONDERS OF THE NIGHT MIND

                                    1.

The wind blew wildly in the rocks, the clouds raced by. It seemed like the rocks would be destroyed by the waves that, like giants tired of a day’s work, rolled heavily onto the deserted beach. Spray flew solemnly into the night air.

                  Then the sight fades again. What is this? Where? The feelings of joy and sadness were all mixed up.

                  I started to wonder, thoughts were like waves flowing unrelated to time into the ever-deepening abyss of yearning. They rolled over me in cool, refreshing strokes. They gave me peace of mind but also invigorated me.

                  Light starts to fade outside or, though it’s strange, outside of what? Does it fade for we are in no capsule and live in our own within the light? The next thought comes. Which of these worlds is real? Certainly the one on the other side of the barrier … or maybe?

                                    2.

Why can’t we reason when we are in the world that’s solid? Maybe it’s our senses that don’t let our minds float freely when awake. Our minds cannot, in here, react and relate to the solid reality. But why in reality can it relate to this world of liquid and thought that is as fog revealed to a clear mind.

                  Nature is wise for it will provide you with time to think over all you need. Yet too often we do not think enough of the things of most pure importance in our lives. Only bread for the spirit gives life its satisfaction and will quench the burning hungers for truth.

                  Yes, and memory too is for me best served not of those places that have the best food, hotels or scenery, but of those where friends seemed closest. These places were target camp, Crimea and others that, in this manner, brought relief to the mind. The friends were of totally different types, but all very close to my heart.

                                    3.

As I lay there on the cold rough gloomy stones, I hear a voice calling me with him. I get up and start walking. This man I know well, though I met or saw him not before. As we walked through the ages among the great boulders of time and life, we entered a second being from which few details can I recall. My mind was covered with thought, as if what it was could never be recovered. But as thought came through though and covered itself in a knot, the time, like a wet string, slipped out of my hand, with it untying the silk of memory spun by the spiders of our senses.

                  As the moments flash by, the dream must end. But it does not, for the unfamiliar world must persist.

                  The unknown yet so familiar man walks in front of me and then, like a weary apparition, a huge lake appears before us. The old man slowly walks towards it, as if fearing the disappearance of the new wonder into the water-saturated air that, in the form of mist, tricks our senses. Then, out of the fog, appear oaks, their silhouettes coming from the darkness of distance. These oaks were as old as the age itself, as tall as the towers of Italy and as wise as the greatest of men and as terrible as any of the wolves of the North.

                  The oaks stood draped in the brown shrouded cloaks of last year’s leaves, solemn and sad in the rain. Yet from them went an unmistakable joy of being among the Great Century thinkers.

                  The trees were not heading for the sky. Their arms were few and heavy. Their trunks were as twisted as the snaking ways of the mind. Yet there was power in these hard trouble-worn muscleless bodies, for their branches were frozen in a swing and the trunk was yet ready to pounce. They were in an infinite sleep that brought wisdom of an equal amount.

                  This sleep, however, did not come monolith out of the deep of night, but trickled in from the soul of the tree and covered its branches with a blue fog of hope. There was a quiet crunching sound and, as in a slow-motion film, the branch of the oldest of all the trees fell to the ground, producing a thump that split the air and was repeated by a chorus of a million echoes.

                  The trees were not alive, but were still bursting with personality, only pockets of life were left upon their mighty branches. The birth out of the dead wood of the green leaves was a process that’s pleasant to watch. It was brought into Nature to bring about hope, and it does that successfully, for that duty is its most favored task.

                  Those trees indeed were great and indeed they had been thinking all their time. As we stood there, the trees shook off the rain of the morning and started bathing in the afternoon sun.

                  We walked up to the lake. The water was mirror-like. It seemed not a grain of sand was misplaced in the whole lake. It seemed as if it were some symbol of peace.

                  Then darkness falls again, a small light appears, fog swirls around some peak, a dark abyss opens below my feet, figures move around on a small road far down. Somehow I knew there was a valley and a river below, but all that was now infinitely far. Only a knowledge remained that anything else existed.

                  I saw people determined in their challenge to make the dark a little lighter. They were tugging ropes, ropes of hope, ropes of work. They were tearing the rocks of the Great Body of the Mountain, plucking out its dark and eroded heart.

                  Thoughts followed the same pattern as the scenery. They were not serene, they weren’t flowing over in wavelike cool gusts. The thoughts hammered down in a wild torrent, as if they echoed the ever-running avalanche of darkness that now engulfed us both. We fell through the darkness like a stone, lost to the world above, yet found by the richness of that which was below.

                  Around me was a swirling moist current of gloom. Though the rocks below were sharp as razors, no fear was in sight. Then the scenery changed. A light-blue fog covered all, a river trickled. We were sitting in a circle. Me, a tall looking man in a jacket, a strange-looking bearded man of about forty in a black anarack, and the old man in his normal torn black tunic. A broth was cooking in the old pot on a fire in a hole in the ground. The darkness was ultimate, as if the eyes had no knowledge of what was outside the small wooden gazebo.

                  Again “the game” started, a distant noise of unicorn feet was driving the peaceful world into a circle around my body. The echo of past waves appeared to have come back and the abyss flashed by. There was no bridge to the island which appeared. A black shape glided through the darkness. Its wings seemed to cut the rich and cold night air. Out of the night came a new image, a new idea maybe, it was flying in a circle around me like a bat and yet I could not grab it, though its route seemed identical to that of my hand.

                  In the distance, thunder rolled as clear as if somebody beat a drum a few meters away, and yet none could see darkening clouds. The countryside around seemed to live a life separate from the reality. From a thousand caves infinitely above us, there was a howl of creatures unknown to man and unseen to other inhabitants of the earth.

                  They danced the dark sky and the oaks that we mentioned in this story before were among them, their minds enlightening the world with a trillion stars of knowledge. This was indeed the time when the dream, after it has tested your reaction to it, comes in its full power to take every resource of imagination and show you its theme.

                  It comes in a slow but steady gallop in its many billions of images, and yet it may just be like the moon that watches it from behind the cloudy veil, not fully ever revealing itself, and then disappears leaving no image of itself in the brain or the heart. Its Great Flame, however, dwindled in the sky, and under its warmth the countryside was ever mobile in the face of the setting moon. The world of that outside human knowledge was ever more present, its cat-like eyes staring at our gazebo that stood in the flow of the clean river water which invisibly linked the far off mountains to the dark stormy sea. All was now quiet, so quiet that you could hear a pin fall onto the unending plateau of leaves and needles. This was the final episode of the adventure; the boats were ready and the dream’s challenge had been met and the time for the end had come. I had already gotten to know this world very well. In fact, though somewhere I knew I must be awakening, I could not recall a world outside of it.

                  The boats were untied and the old man with the torn coat bid me goodbye. I looked with light sadness at an unrealistic world that would soon cease to exist. The boats had already disappeared into the morning fog and the vision that I so loved disappeared too. A new world would be made the next night, but for now my time was up and a rising sun shone through the window.

                                    4.

Few will enter that world of the wild free mind, because it’s the mind, not the sense, that may discover it. The measurement of the mind is not sensible for mathematical calculations, and is therefore greater by far. Its unlimited freedom mocks the powers of sanity for they, in all their logic, overlap, contradicting each other. Nothing that cannot be convinced through faith is true for a man who sees infinity will uncalculate his own existence as not true. Only by our beliefs do solids take on a physical sense, whilst dampness, like darkness, is felt through the heart.

                  We don’t know we are we. We say it’s unlimitedly likely, but our senses never allow us to doubt our existence, though we can’t prove it to any alienated mind. We, by our evil instincts, will be perceived as the mad men, while their theory is much more logical than that of existence. In our “true” world we perceive in unison, imprisoning the brain in a cage of reality, and only Dali will lift our world on his mind’s crutches, through the mist of suspicion.