"A Spyglass Rusted Shut

Prologue : Of Comets & Dreams

To peer into binoculars and see a comet is to look ahead of your life and see
a dream.

Though we may hope to do so, we can never fulfill it. To fly towards the
comet and hug it would be to halt it's fall, turning it instead into an asteroid.
Similarly so, to reach your dream and obtain it would be to negate it, turning
it instead into a reality. In reality, touching a comet would burn your flesh
into soot and bones into coal. Reaching your dream would destroy yourself
just as well. You would have stopped being the version before, the 'you' that
was in wait for a moment now passed. Reverting the comet is also a self-
destruction, as you and the comet are the same. Like a meteorite streaks
across the expanse of night, you flicker across the earth for an ephemeral
instant, and both of you welcome back a clear evening sky in the wake.

We look through the lens, into the heavens, and see ourselves on the
opposite shoreline. What's more, we wish on the glimmer we see. We wait
for it to be granted, and in wait comes moving forward. We are perpetual
motion machines, for motivation is in endless supply when that which drives
you forward is just out of reach. The design is even more efficient if that goal
is, for all intents and purposes, unattainable. However, no one can tell us
that it can't come, for the chance can only die with us, and in perishing we
lose any ability to know the chance has gone. Through this we are granted
the one thing we can receive in this life : eternal hope, or at the very least,
opportunity that is never dashed.

With age many lose sight of the sky. It is not because their eyesight fades,
for it does not happen when their eyes break, but when their binoculars do.
Their sense of vision is very much the same, but without the binoculars it
cannot reach outside that which is physically possible. So they settle their
outlook only on the world around them. For most it is a malfunction they
would've rather avoided. Regardless, by unsure will or by strong outside
force, everyone walks away from their broken pair, and the spyglass rusts in
their leave. For some there is a lasting scar. They look into mirrors and see
indents around the eyelids, and recall the device which would let them see a
comet which sparked above a hill.

To remove the comet is to remove something from inside of you. The dream
existed in thought, even though it never would or could take physical form. It
was a possibility we feel is robbed from us, yet it was only formed by means
of past, present, and future non-existence. Those who move on with despair
continue onwards feeling rather hollow. They live in false notions of
emptiness, until death reveals a true emptiness; a state without even the
self. To stave this known eventuality they search, mostly in vain, for
remnants. Sometimes they discover shards of glass which shattered forth
from the rims. They pick up a fragment from the hilltop grass and peer
through it, and like before, the world seems to be a different one.

It lasts for a shorter while this time, as their view has permanently
broadened. They see they are merely holding a tiny piece of broken glass,
and with this comes a larger perspective : the source that had filled them
with so much wonder was nothing but an object weighing no more than 2
stones. So they throw the spec over their shoulder and march back down the
hill, and in passing realize it was merely a gopher hole. They abandon the
version of them that exists up above, not knowing that they had been
forsaken long before by that same party. It was the comet that passed
quickly, and it was only the observer who lingered. Once they grow older
they see more comets, perhaps even storms of them, but they see them by
chance, and they're small enough to be suspect.

After all, they might only be bits of dust caught under the eyes. -- Adam
Loofburrow"

Charles lifted his hands from the keyboard and let his eyes cease their flow
over the words on the screen. He idly sipped his coffee, fiddled with his coat
pockets and, after a thorough mussing about, retrieved a pen. With a quick
dash he marked out a sentence on the small note beside his laptop, which
read :

"Prologue : Of Comets & Dreams"

Up above in bold was a title, below it a table of contents.

"A Spyglass Rusted Shut

Prologue : Of Comets & Dreams

Chapter 1: ???

Chapter 2: A Quell

Chapter 3: A Duration

Chapter 4: A stagnation

Chapter 5: The Climb"

He returned to the monitor and tapped the keys beneath. When his fingers
weren't in motion, his eyes and lips were; gliding over the words from left to
right, speaking in whispers only his own ears could understand. If he came to
a questionable passage he'd read it aloud, with enough volume so that others
could hear if they were so inclined. Depending on whether he'd delivered it
with confidence or embarrassed shame, he'd continue on or strike all of his
progress from existence. If a line were out of place, the lines around it were
also at fault. When this erasure occurred, as it often did, he would run a
hand through his greying hair and purvey the scenery.

As he looked to the Caffé menu in the distance, he noticed a spectator in the

foreground. A small child had been twisted to an almost impossible degree
to watch him over the back of his high-chair. The boy's head was tilted to the
side, his eyes were dazed and seemed to wash over everything warmly, and
his mouth formed into an orb which coo'd. Charles waved at him, which
caused the boy to stir and beckon to his mother. Once she looked up from
her newsprint and caught wind, she pulled her child around by the shoulder
and smiled at Charles. It was humble, yet prideful, that to him sent a specific
message; "My child need not be forgiven, for he is special. His very presence
is a wonder, a gift I have shared."

He smiled politely back at her and returned to his affairs. At first he seemed
to shrink before the blank word document, but then his eyes began to drift
beyond it's looming monolith shape, through it, into a world of thought. He
slid his glasses back up the ridge of his nose, reached for the pen, and used it
to write on the back of the chapter outline, "Inspiration for some other story,
some other time : A small boy in a public setting looks across the room to a
man he may some day resemble. This man is writing about all the
foolishness the boy has yet to comprehend, that all those around him know
full too well,"

He suddenly became aware of the people beside himself, and made an effort
to absorb the atmosphere, to breathe it in deeply like the ether. It was one of
business, with a hint of rush, one too frantic for need, be it his or theirs. He
flitted the pen tip a few strokes more, "Or maybe they do not understand.
They each put a sheet over a cage; The sheet is a smile, the cage is their
heart, and inside it is what they refer to as their sorrow. Yet their cage is
empty, because unlike the others, sorrow takes no physical shape. The only
thing that presides is air, and it is never trapped, instead it pushes in and out
of the grating. By putting a sheet over the cage they simply create a barrier,
one that will flutter and let them know when a wind does blow."

A waitress laid a plate in front of him. A welcoming scent and heat rolled
down it's mounds, pulling him away at once. Although not professional by
any means, the food looked appetizing, and had been plopped onto the tray
with hospitable charm. As he looked up the employee tossed him a
customary smile, which proudly displayed every tooth along her gum line.
Charles hesitated, then flashed a grin of his own. As she pointed to the back
of his computer, she spoke, "Been writing all day again, I'm sure you're
hungry." He gave no reply but an awkward chuckle and a tip, which satisfied
his only obligation and sent her away.

Charles finished his meal and set his tray under the window, which now let in
the orange glow of a sunset. The notes he'd returned to were now painted
with warm hues, and his pen glinted as he moved it, underlining the word
"flutter" with much care. The other words aroused less affection in him. He
stared at them harshly, incredulously, sometimes even with the look of
chancing upon another's vague scribbles. He flipped the paper over and
made one correction; the question marks beside Chapter 1 had been
scrawled out, and a new title had been set above. He replaced the pen in his
pocket, then with very little regard tossed the paper to the wayside. It landed
on his empty plate, the information therein condemned with the same
relevancy as that of porcelain stained with residual grease.

Slowly he laid his hands back onto the keys. For some time he did nothing
more than look upon them meditatively, until out of the blue they began to
type,

"Chapter 1 : A Flutter"