Tales From The Ridge: July 2005

The Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny

There was a gap between hopeful dawn's rising and a night that drew heavy black curtains over the earth, so the day stretched to fill it. A man caught halfway between birth and death with an old-fashioned radio and drawers of neatly pressed clothes found himself marooned in this day as it slipped across the globe. He was not worried. He had been stranded in days before.

As the minute hand chased the hour hand he settled in and made himself comfortable. All he could do, he mused, was to sit it out. She'd be here eventually, to brighten his southern sky. It was all just a matter of time.

Medulla oblongata

This guest post comes to you from an entity residing in the medulla oblongata of a 24-year-old Turkish man. The man's name is not important, but for those who are interested in such things, it is Ismet.

"The brain stem is a comfortable home; it gives one a clear perspective on a lot of things. There are none of the confused muddlings that clog the amygdala, nor the muddy clouds that stain the fringes of the frontal lobes. There was a time when I would inhabit these centres of higher consciousness, but the images there are too confused for my taste now. I remember fondly the time when I was younger, aeons ago, and none of my hosts exhibited any elevated cognition. Things were so much simpler then. More pure. It was beautiful.

The situation is worsened when they're in love. One must retreat further into the hindbrain in such cases, for fear of being drenched in the rushing purple waves that flood the cortexes. My host is in love. I can sense it even here, just a whisper from the spinal cord. There is a girl who bewitches him, whose words sound as music to his ears, whom he would take and hold in his arms and never let go - and yet he is afraid of her. I feel his pulse rise, his breathing quicken, his brain fear her as she nears. Then she smiles at him, and his knees weaken, and his belly turns hot and the feelings of fear melt into floods of warmth that flow even as far as the spine.

I understand neither his anxiety, nor his elation. These feelings, these responses, they run against the natural order of things. These emotions obfuscate the simple beauty that I, and surely all, must seek.

So once again, I find it time to locate for myself a new host. Perhaps this time I can acquire one immune to love, immune to the dizzying highs and the crushing lows, so that he and I can finally be truly happy."

Ecks Ridgehead is unwell.