I climb the steps of the Tower. How far have I climbed? For how long? The chiming of the great bells tolls off the hours in quarters, reverberating through the dizzying spirals of stone steps, always just ahead, never in sight. I lost track of their chimes so very long ago. Still I climb. My muscles are liquid. They are burning with the heat of ages, yet they stoutly forge onward. My knees and hips are grating through bone, all remembrance of cartilage long gone from the strain of the climb. They are no longer human flesh, but un-greased metal hinges, forced open and closed by the burning hydraulic fluid of my veins. Still I climb.
I can’t go on, I tell myself. Yet one foot lands on the step before me, and the one behind it lifts up to the next. My cramps are gone; they long ago disappeared, unable to work a change on the resolution of my body. I feel the burning. I feel the pain. But it is not I who burns, not I who hurts. All of that which I once was has been left behind me, spiraling down the stones to the nothingness below. Still I climb.
The bells are ringing. It is a quarter hour – forty five, for there are three tollings to be counted – but now the vibrations come from behind. They give me new strength, as though each toll long and deep is pushing me along before it, rushing me onwards to the final destination after the very last step at the top of this topless Tower. The force of the forty five carries me onward until the hour tolls, a single pulsing crash. The bell is inside me; the tolling is myself. It fills me, expanding outwards from my Tan Tien until there must no longer be room for my organs. My head is giddy with oxygen and my eyes are hazy and light as my presence rushes forward, carried on the force of the hour, and I am free. I stand on top of the Tower. I climb no more.
The summit is flat and undefined. Perhaps there once were lines of mortar, crisscrossing the stones in a rectangular, offset pattern. No more. The surface is smooth as marble; the staircase does not exist. Now I have stopped, the pain returns. My body is cramping; my joints are fused. I must stay resolute, though, for one demand yet rests before me. I limp to the edge of the Tower and look down its side. The solid, stone walls run smoothly away, fading into the distance below. Of where they end, all I can see is a vast sea of clouds. I look through them, and there is nothing but faint atmosphere blue; the city has left, the Tower has no anchor. It simply is. The cloud field stretches out as rolling hills in all directions, though far in the distance the serrated peaks of mountains bite through the white expanse, sharpened teeth slicing through white bread. I stand; I look.
The Tower pulsates beneath my sore feet. My face is turned to the open and endless sky. The stars are shining, though it is yet daylight. They fall from the heavens, growing closer. The first among them finds my cheek, shattering into a million droplets of water, which run down my neck, mingling with the sweat of my climb. The rest of the stars rain about me, falling to the clouds below and lighting them with incandescent colors. I yearn to follow them. A single bell tolls out, deeper and more resonant than the others. Is the bell within the Tower, or is the Tower itself the Bell? I do not know if there remains any difference. The Tower is alive, and I am not one to restrict her. The toll recedes to a pulsing vibration within the unseen roots of the Tower. It is not the tolling of a quarter. The bell says only this: It is Time. I nod, for I am of the same persuasion. My strength is fading; too much of me was left behind on the stairs. I gather myself together, all that makes me, and summon forth the remainder of strength hidden down within my bones. It is Time. The Tower tolls her farewell, and I throw myself from her edge.
I fall, and the tower rushes by, flying past me. The clouds below hurry to meet me, but they are still far away. I will meet them soon enough, but for now I am amongst the stars. They are faster than I am, and they turn and smile at me as they pass. What color are you? one asks of me, and I am confused. I look at myself, but the wind is too strong, and is stripping away my body. I cannot answer the star, and she laughs, rushing onward to the clouds, where she erupts into fireworks of a brilliant red hue. The others continue past, flying down the air to end themselves in radiant flashes on the clouds. I am falling, following the stars, but I do not wish to end like them as but a moment of paint across a cloud. I look back, but there is very little of me left; the wind has taken much away. What am I now? Am I still a human, falling through the sky, or am I now but a Star myself? The clouds are close now. Soon I will know. As I fall I gain speed, and now I am outstripping the stars, who watch me with eager interest. I hit the hill of white and the mist erupts into color: deep, vibrant green, like the core of an emerald set in the sun. I am emerald green.
I fall through the clouds. My friends the stars are gone, for they cannot follow me into the great field of white, nor would they if they could. Their place is the sky; their home is in the heavens. My home is elsewhere, and thus I fall. Without the stars, within the white, I cling to my only landmark, the Tower beside me. It rushes by, a smooth plane of stones. The clouds have stripped away the rest of my body, and now I cannot say what I truly am. Whether a soul or a spirit, or merely a thought on the fickle wind, I know not who could say. It is no longer of importance. I look ahead.
The walls of the tower rush past me, but all the rest of the world is clouds. I can see no more than white, and the stones. They are changing. Where once they were long, square and flat, they have now become short, round and lumpy, and I realize that the wall is no longer a wall; the tower is a cobble-stone road. Am I still falling, or am I moving forward, slipping over the ground like a kestrel on the wing? With only the clouds for comparison, the answer seems whichever I choose. I look to the sky about me. My home is calling, so I say farewell to my acquaintance the road and veer upwards, rushing away into the great white depths before me. I climb no more. I fall no more. I am no more. I soar.
A little explanation.
I wrote this stream-of-consciousness just about 20 years ago now, as an introverted, gangly teen, teetering on the uneasy yet exciting precipice dividing one’s life between:
CHILD | ADULT
This cozy library I’ve been building is primarily meant to hold new, or recent written work for your perusal. No small part of the reason for this is that much of my very old work is, bluntly put, quite awful to behold – as one would expect from a socially-inept child navigating life, relationships, and…
High School dun- dun-dunn!
Sometimes though, that awkward kid surprises me from way back when with something that, while maybe not polished and refined, has aged well in its own unique way.
It can be punishing to look back at your earlier work and cringe in embarrassment at your initial flailing, fledgling attempts at creation. But that kid, and their terrible writing, guided you to who you are today – and if you listen to them, they just might remind you of things that are important to you which you’ve forgotten. They are, after all, still right there inside of you; maybe give them a break, and some forgiveness.
-KTL
The Literary Diversions of K.T. Lazarus 
Leave a comment