I Will Be the World

I woke up and the first thing I saw was a mini blackboard on my windowsill, underneath which someone had scribbled a schedule of events from eight to eight for each day of the week. I reminded myself that I had written that timetable, not someone else. The chalk didn’t write it, nor a past version of myself that was somehow separate from my current being. Just me. The blackboard was next to several empty canisters that had once held pills, jars of paint, empty tins of food, and a stray sock. I pushed the covers off my body, stepped onto floorboards that creaked to their maximum capability, and pulled on some clothes, knowing the air was cold and discontented outside. I navigated the interior of my cabin with sleepy steps, half of my brain still dreaming. 

I was met with a great clamour of voices as I cracked open the door. It wasn’t like it had ever stopped, but urban objects were far more muted than the wild elements of nature. A thousand voices, none of them human, clattered into my head. I had to stop walking for a moment to let my mind adjust to the surge of meaningless words that fell upon me – half of the conversations were about things no mortal would ever understand. The wind grumbled to itself as it lashed around the peninsula of the island, igniting miniature sandstorms which in turn raised complaints from the sand. The pebbles chattered about the movements of the glaciers many years ago, and from the Ocean I was just beginning to make out the babble of a thousand saltwater droplets. As I walked I heard greetings, well-meant taunts, and words of love. Everything knew me, even in my utter insignificance as an individual in this wild metropolis. I raised airy greetings to one or two, and as usual ignored most of them. Several pebbles skittered towards me as I walked past, demanding an attention which I did not wish to provide. 

As I got to the sea, the great white noise reached its crescendo. The Ocean was the wisest collective community I could comprehend. Every droplet had heard secrets, rumours, and conversation from all corners of the world. Rain would fall, listen, and flow back into some great river of jabbering water before it was fed into an estuary and channelled back into the Ocean. In their great blue mass, the droplets would discuss and compare information, sharing confidences beyond any individual’s comprehension. It was stronger and faster than the world’s most advanced supercomputer, a perfect ecosystem of endless data input being manipulated, contested, stored and dispersed until the Ocean knew everything about everything. 

I left the world of my friends and family to be alone. It was, I think, an attempt to get away from the endless stress and terror of the real world. My memory of those days is ragged, maybe due to the noise. It must have been impossible for me to hold a conversation with a stranger while the clamour of infinite paraphernalia pounded at my head – I could talk to a bench just as easily as I could talk to a teacher. I must have run here, out to an island far from any place you could call civilised, to seek isolation. Despite this, I was never alone. Over time I began to attune to the music of the world around me, a complex melody that only I could hear. It had taken me eighteen years to accept that everything in this world was alive and communicating, from the steadfast, wise mountains to the gluttonous, greedy forest fires. That had to be the case, hadn’t it? Nothing else could explain the perpetual noise that this island made.

Standing on the sand dune, I held my arms outstretched to their limit and closed my eyes. The sea began to quieten as each droplet examined me, even the surrounding sand pausing its chatter. I listened to their silence and breathed in, the world breathing in with me. I was instantly at one with everything in existence, a piece of the universe’s jigsaw fitting perfectly into place. I knew I could be as light as air or as heavy as a skyscraper because the world heard me, in my voice not composed of word or sound, and responded. The wind and sand formed dusty silhouettes of my figure all around me. The Ocean began to thrash, boiling up huge waves and spraying saltwater like a furious leviathan. I wasn’t forcing the elements to obey me – they did it because they saw no reason not to. 

The wind picked me up off my feet with an invisible, icy grip, as if the hand of God had caught on my scruff and was raising me to heaven. I opened my eyes and beamed, every synapse in my brain firing. I began to rise higher and higher, as lightning coursed through the sky and the sound of every word filled the air with corrosive white noise –

I fell to my knees. I had never been floating. The beach and the sea were silent but for the crashing of the waves. The wind tore at my hair and face, but did not speak to me. There was no voice but the pitiful crying of my own – so tiny in the huge, apathetic universe. The silence flattened me to the floor as my mind tried to grasp at a senseless reality, but to no prevail – it was like trying to catch smoke with burnt hands.