The art of dreaming, and why fairytales sometimes require their fair share of blood, sweat, and tears

*Note: this post is quite long. If you are not my parents, please feel no obligation to read it in its entirety. The first section is a life update, the second a somewhat humorous look at climbing ethics, and the third a short story I've been writing between climbing sessions. Feel free to skip any or all of these that do not personally interest you.


This summer has been a dream.
       I'm honestly not sure how else to say it, though the statement sounds like a complete cliche even as I type it. There's so much to describe (and so long since I've last done so) that it's hard to even think of where to begin. After Tensleep, Alex and I headed south to Wild Iris, and a route that's been humbling, injuring, and frustrating me for the past three years. Throwing the Houlihan; a Todd Skinner classic and the first of its (quite sandbagged) grade sent by an American. I've been through the emotional rollercoaster on this piece of stone, fallen everywhere I possibly could have, uttered near every obscenity I know.
And this time, I did it.
       I don't know how to describe the experience, really. It was something so special maybe it can only live in my memory, and I'm alright with that. The morning was perfect, the breeze cool, the crag empty. It was just me and my belayer, and a swarm of flies that seemed intent on conquering the entire climbing area under the banner of the etymological. It was the first go of the day, and there really aren't words to describe the feeling of securing the crux crimp and knowing I had just enough in reserve to lock it to my waist. I topped out, and I celebrated, and I walked off the back. When I got the the base, Dylan hugged me, and then gave me this strange look. He asked me if I felt that, on the last two moves of the route; if I felt...that.
And I did.
       I'm not sure where the border lies between emotions and spirituality, but I think I neared it that day. Todd Skinner probably has better things to do in eternity than care particularly much who sends his routes, but I'm not sure...maybe he made an exception this time. Maybe I wasn't totally alone up there, or maybe I was, and maybe that's what made it so beautiful. I'm not sure, really. I just know this was a pivotal moment in my life, more than even the realization of a decade-old dream, although it was that too. It felt like this send gave me opportunity to start a new chapter, as corny as that sounds, and even if it might not seem that way, I feel I've done so.
        After saying bye to Alex, Dylan, and the Lander crew, I met up with a woman named Vian in order to head further westwards and explore a new(ish) crag in Idaho called The Fins. We had originally met last winter in the Hurricave, and boy, was it an experience. Watching Vian climb is like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, and the two conspiring to pool their resources in the pursuit of exponential hyperbole. Her vast experience in climbing shows on the rock, and she won't let any section of route rest until she fully understands it, outside and in. We campaigned hard at The Fins, both of us going for mileage over singular difficulty, and it felt like watching a tennis match. She'd send a route, then I'd repeat it next, and if I sent something she'd be damned if she wasn't clipping the anchors within the hour. Though psyche was high, temperatures there soon caught up to it, and we were forced to higher elevation, and ended up returning to Tensleep. My experience in the canyon was different this time; secure as I was with the knowledge that the summer's goals had already been achieved. More were added on top, however, and I was able to relish the opportunity to explore new crags that didn't boast the big-name routes which had so distracted me earlier, but still provided numerous modern test pieces on amazing blond and streaked dolomite.
       There is a limit, though, to the amount of time one can spend pulling on a single style of rock, and though I sometimes test the accuracy of such a statement, I am no exception to it. I find myself now in the familiar mountains of Colorado, braving thin air and long, tourist-ridden hikes to regain some semblance of an ability to boulder, before the prime temperatures of fall catch up to me. This will be my last post for the summer, and I apologize for it also being only the second, but I've tried to make up for these low numbers in its sheer longevity. Out of all these things I've written for it, I hope you enjoy at least some of them.
See you all down the road.

-

*Note #2- this section was written on a rainy rest day while sitting in the Estes Park library, fueled by caffeine and Safeway donuts. It is, as a result, not meant to be taken in any way seriously. Please don't get mad at me.

         What is a climber? It’s question steeped in a history and atmosphere of in-group exclusion; those who place gear reject those who clip bolts for their lack of risk, who in turn reject boulderers for their lack of endurance, who reject alpinists for their lack of ability to move over complex vertical stone. At this juncture of our sport the trend seems to be to ignore the question, stating something along the lines of “Anyone who wants to be a climber is a climber!” (or the related axiom; “The best climber is the one having the most fun”). This, however, proves to me insufficient. On one level, this may simply be because I wish to exclude the greatest amount of undesirable, Mythos-clad weekend warriors from my elite little club of stringy, beet-root-ingesting and double-bowline-tying rock maniacs. I won’t deny this; I do prefer to climb with those who participate in the activity at a high level, and value and respect the effort required to get there over the effort required to purchase a gym membership and spray about how you almost sent your first .12a last weekend (“My belayer wasn’t encouraging enough man, if he had called up ‘you got this bro’ one more time I for sure would have clipped the chains.” Don’t laugh, I’ve heard someone say more or less this exact thing). But there’s another reason why I feel we as a community must draw a line separating the climber from the non, and this one might ring true even to those already fed up with my blatant elitism. This is a time of change and (dare I say) even turmoil in the climbing world. Maybe the Euros have been dealing with this forever, but us rock boxers in the United States are getting hit hard with some ethical left-right-left combos Royal Robbins would probably use to justify selective euthanasia of the sport climbing population (everyone who doesn’t carry a humidity gauge to the crag is likely safe, no worries). We’ve got holds (routes? crags?) chipped in Tensleep, Hueco’s been a crazy post-adventure-sport guided amusement park for awhile now (not that I’ve been there, but the stories keep me away), and Australia’s climbing just got knocked down like three notches because of some murky matter concerning rock art, governmental conspiracy, and a viral change.org petition signed mainly by those who previously thought the Grampians described an ethnicity comprised entirely of elderly men concerned that their grandchildren may be becoming corrupted from listening to “The Raps” (maybe that last one’s a slight exaggeration, but you get my point). But now to tie this tangent back to my original argument, about why we need a means to exclude people- for these matters to be resolved, and for the sport to continue whatever progression it has in store, we need to seriously consider these issues as a community, and as a user group of the lands we…well, the lands we use. The thing is, these discussions simply don’t have room for everyone who seems to want a seat at the table. I don’t particularly care that Billy, who saw Free Solo and then sketched his way up the Third Flatiron in a knockoff supreme t-shirt and torn up Vans (“The experience is so much more pure without a rope man, by the way, you got any Adderall I could pick up for the rave tonight?”) has a staunch and vehement Facebook opinion about retro-bolting some obscure x-rated slab in the High Sierras. Sorry Billy, but you just ain’t a Real Rock Climber, and I think most of can actually agree on that extreme example. The question, however, remains…why? You obviously can’t be considered a Rock Climber simply because you want to be, but where is that line drawn? Certainly, for all his previous foibles, there is some way for Billy to “join the club,” as it were, and become a (lead) card-carrying Rock Climber. If our friend Billy went out and bought a chalk bag, would he be a Real Climber? How about shoes, or a harness? No? What if he went to Movement, took off his shirt to reveal faint lines of abdominal muscles that haven’t yet grown noteworthy even from all the attention he’s paid to them in the bathroom mirror, and sends 5.12? What if he does it outside? When, oh when, can Billy’s desire to keep “Death Anus Shit Crack” (5.5 R/X) in its natural and unprotected state be taken with the respect and gravity it deserves, dammit! 

I think these are important questions to be asked, because it’s not like we can let just anyone with a Supertopo account and bone to pick with rap bolting chime in on decisions that affect the entirety of our climbing community (I mean, we could I guess, but that just ruins this whole exercise). An obvious answer would be to allow local climbers to solve issues pertaining to local areas. This sounds all fine and dandy, but is (of course) fraught with issue. Who do we consider to be local at a climbing area where many visitors and even developers travel in from out of state (say, Tensleep. Or The Red. Or basically anywhere in the U.S. with quality climbing) in hordes of shiny sprinter vans that try their hardest to scream “dirtbag!” but with a cultured tone that reeks of Whole Foods and diversified investment portfolios? It’s not like the massive contingent of climbers who reside permanently in the town of Tensleep can go have a powwow about hold chipping and bolt chopping, and even if such a group did exist, the ethical issues are affecting more than just them, they're impacting everyone who drives seventeen hours and hikes up the FCR approach to pull some crimpy blue limestone and finds a jug ladder blasted in its place, “for greater diversity in grades” (kidding, FCR is the actual bomb.com and generally has escaped all the chipping hubbub). So if we can’t rely solely upon locals to maintain crag ethics and solve conflicts, we’re left again appealing to groupthink (or lack thereof) of the ephemeral Real Rock Climbers. So, back to the issue at hand, how does one get included in this group, and these conversations? Is it based on what grade you climb? Do you, after the victorious send of your first 5.12, or V5, or what have you, curl up into a chrysalis covered in Friction Labs stickers and emerge with the elegant majesty of a Real Rock Climber? Nope, didn’t think so. After all, we all know grades are bullshit, even as we rely on them to stoke our massive collective egos, and we don’t want all the Smith Rock connoisseurs stripped of their Rock Climber statuses simply because sending .12a there requires mystical incantations and the sacrifice of your first born. Maybe, as the Olympic buzz reaches an all-time high and people flock to bourgeoise climbing gyms the world over inspired by the intense race to find out exactly which Japanese teenager will emerge victorious in Tokyo, we can draw a simple line between those who climb primarily indoors (“fake rock climbers”) and those who climb mainly outside (“the archetypal epitome of the rock climber, and also God’s gift to the opposite gender”). C’mon now. One can’t really expect to place themselves above the likes of Kyra Condie or Tomoa Narasaki in the climbing hierarchy simply because when they perform amazing vertical feats, they do it inside. I’m rejecting this argument based purely upon the fact that any world cup competitor would likely do warm up campus laps on the current project of anyone reading this, whether stone or plastic, and probably also smells better. 

We are becoming desperate. Perhaps we must appeal to the basest of standards; declaring anyone a Rock Climber who thinks of themselves as a Rock Climber. The club has lost its bouncer! Everyone, flood in, declare yourself to be what you truly feel! The beautiful, the strong, the resilient, the brave…the ROCK CLIMBER! 

Ew. Can you imagine?

I mean, have you seen the people who fill climbing gyms anymore? It looks like the Brady Bunch fucked some Bear Grylls wannabes and started drinking protein shakes instead of water. And let me guarantee you; this group of crossfit obsessed, lulu lemon wearing, KT tape applying, proper deadlift form lacking millennial fitness buffs all consider themselves Real Rock Climbers. And when the latest Rock and Ice Facebook post comes across their feeds declaring Louie Anderson the pariah of all things natural and good, boy do they have something to say about it! Forget that they wouldn’t know a quarter inch expansion bolt from a glue-in even if the former blew out during a whipper and bit them in the ass, there’s a man out there (only one single man ever, mind you) MANUFACTURING routes on DOLOMITE! If they ever established a rock climb (they’d love to learn, but you know how it is with work and school, and after all have you heard there are mosquitoes out there?) by golly, it would be 100% natural and likely on par with the likes of Biographie or Lucid Dreaming.

So after fostering all this confusion, I’d like to propose something of a solution. A lot of you are probably quite angry with me by now, as I’ve carefully dragged through the mud of satire many things we consider sacred, and likely insulted you and many of your friends in the process (sorry). And you know why? You know why we bristle when holds get chipped, or bolts chopped, or climbing areas closed, or our first really sketchy trad lead retrobolted, or some kid with a blog insults our ethical predispositions? It’s not because we’re a bunch of privileged upper-middle class dirtbags with nothing better to argue about than our obsessive and dogmatic opinions regarding a piece of stone in a canyon somewhere only ever seen by those who know in great and disturbing detail the difference between an A2 pulley rupture and chronic tendonitis (well, it’s partly because of that, but hear me out). 

It’s because we care.

It’s because we see sequences when we close our eyes at night, and then dream of soaring cracks,  and granite crimps, and rad moon-kick sequences that simply can’t be cheated. It’s because we felt something deep inside the first time we saw The Motherlode, or Chaos Canyon, or The Erratic, or wherever, and knew some piece of us would never leave there. It’s because we brave rain, hail, freezing temperatures, and the permanent departure of significant others absolutely sick of hearing about how our right index splits are healing for the sheer, incomparable joy of climbing. It’s because life wouldn’t be the same without this absurd, dangerous, painful, and absolutely incredible activity in which we get to partake, and we can’t imagine our lives without it, and we sure as hell don’t want to.

And that’s why we’re Rock Climbers. That, and nothing else.

-

         Though she could not read minds, Samantha thought she could understand the dreams of Leopold as he lay with his head upon her crossed legs, believed she could grasp their meaning and query. It wasn't as if such intuition was any stretch of the imagination, as the same thoughts had been parading through both their minds, unspoken, for the days or weeks since either had laid eyes upon anything resembling sunlight. She shifted her hips slightly, in order to reestablish blood flow to certain lower extremities. Leo’s head sank some inches, his mess of brown curls splayed over her knees and thigh like elegant swathes of minuscule and luscious tumbleweed. She leaned back on outstretched hands and took in their surroundings for the millionth time; the moonbeam upon which they rested which of course could not be true moonlight; the dark vacuum around them which of course could not be truly empty.

And the doors. God, all the doors.

From a distance they all looked the same, uniform rectangles outlined by the thin border of adventurous light seeping through from an opposite side. When they began walking those luminous white trails leading up to them, however, the uniformity apparent from a distance withdrew its hold. It was as if the archetype of a door was insufficient and inaccurate, driving home the point that they represented so much more than a passable barrier between here and there. They had walked to doors of royal and solid oak, complete with iron knockers and splendid inlay. They saw doors painted green, blue, magenta, manilla, and everything in between; steel doors meant to keep out or in with an indifferent sense of unbreachability, and swinging doors to bathroom stalls proclaiming in proud sharpie that Andrew and Maggie’s love was destined to last forever. 

There was a ceremony in the opening of each door, a lightness in the head from breath inadvertently held. Each door held the promise of trespass and discovery, but perhaps more importantly; the hope of escape. For they were lost somewhere Samantha knew sinkingly they did not belong. As if trapped in a rat’s maze, she wished she could yell to men above in white coats that they were in fact guinea pigs, or gerbils, or capybaras, or flying squirrels, or finite beings trapped in a world that, in its impossible and alien way, led to nothing.

Leo shifted his head and blinked blearily, likely woken by her fingers absently tangling and turning their way through his hair. He exhaled carefully, through his teeth, the action long of breath but short of sigh. 

“I dreamt of home,” he murmured, oceanic eyes meeting her own. It was a statement so neutral it could only conceal some veiled agenda, or at least it appeared so to Samantha’s ears. The feeling softened only slightly when he added, thumb brushing over the fine hairs upon her cheek; “And you. I dreamt of you.” 

He was always so smooth with his words like that, sentences saving themselves from repudiation by only a few syllables tacked on behind an offending period or comma. Still, she knew that despite his love of or need for her, he wished nothing more than to escape this place they were trapped, to keep trying doors until one led to his overgrown backyard, a familiar sidewalk running beside familiar storefronts, or even the rusted and sulking dumpster to which he so despised transporting trash during long days of dull work. And Samantha knew (and knew all too well Leo did also) that she could grant such a wish instantaneously, with no more effort in the moment than a snap of one’s fingers. The cost, however, was one she alone would be expected to bear, and one she was not nearly prepared to shoulder. 

Leo’s back ached almost melodiously as he rose to his feet, blood rushing to various forgotten niches of his body with a buzzing static. Silently, while spinning a slow circle to take in once again the place’s terrible novelty, he bemoaned his total and complete loss of time; his nap which could have lasted minutes or days to a single mind lost hopelessly in a sea of the never-ending now. Samantha reminded him, on the occasions he had expressed such concern, that time had followed them on their journey to this place, that she could feel its pull and pulse like a loyal terrier who would follow its master to the ends of the earth. This was all well and good, but to Leo time carried with it a necessary causation; the passing of day into night, or the young’s inevitable transition to elderliness. Time to him could not exist in a place it did not affect; he could not hold it like clay or dough between his fingers like Samantha, could not step outside its coursing surge like some would exit a stopped train before it sped forwards towards inevitability and a loosely grasped future.

But she could, and though the thought was grating, he could not banish it from his distended mind.

As they walked, past another absurd deluge of doors, testing each one in turn (he would take those on the right side, she those on the left), Leo thought back to the day they had met, in a thirsty Central Californian city that could really have been anywhere, on a sidewalk which only existed beneath a cracked Coca-Cola ad (“Its taste holds the answer,” apparently to some inaudible question), along a certain sun-baked Sycamore Street. He was chewing the cud of a recent promotion to general manager at the local Dominoes, trying to feel excitement at the securing of what was likely to be his highest possible station in a life hell-bent on the mundane. The inside of his mouth tasted bitter and sharp, and he turned to let fly a dry and foamy wad of spit upon browned dandelions which looked to struggle sufficiently with the puzzle of existence even before such an oral assault. His surroundings were simple; he had walked this street countless times, had seen it in times of storm and fair weather; in times of optimism (so long ago) and so much more often in desperate times without the inertia of ambition to walk hand in hand with the glory of the unknown. For most his life, up to that approaching point of luminescence (“the emission of light by a substance that has not been heated,” a definition he found so retroactively appropriate), he had lived as water flows; tracing a path of least resistance, every trickle dreaming of the sea yet only the mightiest of rivers realizing such a goal. The metaphorical epitome of a single drop leaked from an unrepaired faucet, Leo had long relegated his own dreams to hazy evenings softened by the smoke of pot wafting in the air, hopes of riches and their associated power verging only on the warped edge of sedated sleep. 

When he saw Samantha; red hair afire in the beating sun, green eyes fixed on a point he could not discern, Leo began subconsciously to think again upon what it meant to dream. Her approach alone had a quality abutting the surreal; a gravity that, with near imperceptibility, drew the unnoticeable. The sun seemed to bend around her form, seraphic in its warm cocoon of light. Trees and bushes bordering the sidewalk, previously dry and brittle, began to soften and flourish with her passing, branches assimilating a newfound fecundity as they so subtly drew themselves outwards is if to bask in the glow of her spirit. Leo glanced around to the others walking nearby, to ascertain whether they saw the same spectacle he did, but each and every passerby had their gaze fixed intently upon their phones, the concrete horizon, or the tops of their own shoes. Whether or not the sight of Samantha’s approach was intended as a private performance, he was its sole viewer, and stood nothing short of transfixed. It was as if her hands represented what could be and her eyes what should; as if her body was the earth and breath the wind. Leo knew, as she drew closer than he could ever have wished, that he was helpless but to talk to her, and wracked his brain desperately for an appropriate conversation starter. The standard “What’s your name?” garnered no response, and “Where are you from?” as well as “Would you like to get a drink sometime?” fell on equally deaf ears. Finally, trailing like a caboose or lemming behind her measured pace, he whispered; “Are you magical?”

She stopped then, turning with a tilted head and smile cocked like the moon, and responded with her velvet voice; “Just a little bit.”

The response held equal parts temptation and fascination, and Leo fell into step and dialogue beside her. Without warning she began telling the story in wispy voice of a place where grass, lush as a forest and endless as the plains, became lonely and yearned for visitors there to stay, extending like tentacles over the boots of passerby, inviting them downwards to a minute kingdom where castles were carved from the roots of trees, beetles scurried silently like armored knights, and puffs of clover swayed overhead in place of clouds. Leo shuttered at the thought; the kidnap of the intelligent by lower forms of life, and asked Samantha with a joking smile what she called such a place. Her eyes flashed emerald with gravity, and she responded simply; “Heaven.”

Their first date was not at the rustic cafe Leo always felt endeared himself towards those women he was attracted to, with its moody Ansel Adams mountain ranges adorning the walls which were permeated with the smells of expresso and vanilla. Samantha insisted they hike along the river which ran south of town, a destination he had not frequented since its secluded banks held witness to long ago scenes of high school debauchery and rebellion. The trail they initially followed soon faded to a mere suggestion, and then proceeded to disappear entirely, leaving the two to crash through thickets of briars and over the skeletal remains of downed trees; Samantha seeming to gain energy and excitement for the adventure with each additional obstacle. Leo managed to follow her footsteps propelled solely by his own sense of pride and lust, sharp burrs collecting at the hem of his pants and sweat stinging his eyes in misplaced vengeance. She finally halted their march at a forgotten overlook, undecorated by the cigarette butts and crushed beer cans of more traditional destinations. The spit of limestone extended over the river like some primitive diving board, and the calls of birds hung in the air like ribbons blown upon southerly winds. It wasn’t until she took both his hands in her own that he realized the simple majesty of the place; its proud aura born from solitude and isolation. It wasn’t until she kissed him there, with the birds and wind as sole witnesses, that he forgot the aching of his legs and scratches upon his arms; forgot his eyes watering from pollen and feet chaffed from walking. It wasn’t until she opened his eyes like the rays of dawn that he realized the true meaning of beauty and adventure, and the extent to which he had been living without their mutual presence. He may not have realized it at the time, but it wasn’t until he was with her that he understood the vivacity and spark his life so sorely lacked.

Before long her presence became like a drug, the thought of her smell like sage and honey propelling him through endless shifts of work and viscous lonely nights. He wold fall into her spell like a satellite into orbit, and the sun’s light would soften, and the future would sharpen with possibility while the past blurred with inconsequence. He quickly reached a point where life was unimaginable without her to give it depth and mystery; where his day separated itself into time spent in her presence and that spent grasping her memory like a drowning man a rescue line. It would have been difficult for Leo to say, retrospectively, the precise and irreplaceable thing she provided so endlessly and vitally. Perhaps it was the way she could hold a plant’s bud in her palm; shiny and dense, and make it bloom before their eyes in silky fireworks of purple, pink, or blue. Perhaps it was the way she insisted on absurd and convoluted routes to the most mundane of destinations; circuitous wanderings to the nearby corner store that frequently required (in a single trip) impromptu directions from local passerby, confident entrances of various apartment buildings “to see if they’ll let us stand on the roof”, and various illicit traverses through private gardens.

Perhaps it was the way that, when she smiled or winked, time seemed to bend.

This relationship with time was not one she readily advertised, though whether it was because she sensed its import or the precise opposite Leo could never tell. He noticed it first in her apartment, amidst undulating walls swirling with colors unordained by any sane interior decorator. He would turn his back for but a breath and some previously scattered dishes would be stacked, a number of drawn blinds would suddenly open, or her simple crop top and shorts would be instantaneously transformed to an elegant red dress whose shimmers seemed to be born from wind of their own creation. Life with Samantha, however, was rich with such incongruences; teeming with minutia of the unexplained, and Leo spared no extra thought to any particular pliability of time which may have occurred in her presence. He didn't think of it, that is, until a night that began with opaque glasses of sangria and Samantha seductively allowing the tendril of a houseplant to wind around and up her index finger with alien vivacity, and led to the ecstatic intertwining of fingers and limbs upon bright and silky bedsheets. It was not that Leo was a stranger to sex, but he was apparently also not particularly experienced in its specifics, as he could not remember during previous encounters anything akin to the soaring feeling he felt in her arms; like a paper airplane riding the thermals high above a churning storm, or the way her body guided him, straddling the verge of perceptibility, until they felt merged as a single entity focused simply upon the achievement of the most primitive and visceral of objectives. Her torso flexed and twisted on top of him upon its arrival, her lips parted and pressed into his neck, and the room seemed to explode into surreality. Papers adorned with various ink drawings flew from the nearby desk and circled the bed in a cyclone of stationary, while vines and leaves grew with blinding speed to adorn the walls in jungle decor. From Samantha’s fingers, outstretched upon the tangled sheets, orbs of light began to emerge like minute galaxies in which eternities could be contained on the head of a pin. And suddenly, as her breath returned to its standard pace, the room froze. The papers hung suspended in place as if by invisible wires without even the slightest gust of wind to cause their rustling, and even the wall clock’s smallest hand halted promptly between the four and five. Something vast and unimaginable lay perfectly still as if by command, and Leo felt the concept of time slip from his neck like a dog’s escape from its collar. 

The stillness was pressing; lack of movement a force unto itself. He dared hardly to breath, lest he break whatever spell had descended upon the room, yet some small and primal part of hm insisted upon an escape from this impossible and vaguely unnatural magic at any cost. So much made sense now; the illogical and unexplainable aspects of everyday life with Samantha settling into place in Leo’s personal Copernican Revolution of thought. They didn’t talk much of it directly after the fact, as papers settled silently to the floor in a misshapen ring and cars resumed their soft and impatient roars beneath the window’s serene square of twilight. Leo simply lay there on the verge of slightly drunken sleep, the moist skin of his chest cooling against the curvature of her shoulder blade. He lay there and thought of what he could no longer deny; reflected upon his accidental (and perhaps undeserved) escape from the clutches of empiricism and rationality, even reflected upon the mystical and tremendous volume of that which he could not understand. But like a pendulum’s inevitable return to inactivity, Leo’s mind could not help but slip into dreams of the concrete and pecuniary; without realizing it twisting in his mind Samantha’s otherworldly gift into a tool of personal advancement like primitive man would an advantageously shaped stick or stone. 

Leo awoke the following morning energized and hopeful, a long-dim horizon in his mind brightening with a sense of possibility so foreign he hardly knew how to approach it. He found Samantha in her small but cozy living room (which, in the minuscule apartment, served any function unclaimed by bedroom or kitchen), gaze and attention wrapped in the yellow pages of a book whose title lettering had long ago faded to history. Preceding even a morning’s greeting, he stated bluntly yet with burgeoning excitement; “You can stop time.”

“I suppose so,” she responded, eyes amused but ever so slightly wary.

Leo was practically convulsing with plans and energy, the siren’s song of material gain rising to an almost deafening crescendo.

“Have you thought of the possibilities?!” he cried suddenly, smile bursting to the point it pressed against his eyes; “We could go anywhere, do anything! We could rob a store, a bank…hell, even Fort fucking Knox!”

Her downfallen expression hardly registered amidst such ecstasy, and Samantha responded with a forced smile; “No that’s…that’s not how it works.”

Leo appeared crestfallen but recovered quickly, classic reasoning quickly defeating romantic appeals. 

“We deserve this,” he said, eyes pleading; “we could hold the world in our hands, and do with it whatever we desire.”

Samantha frowned, and cast her eyes towards the ground. She answered slowly, in a whispered but clear voice; “I’d be content to simply hold the world’s hand, if I could, and allow my wants not to exceed what it feels inclined to give.”

She walked away then, towards the kitchen and its door leading to the street, closing her ears to Leo’s propositions that caused her equal parts sadness and rage. She did catch, however, the words “magic powers” carried on his now emphatic and raucous voice before the door’s resounding slam, and reflected with a knowing frustration how only the former of the two carried any semblance of accuracy.

Leo followed her at a helpless and vaguely confused distance, soon giving up the prospect of assigning any sense of order to her route of equal parts convolution and improvisation. The sun seemed to darken as Samantha walked with increasing absence, as if toeing a trail deeper into her own thoughts. Leo almost lost her a few times, her pace verging on that of  run as she passed through hotel lobbies and coffee shops; parks and backyards. Neither noticed when the wind stopped, or when the sun faded prematurely to night. Both quickly forgot from precisely where they had come at any given point; sidewalks merging endlessly to streets and hallways to doors. More doors, in fact, than either imagined to exist in the whole of their city. 

Neither party noticed abruptly the fade of reality; the world’s slow loss of traction. There was no distinct moment of shock, as Samantha opened some unlocked door or rounded a darkened corner, when they suddenly entered that place of absurd entrapment. It was a gradual fade, indiscernible save to those who found themselves in its clutches, and even then unimaginably indistinct and strange. With each step their surroundings darkened and disappeared; with each twist of the path a new door (or three) seemed to appear on the blurred horizon. They convened there in that place so removed from the world they knew eventually, pale moonlight underfoot, and forgot momentarily the dichotomy of their conflict as its raw and surging emotions were replaced by those of confusion and gnawing panic. They struggled together to remember from where they had come, hopelessly conceptualizing a reversed route which could lead them home. And when the futility of such an effort became clear, they began to wander without aim, opening endless doors, together but for lack of alternatives; without argument but for lack of reality. 

Leo was the first of the two to truly feel the strain of the place in his heart; to feel home as a vital need equal to water, food, or air (all of which, curiously, seemed unnecessary there). When running from door to door in manic fervor failed to produce an appropriate path to reality, his mind settled on the other resources at his disposal, and he asked Samantha his grandest of all favors for the first time. The premise was strange, but amounted simply to her stopping time with him enmeshed within; to her trying doors (for days? Years?) until she came upon that one which would lead homewards. To him walking only a second later, a second that had contained this entire search, victoriously through such a door, her hand clasped comfortably within his. His plan did not state, simply glossing over, the unknowable length of time Samantha would be expected to wander alone. Her solitude was chalked up in Leo’s mind, as it neared a state of desperation, as a necessary cost instead of insurmountable obstacle, him unable to think of any reason they should both suffer the place’s terrible monotony. Unwilling to believe that, should they continue resolutely together, perhaps “suffer” would be too strong a verb for an experience softened and defined by one another’s company. 

They debated the issue many times over, until Leo warped in his mind its premise from that of a favor to one of expectation and demand. He began to pursue the point with greater vigor, until Samantha would, in fact, step outside time for some moments, but without his knowledge and of her own accord, in order simply to mute the nagging and subtle pleading with which she felt to be constantly bombarded. It was soon after he awoke from his nap, during a rest following an extended period spent checking another spate of doors, that he refused to let the issue lie, badgering Samantha like a starving dog will its owner, forgetting conversational etiquette in favor of the raw hope of an escape. Samantha sat silently, listening but not processing the words familiar as gnats to her ears. She finally spoke abruptly, cutting Leo off mid-sentence, demanding; “Do you love me?”

He of course answered yes like an effect follows a cause, but Samantha brushed off the response like hair from her shoulder, clarifying; “But what does it feel like? How do you know?”

Leo pondered for a second, his thoughts derailed and forced onto a track whose destination he could not ascertain. He said finally; “It feels like a blanket, and something like a window. It feels warm; safe, yet crystal-clear with the vision of what can be. It feels like the reading of a novel that smells so wonderfully sweet and might just go on forever.” 

It wasn’t a bad response, as responses to that question could have gone, but it caught somewhere in Samantha’s conscious as if the words were barbed, stuck deep in the craw of mind and reason. She spoke as if the words had been circling her mind for months or years, stating softly; “I think, deep down, love feels like an adventure. It’s exhilarating, a little dangerous, and is filled with more blind corners and dead-end alleyways than anyone could hope to anticipate.”

She paused for a moment, thoughts building behind her tongue like floodwaters behind a levee, and continued; “Love is terrifying and sharp; visceral and chaotic. It’s filled with kisses, caresses, and an undying confusion as to what will happen next. It’s so massive, so powerful that I can only feel it as a rushing current which we can grasp no more concretely than the churning foam of an overflowing river.”

She looked deep into Leo’s eyes then, deep enough that he could feel her concentrated energy and passion, and said finally; “Love is the kind of magic everyone dreams they can one day believe in.”

Leo had never been scared of Samantha, in fact quite the opposite, but he felt increasingly disconcerted as she spoke. He always imagined their relationship, as well as any other, as a comfortable place to rest from a tumultuous world; a kind of unchanging emotional shelter and cathartic requiem to the ever-present confusion of life without another. He balked at the prospect of love which carried with it adjectives such as “terrifying” or “dangerous” just as he balked at rollercoasters, overseas travel, or most activities requiring the use of helmets. He responded in kind to Samantha, saying; “We don't need excitement or adventure. We have each other.”

She gazed at him sadly, responding; “Its as if you’re saying we don’t need food, because we have water and air.”

The feeling in the air around them was like that in a writer’s study as he pens the final chapter of a great novel, and Samantha finally understood something she had been circling since finding herself there. The atmosphere heavy with burdensome realizations, she walked to the nearest door, a simple slab of white complete with traditional handle and cloudy brass peephole, and opened it to now reveal the street outside Leo’s house, bustling with people going about their midday business. He stared at her, openmouthed with shock and the gnawing acceptance of finality, and walked gratefully towards the opening without a word, perhaps still expecting or hoping for her to follow. At its edge he stopped hesitantly, almost near enough to feel Samantha’s warmth; to smell the earthy tones of her hair. He used a trembling hand to place a single one of its strands behind her ear, savoring its silken pliability, and gave into the irresistible pull of home, walking calmly and thankfully into the soft safety of what he knew. Samantha shut the door behind him, sealing with a sense of gravity his chosen life of obligation and inevitability, watched him resume his trip along a path trod by millions and demarcated with signs proclaiming happiness, security, and longevity that so falsely imagined itself to flirt with the infinite. She walked away then, and alone the doors turned from chore to possibility. Choosing one at random; a hulking behemoth of cherry wood and golden detail, she squared her shoulders and walked through. She walked with purpose, curiosity, and strides strangely massive in the distance each covered. She let go what she knew, savored what she didn’t, and tasted the sugary promise of mystery upon the roof of her mouth. She proceeded through that door like one of Plato’s men from his cave, with every expectation she had ever had joyously released, save that she knew nothing of what would be found on the other side.