HOME | DD

Description
  Beinn Mhor, I know it well. I used to come here with my uncle as a boy of twelve up until I was eighteen, on school summer holidays. I see it, dream-like but something makes it look so real, so much in the present that I don't want to claim it to be 'dream-like'. I see that I am not that far up the mountain, right where my uncle and I used to rest when we first started doing this (when I was older I wouldn't need to rest but we would still stand and gaze at the world around us). I feel conscious, but this must just be some odd dream. .
  My apparent vision keeps faulting and shifting ever so slightly like a camera with a shifting focus, like it is trying to decide, still, if I should really see what I can right now. Am I remembering, or am I dreaming? I cannot tell. It feels like so much more than a mere memory (try thinking to your first day at school, your first lesson learning times tables or the first birthday party which you were invited to from someone in class; to me, at least, I only visually recall fragments and sections and it looks a little dull and my mind seems to make up its own facts to fill in the gaps and the reconstruction is so shaky, so fragile and unsteady).
  I can hear the buzz of bees and the heat of the July sunshine on my back. Again, something is nagging at me about the vision, the scene. . I hear peculiar noises in between the bees' buzz, it's a strange sound. . Unnatural. Ululating. . And I see what is still not quite right about what I see – in front of me there are splodges and patches of nothingness within my vision, as if a painter put down his brush too soon, but still the canvas was framed. . Echoing faintly, it's the cries of a siren . .   My surroundings blur and shapes streak into one another like a water colour bleeding in rain. Nothing looks like one; everything is adjoined in a haze of all. . And the siren . .
  And a black gloom sinks upon it all. In the Black Gloom, there is no longer touch nor taste and no sensation of scent, either, and it seems like no time passes at all yet at the same time infinite space and time is passing me by, and I would be none the wiser. . the siren stopped in the gloom, too. I feel weak, yet unbodily. What is happening?

  Gloom. Black. That is all I see. In fact, calling it 'gloom' really isn't quite right, it's literally only black I can see whatsoever (and wouldn't 'gloom' just suggest that it's lingering over or covering something? I cannot tell if it is covering something, I can't tell anything other than it is Black. But still, I shall call this the Gloom. It's gloomy, I guess, only seeing Black). Also, to 'see' the Black might cause an issue, but I'll get to that soon. No noise, nothing. None of my other senses are registering (and are they even there? Who knows). I feel conscious. For this is conscious thought (again, a questionable issue), is it not? Nothing is around me other than the Black. I feel out-of-body, but perhaps it's my running thoughts which keep me thinking of things as 'seeing' Black. By 'seeing', it is what is apparent in image. I am contemplating if I am bound here, what would happen? I can't tell if time passes – what if it is like when you wake up and feel like you close your eyes for just seconds when hours have passed? But, again, it doesn't feel either way, just seconds nor hours or more feel to pass. Splat. Splodge. Flecks of colour glimmer in my sight . .

. . And suddenly an entire image, but with some speckles of black scattered in places where the image appears to be not quite complete, springs in front of my eyes from the Black and I am suddenly 'here'. Eyes sting as I find myself staring into nothing in particular. Blurred greys and blues surround me, it looks like the sea – I can taste it and feel the blast of a wild wind on my body, but the image is still blurred, but also speckled. And now! I see it all now. It has come to focus quicker than the mind likes it to, as if it's worked by mechanical machinery turning the clogs. . The world is in front of me – not the dreary, blind eyes of luminescent street lights, motors shouting and it's without the thin, wiry whines of televisions, computers, dampening life and nature's cause – albeit, all that filth is but minutes walk from here. I know this place. This is only five minutes' walk from the house which I grew up in. It has been nearly a decade since I've actually set foot here. Why is it this place which is the Image World in front of me?
  Breaking waves of the sea and gliding gulls bless my vision, with the wind whistling through my hair, with some bursts of uproar, bitter against my skin, but soon it settles back down to a wonderful but tough breeze. Millions of ripples run, chasing one another desperately in a small rock-pool by my feet. Scattered around me and up to the shore line are lots of rock pools, some quite deep with larger ripples. A dark and menacing sky greets me and leers down, but it feels a joy to be apart from the busy streets with cars and people. I always did like the beach here, and I've always liked places where the most common sighting wouldn't be concrete, tarmac, brick or streetlights and road signs.
  Here, in this – oh, what is it? A dream? Here, in this Dream World, I don't quite feel the freedom, the liberation which I always did feel standing, walking and escaping to here all those years ago. Perhaps this is a memory. . But I don't remember these thoughts going through my head, and I don't feel like I'm remembering a younger-self's experience here, I have the sensations through my touching-30-year-old present self. . And it still feels too real to be a dream – I'm thinking normally, for goodness sake! I don't see any radical things which tell me, "You're dreaming, so shut up and get on with it."
  I used to come here a lot, too much really, to get some space. A lot of those times it was to get some space from myself. . But now – right now – I feel far from free. This World, why am I here? Of course I cannot be physically here, but why is it like this? Maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the ride, even if it is just a warped-up dream. I don't want to be back here, though. There were so many troubles which I flung myself to here when I was younger!
  The sand is coarse with a haze of little fragments of shells; I can see blue flecks from mussels' shells and the odd strip from a section of razor clam, amongst it all. I feel the panicked surge of my heart beat, a twisted sickening sensation in my stomach. Clenching my fists and brows furrow as I look down at the dull light brown sand, and I am falling into a state of anxiousness. Why here? Why am I here? I find myself biting my lip, and the damp sand underfoot squelches slightly under my feet as I slowly shift my weight. This feels real. . now the surge inside mellows down and settles somewhat. And – up! I look up again: the crashing waves roar with laughter and gulls far off battle in the winds and sea; I can't help a broad grin spread across my face, for this is  Life – as it should be – and it is all I can see here. The great bellies of the beating waves, their force can pull hard cliff edges to mere grains of sand. The sky here is not yet touched or mutilated from the scorch of amber streetlight; there is part of a stretch of coastal golf course between I and the nearest street light some 200m south within this small, small town. The call of seabirds' far off and overhead sing in my ears (from having lived in such a town with an abundance of the birds from the age of three to twenty-one, their screams and shrieks have melted to mere calls which are quite sweet to my ears).
  I feel so trapped here, because of the past difficulties, but I don't want to face the concrete abyss when I can see this in front of my eyes.  Maybe it doesn't matter about the past and that why I used to come here was so often because of hard times and trials of trust and love back then. That past is not here with me, I am older now and stronger and secure. This, in my vision, is such a fantastic place – even if I am dreaming – and that has not changed, still. I feel less worried and gladness flows in my veins, just as . . in my ears, I hear an echoing Tha-ud, tha-ud around me, everywhere . . Tha-ud, tha-ud. . And gloom again shocks my sight and, again, the sensation of being an unbodily presence takes over.

  A bridge. I am standing on the great bridge which connects the Old Town from the New in the busy-body city which we call a Capital of my country, spewing with tartan tack shops and tourists moving as slow as sheep and business men and women trying to zip around everyone else and the gentle stroll of regular people who are in no real hurry, but are stuck dawdling behind and around people posing in front of generic Edinburgh things which we see every day and take for granted (monuments, the bridge side itself, the Georgian architecture on either end of the bridge, etc., etc.). The pavement is grey with white-ish-grey splodges of chewing gum and the litter bins are full – oh, what a surprise that is – and the sky looks heavy, swollen with thick fog. I see merely slightly darker greys among grey to the right of the bridge through the fog – the Castle Rock stands over the gardens and the street filled with shops, the train station bellow me. To my left, I would be able to see Arthur's Seat with its crags nearly 1km away, but now it is nowhere to be seen within the white, obscured sky, with tiny darker greys of Carlton Hill's monument pearling through the thick mist. I hear nothing. Not yet, in this World
  I see as much the weather lets me – oh, the weather doesn't make me think that it's altogether dream-like obscured location, not the location or the environment, or the tick heavy smell of fuel emissions from the constant flow of taxis, buses and cars. The taste feels wedged in my throat. All of that's the way it's always been and everything feel fine, oh, except the people. They are everywhere, as usual. I could see people trying to be as brisk and efficiently getting from A to B, probably office-types on a lunch break, skittering amongst the milling around pace of people around little clusters of people waiting at bus stops (the tourists just looked quite lost and bewildered). Yes, everywhere as usual – but I see all of the people as figures purely of smeared colours within their silhouettes, like some hand drawn animation. The colours flow and swirl around within their individual figure's outline. Not every figure is the same colour, it's Technicolor madness: oranges as bright as marigolds, greens like grass, purples as strong as freakin' Barney the dinosaur. .  eerie, to say the least.
  No-one even bumps into me. There hasn't been so much as brush of the shoulder or even a mere sweep of a bag against me as they pass me by, in this World. They. If I ignore the coloured silhouettes, it seems fine – the way they walk, the way they stand - but it's madness. Is this madness? I cannot hear a thing Here, yet I think that I can even feel the chill of the fog on my body, clinging against me and then sliding slugishly away.
  My ears seem to prick as, finally, I can hear the slightest signs of sounds, like a television slowly increasing its volume from mute. Quite quiet, but I can see how busy it is. . and still 'low volume' at the edge of hearing. . but, all at once, the noise. The drone of the engines – slow, heavy and laboured sounding in the heaving buses and somewhat lighter in the cars but there was still that grating sound within – and the people and all the stilettos chtip, chtip, chitp, chtop-chtoping, boots and trainers twumph, twumph, pwumthing, brogues tomph, timph, tomph, tomphing, and a hum-drum of chitter-chattering to peers, the sound of spitting on to the street, the talking on telephones, and the madness the of sound pounded my ears for the first few seconds of hearing it all, all at once. It feels unsettling to be able to hear all the people around me, whilst only seeing bizarre coloured figures of it all, let alone the fact that there seems to be some thing stopping even a feather touching me here.
  These people! What can I really call them, though, the hollow vibrancy of colours, walking! These are shadows of colour! Panic rises slightly in my chest. Underneath all the crazy noise and mess of the city sounds I hear a separate line of sounds, like an underlying track is being played. It sounds less sporadic and horrid as the city, but I still can hear concern and worrying within the sounds themselves. The sounds in this hiding trail of sounds.. voices, but not that many. I can faintly pick out odd electronic sounds like whirps and womps around the vocals. Talking. Someone is talking. . to me? Yes. A clearer voice, soothing me in this World of Shadowmen. The calming track underneath the raging city is still oh so faint, but it comforts me somewhat. The panic fades. And it fades along with the colours, the image the sounds switch off into the Black Gloom, once more.

Sometimes, in the Gloom of the Blackness, I see glimmers of places as if I am nearly there but not quite, yet. Often the places are full focus but still blotched and splattered in their completeness, some fully complete altogether or some look like odd outlines of places I can recognise but have little affection for (like how the view from the bus you take 5-days-a-week: it's familiar like hell, but why would you want to go there like you're still half-groggy from the coffee after a 6am wake up). I can see Shadowmen (as so I have decided to name them) sometimes, within ordinary places. Most of these places feel mundane to me – I do know these places, no where looks dream-like or out of place odd. I don't see much connection to the Worlds which flicker, other than that I am the cloth of the thread which seams me. I seem to fall into ones which are that bit more special to me, rather than the local pub which I've seen flash for some five seconds (it feels like) or the standing outside church my mother went to (I must have last been there, 8 years old and wearing my Sunday Best). Little places around from time to time (I say 'time' because I cannot fathom to work out what else to call it, even if it does feel as if time ceases to exist here in this Gloom). The flickers, they are complete with peripheral vision, those slightly hard to see things are just that; just on the edge of your sight. It is not a pulling or a pushing, nor a leap or walk which I have into the Worlds. I do not know what causes me to go where or why, but I do. It appears – or is 'created' the right word? Maybe 'formed' is better –  around me.

  Blurs and smears, like paint not yet fully covering a canvas, blot into vision; blacks and rich deep blues and tiny, little sparks of white-ambers and golds which twinkle along a horizon. Calm swoosh and sways of dull greens by my feet, but I cannot hear what I know is the sea in front of me once more within these Worlds. The small little harbour is to my right, the sandstone ramp for the lifeboats I stand on which reaches up to the seafront street with little houses nestled side-by-side. I taste the soft salty air in my mouth. The tide is low. Again, I know this place, and – again – it is my town where I was brought up in. This is more pleasant. I remember walking with ice creams dribbling on my hand with my sister and our grandparents when they came to visit from England (beach chairs and sun hats at the ready, when it in the lush summer sunshine visits, cups of tea and nice chicken breast and vegetables served to tickle your taste-buds for winter visits). These fond memories brought a soft smile across my face, and I felt peaceful.
  The splodges of colours are still filling up their canvas, my sight, as I think happily. The sky must be cloudless, or near that, and it might be a late spring night, for there isn't much of a chill in the air. And, gradually, bit by bit, the colours have fully filled in the gaps of the canvas and now the focus trickles into the right sharpness for me to see it all. Little ripples of little waves close to me and the little white horses as it laps the slightly pebbled shore. The colours are a little obscured from white-yellow bright lights of the harbour with its little boats bobbling gently, and a green light on its entrance. The street lights are behind me, but they aren't amber on the street which leads to the harbour, which separates the East from the West Bay. I stand on the East Bay, and the tiny twinkles on horizon are those of another town, sleepy in its bright streetlamps blazing, and she's gazing over to me across the Firth of Forth. One of the three main iconic islands of the local area is seen as an ominous, solid black silhouette west of me. Still, the sound of where I stand hasn't come to me yet, but I know it all so well and I look forwards to hearing it. I came here, when it was dark, to see the twinkling street lights from afar and the harbour's light on the sea.
  It is mid-tide and I can see little stars peeping down to see what's happening tonight on this chaotic world – but here I feel somewhat free from it, despite the lights and houses everything always silent at this time. I'm sure it's near midnight, in this World. I don't think a camera could capture this moment. Perhaps a painting, but it would have to be outstanding and supreme to manage to contain how I feel.
  My heart leaps with joy as I hear those wee harbour noises with the sloshing tide. Clink and clanks of little boats tied up, gently shouldering one another with a slow but gleeful manor in the night. The tide, shhwwoorph in, and shwwiiiiiift out like sea is sleeping softly. The Black covers all, and I no longer hear the sleeping angles giggling and the whisper of the water.

   A thick mist cloaks my vision for a mere ten metres beyond me. Lampposts peered bleakly with a horrid ominous manor, like splinters imbedded in flesh. Young but struggling trees whimper amongst seas of concrete soils and tarmac, drowning their potential greatness, with their little leaves flittering in the air was the only movement I can see. In the cracks and joints of concrete – it's littered with them – which I can peer through the mist to see, thick shoots of grasses and wild flowers stand with ambition. Where I am, quite, I do not know – but once, surely, this must have been a large city, for the remnants of a road which I stand near the middle of stretches off for what I estimate as eight full lanes, four-abreast.  In the gloom of this World I can see a blue sheet of metal, oozed in rust, with large white letters of a name of some place, but the surface is too obscured with weathering and moss growth to see, let alone through the fog. . All that I could make out was a 'SA—' and a '—SI—', nothing more.
  I daren't move from where my feet stand, and I have no idea where I am, but this place feels like a plague-like apocalypse of a world I don't even come from. This – this mess of what was once urbanisation – is not a reality I know; this actually feels like a dream to me. These surreal surroundings I can see in this World can only be a dream; something my mind has conjured with a Hollywood-look to it. I have never been anywhere in these Worlds where it has felt like a dream, always somewhere I have been before or the glimmers within the Blackness Gloom of everyday places. What is the meaning of the Worlds, then? And then vision dimmed to Black and I am taken away, again, like always into to the Dark.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, speckles of fuzzy blurs of green and gold, from where I imagine is at my feet right up to just a touch higher than my hips, merge in front of the Black – and now soft, soft blues in a long expanse cover from the golden greens to infinity above creep their way in thickly. The colours appear in speckles on the black like a black canvas with the paint splattered on from the bristles of the painter's brush. The rest of my apparent vision is filled in, like a photo is developed in the chemicals in the darkroom, the forms which have been captured and frozen in place eventually flood in the gaps, when given time.
  Now the whole scene snaps into focus suddenly, filling in all gaps of blur. I see the pinks and yellows, whites and purples and reds of sweet scented wild flowers in a vast abundance, imbedded within what I had seen as golden green expanse – I am standing in a flat, level grounded meadow which stretches on for what seems like forever. I cannot see anything other than rich colours of the petals amongst the long, long grasses and wheat heads, with a fat, blue sky above it, without a cloud in sight. I cannot yet hear or smell anything in this – in these Worlds, I have leant that the vision always comes first, but it is never reliable to predict when any other senses come in and how suddenly or subtly for sometimes they arrive with the full image in-focus.
  I can see that there is a breeze here through the grasses and flowers, but none of it I can feel against my body nor hear. The powerful scent of sweet, sweet honey suckle nearly startles me for its suddenness, mingled with a range of other beautiful pollens, for I am completely surrounded by flora in bloom. This sense gladdens me greatly, for it reminds me slightly of a distant and dim memory when a toddler with my hands in the soil and wild poppies well above my head in my grandmother's garden which, at that age, felt like a jungle of pollens and colours. Now, the sounds joyous bird song tickle my ears and I can finally feel the beautiful breeze in the air which makes the heads of flowers swish and sway their long elegant necks. I cannot see where the birds play, until a very slight movement in some bushes, some five metres away, draws me to what seem to be some blue tits and wrens dancing in the branches. Tiny cream coloured butterflies dance, moving in that slightly odd but beautiful way, with their bodies gently moving but with their wings jittering and flittering.
  My heart feels almost buoyant in my chest, but – again – there is a little nagging and twisting in it, like a small pebble in the balloon bringing it slowly down. The birds still sing and the flowers' pollen still fills my nostrils – but what is wrong? What is it? And, then I hear something which sounds out of place. The something of sound does not seem particularly close, yet it does not feel that far off to be distant by any means. . The voice, it is everywhere yet nowhere. It. It sounds like. Talking. Simply talking. Audible vocals. Talking. It is a talking which I feel and sense to know that it is directed to me. A woman's. Talking without expecting any answer. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter – my heart beat goes – pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Talking. Pitter-patter, pitter-pa ---- Black Gloom, once more.

  Rowan berries hang in full ripeness, a sharp contrast to the bright green eaves. I have come to this little World sitting on a large picnic blanket at the foot of a small cluster of these trees. An artificial looking lake shore with large boulders creating its boundary from the stretch of grass surrounding it is just an arm's reach away from me. Someone has been here; sitting next to me – or lying – and two plastic wine glasses sit placidly on the grass, a bottle is nearly empty in a plastic supermarket bag. Who? Who am I within this World? I seem to have been alone whilst drifting in and out of World after World – who is this with me?
  Ducks mingle in couples on the lake, spiralling and swirling. 10 ft from me, I see Shadowmen figures. The Shadowmen I have seen within the Black Gloom's Glimmers of images so much that they have lost their shudder on me, and I manage to see past the colour-craziness (or I am just concentrating on ignoring it). There are some children and presumably their mothers tossing bits of bread to the ducks. . Am I waiting for someone? Here, this lake, I know I've been here before (it isn't new to me as a World) but it is not one which I have been or seen before this one visit, nor since. I should who I was with when I came here that one time, and it's somewhere in my memory. This isn't a mundane occurrence. This day, in my memory, in my past, it cannot be unimportant An itch. A nag. A strain. Where? When? I feel terror creep up my spine as I still cannot recall it, I cannot remember this important place, or who it was with. The tranquillity this Day had, and the spark of starlight I had, I have. I know the feeling, goddamnit, I feel the wholesome joy and completion of self, this love, I know it and I crave to know why I cannot remember it all. Why ever not? Waiting for someone to come back to me. . Who? I want to remember, but it's lost. . And the shapeless, formless Gloom engulfs the World once more and I sink away from the lake and the fractured, splintered memory and strain desperately to find the missing shards but cannot.

  Everything is blurred. But. . in this World I'm not standing. Something emits bright light and it feels as if it's grating my retinas. I close my eyes for a few seconds and slowly reopen them. The World is still blurred. I can hear twinkling of electronic sounds. . So, no waves of a sea to greet me (wild or calm), no flowers bobbing or any swirling ducks on a little lake this time, in this World. . Every sense has arrived at once and promptly, on time as I'd expect normally, and there are no wee speckles in the Image – it's just all blurred. I blink. I can hear some quiet murmuring of people; maybe it's only two or so voices, I can't quite concentrate. One of the voices I can hear sends I a pang of distant recall of, but my mind is fuzzy.
  I keep blinking and the World in front of me still tries to figure out the focus, gently and steadily. The World isn't any less bright and scalding my eyes, but slowly my eyes adjust, too. Beh-deep, beh-deep I can hear amongst a mishmash of little sounds. And – easy does it! – the World eases into a clear image.
  No landscape. Nothing like that at all. A room. I see the place the murmurs came from, two women. They aren't Shadowmen. It looks Real. One wears a nurse's uniform, I see the little upside-down watch clips on her blouse pocket and she is holding a clipboard. The other. I couldn't remember, I couldn't remember her, oh God, I couldn't remember – what happened? Oh God, she's here, she's safe! And I find myself uttering these words aloud, and the women turn quickly to face me, and they see my blubbering – no Shadowmen with their coloured silhouette madness, here, this is Real, no more Worlds and no more Black Gloom!
  She practically leaps across the room to me, stroking my hair and uttering sweet words of joy and blessing, as the nurse quickly shuffles around quickly by the doorway barking something and young a female doctor comes barging in. Her eyes, her face, her being is all I care for, for now she is with me, here and I am not in a World and no Shadowmen or the jumping from World to World, this is Real and I am with my love once more and that is what matters.  Now and here, and here she is.

Description
  Beinn Mhor, I know it well. I used to come here with my uncle as a boy of twelve up until I was eighteen, on school summer holidays. I see it, dream-like but something makes it look so real, so much in the present that I don't want to claim it to be 'dream-like'. I see that I am not that far up the mountain, right where my uncle and I used to rest when we first started doing this (when I was older I wouldn't need to rest but we would still stand and gaze at the world around us). I feel conscious, but this must just be some odd dream. .
  My apparent vision keeps faulting and shifting ever so slightly like a camera with a shifting focus, like it is trying to decide, still, if I should really see what I can right now. Am I remembering, or am I dreaming? I cannot tell. It feels like so much more than a mere memory (try thinking to your first day at school, your first lesson learning times tables or the first birthday party which you were invited to from someone in class; to me, at least, I only visually recall fragments and sections and it looks a little dull and my mind seems to make up its own facts to fill in the gaps and the reconstruction is so shaky, so fragile and unsteady).
  I can hear the buzz of bees and the heat of the July sunshine on my back. Again, something is nagging at me about the vision, the scene. . I hear peculiar noises in between the bees' buzz, it's a strange sound. . Unnatural. Ululating. . And I see what is still not quite right about what I see – in front of me there are splodges and patches of nothingness within my vision, as if a painter put down his brush too soon, but still the canvas was framed. . Echoing faintly, it's the cries of a siren . .   My surroundings blur and shapes streak into one another like a water colour bleeding in rain. Nothing looks like one; everything is adjoined in a haze of all. . And the siren . .
  And a black gloom sinks upon it all. In the Black Gloom, there is no longer touch nor taste and no sensation of scent, either, and it seems like no time passes at all yet at the same time infinite space and time is passing me by, and I would be none the wiser. . the siren stopped in the gloom, too. I feel weak, yet unbodily. What is happening?

  Gloom. Black. That is all I see. In fact, calling it 'gloom' really isn't quite right, it's literally only black I can see whatsoever (and wouldn't 'gloom' just suggest that it's lingering over or covering something? I cannot tell if it is covering something, I can't tell anything other than it is Black. But still, I shall call this the Gloom. It's gloomy, I guess, only seeing Black). Also, to 'see' the Black might cause an issue, but I'll get to that soon. No noise, nothing. None of my other senses are registering (and are they even there? Who knows). I feel conscious. For this is conscious thought (again, a questionable issue), is it not? Nothing is around me other than the Black. I feel out-of-body, but perhaps it's my running thoughts which keep me thinking of things as 'seeing' Black. By 'seeing', it is what is apparent in image. I am contemplating if I am bound here, what would happen? I can't tell if time passes – what if it is like when you wake up and feel like you close your eyes for just seconds when hours have passed? But, again, it doesn't feel either way, just seconds nor hours or more feel to pass. Splat. Splodge. Flecks of colour glimmer in my sight . .

. . And suddenly an entire image, but with some speckles of black scattered in places where the image appears to be not quite complete, springs in front of my eyes from the Black and I am suddenly 'here'. Eyes sting as I find myself staring into nothing in particular. Blurred greys and blues surround me, it looks like the sea – I can taste it and feel the blast of a wild wind on my body, but the image is still blurred, but also speckled. And now! I see it all now. It has come to focus quicker than the mind likes it to, as if it's worked by mechanical machinery turning the clogs. . The world is in front of me – not the dreary, blind eyes of luminescent street lights, motors shouting and it's without the thin, wiry whines of televisions, computers, dampening life and nature's cause – albeit, all that filth is but minutes walk from here. I know this place. This is only five minutes' walk from the house which I grew up in. It has been nearly a decade since I've actually set foot here. Why is it this place which is the Image World in front of me?
  Breaking waves of the sea and gliding gulls bless my vision, with the wind whistling through my hair, with some bursts of uproar, bitter against my skin, but soon it settles back down to a wonderful but tough breeze. Millions of ripples run, chasing one another desperately in a small rock-pool by my feet. Scattered around me and up to the shore line are lots of rock pools, some quite deep with larger ripples. A dark and menacing sky greets me and leers down, but it feels a joy to be apart from the busy streets with cars and people. I always did like the beach here, and I've always liked places where the most common sighting wouldn't be concrete, tarmac, brick or streetlights and road signs.
  Here, in this – oh, what is it? A dream? Here, in this Dream World, I don't quite feel the freedom, the liberation which I always did feel standing, walking and escaping to here all those years ago. Perhaps this is a memory. . But I don't remember these thoughts going through my head, and I don't feel like I'm remembering a younger-self's experience here, I have the sensations through my touching-30-year-old present self. . And it still feels too real to be a dream – I'm thinking normally, for goodness sake! I don't see any radical things which tell me, "You're dreaming, so shut up and get on with it."
  I used to come here a lot, too much really, to get some space. A lot of those times it was to get some space from myself. . But now – right now – I feel far from free. This World, why am I here? Of course I cannot be physically here, but why is it like this? Maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the ride, even if it is just a warped-up dream. I don't want to be back here, though. There were so many troubles which I flung myself to here when I was younger!
  The sand is coarse with a haze of little fragments of shells; I can see blue flecks from mussels' shells and the odd strip from a section of razor clam, amongst it all. I feel the panicked surge of my heart beat, a twisted sickening sensation in my stomach. Clenching my fists and brows furrow as I look down at the dull light brown sand, and I am falling into a state of anxiousness. Why here? Why am I here? I find myself biting my lip, and the damp sand underfoot squelches slightly under my feet as I slowly shift my weight. This feels real. . now the surge inside mellows down and settles somewhat. And – up! I look up again: the crashing waves roar with laughter and gulls far off battle in the winds and sea; I can't help a broad grin spread across my face, for this is  Life – as it should be – and it is all I can see here. The great bellies of the beating waves, their force can pull hard cliff edges to mere grains of sand. The sky here is not yet touched or mutilated from the scorch of amber streetlight; there is part of a stretch of coastal golf course between I and the nearest street light some 200m south within this small, small town. The call of seabirds' far off and overhead sing in my ears (from having lived in such a town with an abundance of the birds from the age of three to twenty-one, their screams and shrieks have melted to mere calls which are quite sweet to my ears).
  I feel so trapped here, because of the past difficulties, but I don't want to face the concrete abyss when I can see this in front of my eyes.  Maybe it doesn't matter about the past and that why I used to come here was so often because of hard times and trials of trust and love back then. That past is not here with me, I am older now and stronger and secure. This, in my vision, is such a fantastic place – even if I am dreaming – and that has not changed, still. I feel less worried and gladness flows in my veins, just as . . in my ears, I hear an echoing Tha-ud, tha-ud around me, everywhere . . Tha-ud, tha-ud. . And gloom again shocks my sight and, again, the sensation of being an unbodily presence takes over.

  A bridge. I am standing on the great bridge which connects the Old Town from the New in the busy-body city which we call a Capital of my country, spewing with tartan tack shops and tourists moving as slow as sheep and business men and women trying to zip around everyone else and the gentle stroll of regular people who are in no real hurry, but are stuck dawdling behind and around people posing in front of generic Edinburgh things which we see every day and take for granted (monuments, the bridge side itself, the Georgian architecture on either end of the bridge, etc., etc.). The pavement is grey with white-ish-grey splodges of chewing gum and the litter bins are full – oh, what a surprise that is – and the sky looks heavy, swollen with thick fog. I see merely slightly darker greys among grey to the right of the bridge through the fog – the Castle Rock stands over the gardens and the street filled with shops, the train station bellow me. To my left, I would be able to see Arthur's Seat with its crags nearly 1km away, but now it is nowhere to be seen within the white, obscured sky, with tiny darker greys of Carlton Hill's monument pearling through the thick mist. I hear nothing. Not yet, in this World
  I see as much the weather lets me – oh, the weather doesn't make me think that it's altogether dream-like obscured location, not the location or the environment, or the tick heavy smell of fuel emissions from the constant flow of taxis, buses and cars. The taste feels wedged in my throat. All of that's the way it's always been and everything feel fine, oh, except the people. They are everywhere, as usual. I could see people trying to be as brisk and efficiently getting from A to B, probably office-types on a lunch break, skittering amongst the milling around pace of people around little clusters of people waiting at bus stops (the tourists just looked quite lost and bewildered). Yes, everywhere as usual – but I see all of the people as figures purely of smeared colours within their silhouettes, like some hand drawn animation. The colours flow and swirl around within their individual figure's outline. Not every figure is the same colour, it's Technicolor madness: oranges as bright as marigolds, greens like grass, purples as strong as freakin' Barney the dinosaur. .  eerie, to say the least.
  No-one even bumps into me. There hasn't been so much as brush of the shoulder or even a mere sweep of a bag against me as they pass me by, in this World. They. If I ignore the coloured silhouettes, it seems fine – the way they walk, the way they stand - but it's madness. Is this madness? I cannot hear a thing Here, yet I think that I can even feel the chill of the fog on my body, clinging against me and then sliding slugishly away.
  My ears seem to prick as, finally, I can hear the slightest signs of sounds, like a television slowly increasing its volume from mute. Quite quiet, but I can see how busy it is. . and still 'low volume' at the edge of hearing. . but, all at once, the noise. The drone of the engines – slow, heavy and laboured sounding in the heaving buses and somewhat lighter in the cars but there was still that grating sound within – and the people and all the stilettos chtip, chtip, chitp, chtop-chtoping, boots and trainers twumph, twumph, pwumthing, brogues tomph, timph, tomph, tomphing, and a hum-drum of chitter-chattering to peers, the sound of spitting on to the street, the talking on telephones, and the madness the of sound pounded my ears for the first few seconds of hearing it all, all at once. It feels unsettling to be able to hear all the people around me, whilst only seeing bizarre coloured figures of it all, let alone the fact that there seems to be some thing stopping even a feather touching me here.
  These people! What can I really call them, though, the hollow vibrancy of colours, walking! These are shadows of colour! Panic rises slightly in my chest. Underneath all the crazy noise and mess of the city sounds I hear a separate line of sounds, like an underlying track is being played. It sounds less sporadic and horrid as the city, but I still can hear concern and worrying within the sounds themselves. The sounds in this hiding trail of sounds.. voices, but not that many. I can faintly pick out odd electronic sounds like whirps and womps around the vocals. Talking. Someone is talking. . to me? Yes. A clearer voice, soothing me in this World of Shadowmen. The calming track underneath the raging city is still oh so faint, but it comforts me somewhat. The panic fades. And it fades along with the colours, the image the sounds switch off into the Black Gloom, once more.

Sometimes, in the Gloom of the Blackness, I see glimmers of places as if I am nearly there but not quite, yet. Often the places are full focus but still blotched and splattered in their completeness, some fully complete altogether or some look like odd outlines of places I can recognise but have little affection for (like how the view from the bus you take 5-days-a-week: it's familiar like hell, but why would you want to go there like you're still half-groggy from the coffee after a 6am wake up). I can see Shadowmen (as so I have decided to name them) sometimes, within ordinary places. Most of these places feel mundane to me – I do know these places, no where looks dream-like or out of place odd. I don't see much connection to the Worlds which flicker, other than that I am the cloth of the thread which seams me. I seem to fall into ones which are that bit more special to me, rather than the local pub which I've seen flash for some five seconds (it feels like) or the standing outside church my mother went to (I must have last been there, 8 years old and wearing my Sunday Best). Little places around from time to time (I say 'time' because I cannot fathom to work out what else to call it, even if it does feel as if time ceases to exist here in this Gloom). The flickers, they are complete with peripheral vision, those slightly hard to see things are just that; just on the edge of your sight. It is not a pulling or a pushing, nor a leap or walk which I have into the Worlds. I do not know what causes me to go where or why, but I do. It appears – or is 'created' the right word? Maybe 'formed' is better –  around me.

  Blurs and smears, like paint not yet fully covering a canvas, blot into vision; blacks and rich deep blues and tiny, little sparks of white-ambers and golds which twinkle along a horizon. Calm swoosh and sways of dull greens by my feet, but I cannot hear what I know is the sea in front of me once more within these Worlds. The small little harbour is to my right, the sandstone ramp for the lifeboats I stand on which reaches up to the seafront street with little houses nestled side-by-side. I taste the soft salty air in my mouth. The tide is low. Again, I know this place, and – again – it is my town where I was brought up in. This is more pleasant. I remember walking with ice creams dribbling on my hand with my sister and our grandparents when they came to visit from England (beach chairs and sun hats at the ready, when it in the lush summer sunshine visits, cups of tea and nice chicken breast and vegetables served to tickle your taste-buds for winter visits). These fond memories brought a soft smile across my face, and I felt peaceful.
  The splodges of colours are still filling up their canvas, my sight, as I think happily. The sky must be cloudless, or near that, and it might be a late spring night, for there isn't much of a chill in the air. And, gradually, bit by bit, the colours have fully filled in the gaps of the canvas and now the focus trickles into the right sharpness for me to see it all. Little ripples of little waves close to me and the little white horses as it laps the slightly pebbled shore. The colours are a little obscured from white-yellow bright lights of the harbour with its little boats bobbling gently, and a green light on its entrance. The street lights are behind me, but they aren't amber on the street which leads to the harbour, which separates the East from the West Bay. I stand on the East Bay, and the tiny twinkles on horizon are those of another town, sleepy in its bright streetlamps blazing, and she's gazing over to me across the Firth of Forth. One of the three main iconic islands of the local area is seen as an ominous, solid black silhouette west of me. Still, the sound of where I stand hasn't come to me yet, but I know it all so well and I look forwards to hearing it. I came here, when it was dark, to see the twinkling street lights from afar and the harbour's light on the sea.
  It is mid-tide and I can see little stars peeping down to see what's happening tonight on this chaotic world – but here I feel somewhat free from it, despite the lights and houses everything always silent at this time. I'm sure it's near midnight, in this World. I don't think a camera could capture this moment. Perhaps a painting, but it would have to be outstanding and supreme to manage to contain how I feel.
  My heart leaps with joy as I hear those wee harbour noises with the sloshing tide. Clink and clanks of little boats tied up, gently shouldering one another with a slow but gleeful manor in the night. The tide, shhwwoorph in, and shwwiiiiiift out like sea is sleeping softly. The Black covers all, and I no longer hear the sleeping angles giggling and the whisper of the water.

   A thick mist cloaks my vision for a mere ten metres beyond me. Lampposts peered bleakly with a horrid ominous manor, like splinters imbedded in flesh. Young but struggling trees whimper amongst seas of concrete soils and tarmac, drowning their potential greatness, with their little leaves flittering in the air was the only movement I can see. In the cracks and joints of concrete – it's littered with them – which I can peer through the mist to see, thick shoots of grasses and wild flowers stand with ambition. Where I am, quite, I do not know – but once, surely, this must have been a large city, for the remnants of a road which I stand near the middle of stretches off for what I estimate as eight full lanes, four-abreast.  In the gloom of this World I can see a blue sheet of metal, oozed in rust, with large white letters of a name of some place, but the surface is too obscured with weathering and moss growth to see, let alone through the fog. . All that I could make out was a 'SA—' and a '—SI—', nothing more.
  I daren't move from where my feet stand, and I have no idea where I am, but this place feels like a plague-like apocalypse of a world I don't even come from. This – this mess of what was once urbanisation – is not a reality I know; this actually feels like a dream to me. These surreal surroundings I can see in this World can only be a dream; something my mind has conjured with a Hollywood-look to it. I have never been anywhere in these Worlds where it has felt like a dream, always somewhere I have been before or the glimmers within the Blackness Gloom of everyday places. What is the meaning of the Worlds, then? And then vision dimmed to Black and I am taken away, again, like always into to the Dark.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, speckles of fuzzy blurs of green and gold, from where I imagine is at my feet right up to just a touch higher than my hips, merge in front of the Black – and now soft, soft blues in a long expanse cover from the golden greens to infinity above creep their way in thickly. The colours appear in speckles on the black like a black canvas with the paint splattered on from the bristles of the painter's brush. The rest of my apparent vision is filled in, like a photo is developed in the chemicals in the darkroom, the forms which have been captured and frozen in place eventually flood in the gaps, when given time.
  Now the whole scene snaps into focus suddenly, filling in all gaps of blur. I see the pinks and yellows, whites and purples and reds of sweet scented wild flowers in a vast abundance, imbedded within what I had seen as golden green expanse – I am standing in a flat, level grounded meadow which stretches on for what seems like forever. I cannot see anything other than rich colours of the petals amongst the long, long grasses and wheat heads, with a fat, blue sky above it, without a cloud in sight. I cannot yet hear or smell anything in this – in these Worlds, I have leant that the vision always comes first, but it is never reliable to predict when any other senses come in and how suddenly or subtly for sometimes they arrive with the full image in-focus.
  I can see that there is a breeze here through the grasses and flowers, but none of it I can feel against my body nor hear. The powerful scent of sweet, sweet honey suckle nearly startles me for its suddenness, mingled with a range of other beautiful pollens, for I am completely surrounded by flora in bloom. This sense gladdens me greatly, for it reminds me slightly of a distant and dim memory when a toddler with my hands in the soil and wild poppies well above my head in my grandmother's garden which, at that age, felt like a jungle of pollens and colours. Now, the sounds joyous bird song tickle my ears and I can finally feel the beautiful breeze in the air which makes the heads of flowers swish and sway their long elegant necks. I cannot see where the birds play, until a very slight movement in some bushes, some five metres away, draws me to what seem to be some blue tits and wrens dancing in the branches. Tiny cream coloured butterflies dance, moving in that slightly odd but beautiful way, with their bodies gently moving but with their wings jittering and flittering.
  My heart feels almost buoyant in my chest, but – again – there is a little nagging and twisting in it, like a small pebble in the balloon bringing it slowly down. The birds still sing and the flowers' pollen still fills my nostrils – but what is wrong? What is it? And, then I hear something which sounds out of place. The something of sound does not seem particularly close, yet it does not feel that far off to be distant by any means. . The voice, it is everywhere yet nowhere. It. It sounds like. Talking. Simply talking. Audible vocals. Talking. It is a talking which I feel and sense to know that it is directed to me. A woman's. Talking without expecting any answer. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter – my heart beat goes – pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Talking. Pitter-patter, pitter-pa ---- Black Gloom, once more.

  Rowan berries hang in full ripeness, a sharp contrast to the bright green eaves. I have come to this little World sitting on a large picnic blanket at the foot of a small cluster of these trees. An artificial looking lake shore with large boulders creating its boundary from the stretch of grass surrounding it is just an arm's reach away from me. Someone has been here; sitting next to me – or lying – and two plastic wine glasses sit placidly on the grass, a bottle is nearly empty in a plastic supermarket bag. Who? Who am I within this World? I seem to have been alone whilst drifting in and out of World after World – who is this with me?
  Ducks mingle in couples on the lake, spiralling and swirling. 10 ft from me, I see Shadowmen figures. The Shadowmen I have seen within the Black Gloom's Glimmers of images so much that they have lost their shudder on me, and I manage to see past the colour-craziness (or I am just concentrating on ignoring it). There are some children and presumably their mothers tossing bits of bread to the ducks. . Am I waiting for someone? Here, this lake, I know I've been here before (it isn't new to me as a World) but it is not one which I have been or seen before this one visit, nor since. I should who I was with when I came here that one time, and it's somewhere in my memory. This isn't a mundane occurrence. This day, in my memory, in my past, it cannot be unimportant An itch. A nag. A strain. Where? When? I feel terror creep up my spine as I still cannot recall it, I cannot remember this important place, or who it was with. The tranquillity this Day had, and the spark of starlight I had, I have. I know the feeling, goddamnit, I feel the wholesome joy and completion of self, this love, I know it and I crave to know why I cannot remember it all. Why ever not? Waiting for someone to come back to me. . Who? I want to remember, but it's lost. . And the shapeless, formless Gloom engulfs the World once more and I sink away from the lake and the fractured, splintered memory and strain desperately to find the missing shards but cannot.

  Everything is blurred. But. . in this World I'm not standing. Something emits bright light and it feels as if it's grating my retinas. I close my eyes for a few seconds and slowly reopen them. The World is still blurred. I can hear twinkling of electronic sounds. . So, no waves of a sea to greet me (wild or calm), no flowers bobbing or any swirling ducks on a little lake this time, in this World. . Every sense has arrived at once and promptly, on time as I'd expect normally, and there are no wee speckles in the Image – it's just all blurred. I blink. I can hear some quiet murmuring of people; maybe it's only two or so voices, I can't quite concentrate. One of the voices I can hear sends I a pang of distant recall of, but my mind is fuzzy.
  I keep blinking and the World in front of me still tries to figure out the focus, gently and steadily. The World isn't any less bright and scalding my eyes, but slowly my eyes adjust, too. Beh-deep, beh-deep I can hear amongst a mishmash of little sounds. And – easy does it! – the World eases into a clear image.
  No landscape. Nothing like that at all. A room. I see the place the murmurs came from, two women. They aren't Shadowmen. It looks Real. One wears a nurse's uniform, I see the little upside-down watch clips on her blouse pocket and she is holding a clipboard. The other. I couldn't remember, I couldn't remember her, oh God, I couldn't remember – what happened? Oh God, she's here, she's safe! And I find myself uttering these words aloud, and the women turn quickly to face me, and they see my blubbering – no Shadowmen with their coloured silhouette madness, here, this is Real, no more Worlds and no more Black Gloom!
  She practically leaps across the room to me, stroking my hair and uttering sweet words of joy and blessing, as the nurse quickly shuffles around quickly by the doorway barking something and young a female doctor comes barging in. Her eyes, her face, her being is all I care for, for now she is with me, here and I am not in a World and no Shadowmen or the jumping from World to World, this is Real and I am with my love once more and that is what matters.  Now and here, and here she is.