Autumnal Ghosts

Autumnal Ghosts (2017)


Edgar slowed his pace as the burial oak crawled into his field of vision from beyond the trail's end. His son Nathan scurried at his side, riding on a meek ripple of strength that would soon fade away. The cascading breeze threw some of the fallen leaves into a whimsical dance around them. Their jumbled earthly hues reminded Edgar of a funeral procession, a flurried gathering of heavy souls. He no longer wept for the boy. Edgar could no longer contest the burning seal of doom woven into his family line. His grief fell into a permeating numbness, bound to his bones by the inescapable gravity of Nathan's imminent death.

The father glanced at his son's sheepish face and smiled at the soft painless expression. Soon it would be torn away and replaced with the hollow stare of suffering. Nathan would be forced back into the country house, back into his shoddy bed, and back under the grip of a fresh syringe. The boy's eyes told his father that he was not yet through fighting the disease. Edgar marveled at his son's strength from behind his own veil of experience. Surely he would beg for suicide in Nathan’s place.

On hushed footsteps they entered the wide embrace of the tree's shadow. Their awareness sunk into its ethereal realm. Its rustic sprawling facade inhaled the remnants of the fading day's warmth, hinting at the barren winters of its past. They approached the claws of its twisting roots and made their way in deliberate paces around the base of the trunk. The wind shifted course and the tree waved to the father a brisk greeting with its outer leaves. To the boy it meant farewell.

"Is God real? Will He be there, when I go?" said Nathan. Edgar looked down at the boy's solemn countenance, which drifted like a fog below the pale hairless curvature of his skull. 

"Yes, God is real," said Edgar. He held the boy's shoulder to assert his lie. "God is both around us and within us. He was here before our planet came to be, and he'll be there when everything is gone."

"Good to know, dad. I get scared imagining what nothing will feel like. I hope God is kind," Nathan said.

"God is beyond anything we know," Edgar said. "What really matters is that you are kind."

The imposing aura radiating from the tree opened a deluge of centuries inside Edgar's mind. Through wealth and trouble, and through toil, feasts, and famine, the names engraved into the trunk fell together and coalesced into a single black diamond, a macabre shrine for those unknowable souls.

"Why are we here?" asked Nathan.

"I wanted to show you the others," Edgar said as he stepped closer towards the engravings.

"What do you mean?"

"The others like you, the kids from our family who got sick when they were eleven years old.” Edgar softened his voice for the forlorn boy who would never know manhood. “Think of them as autumnal ghosts. They blessed their loved ones with their summer light and then drifted off to be with God before the early frost came." Edgar waved his palm over several engravings in the side of the tree.

“Were they lonely?" asked Nathan. 

"No. They were loved,” said Edgar. He spoke like a somber grandfather. “At first I didn't believe the rumors, and I stopped thinking about them for a while. Then you were born and I was overjoyed, but then…" Edgar's mind froze as he remembered his wife's suicide. "Then your mom got sick, so we came here."

"I didn't really know mom," said Nathan.

"Your first treatment started when she was already gone," said Edgar. "Her spirit was gone, anyway. I doubt you remember much from that time."

"Needles," said Nathan. "I remember all kinds of needles, and lots drilling and light."

"Then it's for the best," said Edgar. Nathan's expression grew inquisitive. Edgar's grief withheld much of the past from him.

"So you say those relatives caused my sickness? How?" Nathan scowled with the remaining strength in his face. "I don't know everything the doctors say but I know it's not a curse and I don't think I belong here with the others.”

"It's okay, son, just sit down on that grass for a minute, " said Edgar. He forgot to bring the emergency dose of medicine.

"But how can that be true? Why did you and mom have me at all?" said Nathan. He kneeled over and his chest convulsed under tiny, jagged breaths. A tear slid from his face and into the dirt.

"I spent months doing research after you got sick," said Edgar. "I tracked down my father's ancestors, from centuries ago."

Nathan sat down on the grass in a broken slump, but he did not collapse.

"I'm weak," Nathan said. "If I was stronger I could get better and be here with you, on the farm, and help out, and be happy." He succumbed to another coughing fit. Edgar considered running back to the house for the medicine, but remained still.

"You're not weak," Edgar said when the boy's throat finally ceased its grinding convulsions. "I know you feel like you are. We're all powerless against the tides of time. Your mother would have been so proud of you, so proud..." Edgar's eyes sank into the shadows.

"I'm still glad I could live for a little bit," said Nathan. Edgar cleared his throat to rattle the swelling of his own tears.

"Most of the boys remembered here had a phrase engraved near their name," Edgar said. He glanced over the older marks as his spirit buckled under the burden of what those who stood here long ago must have endured. The generational death spiral pulsed in his veins. Edgar’s own blood mocked him. The very same matter that kept him alive pulled his only son into an early grave. "If you have anything you want engraved here, just let me know. Take some time, think about it." 

Edgar took several steps around the oak while keeping an eye on his son sitting in the grass. Time’s reaper would heed none of his son’s bravery. Edgar's gut seized up with the sudden urge to tear down the tree, yet he knew he never would. He could boil out his own blood and drown Nathan in the finest medicine, but it wouldn’t matter. The immutable mechanism behind their parting lives would clamor on like a stone bull.

"I've got something, dad," Nathan said.

"Already? What is it?"

"Behold the shadows, for there is light," said Nathan. His voice and eyes sank into the dirt.

"That's beautiful," said Edgar.

In silence they watched the forest swallow the final rays of the setting sun. A line of birds bound for warmer lands shimmered beneath a lonely cloud as it hung motionless in the air. The life around them withdrew into the fringes of the land.

"What will you do after I'm gone?" said Nathan. They walked towards the house. Nathan’s feeble legs struggled to move over the flat dusty path. Edgar walked close enough to catch the boy, but his instinct told him not to.

"I'll remember you," said Edgar. "You're the bravest person I'll ever know." He paused, admiring the enduring spirit at his side. His burning shame reminded him that the boy was unreachable. "Then I'll keep going. I'll keep going and then some day you'll be all better and I'll see you again."

*****

Nathan passed away during the dead of night without a hint or a whimper. Edgar did not look at the body. When the early morning came, a silent ambulance carried the dead son away from the farm. Edgar signed a few papers for the driver and then returned to the house to complete his remaining chores. He watered the living room plants and gathered Nathan's old clothes and bedding. He stuffed the decrepit fabrics into a large cotton sack and placed it in the center of the backyard fire pit. He fetched a tin canister of ignition fluid from beneath the deck's stairway and sprayed some of it on the cloth bundle. He lit the top of the pile. The flame burst forth with great force, then faded into a simmer. 

Edgar returned to the house to gather his wallet and car keys. He produced a hefty pile of unpaid medical bills from a seldom used drawer and walked out of the front door. On his way to his car Edgar threw the envelopes on top of Nathan's smoldering belongings. He sprayed the rest of the ignition fluid into the flame wisps and turned his back to them, walking away from the resurrected pyre.

The sun's disk rose over the shallow hills and the air remained still as the fire raged on, taking everything that it could.

Edgar drove his worn out sedan down the grey country road as his life dissolved into the monotone horizon behind him. In his soul there were no shadows, and so there was no light. The boy, the wife, and the autumnal ghosts tugged at his memory, hoping to extract some closing grace from his self reflection. He offered them none. He narrowed his eyes at the rising sun, pulled down the visor, and kept going.

Synthite

Synthite (2017)

               Dennis Jones took the dose of powdered synthite with an abrupt inhalation through his left nostril. After the initial burn settled down he took a seat on his couch and prepared to ride out the first wave of psychosis and delirium that would soon follow. He knew the dose taken was sufficient to break through and reach maximum effects. He also knew that the accompanying madness would wreak havoc on his psyche until the moment he transitioned to the other side.

                The drug was still a relatively untested novelty, even for seasoned psychonauts such as Dennis. Reports of its effects first spread on the deep web news network called the Mystic Underground a few years ago, when it was accidentally discovered by an amateur chemist attempting to create a more potent version of DMT. The reports were profound in their nature. The first few users who broke through experienced the essence of an independent multiverse inside their own mind. They were able to live out a series of events not as beings with egos but as sentient particles of subatomic matter. They could form and create entire chains of multiverses and live out generations upon generations of lifetimes as the beings who inhabited them. The power of this drug greatly surpassed DMT, which was thought to be the most powerful psychoactive substance prior to the discovery of synthite.

                The first wave hit Dennis like a freight train. His body began to tingle and then slightly warm up while his mind began to feel like a balloon inflating at an exponentially increasing velocity. Memories of his childhood flooded his mind but they now were severely altered. Instead of being pushed on his swing by a compassionate father, Dennis was being whip lashed around by a snarling belligerent demon with thick grey horns. The psychosis had begun. More visions followed. Dennis’s body grew ever warmer and his perception of his own mind continued to expand, faster and faster.

                Within moments Dennis found himself floating in deep space, completely disoriented. A cold void surrounded everything he perceived. Then the demon returned, only this time it was much larger, and it was laughing at him.

                “What do you want from me? Where am I?” Dennis asked. He felt an intense sickness grip his senses. 

                “I am your own interpretation of you,” said the demon. “Why so troubled?”

                “You’re not me!” Dennis yelled back. His eyes were bulging out if his head in a fit of panic. His arms and legs flailed around in a swimmer's motion as he desperately tried to find something to hold on to.

                “You have much to learn. Do you even remember taking the drug?”

                “What drug? What the hell is this? This isn't real!” said Dennis.

                Dennis truly forgot. He forgot that he had taken the most powerful psychedelic in the universe. He was at its mercy now. The demon continued in a calm and collected tone.

                “I have much to show you,” said the demon. “First you must let go of the part of you that is tortured. It doesn’t get any easier from here on out. This trip is just beginning.”

                “I’m not tortured… I had a good life… then I woke up here… in space.” said Dennis.

                “This is an illusion. Don’t be dense. You took a drug, remember?”

                “No, I don’t remember… at all.”

                “What I will tell you next will shock you, but I assure you that I am telling the truth. You’ve been on this drug your entire life, Dennis. None of your life actually happened. You were an astronaut and you smuggled some of this stuff into your suit during a spacewalk. There was some trouble. Your ship and crew abandoned you. Now you’re floating in deep space with only minutes left in your life support system.”

                Suddenly Dennis woke up on his couch. The change of scenery occurred in less than a second.

                Deep space.

  The demon.

                What happened?

                The chilling memory of what the demon said remained with Dennis as he was coming to his senses. His current life wasn’t real. He actually was still deep space, minutes away from death, tripping on synthite. Dennis then began to question himself. Which reality was actually true? If synthite was as powerful as the reports said, then he could be tripping right now in his clean modern apartment while his true reality is actually him drifting in space as a lost astronaut. He did seem to recall vague inconsistencies in his life, even strange flashes of white and purple light which occurred in his field of vision from time to time. Could they be small seams in the drug’s grip of his mind?

                To get some immediate answers Dennis took out his mobile phone and called his good friend Jack. There was some initial static in the call, which gave Dennis a sinking feeling of doom in his stomach. Eventually, however, Jack answered the call.

                “Hello.”

                “Hey, Jack. It’s Dennis. I’m having a bit of a struggle today…”

                “You need to stop tripping, man. What did you take this time?” said Jack.

                “It’s more of what I didn’t take,” said Dennis as he sunk into his couch.

                “What do you mean?” said Jack.

                “What is reality? Are we real?” said Dennis.

                “That’s a deep philosophical question,” said Jack. “No one truly knows what reality is, but I suppose this is as real as it gets.”

                “If your whole life has been you tripping on a powerful drug, how would you know in the first place? What if you simply died when the effect began to wear off?”

                “Hmm… are you sure you didn’t take anything. You sound tweaked, Dennis.” said Jack.

                He was right. There was a lot of panic and tension in Denis’s voice. Jack sensed that his friend was in deep psychological trouble.

                “Look, I’m at a store around your area. I’ll stop by with a case of beer. We can just hang out and relax, you seem to be struggling,” said Jack.

                “Hmm… sounds like a good idea. I’ll see you soon.”

                They both hung up their phones. Jack arrived at Denis’s apartment about twenty minutes later with a case of beer and a few bags of snacks.

                “Good to see you,” said Jack. “Man, you don’t look so good. Maybe it is time to give this psychonaut thing a rest? It is breaking you down pretty badly.”

                Dennis did not answer normally. Instead, he screamed and reached for the machete he kept in the hallway closet. Jack suddenly got uneasy.

                “Hold it, man… what… what… what! What are you doing?” Jack began to backpedal but he could not escape. One precise swing of the machete sliced into his stomach open and he collapsed to the floor, bleeding.

                “Get away from me!” screamed Dennis. He did not see Jack as his normal self. He saw him as the demon from earlier. “Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!” He screamed the phrase a few times while pacing around in circles. Jack was on the floor, bleeding out and shaking.

                “No more! No more! No more!” Dennis let out several more screams and then charged towards the biggest window in his apartment. His flailing arms hit several shelves, knocking down all of their contents. Without hesitation he let out a primal roar and jumped while leading with his shoulder. He broke through the glass and fell twenty one floors down to the concrete street. 

                

What Was Needed

What Was Needed (2016)

Epochs unfolding swiftly

Glow wild with desire

Everything in between is a dream - 

Only the single moment exists

Reach and reach for something

Once it is yours, it is no more

Longingly wait for something

You never truly needed

Regret and Desire

Regret and Desire (2016)

Letting go of both regret and desire is an instrumental component of living a more complete life in the Information Age of the 21st Century. The contemporary world is a whirlwind of information and possessions. Dark moments of a person's past and a person's internal desire to continue acquiring material wealth can blur his or her perception of the current moment. The beauty of the current moment can be quickly lost in a cloud of regret and desire. Too much precious time is wasted on contemplating what could have been instead of what currently is. In a similar manner, much time is wasted on contemplating the pursuits of unattainable desires such as unnecessary luxury goods.

A person who achieves the goal of forfeiting both regret and desire will appreciate the beauty of the current moment more than a person who is living a life stuck in the past (regret) or a life stuck in an imaginary future which may never come true (desire). Also, the pursuit of cosmic wealth (art, literature, music, aesthetics) is much easier when regret and desire are disposed of. In this state of being the creative centers of the mind are brought into a more active and lucid state, allowing for both the creation and the appreciation of intangible cosmic wealth.

Pursuers of material wealth (tangible goods, income, money) could argue that the desire for more is what drives much of the productivity in many economies, which is true to a degree, but a pursuer of cosmic wealth can say:

"At what point does the pursuit of material wealth drown out a life entirely?"

It is fine for a person to proudly work for a living and to be proud of his or her material possessions, but the dedication of an entire life to material wealth will result in an inevitable decay of the spirit.

Letting go of regret and desire is an instrumental part of allowing the human spirit to flourish.

Cosmic Troubles

Cosmic Troubles (2016)

Of all troubles in the cosmos

Of all things shattered with shame

None come close to vast explosions

That rid systems of their name

Small scale beings chase old trite treasures

Small scale beings know nothing of

Nature's fury in the vacuum

Only conquered by its love

In its vastness - hopeless darkness,

Empty beacons of despair

And then - love and fruitful fortunes,

There's some beauty in some airs

All a spiral, blended visions

Holding both troubles and love

For each time a lone being suffers

Someone else glows, has it all

Piano Sketch

Piano Sketch (2015)

Introduction

Welcome to the Creative Multimedia Archive of Vlad Motchoulski. Vlad is a 21st century polymath who specializes in music and writing. He is self-taught in all of his disciplines.

Vlad Motchoulski was born in Moscow, Russia on March 16th, 1988. He endured a turbulent and tumultuous upbringing, being often cast away from his peers and isolated from society altogether. He began to independently study music at age 20 after a meditation session following the ingestion of the entheogen known as Dream Herb. A transcendent experience gave him new perspectives on his life and he began to see the cosmos and his place in it under a new light.

Vlad is completely self-taught in all aspects of music. Having either been financially unable to support lessons or sometimes even outright denied all opportunities by prospective instructors, he forged his own path as he trekked on his musical journey, which he hopes will someday become the pinnacle of his legacy.

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Brief Excerpt from Vlad Motchoulski's Biography:

Biography of Vlad Motchoulski 

(Birth to Age 27)

Vlad was born on March 16th, 1988 at a nondescript hospital in then-Soviet Moscow. Upon leaving the facility he was wrapped in insulating blankets for warmth and shuttled through the dreary streets of the city to his family's apartment in a monolithic five-story building in the Izmailovo district. Political and social turmoil engulfed the city during his early years. One of Vlad’s earliest notable memories is of the 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis, during which armed tanks from the Taman Division opened fire and bombarded the Russian White House with artillery.

Vlad’s pre-school was in the courtyard of the Soviet-style residential block. It provided a tranquil enclave that acted as a spark for his interest in nature. As a child he enjoyed the ambiance of rainy days and the earthly smell rising from the courtyard’s lawns. During spring the numerous lilac trees would be in bloom, creating a peaceful and pleasant atmosphere. On occasion he would accompany his grandmother on strolls through the aptly named Lilac Boulevard, picking up freshly baked bread from local merchants on their way home.

Soviet agenda permeated the culture and environment at the pre-school. When Vlad was learning how to write, one of the instructors noticed him using his left hand and quickly chastised him for it before forcing him to continue with the “proper” right hand. During recess the teachers would walk away from the children and huddle around a gazebo towards the back of the yard while smoking cigarettes. Nap time was mandatory at this facility and restroom breaks were not permitted until a specific time. Early on Vlad noticed the oppressive structure of this establishment, and it likely played a significant role towards his involvement in social justice and equality as an adult.

Vlad and his family immigrated to the United States in the summer of 1994. His father secured a research position at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The family moved to the Purdue Village residential complex in the southwest corner of the town. Vlad was apprehensive of other people during this time and did not initiate much contact with others. Instead he chose to take solitary journeys on his bicycle through the winding sidewalks of the apartment complex. Directly to the south was Purdue University Airport. Upon making this discovery, Vlad became fascinated with the small single engine aircraft that took off and landed there. He was amazed at their sleek beauty and skill of the pilots that maneuvered these machines.

Over time, Vlad began to feel scared and alienated by America. He simply did not understand…

why are these people…

 so…

... angry?

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