Into a Surrealist’s Utopia

Part 1
The Realm of Realism (Life in a Tomb)


The Path of Uncertainty    
     I know this path. This is a path that I’ve walked before. It’s a dark one with an indeterminate end. Me, myself and I think there are some things that are just kept better quiet. I don’t want to be quiet anymore. I want to leave this arctic realm of realism, lower my foot into the warm bath water of surrealism, and be home! Here, I am no one. There, I am someone. Oh, how I hate gazing into the mirror. May as well be prison bars between my Utopian realm and this one. I’ll raise my hand to the glass and the figure in the reflection follows. Then we join palms, then a ripple in the glass. All I must do is step through, press my convictions of liberation through the surface. Here, comes the end of this psychotic episode. I come to, looking away from the mirror, overwhelmed by a realist’s realm that’s full of glares from strangers. This path trodden in a dark forest would surely mean my death. Reality’s forest is callous, frigid and dark. The trees have no leaves, only sharp branches. The sun’s not intimate, rather a distant glow. I can bunch up as much as I want to but I’m still freezing. And those wide eyes of strangers! Oh, yes, those eyes themselves are plundering daggers! Inflicting very real amounts of crippling pain to my soul. So, I take a deep breath, turn back to the stranger in the mirror, and speak to him,  
     “I’m ready to step into the mirror and see the utopia my mind has created!”  
A tear then falls down the stranger’s face.

     Mirrors on both sides, I watch myself in the realm of realism decaying of misery. I just watch this man standing there whom I know, though don’t. Who’s he becoming? Humiliated in his posture, he breathes because he must move one step further out of the reflection. But he doesn’t make a move, he just stares back at me as I go on,
     “Oh, I’m ready.”  


Stepping Through the Mirror.
     Mirrored faces reflect faces mirrored. The glass can break and appear as impassible spindles of web, and sometimes it can shatter my only doorway to my utopia. Fingerprints on the glass tell of past attempts to cross. Opaque with its tropical steam, no, its my breath on the glass, yearning to cross. So close though, I stare back into chipped eyes. One by one they fall; I’m losing time! It may cut me to cross, but lacerations would be on my body, not my soul. I shirk the responsibilities of a normal citizen now. My heart’s a fist trying to punch out of the birdcage that are my ribs! And my voice as a ram, plunging through the tall fence of my teeth! I won’t be silent anymore! I will not restrain my beating soul! As I gazed on in wonderous anticipation, a face rose over my shoulder like the hellish sun of reality, “don’t go Daniel” the figure murmured. Like the sun I regarded another human with the same warmly compassion. But no, I must go! If I stay, I’m a prisoner!    

     A blast of lilac heat, and wind that wraps itself around me. “Welcome home,” I hear. Lacerated hands now healed; eyes adjust to the new light. Was I really in such a dark place all my life? That, with new consciousness I can barely keep my eyelids ajar. The shores that are my eyelids wane to a tear-sea that reigns.