I remember the fall. Not a stumble, but a soft, dizzying descent, a turning upside down that felt utterly right. One moment, the world was solid beneath my feet, the next, it was stretching out above me, a vast, inverted sky. My eyelids, heavy with the day, seemed to open into this new gravity.
Everything felt familiar, yet completely unmoored. The mountains, so steadfast and proud, now cradled the deep, still waters of the lake as if it were a mirror reflecting a secret heaven. The pines, sharp sentinels of the waking world, stood rooted in a sky that wasn’t quite sky, their needles whispering promises of a deeper truth. And the air… the air… it tasted of cool water and distant peaks, a flavour I’d only ever yearned for in the blur of consciousness.
Perhaps this is the true waking. All those moments I called “awake,” were they merely the soft, hazy beginnings of a dream? A dream of structure, of logic, of an earth beneath my feet? And now, as I surrender to this weightless suspension, this gentle descent into the blue, perhaps this is where clarity resides. The sun-drenched chaos of daylight, the relentless pull of gravity – maybe those were the illusions.
Here, in this fluid space, where my breath is a ripple on the surface of the world, and the vibrant hum of the air is carried by iridescent wings, everything aligns. The ordinary world, rearranged into its proper, glorious chaos. The silent, knowing gaze of the hummingbirds, darting between dimensions, seems to confirm it. They are not merely birds, but emissaries of this deeper reality.
As my lips part, not for speech but for breath, it’s as if I am about to drink in the very essence of this landscape, to internalize its serene logic. This isn’t sleep. This is the moment before true understanding. This is where I begin to truly see.
Story and art by Damian Smith
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