Keep Moving

Sarah sat beside her sleeping sister, idly flipping through channels in the hospital room. A gray haired unkempt man wearing a wrinkled suit and smudged spectacles appeared on the television:

"...and yet I have heard complaints from some 'discerning' critics that today's music is too fickle, that it lacks consistency. Should an art form that is to encompass the breadth and depth of human emotion and experience not be dynamic? Should it not be able to turn on a dime and entertain a multitude of whims as we do? It would seem these 'music lovers' make appraisals based on what they feel we want as humans; not what we are. They urge us to trample upon and stamp out chaos for the grand illusion of order - in the name of control and consistency - to quiet the deep insecurity looming in the mortality of their hearts. It's fitting that they who need art most are most vehemently opposed to its truest expression. Instead they resort to the comfort and safety of routine's pacifier while rocking to sleep in a cradle.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. A desperate consistency is the folly of the vapid and the quotidian. Orthodoxy has no place in art or in thought; it is a macabre display of death, of putrefied corpses masquerading as marionettes. The proliferation of pablum pervading current discourse is a blight on progress and a signifier of intellectual decay. The restoration of a fecund imagination should be the sole pursuit of any thinker, artist, engineer, doctor or philosopher. Eschew what is customary. Throw away the moth-eaten heirlooms that pass preserved through time. Create something new and quickly destroy it.

Then, do it again."

Sarah changed the channel, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the man's brio. There's truth in that, she thought. But not all conventions are bad, they can't be. Some endure because they promote goodness or help to eradicate ignorance. Some uphold virtue and protect inalienable human rights; rules against torture, murder and rape; the benefits of altruism, education and empathy. When outdated beliefs fade into obsolescence they're replaced with new ideas built upon - or in response to - the old ones. Ideas are largely derivative, it's science. Then is science just another variation of our attempt to control the chaos? There is great power in being able to explain something away. It is a kind of dismantling. To learn how a thing works is to conquer it, to take away its power to mystify; to rob it of its secrecy. But are we just exercising a petty desire to dominate? To flex our intellect at the universe's mysteries in the hopes that we prove ourselves worthy of being spared our oblivion?

I've had too much coffee, I'm beginning to sound like Jane.

Sarah placed the remote down on the hospital-tray and stood up. She bent down and kissed her sister on the forehead before walking out of the room to go to the bathroom. Exiting the room she turned right and walked down the corridor with the shiny linoleum floor. As she did, a man wearing ugly pointed shoes approached the room from the left. He stood in the doorway and stared.

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Jane, in response to a low hissing behind her, quickly turned but only found dirt scattering in the breeze. It was eerily windy - like she was standing near the edge of a cliff close to a shore - but she didn't feel cold. The long arms of the trees bent and swayed as though trying to shoo her away, and then all at once, as though in terror, they threw their limbs up to the sky revealing a bundle of sticks resting against the trunk of one of the trees. Again she heard that scraping hissing sound. It seemed to stop right behind her, for the second time. When she turned around she saw a thick wall of clouds creeping in. Slowly encroaching the smoke smelled faintly of tobacco and tar. It began to choke her. Where was the sheep, she thought, as she stumbled away from the fog coughing. She neared the sticks leaning against the tree and noticed they looked skeletal slender and knobby. Her dress began to pulse and shimmer, making them rattle. They levitated and assembled in the shape of a hand and tore a blank leaflet from the limb of a tree overhead. Dipping into the muddy earth the pointer finger of the wooden hand scrawled: he's watching, keep moving.

Jane asked who's watching, and turned to see. Standing in the foul smelling smoke she saw a dark shadow dripping like ink. She remembered those pointy boots from the last time, when she'd seen them up close. She followed the hand that beckoned her and moved deeper into the forest, the trees dropping their arms to conceal her. The squeal of screeching brakes and grinding metal pierced the silence and with a white flash she was no longer in the woods. She saw a couple walking on a quiet street soon after the sun had risen. The sheep stood beside her with a sign around its neck that said invisible.

Really though Peter, what do you want out of this, the woman asked. She was passing Jane as she finished her sentence and her hand brushed against Jane's. She stopped and stared.

What, Peter asked. What's wrong? Madeline continued to stare through Jane and said, I don't...I'm not sure...I felt like...never mind.