There is no point in talking to people who are sleeping as though they were awake.

As you heard, those were the orders, and inevitably they would be executed. Don’t hold it against them, they were only performing their duties, just like I am mine, and you are yours.
      
Don’t be sad or disappointed, I’m not the author, just a part of a part of the whole story. You’ll see, it was all for the best. There was no avoiding it, I had to go, one way or another, and that was just the way it was. It all works out in the end.
      
I was just here to scribble it all down for your enlightenment, that’s all. Neither a talent nor a light, just a slave, nothing more. Try to understand: don’t try to understand. Trying just makes it all that much more difficult. Stop trying to understand, and it’ll all make sense that much quicker.
      
Now, it’s not so much that it’s hard to explain, it’s just hard to tell, mainly because I’m not a writer, and have never been a good story teller. I think you’ll understand best if I just tell it the way it happened, and don’t try to explain. If it doesn’t make sense at first, just read it again, you’ll start to get it, just like I did. I didn’t really understand it myself either, even as I write it now, because I’d never heard a story quite like it before, and it was still unfolding as I engrave it.

You see how difficult it is? Even the tenses are confusing.

It was like a rainstorm. It came, first a bit here, then a little there, then it started to make sense - sort of - in a downpour. Though it developed chronologically, it didn’t appear that way, it eventually just blended up that way. When suddenly, it turned into Fate. Fate just grabbed me by the collar and said, “Do it! NOW!” And the thing about Fate is, as I am sure you know, you have no choice. By definition, Fate is involuntary.
      
For me, there’s no more time even - not in the way I used to understand what I thought of as time. Time has become an uninterrupted and indivisible continuum. Sure, the sun still rises and sets, I can still use a calendar, tell the time, and witness the passage of events, but it no longer fits together into a rational, consecutive series of discrete occurrences. It has a far more complex structure that plays itself out in an irrational pattern. It’s almost like a puzzle you can start anywhere with, stick the pieces together in any order, and still come up with a complete picture; it just appears different. In that way, tomorrow is yesterday; is today; is five minutes ago - or fifteen minutes from now. Sometimes six months is like a day, or vice-versa. It has its own rhythm, and it changes all the time.
      
If you imagine yourself listening to a piece of captivating music, you’d probably have a better idea of exactly what I mean. You just get transported. Sometimes you are so involved with one note, that you miss a whole passage, then lapse into the recognition of a sequence, then it all changes again, and you move along with it, and it moves you, and then, only when it concludes, and the silence or applause reawakens you, do you realize: time has passed - and you along with it. You step out of time once, twice maybe, and it never looks the same again. So, this is the story of how I was ultimately forced to effortlessly participate in time. At least, that’s part of the story.
      
Since that’s what it was like, that’s probably the best way to tell it. And I guess the best place to begin, for no reason at all, except that I have no choice but to conduct, and I have to start somewhere, is with a description of the place where I lived and the apartment that I came to call my home.

I had left behind a tranquil, pristine, alpine environment, composed of moderated transitions between gentle extremes; still reverberating with the incomprehensibly traumatic devastation of my wife’s suicide, of less than a year prior, seven months of sometimes bi-weekly psychotherapy that followed, a criminal employer who had swindled me of roughly six month’s wages, and a legal process that I only doubted would ever recover it.
      
The myopic, habitually negligent behavior of the inhabitants of my new surroundings, the absence of even the simplest consideration for the environment, or respect of one another, the toxic contamination of the air, soil, water and food, the advancing nightmare of political terrorism, the suffocating constriction of liberties, the crude concentration on material acquisition, and my good friend Yaakov’s rapidly approaching appointment with eternity - cancerously ravaging then devouring him, first into a state of mocking incapacitation, finally by emaciated confusion, before my very eyes - all that only strengthened my resolve to live tidily among the ruins.
      
When I first got back, it was February: the unbreachable, dead-end, concrete barricade of Canadian winter. Desolate, bleak and brittle. In appearance, a colourless, petrified landscape of frozen and refrozen granite, entombed within a perpetually glazed, overcast dome of horizonless captivity. As cold and painful to the touch as dry ice, with sneering winds that crumble fortitude, and sear flesh. It’s the kind of place where you futilely estimate the severity of enduring a painful choice: wait for the cruelly infrequent bus or walk, and watch it pass, receding down an endless avenue of aesthetic barrenness and monotonous similarity, into a corridor of opposed mirrors, and at some indiscernible vanishing point, tumbling off the edge of the earth, swallowed by the void.
      
I was back, once again, to Toronto - a cannibalistic city with a particularly predatory contempt for pedestrians, and whose deranged, cruelly sadistic temperament is carefully concealed beneath a façade of righteousness and propriety. A city that ensures its own survival by torturing and psychologically dismembering its occupants into antagonistic camps of alienated prisoners who are either brutally determined or utterly resigned. A fortress upon which Nature annually wages a winter war and whose citizens defend against it with military-like precision. A place where summers melt asphalt, amidst a staggering and asphyxiating humidity, and whose embattled road network is under around-the-clock repair. A barrack with two seasons permanently locked in a hostile stalemate of enraging immobilization, modulated by convoys of dump trucks, salt-spreaders and road prowling tow-hookers. A compound of extremes, whose heroes are snow-plough operators and ice cream truck drivers. The kind of place where the typically heartfelt response, “Not too bad,” is a genuinely positive expression of well-being to the query, “How are you?” - back to my old home town.
      
It was just a humble, red-brick, three-storey walk-up, pleasant enough in its day - the pulp era - I am sure. The building was situated midway up a fairly steep hill, nestled among a series of neighbouring buildings adorned with titles like the Mayfair Mansions, Hillside Apartments and the Balmoral. Together they grazed on the verge, by that city’s standards, of antiquity, edging into the abyss of extinction.
      
Outwardly, it seemed a barely matured though somewhat decrepit structure, inside, it was like entering a flop house. All the trim looked vague and uneven, like putty or clay. Everything was carelessly re-painted a hundred times before, but never once sanded, and applied in inattentive streaks where ever there were panes of glass. There wasn’t a single door hung true, or that didn’t leak shafts and beams of stabbing glare. Everything about the place resonated neglect, with one redeeming exception: the wildly undulating, but lustrous, exuberantly grained, tan and honey-hued, impenetrably varnished, glistening hardwood floors.
      
The noise from the six lanes of traffic below was incessant. I quickly learned that in twenty-four hours of a day it barely subsided. There was no refuge from that deafening drone, not a palpable quiet nor anything resembling silence that lasted as long as sixty seconds. I had to stuff the bedroom window with seat cushions, and drape a heavy carpet over it, to dampen the noise enough to allow me to rest or read in peace. It worked, but in daylight, no matter what day of the week, it was like living beside an airstrip.
      
The windows were so thick with grime I literally couldn’t see out of them - not that I wanted to. There was a sense about the whole place of badly applied, garish make-up, wiped on a face that could barely see itself in a mirror. Once I’d wandered in, I immediately felt like running away, but when I peered out at the prospect, it was hard to tell which was worse. Though she had lost her charm, she meant well, and I had to love her for caring; once I got over her appearance.
      
It was just about empty, but not quite. Like someone had been living there, but not really, and had moved out in a hurry. Like a drunk in a stupor. On the bedroom floor lay a worn out mattress and box-spring, along with some unwashed bed linen of faded floral print, a lumpy comforter and a couple of foam pillows. In the closets, kitchen and bathroom were remnants of only the most inconsequential and discarded personal effects. Tokens of a carelessly lived and under appreciated life.
      
Abandoned in the living room, an assemble-it-yourself bench style futon couch, laminated pressboard table and bookshelf - concealing a plumbing access panel in the wall behind it - and a flexible moulded white plastic chair, were what my furnishings initially consisted of. For privacy, a sheer curtain, and a robin’s egg blue, ink-stained bed sheet, slung from a bracketed pine rod, mounted from the ceiling, served as drapery.
      
The kitchen was so cramped, awkward and ill-conceived, it made every meal a hazardous chore, as if designed solely to spoil even the most primal of satisfactions.
      
The place had all the charm and cheerful disposition of a Chronic-Depression Clinic waiting room.
      
Unexpectedly, as so much else that came and follows, one of the most transparent moments of my entire life occurred. Not five minutes after his arrival, and coincidentally his departure, during his first and only visit, my own father, gobbed directly in my face the gagging utterance that the place had “real character”.
      
The highly corrosive and toxic venom of that genuine insincerity, not only prompted a remarkably deep insight - instantly annihilating one of the most persistent demons I was possessed by - but discharged within me a sudden supernatural appreciation.
      
Prior to that day, I had no idea my dad was a Medicine Man. It was as if, with his tongue, he had lanced a festering boil, and evacuated a crippling, terminal infection.
      
Moreover, that inadvertent incantation, having startled open my third or fourth eye, enabled my subsequent attenuation to the unfolding mysteries surrounding me and their consequent passage on to you.
      
During the next few months, as the dormant spirit re-emerged from within the walls and beneath the floorboards, the morose atmosphere gradually lifted, then vanished entirely.

First, a slat and shelf type wooden bed frame appeared from the warehouses of the Great Hudson’s Bay Company. It was stained a deep, dark, rich burgundy, the colour of fresh-brewed black coffee, with the shelf parts much lighter, similar to when frothed milk foam dries and adheres to the inside surface of a clean, white ceramic mug. Along with it came a brand new, patented, quilted pocket-coil, Marshal mattress and box-spring set, complete with fifteen-year guarantee, a goose-down filled comforter, two feather pillows, and a set of off-white - or off-cream - coloured, soft cotton bed-sheets, duvet cover and pillow cases. Once the bed was made, it was like diving into a steaming cappuccino cloud.
      
In one corner of the room, at the foot of the bed, was a soft, sage green, broadly textured, and totally enveloping, upholstered armchair. Partially covering the floor was a coarsely woven, wool floor blanket with a pattern of rectangles alternating in subdued tones of charcoal and milk chocolate.
      
Against the wall, opposite the chair and just inside the bedroom door, a polished walnut bookstand with a hinged top contained a selection of dictionaries and reference books.
      
Beside the bookstand, and opposite the bed, stood a three drawer, wooden dresser, curved at the front, stained burnt orange with India-ink black trim and pull knobs.
      
Upon the dresser, encased within a three hundred-year-old mahogany chest, finished in a darkened burr walnut veneer, inlaid with broad, tessellated diamond bands of iridescent mother of pearl, set between thin marquetry frets, rested Leda’s ashes.
      
Concealed beneath the lid of the chest, was the pin-release of a spring mechanism secret drawer, containing the eloquent template of her suicidal ideations; a thoroughly articulated draft version, written in pencil, in a blank book from which she had torn all other written pages; a prelude that yielded to much less ornate prose and her ever so much less dignified dissolution.
      
Surrounding the chest sat a frequently refreshed, yawning cut glass flower vase, pictures of our wedding kiss, her sister, Vera, and mother, Teresa, an intricately perforated, black sandalwood fan, partially spread out upon a section of exquisitely gathered indigo velvet that once lined the chest, the white lace handkerchief in which she shed her last tears, a tender drawing she had both made and framed, styled after Klimt’s The Kiss where in we replaced the original figures, and a book of Shakespeare that inside she had placed copies of a few other works of poetry that touched her.
      
Atop the chest, in a black suede box with blue velvet interior, were our platinum wedding bands; her name, in Greek, engraved in mine, and in that tiny ring of hers, the following line by W. B. Yeats: Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
      
Propped against the chest and the wall behind it, was a photographic portrait of Leda, herself, adorned with fluorescent orange hair, and bearing an expression that makes Mona Lisa’s countenance appear as enigmatic as the gesture of a grimacing mime.
      
An old cherry wood, wind-up Waterbury clock, with a cameo pendulum, hung on the wall near the chair by the door, and inscribed, with its hollow, woody notes, the sweep of its graceful hands, dignified face and a welcome imprecision, the adjustable, fleeting boundaries of my sanctuary.
      
Beside the dresser, and just a step from the bed, was a tiny, dull, uninviting bathroom whose convenience, and the delight of showering in, rendered its appearance insignificant.
      
Between the clock and the chair, along with miscellaneous attire and an assortment of disorganized items, bolted to a wall in the recesses of an enormous walk-in closet, was a steel safe containing my registered, mat black, Bruniton finish .40 calibre, Beretta 96FS, semi-automatic pistol - safely returned to its legitimate owner, following nine months incarceration in a local police vault.
      
In the living room, occupying a prominent place, I positioned my Great-Grandfather’s oak, banker style desk, accompanied by a birch swivel armchair, painted silver. A forest green, fold-out sofa-bed, a three-leaf, maple dinner table and two gently curved, folding teak deck chairs, constituted, until the arrival of the Surrealistic Chair, my remaining functional comforts.
      
Eventually, in front of the pair of French doors, opening to the cramped and dilapidated smoking balcony, a pair of unstained poplar, bi-fold shutters with pivoting louvers were installed to subdue the sunrise, or obscure the gloom-depending. At night they spread an adjustable pattern of stripes, originating from the phosphorescent street lamps below, across the floor and up the walls.
      
Overhead, a ceiling fan, in constant and comforting rotation, gently disturbed the air, dispersed the cigarette and incense smoke, and served to eliminate the cooking odors that permeated the atmosphere every time I prepared a meal.
      
At times, the place seemed like a vast theatre, or temple, when it wasn’t acting like a film noir set. Various pictures, the original artwork of extraordinary and beloved friends, soon adorned the walls “AMERICANCER” - a holographic collage, within a gilded architectural structure, resembling a monument, or mausoleum, guarded at the entry by seven rounds of lethal ammunition, and topped with a golden crown of nine points; a vivid, incisive portrait, as close as penetrable gets, of the sculpture’s creator, painted by his former mate; a definitive photo of the photographer who would later appear as an apparition, in the form of a Talking Cloud, during an oracular vision provoked by a session with the Surrealistic Chair; various studies in oil and acrylic, oscillating between the blaze of crematory self-immolation and prismatic refractions of rapturous enlightenment; a woodcut of an angel in a gown, with long straight hair, seated on a cloud and gazing beyond a distant horizon, toward the world, commemorating Jody - killed in a car accident at seventeen.
      
I have felt at certain times, in places like London’s National Gallery and the Louvre in Paris, but never so strong and nowhere so lucidly as within the Alte and Neue Pinakotheke, Buchheim, Franz Marc and Murnau Schloß museums, Lenbach, Von Stuck and Munter houses, in and around Munich, upon entering certain rooms, the experience of a warm and welcoming feeling, as though surrounded by close friends.
      
Having been struck by the inescapable conclusion that my flesh, blood and spirit friends together share a place at that same table, I immediately commenced assembling a gallery of my own, so as to remain constantly surrounded with those in whose lives and presence the dawning recognition of the face and captivity of Fate becomes so much clearer.
      
For immediate companionship, two cats, one of whom, the ginger one it turns out, was actually my employer, the other, Abdoul, a black and khaki striped tabby, shared the apartment with me. And, like a gate to the eastern sun, on the balcony stood two dense, dark waxy green, pyramid shaped boxwoods, in cedar wood planters.
      
On the very morning the boxwoods arrived, and the place had begun to take shape, I was shaken from my slumber, as the day arrived, by an earthquake.

In late April, the skies began to clear, the sun shone brightly, days lengthened, vistas deepened, and the trees began to bud.
      
Throughout the neighbouring streets a festive parade commenced, and fusillades of arboreal artillery let loose from concealed arsenals; cascades of magenta magnolia blossoms swelled to overflowing; pink and rouge crab-apple carousels spun and whirled deliriously; arrays of forsythia exploded in impulsive, dazzling bursts of blinding chrome yellow; clouds of petals lobbed aloft in celebratory salutes dispersed and rained down in sparkling torrents of hail and confetti bouquets; clusters of streaming lilac skyrockets and exotic displays of flowering grenades detonated, and an intoxicating profusion of fragrances filled the air. The whole glorious procession sustained throughout the month of May.
      
By June, the unfurled foliage of limbs combining, merged, and swayed inseparably in windswept waves, billowing clouds raced across the sky, shadows barreling and shifting across the contours of the ground below. Having, by then, scraped the paint off and rid the windows of years of impacted débris and air-borne filth, the apocalyptic torment of the external world diminished significantly.

Mesmerizing as nature’s pageantry is, I would not be seduced by her again, no matter how arresting and irresistible her attractions, or so I told myself. As every signal serves both to guide and warn, one of the other portents I happened upon, an emblem embroidered inconspicuously within a tiny corner of the frenetic tapestry, was a naked hatchling, flesh split and entrails exposed, trodden and crushed upon the pavement.

It was around that time, that the Surrealistic Chair entered the picture.

Prior to the arrival of the Surrealistic Chair, I found out I’d been the author of at least one rather peculiar photograph. It wasn’t just a snapshot, it was a prophetic image, it was a view of the place I would soon be living in. I was already in it, when I found the picture, but discovered I had taken it long ago, well before I was born, before knowing I’d ever live there. I found it on my computer, once everything had been arranged for my comfort and convenience.
      
It wasn’t a picture of the place itself, it was a view from the balcony, due east, overlooking the De La Salle track and sport field. It was a panoramic view, wide and narrow, sepia toned, like you might associate with a Matthew Brady photo, from the American Civil War, but just by the colour I mean. The border surrounding the image was kind of weathered, a little water damaged in places, possibly a bit mouldy. Beneath the image, in an elegant style of script, was inscribed, as best as I could make out De La Salle Athletic Field - 1941.
      
It was that picture that secured me my joint position as Official Photographer to Chairman Meow, Guardian of the Surrealistic Chair, and Dream Facilitator. The Chairman needed indelible proof, and chose me to deliver it. More accurately, he intuitively recognized me as the man for the job, the person he’d been watching for.

That soon led to the discovery, through my e-mail correspondence with the great Argentine Celluloid Dream Analyst, Dr Juan Carlos Frugone, that the apartment itself was under surveillance. Dr. Frugone and I corresponded regularly, with increasing reports on my evolving unconsciousness. It seems that our communications had been intercepted, probably as a result of the innocent use of a key word or phrase picked up by the Global Eavesdropper, during routine monitoring.
      
One evening, while checking the e-mail, I found that a friend, known here onward only as Lonely-T, had forwarded me a copy of a ‘CLASSIFIED’ message, cryptically outlining a mission, along with an image. Lonely-T has a certain expertise, one of many gifts really, in electronic security. I say gift, because his intellect transcends and defies rational captivity by leaps and bounds - yet another example of the characteristic intuition I found myself increasingly surrounded by. Those of whom I speak have left the rigid, haemorrhoid-inducing seat of rational formality far behind, discarding the inhibition of their intelligence, but all, it has to be said, with a similar, gradually diminished reluctance, ultimately yielding to a perceptive, clairvoyant attentiveness to cues.
      
It was definitely my apartment all right. There was no mistaking it, even in that grainy, eerie green night-vision shot. The little smoking balcony with the wrought iron railing, the proud and bushy boxwoods, that stand like pillars and shine like beacons at either side of the French Doors. It was all there, hi-lighted for the viewer, within the pixel grid in a slightly less contrasted oval, and inserted as an enlarged detail, bottom right. The image was imprinted 05.05.2002 - around the same time as the Chair was ordered, and my discourses with the Doctor had begun. The exact location of the apartment, the note indicated, had been determined using Global Positioning Satellites and complex position orientation systems.
      
They were on to me, for sure, and it hadn’t taken long. Problem was, I still wasn’t entirely aware of what exactly they were on to. It was only just emerging for me. It seemed like, what ever it was, they were way ahead of me, and I had some catching up to do.

The stated objective of the mission was to abduct the Surrealistic Chair that had not yet even come to reside in the apartment. That much I knew, but I needed to know more, so, one night, I invited Lonely-T to dinner at a local steak house, to see what else I could discover.
      
It was strange the way the details emerged, mystifying, astounding. As we related aspects of the story over our dinner, Lonely-T asked, somewhat mockingly, “Does this chair have a name?” But with a conviction that astonished even me, I replied enthusiastically, “As a matter of fact, yes, it does. Henry Brown, Mr Henry Brown.” That reply, with its tone of absolute assurance, diffused any further skepticism, and our conversation turned to the nature of the Chair.
      
We then digressed to conjuring sequels, such as how the Chair might, one day, long into the future, perhaps even in another parallel universe, wind up at a smoldering dump site, battered and neglected, only to be rediscovered by an innocently rummaging child, golden haired son or daughter of a dedicated dump scavenger. Perhaps as the result of being startled by a cat, emerging from behind the Chair, seeking attention or affection, the father, scrutinizing the potential of the decrepit remains of the Surrealistic Chair, returns it to their home, gradually discovering its miraculous properties, and, in turn, becoming its ‘chairtaker’. But that was just a tangent provoked by a little pleasant relaxation upon our mutual acceptance of the veracity of the story.
      
The real properties of the Surrealistic Chair, as succinctly as I can describe them, are that the Chair takes some kind of impression of whomever is seated in it. A deep, intimate, psychic impression. An inner portrait of some kind. Next, the Chair induces the sitter into a state of general relaxation, followed by a waking dream-like condition of euphoric self-revelation.
      
A complete session in the Chair ultimately produces a kind of ecstasy, as though turning the initial impression, taken by the Chair, back upon the viewer, in a therapeutic fashion, akin to psychoanalysis, but without the fee, and in an even more profound and private manner. It is as if nothing has really taken place, but a huge weight is removed. There is no conscious awareness of the dreams and the knowledge they reveal to the sitter, but the sitter is, by stages, gradually enlightened. A single session is enough, it isn’t necessary to revisit the Chair. Besides, each person is different, and consequently, it is impossible to predict a pattern of response. The response to the Chair is as unique and varied as the sitter, and the revelations are not transferable. However, there’s no doubt the result is uplifting, by whatever means or metaphysics involved.
      
Of course, that state of induced euphoria and tranquility is exactly what prompted the agents of government and industry to collaborate on a mission to capture the Chair. Contentment being contrary to their own objectives, the Chair, by its very nature, is subversive, and subversion is intolerable. Although, rather than eliminate the Chair, whose disappearance would certainly not go unnoticed, and might prompt a more widespread investigation into the clandestine activities of the agencies involved, leading to, who knows what kind of embarrassments, resignations, denials and perhaps even impeachments - unthinkable and calamitous prospects - a more pragmatic plan was devised.

The plan, it turns out, was that once the Chair was abducted and interrogated, its properties could then be analyzed in well equipped laboratories, by highly trained engineers, scientists and technicians of every description. Once the details of the Chair were fully documented and understood, and a homogenized version developed, cheap manufacturing facilities throughout the world could be established in which to mass-produce the Chair and nullify its subversive effects by turning it into a commodity. Not, you have to understand, by modifying its properties, although that was discussed as an option, but merely by manufacturing and marketing it as a consumer product - something like music. That alone would assure its diluted assimilation into the fabric of everyday life, without ever having to endure the expense and disruption it might excite as an ideological competitor. As quickly as the syndrome of stimulation and satisfaction could be introduced, magnified and habituated, the subversion would be counteracted, and at a profit, plus tax. No agitation, dissent, protests or counter-culture riots - no debate and no bloodshed.

When I first sat in the Chair, I immediately responded to its powers. For the first few days after its arrival though, I remained at arm's length from it, scrutinizing it, gently rearranging its position, caressing its surfaces, examining its seams, assessing its resilience, contemplating its form and basking in its radiance.
      
Even before I sat in it myself, I could see it working on other people. The first person to actually experience the Chair was my brother; a tormented Promethean - Bullshit’s Eternal Adversary - who surfs Black Holes for relaxation. I felt he was, without exception, most deserving and best equipped to appreciate its unique properties and replenishing benefits. Its effects upon him were, to this day, the most immediate and evident of anyone since, apart from me.
      
After my first experience of it, I instantly realized it was my duty to protect it, that I had no choice. After prolonged exposure, my duty became instinct, and my admiration approached reverence; I practically worshipped the Chair. I know I certainly adored it with pure and enormous affection. I was awed by it.
      
Now, however, I was the guardian of the Chair, and knowing full well its powers, I had to abstain from its use, it was my obligation, my commitment to protect it. I would have done anything to defend it, or die trying, and had come to realize that I eventually would. It was, after all, an increasingly reckless world, where anything was not only possible, but likely to happen, and I was immersed in it.
      
Another reason I now understood that I had to abstain from the use of the Chair, was that it was important for whomever was seated in the Chair that another person remain present with them, and I was that person. It was important because having someone there provided a connection with reality for the person engaged in a session. Not as a guide, but an anchor, because due to the intimate nature of the relationship between the Chair and the sitter, each voyage was self-governing and required no instruction. Without someone else in the room though, the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy was gradually impaired.

So far, I had no evidence to verify the extraordinary capabilities of the Surrealistic Chair. I had evidence that others needed no further convincing, but I had no proof for posterity, and that is what the Chairman needed, and you will soon become.
      
That all changed with the arrival of the Talking Cloud, the one I mentioned earlier in the story. The day the prophetic vision of the Talking Cloud appeared, was the first tangible evidence I was able to record for myself, from my own experience with the Surrealistic Chair.
      
As is most often the case, I find myself drawn to the Chair without any real awareness of the Chair’s properties. It is simply force of habit. All I usually think before anything happens is that I feel like sitting down, and the Chair looks comfortable, and, so I do. But it’s never long before I find myself dissolving into its embrace and examining things in a different light, and then recollecting, like I said about music, that I am on a ride, and better hold on, ‘cause there’s nobody here but me, and I can’t forget my duty, even though I know the fate that awaits me.
      
That day was no different. I sat in the Chair, and as I exhaled, suddenly, out of the blue, a cloud appeared before me, and in the cloud I saw a face that resembled someone I knew, who spoke directly, imploring me to “Dream in colour” then just as quickly vanished, as though it never were.
      
No sooner had he spoken and disappeared, then my surroundings were transformed into the kaleidoscopic vision of a voluptuous woman. Thus he spake, and it was so. And now I had the evidence.
      
Throughout the session, I took pictures of the dreams I had during my encounter with the Surrealistic Chair - I’ve even shown them to some people - and over the next few weeks, I sat down and tirelessly recorded the events, in every detail, exactly as they occurred, just as I have presented them to you here.
      
The Chairman had his proof, and the story was complete, except for the showing and the telling. Now that I have done that, and opened your eyes to Fate, and the events foretold have happened, everything is nearly done.
      
It’s more important now than ever, we have to keep on dreaming. I’ve told you the story, you’ve heard it for yourself, and in doing so, through a mystical act of transmogrification, as designed by Fate, the properties of the Surrealistic Chair are now embodied within you. As I said, it was my duty to protect the Chair with my life, and I gladly laid it down for the sake of the Chair. And that I did. Rather than kill, I let myself be killed, but first, before leaving, I told the story, for the sake of the survival of the Chair. With every person who hears the story, the Chair increases its chances of survival. I’ve done my best, that’s the best I can do. If it still isn’t clear, I can’t sharpen it for you any more. I’ve passed it along, I’ve done my duty, it’s all yours. It’ll be safer this way, where no one can get their hands on it. Now, it’s up to you.

I added a pinch of salt, poured a few drops of oil and threw a slice of lemon into the water, then made myself dinner: fresh crisp asparagus, emerald green, with hints of purple in the tips, boiled al dente: organically grown romaine salad, with brilliant, ruby red, sweet cherry tomatoes, a toss of plump, salt-encrusted, sea green capers, a few thin slices of singing Spanish onion, a crudely-chopped clove of pungent garlic, a wedge of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, a few drops of sweet, mellow-aged, vanilla brown balsamic vinegar, a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, topped with a bracing yellow dollop of Keen’s prepared hot mustard, a tantalizing crest of creamed, white-hot, Cedarvale horse radish and a shaving of translucent pink, pickled ginger: a piping-hot, Rosedale Gourmet Chicken, baked meat pie.
      
For dessert: a steaming pot of aromatic, fresh-ground, Continental Dark, black coffee: a rough-hewn lump of cinnamon raisin, chocolate-chip and almond biscotti: deftly unsheathed, with a rustling twist and a bit of a squeak, a gentle slide, a graceful flip, a confident tug and a decisive pull, and drawn from a crisp, clean, undefiled, red, white, blue and gold, duty-free package, a couple of deeply satisfying Rothmans, regular, King-size.
      
The last thing I recall, I was working at the computer, had just finished a few minor formatting changes and a final spell-check of the document then made back-up copies onto a couple of disks. Somehow, I knew it was almost time, and so I played one of my favorites songs, leaving it on endless repeat.
      
It was late, I’d been up a lot preparing the story over the last few days, and I don’t know how many times Gallows Pole played, when somebody knocked at the door. By nature, I am a very private person, but that night, I got up from the silver painted, birch swivel armchair, didn’t even look through the peep-hole or ask who it was, and when I reached the door I just slid the chain aside, turned the dead-bolt and opened it.
      
I don’t remember hearing anything, but I do remember feeling Fernando, I mean Chairman Meow, brush past my left leg, then looking down and seeing the white tip of his tail slip out the door and down the hall.

I felt my legs collapse, my head hitting the floor, and wet behind my neck...

“Kill the guy” ...I could hear the clock ticking and a bus pass by outside... “grab the chair” ...I heard heavy... “and get rid of that damn cat” ...footsteps and Chairman Meow protesting loudly... “while you’re at it” ...the MIDI version of Ramble On like the sound of mayonnaise, playing over and over...then nothing at all.
      
I saw the lamp burning way too bright above me, and in the darkness of the bedroom, Leda’s pale face and bright orange hair, putting me to shame and uplifting me with her love. Beneath the bed, Abdoul’s fearful luminous eyes flashed:
      
Amidst cascades of magnolias, overflowing, within a great hall filled with fantastic paintings and marvelous sculptures, I saw my sister, dying, and cut in polished stone, the date, March 6, my mother’s birthday, my Guru, Alexandra, and confidant, Dr. Juan, strolling, the mask of Yaakov, smiling and pulling faces, in an alcove, the priceless ball-cap my brother brought, concealed in a paper bag, to save me from the hangman, who granted a reprieve, Samuel writing his ancestor’s names in invisible ink upon the sky and fleeting clouds, then a man, resurrected from the dead, revived, brewing beer in a garden of cheese, urinating his name in the snow, and laughing merrily, the ghost of a Poet, devoured by a machine - from the wreckage, Michael, a rose - crying out to be heard, a speeding train with wings, sweeping blindly past silvery, turquoise lakes, spired hills and bleeding poppy fields, its wake stirring waves on endless, shimmering seas of grass, the moon scribing an erratic path across the heavens, and from the eternal vacuum of space and darkness, a comet smash into the earth, fracture, and a stalk of grain sprout from within it, I saw my father, seated in a big, soft, sage green upholstered armchair, I kissed him on the forehead, and said, “Good night, Dad, I love you,” then two boxwood Angels, one under each arm, lifted me up and carried me away, when last, I saw a Surrealistic Chariot, sailing past uprooted trees, crumbling cities, marching armies, scenes of brutal slaughter, catastrophic explosions, convulsions and panic everywhere.
      
As Fate would have it, that was how my life ended - brutally, without fanfare, and for nothing but an over-stuffed chair...

Behold; my shrine, my memento mori, my hair shirt, my progeny, my testimonial, my underlying motivation, and just one of the many reasons why I so badly needed you here in the room with me, now that I am gone.
      
Chastened Rider, draped in cobalt robes, Fifth Horseman in this Unholy Crusade, salve of this total war on imagination: this was no chance encounter, no accident, no invitation: you were, along with me, seized at gun-point and shackled, abruptly remanded into custody, dragged by the neck, called to look, compelled to listen, and as you heard, believing in it or not, your effortless re-engagement to Fate began to unfold, as did my own.
      
In flagrante delicto, the mask removed, the face revealed, the frightful corpse displayed, exhibited upon my face my shock, confusion and dismay, along, beside and with it lay, all my pretentious lies, and turned to ash, the garment shred, an elegant, unraveled guise, decayed, the hollowness, exposed, my marriage, consummated, arrested, the life I took for granted, expired, and then, unearthed too late, I realized; but not for you too late to see, to note, to recognize, through my ordeal, heed, exactly as I laid it out before you, in my address, my endless, tiring screed; my indebtedness to you is great, for your precious time and your indulgence, patient and polite, for sharing in my agonies and in my musings, wild speculations, small pleasures and delights. Without so much as ale offered, you danced along, belief suspended, like a puppet from my slate, your ear attentive to my lute, my song, my lyrical dictate.
      
Everything happened, just as I said it would, just as I told you, it did. So, as it was, and, so it is, and so it is to come. It’s happening now, as the props dismantle and the pillars collapse, as the final marks pass and disappear from view.
      
See Fate’s face, in you and everyone around you, as the veil parts, and drifting, falls and flits within the light and shadow, just as these words fold and fade away.
      
From end to end, Fate holds in its hands the torrent of all who passed before you, as all who follow, the good the ill and in-between alike. Trust, therefore, in Fate’s wisdom, guidance and captivity, whatever it holds in store, where ever it takes you, whatever the outcome. So, ache when it hurts, tremble, and cry when it parts, love as you can, and otherwise, be glad.

Embrace Fate, as Fate embraces you.

- skylight7