Fireflies: A Microstory
Before we get started, I need you to take the deepest breath possible. Hold it, and wait until your lungs start give out. Then exhale. This will all make sense soon.
My boss, Mr. Vistan, says the undead see the living in only black and white. If they see you in color, regardless of the shade, then you should be able to see them too. Mr. Vistan, my boss and second father figure, he'll tell you his is just a faded shade of burnt sienna.
It all began in his youth, even before drugged out teens high on acid were convinced they've seen and spoken with God. In a small provincial home, a soldier knocked arrives just where Mr. Vistan had been spending his summer. With the nearest camp a good 40 minute drive away, it was clear this soldier was going to be labeled as missing especially in this evening. What do you tell a missing soldier anyway? Especially one who's missing facial features and anything below his shins.
Hearing that story again, you start to wonder if dead men really tell no tales? Mr. Vistan believes it's more of the finishing the story they never got to. Years ago, I heard the story about Crazy Victor who lived a few houses from where Mr. Vistan grew up. No one who knew him talked about him much. Maybe it was because he was the neighborhood's bad kid, that fuck-up every community has, the only guy in his generation who hasn't matured quite enough yet. During the Baby Boom era, while everyone began marrying and propogating as early as their late teens, Crazy Victor was seen wandering dazed along the streets with nothing but throwing knives on his person. God knows what he was doing.
Or not. Crazy Victor's aphixation related death at 26 was kept a secret from the neighborhood even decades after. Only his immediate family knew the cause, they covered it as a gene related heart condition. It was a tragic end for this community's fuck-up. The morning of his graduation, Crazy Victor was found keeled over from an overdose. For someone who had drifted from school to school, graduation had to be his biggest deal yet. So big that he insisted on dressing up for it, even if it meant borrowing a pair of shoes from Mr. Vistan's father without prior notice.
Mr. Vistan was the last person to speak with him. To this day, only very few of those who were around then know this. A week after his death, a remorseful Crazy Victor managed to find Mr. Vistan's faded burnt sienna and visited him. There was guilt in his speech Mr. Vistan says. But the important thing was that the shoes of his father were kept in a box just under his now old bed. Mr. Vistan never tells of how he knew the shoes were there. His father asked him and Mr. Vistan tells how Crazy Victor always liked those shoes of his.
A kid from my old neighborhood, Gerry, tells me his color could just be a pale shade of red. While never visited by spirits, Gerry was similar to Mr. Vistan. He claims it began in a dream where he saw an unknown man collapsing on a field and dying. A random dream about a random death made even less sense as the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" began to play softly. Days later, Gerry's mom passed away. And just like that, Joni Mitchell's line "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone" just made a whole lot more sense.
Gerry claims that since then, any dreams of someone dying will often lead to the death of someone he knows directly or not. He calls it cryptic foreshadowing, I call it coincidental. But Gerry insists he's dreamt at least the deaths of four people, two of which were close relatives. There's no set date for it, but the dreams often keep him on the lookout until he learns of someone's death or if it appears on the news.
Doctors say that the pineal gland, near the center of the brain, could be the explanation for the beliefs of a third eye. It produces melatonin, a hormone that affects the modulation of wake/sleep patterns and seasonal functions. Rene Descartes called it the "seat of the soul". New Age practitioners say it's the Ajna Chakra at work. Hindu tradition calls it the Chakra of the mind and that whatever is seen by it, the mind's eye is being used.
How I fit into all this, it starts just as we begin to take a walk in a remote town. My parents are there, so are both my brothers. I don't get out of the city much and there's a good reason for that. Too many faces scare me, and that's why we decided to visit this small town over one summer. No one in my family has been here yet.
My only qualm with some towns is that they become big deals when some historical site or ruin is either built near or around it. Anything significant enough to draw a huge crowd and you have a place as busy as the last place you came from. This particular town had anicent holy ground.
People like me, they will say that certain places hold a strong feeling that you can't describe. If you happen to walk by and smell something fresh or rotten, the reaction is about the same when it happens to us. When you have your Ajna Chakra working at full capacity, the possiblity of a connection between your personal and the collective unconscious isn't too far off.
People like me, we see more than what we want to see. We feel more than what we want to.
What happens next is that the further we walked around, my breathing becomes lesser and lesser. Like walking while testing the limits of your lungs. See how it all makes sense now? All this as something began to grip my chest tighter and tighter. I ask my brother what this place really is and when you hear that this ancient site has been around since the 8th century, you can only have one reaction to that.
Oh shit.
As it happened, the Fushimi-inari Taisha in Kyoto is a beacon for ancient spirits. Folklore says one has to be mindful of the kitsune spirits that guard the temple since while they are often seen as messengers with positive intentions, some are mischievous and often resort to possession. The Japanese call them either Zenko, the good type, or Yako, the mischivous type. If someone appears to have been possessed by one, they call it Kitsunesuki, literally meaning the state of being possessed by a fox. Women are said to be favored targets and they enter through the fingers or the chest, which could have been it.
The problem is that not even the Japanese have a term for when a person sees generations and generations of souls staring right back at them. Even away from the torii path and even at a nearby gift shop, they never leave you alone. By my count, there was about a good 20, maybe even 30 of them circling me. Each of them wanting to speak with me, some even crying, screaming or wailing. All of them missing their eyes, with only black pits in place of them. Even if I could understand what each one of them was saying, it can be an overwhelming. My father sees me crying in the middle of a courtyard, and the next thing I know I'm being whisked away to the Inari Station and back to Kyoto. I never told any of them that some of them gave chase until we got on the train. As I said, too many faces scare me. Let alone ones that are just six inches away from you.
This must be why spirits are sometimes described as tiny glowing globs, like fireflies or will 'o the wisps. If they only see in black and white, then I am the all singing, all dancing disco ball of the living world.
So I lied back there. My story really begins when I'm screaming "go away!" while balled up in a corner of my room. I'm barely old enough to go to school and already I'm being bullied. Mother insists that no one but she and I are in the room but I refuse to budge and begin to cry. Even after we've moved houses, more and more strangers began appear out of nowhere. After travelling to from city to city and visiting ancient European castles over certain summers, you just learn to live with it no matter how unsettling it is.
Like Mr. Vistan, this is my fascination I can't share with anyone else. Gerry says that we as individuals have personal spaces that go unsaid but are accepted by almost everyone. When people violate this personal space, the results can be terrifying. If it were only that easy to tell them. This obnoxious invasion of personal space for me is what I have to live with forever.
We've learned to deal with what we have, but we rarely talk about anything we've seen. Mr. Vistan, my boss and my uncle, the last person he saw was his visiting mother-in-law who was never in his home to begin with. My cousin Gerry has not dreamt anything, but I insist that in all my years, I haven't seen his mother around. Neither of us have a lasting image of Mr. Vistan's crazy Uncle Victor. I see new people everyday, with their dark eyes and blank stares. Some will try to approach, but most are courteous enough to know that my personal space is the most valued thing I have.
One thing is certain though. It will be awhile before I visit Japan again.
* Based on conversatons over 3 weekends.
** Credit to Wiki on some medical terms
*** Obviously I'm not the narrator
My boss, Mr. Vistan, says the undead see the living in only black and white. If they see you in color, regardless of the shade, then you should be able to see them too. Mr. Vistan, my boss and second father figure, he'll tell you his is just a faded shade of burnt sienna.
It all began in his youth, even before drugged out teens high on acid were convinced they've seen and spoken with God. In a small provincial home, a soldier knocked arrives just where Mr. Vistan had been spending his summer. With the nearest camp a good 40 minute drive away, it was clear this soldier was going to be labeled as missing especially in this evening. What do you tell a missing soldier anyway? Especially one who's missing facial features and anything below his shins.
Hearing that story again, you start to wonder if dead men really tell no tales? Mr. Vistan believes it's more of the finishing the story they never got to. Years ago, I heard the story about Crazy Victor who lived a few houses from where Mr. Vistan grew up. No one who knew him talked about him much. Maybe it was because he was the neighborhood's bad kid, that fuck-up every community has, the only guy in his generation who hasn't matured quite enough yet. During the Baby Boom era, while everyone began marrying and propogating as early as their late teens, Crazy Victor was seen wandering dazed along the streets with nothing but throwing knives on his person. God knows what he was doing.
Or not. Crazy Victor's aphixation related death at 26 was kept a secret from the neighborhood even decades after. Only his immediate family knew the cause, they covered it as a gene related heart condition. It was a tragic end for this community's fuck-up. The morning of his graduation, Crazy Victor was found keeled over from an overdose. For someone who had drifted from school to school, graduation had to be his biggest deal yet. So big that he insisted on dressing up for it, even if it meant borrowing a pair of shoes from Mr. Vistan's father without prior notice.
Mr. Vistan was the last person to speak with him. To this day, only very few of those who were around then know this. A week after his death, a remorseful Crazy Victor managed to find Mr. Vistan's faded burnt sienna and visited him. There was guilt in his speech Mr. Vistan says. But the important thing was that the shoes of his father were kept in a box just under his now old bed. Mr. Vistan never tells of how he knew the shoes were there. His father asked him and Mr. Vistan tells how Crazy Victor always liked those shoes of his.
A kid from my old neighborhood, Gerry, tells me his color could just be a pale shade of red. While never visited by spirits, Gerry was similar to Mr. Vistan. He claims it began in a dream where he saw an unknown man collapsing on a field and dying. A random dream about a random death made even less sense as the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" began to play softly. Days later, Gerry's mom passed away. And just like that, Joni Mitchell's line "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone" just made a whole lot more sense.
Gerry claims that since then, any dreams of someone dying will often lead to the death of someone he knows directly or not. He calls it cryptic foreshadowing, I call it coincidental. But Gerry insists he's dreamt at least the deaths of four people, two of which were close relatives. There's no set date for it, but the dreams often keep him on the lookout until he learns of someone's death or if it appears on the news.
Doctors say that the pineal gland, near the center of the brain, could be the explanation for the beliefs of a third eye. It produces melatonin, a hormone that affects the modulation of wake/sleep patterns and seasonal functions. Rene Descartes called it the "seat of the soul". New Age practitioners say it's the Ajna Chakra at work. Hindu tradition calls it the Chakra of the mind and that whatever is seen by it, the mind's eye is being used.
How I fit into all this, it starts just as we begin to take a walk in a remote town. My parents are there, so are both my brothers. I don't get out of the city much and there's a good reason for that. Too many faces scare me, and that's why we decided to visit this small town over one summer. No one in my family has been here yet.
My only qualm with some towns is that they become big deals when some historical site or ruin is either built near or around it. Anything significant enough to draw a huge crowd and you have a place as busy as the last place you came from. This particular town had anicent holy ground.
People like me, they will say that certain places hold a strong feeling that you can't describe. If you happen to walk by and smell something fresh or rotten, the reaction is about the same when it happens to us. When you have your Ajna Chakra working at full capacity, the possiblity of a connection between your personal and the collective unconscious isn't too far off.
People like me, we see more than what we want to see. We feel more than what we want to.
What happens next is that the further we walked around, my breathing becomes lesser and lesser. Like walking while testing the limits of your lungs. See how it all makes sense now? All this as something began to grip my chest tighter and tighter. I ask my brother what this place really is and when you hear that this ancient site has been around since the 8th century, you can only have one reaction to that.
Oh shit.
As it happened, the Fushimi-inari Taisha in Kyoto is a beacon for ancient spirits. Folklore says one has to be mindful of the kitsune spirits that guard the temple since while they are often seen as messengers with positive intentions, some are mischievous and often resort to possession. The Japanese call them either Zenko, the good type, or Yako, the mischivous type. If someone appears to have been possessed by one, they call it Kitsunesuki, literally meaning the state of being possessed by a fox. Women are said to be favored targets and they enter through the fingers or the chest, which could have been it.
The problem is that not even the Japanese have a term for when a person sees generations and generations of souls staring right back at them. Even away from the torii path and even at a nearby gift shop, they never leave you alone. By my count, there was about a good 20, maybe even 30 of them circling me. Each of them wanting to speak with me, some even crying, screaming or wailing. All of them missing their eyes, with only black pits in place of them. Even if I could understand what each one of them was saying, it can be an overwhelming. My father sees me crying in the middle of a courtyard, and the next thing I know I'm being whisked away to the Inari Station and back to Kyoto. I never told any of them that some of them gave chase until we got on the train. As I said, too many faces scare me. Let alone ones that are just six inches away from you.
This must be why spirits are sometimes described as tiny glowing globs, like fireflies or will 'o the wisps. If they only see in black and white, then I am the all singing, all dancing disco ball of the living world.
So I lied back there. My story really begins when I'm screaming "go away!" while balled up in a corner of my room. I'm barely old enough to go to school and already I'm being bullied. Mother insists that no one but she and I are in the room but I refuse to budge and begin to cry. Even after we've moved houses, more and more strangers began appear out of nowhere. After travelling to from city to city and visiting ancient European castles over certain summers, you just learn to live with it no matter how unsettling it is.
Like Mr. Vistan, this is my fascination I can't share with anyone else. Gerry says that we as individuals have personal spaces that go unsaid but are accepted by almost everyone. When people violate this personal space, the results can be terrifying. If it were only that easy to tell them. This obnoxious invasion of personal space for me is what I have to live with forever.
We've learned to deal with what we have, but we rarely talk about anything we've seen. Mr. Vistan, my boss and my uncle, the last person he saw was his visiting mother-in-law who was never in his home to begin with. My cousin Gerry has not dreamt anything, but I insist that in all my years, I haven't seen his mother around. Neither of us have a lasting image of Mr. Vistan's crazy Uncle Victor. I see new people everyday, with their dark eyes and blank stares. Some will try to approach, but most are courteous enough to know that my personal space is the most valued thing I have.
One thing is certain though. It will be awhile before I visit Japan again.
* Based on conversatons over 3 weekends.
** Credit to Wiki on some medical terms
*** Obviously I'm not the narrator