Paradise

World ‘scape in a strangers attic

Chapter 1

I'm wandering the sidewalk of a centuries old neighborhood, somewhere in Amsterdam. Suddenly, in front of me and across the street, I spot a frantic looking old man. He's pacing back and forth pulling his hair, staring at the ground. I stop to observe this man because it was things like this I wandered around to find.

The man stopped pacing and shot his gaze back to my side of the street but several apartment houses in front of me. The old man marched back across the road paying no mind to the lunch hour traffic. Oddly enough the traffic seemed to pay no mind to him. Everything happened as if I were the only one to see it. In that instant of thought, the old man was swallowed by the archways. For no other reason, other than pure curiosity, I followed him. I remember nothing of the apartment, other than the area the event took place. The attic, located in a closet, in the master bedroom. I can't see anything right away. As soon as I enter the bedroom I'm blinded by a pure heavenly light coming from the ceiling hatch. Under the hatch in the light I step into a pile of dust that instantly began to swirl and blow away. I spend only a fraction of a moment on the occurrence because the light above becomes so comforting. It's so compelling I realize my arms and legs are hurling me up the ladder.

The light is so hot, but selfish, so clean, but needy, not white or yellow, but vain. The light finally dims and cools, and when I finish clearing my eyes, I gasp. A grassless field is laid out under a massive blue sky, stretching beyond the horizon. The land is grey and brown, almost not right, and then in the horizon, green. The entire landscape is turning green, coming right for me. The closer it got the more identifiable it became. Grass, all around me, it grew, all past me, racing back into the horizon behind me. Amazing I think until I look up and see clouds then think to myself how wonderful it would be for clouds to see their own reflection in some clear white waters, and then, there was an ocean…