Aerial

The Thirty-Seventh Chapter

Clyde?

Quicksand isn't a complication that you've ever encountered before. It isn't something that you've had any particular concern about in the past or future, and in fact, you can't recall a time when anyone you've met has even come close to stumbling in or around a single morsel of it. There's no way of knowing exactly how swiftly or slowly one will be buried alive when and if contact finally happens, since the immersion seems to happen based on how much or how little one flails. Quicksand appears to be one of those types of obstacles that is fabled in novels and Aesop's tales, a type of fairytale-warning that is exaggerated to children as a dilemma, simply a euphemism for drowning due to a lack of caution. Being buried alive up to your chin and your nose and your eyes and suddenly disappearing completely into the earth because you've failed to follow the proper procedure of journeying. As if there is indeed one proper procedure of journeying, according to the advice of sages and scholars.

Clyde?

They had told you so. Every single person within your proximity that has awareness and a brain in their head had told you so. Nettie, your coworkers. Ostensibly, throughout your lifetime, your parents. Harry. Even you; deep down you knew that quicksand lay up ahead, but the oasis just beyond it was too tempting to ignore. It was lush and deep; overgrown and thirst-quenching. It was a perfect respite from the monotonous, dry, lumpy desert you had been trudging through for most of your life. Sanctuaries this luxurious have to at least be partially imaginary, because deserts are too thick and determined of a biome to harbor the exact opposite in the heart of its marrow. Without prior realization, you must have just been so thirsty for love that you had imagined it completely. A mirage of a utopia that only exists in daydreams and daftly written romance novels, a dream that feels so real that you can still taste it when your alarm goes off, a phony pot of gold at the end of a very dazzling, but very transient rainbow. A light switch that was flicked on with determinism and slapped off with just as much gumption. None of which felt at all in your control.

Clyde?

You have always wondered if love was something that certain people just practiced and got good at and can generate from anyone they wish, or of it is, more magically, a distinctive connection between two willing parties.

Or two unwilling parties, for that matter.

Clyde?

The wheels of Harry's van slowly sink through the heaving, fine grains below – covering the windows, pouring into the open barndoor, blocking out all sunlight – before you open your mouth in an attempt to scream, swallowing the desiccated grit until you're strangling to death on the few crumbs of reality that you are able to comprehend.

Clyde?

There is a phrase coined by the psychologist and writer Timothy Leary called "Reality Tunnels", and it's the belief that every living being perceives life differently, that reality is subjective based on the unique brain and blood and bones and guts and heart deciphering it. One could argue that this also means you'll always be wrong or always be right about your experiences based on who you're communicating with and how they're interpreting the delicacy of your circumstances, hinging on how you're choosing to transmit towards their own backgrounds and beliefs. We are all constantly flooded with a limitless number of sensory input; everything you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell, grabbing with gummy tentacles at anything within in our grasp that we can label and spot patterns in to organize and make sense of the world around us.

On top of all this, there's the reminder that all of the discernable input in your immediate surroundings is being sifted through piles upon piles of conditional emotional archives, hormonal balance, the tilt of the earth, the phase of the moon, the pull of the tide, an empty or full stomach, an exceptional or inadequate night's sleep, personal significant events, scabs and open wounds, bacteria and viruses, clouds and humidity. Whittling down into something that is manageable at any given moment, all of us consistently existing through a unique, filtered lens.