My First Line Training Experience
Atop Mount Pollux overlooking UMass, six of us were lying on comfortable green grass looking up at overcast.
"The sky is blended today", the Line Muse said, "It takes an open mind to notice the subtle borders between shades of gray. In time, you will find them. Let your eyes drift along these gentle lines, ever so casually, ever so comfortably. The universe will provide a path for you if you let it."
I had trouble seeing the "lines" at first. The sky looked like a bland blob. But once I stopped looking so carefully, my attention gravitated to the faint ridges between colors and elevation changes. In my imagination, I soared along these implicit lines... I followed them with my pointer finger...
It wasn't long before we got on our feet and began walking about, still looking upwards. We went in the directions that our personal cloud lines suggested.
"If you find a crossroads," the Cloud Muse said, "choose a direction without hesitation. Always follow a track, jump between tracks, improvise, but always remain guided."
We meandered about for hours until we had followed the clouds to the horizon.
When I finally looked down from the sky, I found myself in a beachside parking lot. I didn't recognize it at first, but it conjured up thoughts of freedom and endless possibilities.
My friend Armädeius Galouei was there, running figure eights around two painted parking spaces, stepping only on the painted lines. I followed him. After a few loops, he yelled, "A Wooo Bop!" and jumped off the painted lines onto a curb. He darted along the curb towards the woods, making more sounds. I replicated the sounds as I followed him. We scurried across serpentine root systems on the surface of the forest loam. We balanced across a fallen log. We crawled underneath hedges.
We popped out of the trees and back onto the parking lot, racing along the cracks in the pavement in all directions.
The sun was high in the sky. I felt some sort of universal synergy. It was time for me to be my own muse.
A wandering beetle separated me from Armädeius and led me to the beach, a brief apprenticeship after which I found a line in the sand of my own. Perhaps a kid drew it with a stick or his foot. Regardless of the source, it led me back and forth in a zig-zag. Eventually, it spit me out off the dock and with a splash into the water. I couldn't hold my breath for long enough to faithfully follow my nearest line underwater.
I had no choice but to abandon my Path. After the most synchronized 24 hours of my life, I returned home and to bed peacefully. When I woke up, I found strings tied from each of my fingertips to my typewriter, and so I wrote. When I finished writing these words, I found another string tied to my belt and stretching out my window and far into the distance. I will follow it someday.
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