Memory Island

MEMORY ISLAND Written by: Diego Antolini WGAWest Registration: 1996037 PART ONE – THE ISLAND CHAPTER 1. ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS Looking at the ocean always made him think. He loved to spend endless moments perched upon the eastern cliff, staring at the horizon watching all the shades of blues and greens and grays the waters reflected in the atmosphere. That morning, the wind had arisen as early as him. The spectacle of the breaking dawn which laid its glow upon the myriad of dew drops and over the rocks and the grass of that part of the island seemed to have frozen time, and brought everything back to the singularity of the Creation. Lost in the stream of his thoughts, David didn’t notice the man who sat not too far away. He had been staring at him for a while, an enigmatic smile carved upon his clean shaven face. - It’s dangerous standing on the edge of the cliff like that, the wind is always strong in the morning – said the stranger with a deep yet soothing voice. David turned to him, taking one step backward as if plucked out of the earth by an unknown force. His answer seeped out through his lips instinctively: - Maybe, but the view is more beautiful from up here .- - Aren’t you afraid to fall? You should put yourself in a safer place – replied the man. The defying tone with which the question was uttered made David upset. The feeling of “intolerance” against the other started from his stomach and rose up to the throat, pushing to go out with bitter and aggressive words. How dare you, a stranger, to tell me what or what not to do? That inner voice cropped up into his brain, giving the knot inside his stomach another twist. - I know what I’m doing, – answered David with open hostility. The man kept his eyes fixed on him with a relaxed face, his smile widening: - Careful, one of your feet are over the edge right now, your position is unstable, – he said. The intolerance had now grown to a degree of exasperation leaning to pure hatred. David instinctively looked down at his feet, then fired back: - Can’t you see I am well grounded? - The exasperation took over the defensive attitude, and became offensive. Now he was willing to push the other, the enemy, away from him, out of his sensory zone. Push him out! Push him off the cliff! The inner voice gained ground. David kept on, raising his voice to almost a scream: - If you are here to make trouble, better for you if you move somewhere else. - The stranger stood still, his face calm and peaceful, in silence; that silence eased the knot inside David’s stomach and dissolved part of the mist which was clouding his mind. Why that man wasn’t fighting back? - Yes, it is undeniable that you are physically safe, but can you say to be absolutely at ease in your mind? -. The question killed his aggressive inner voice at once, and so David was able to focus on himself instead of on the other person. Was he at ease? Surely it was, when it had been alone with the wind and the colors of the ocean. However, when the stranger had entered is comfort zone he had felt surprised at first, then upset, then overwhelmed by hatred, he felt he could have done anything. Anything. That feeling was caused mainly by the confidence that the stranger had displayed, by his steady smile and the way he spoke. Now, moving the center of his perspective from the outside to the inside of him, his emotions had changed instantaneously. He felt embarrassed: - I…I’m sorry if I lost control. It’s that I am not used to be asked such direct questions.- - I know. It’s a common reaction – said the man, nodding – we can say that we had a couple of settling quakes, that's all. It’s hard to go beyond our own consolidated positions; more difficult is to accept the position of other persons. It takes a lot of courage to open ourselves to the truth. - - Truth? What truth? – The question came out suddenly, along with an image from his memories, too blurry to become intelligible. - The fact that we are constantly living on the edge of a precipice, and the edge is fragile, rugged, inconsistent. Living with one foot dangling on the void, in a desperate need of stability – he spelled each word slowly, almost mechanically. The image was gone. What was it all about? David struggled to follow the stranger’s thinking. He looked down, his feet were again near the edge of the Cliff. - All it takes is to move one step backward to solid ground. - David said it, but his feet didn't move. The man rose up, joining his hands together as a sign of victory: - Exactly. It seems easy, doesn’t it? - Wind. There was wind sweeping on... - I don’t know, I think it depends on how we see things…- he muttered, confused. David felt an acidic taste down is throat. For the first time, the stranger became serious: - No – he said, whispering as he came very close to David – in that case you would still be settling. To have the courage to see where things go... - A barren land An irresistible force seemed to rise from the depth of the ocean to grab him. One moment, he saw the deep blue of the water, the next moment the clear azure of the sky. Surprisingly, his mind felt calm and peaceful, as if crossing the border between life and death was about to chase all the concerns and the fears and the doubts away. He closed his eyes. Then he stopped falling. A gentle and firm grip was holding tight on his forearm. The stranger had reached out for him, saving his life. - ...And to rely on others, opening your very soul to them. There awaits the Truth. - "...David watched the man walking away at a steady pace. He wasn't sure to have grasped the meaning of his last words, nor could he fancy the reason for that strange image popped up in his mind, an image that seemed to have surged from memories long forgotten. Because there was no barren land on the island..." He looked back at the ocean: on that moment, its vastness seemed to diminish somehow, as if his mind had opened up to something larger, though ineffable, than nature itself. CHAPTER 2. THE OCEAN OF EGOS The encounter with the stranger had left David rather puzzled; not so much for the arguing – the quarrelling – that had been exchanged between them, but for the aura of calmness and tranquility the man radiated. He had seemed away from reality, detached and, at the same time, completely grounded. That was what had disoriented and scared David. Was it insecurity the main cause for his aggressive behavior, or was there something else? The day had been splendid. The island rested upon the ocean like a pure diamond in a topaz nest. The snow-covered mountain tops collected the warm light of the sun and reflected it all over the wide, grassy plains. Further up, to the North, the rocks opened to let a pristine river flow, sneaking across the prairie and into the Western Forest, until cascading over the cliff top to meet with the salty water beneath. David had been followed the stream of the river for more than an hour now, and decided to take a break under one of the large trees at the forest edge. Yes, there had been something else. If in the beginning his instinct had been that of defense. The inner feeling of repulsion had grown fast, turning into sheer desire to attack the other, seen then as an enemy to annihilate because carrying a different point of view. Not only that. During their dialectic skirmishing David had found a sort of pleasure in the clash, which had fueled up something which spoke inside of him, making him feel strong, powerful, and alive. Then, it had come a swirl, a sudden, unexpected change of direction. The other had not responded to the attack with an attack. This had resulted in utter disorientation first, and straight awareness right after. David was wrong, the other wasn’t. He couldn’t have told how or why, no logic answer was anywhere around in his brain but, on that instant, inside of him, David had known that the other was right; of course, he was only relatively right, limited to that specific situation. What was the scope of all that surreal situation? Two lives, two people, two worlds had met and clashed, and then? The forest was already shrouded in darkness, the vast plains behind him barely visible in the twilight. David walked around the outer tree line, and went back to the edge of the cliff which bordered the easternmost part of the island. He moved as if led by an unconscious mechanism. He could hear the sound of the waterfall not so far in the distance, beyond the thick canopy of trees to his right. Up in the sky, the first stars had started to twinkle from their immeasurable, distant dwelling. A strong luminescence, just past the edge of the cliff, caught David's attention. He c****d his head down and what he saw made him freeze: the ocean had become a semi-liquid, transparent film through which, as on a plasma screen, images and figures were forming. Blurry at first, then slowly waving into focus, they took familiar shapes from a time and a place he knew he was familiar with. There were graffiti-covered, smoke-stained school buildings where boys and girls walked in an unsteady pace, like living dead, or automated machines; there were school room where teachers yelled at the students, opening their mouths wide, showing her cracked teeth, tobacco-tainted beards, sun-scorched faces. But the students were not listening, lost in thoughts of their own, or simply lost with no thoughts at all. Out in public squares encircled by dull, pyramidal edifices, men stood on pulpits wearing shining tunics and gas masks, gesturing and fidgeting as if under ecstatic visions of apocalyptic magnitude. The audience upon which the speech was directed, though, looked indifferent and unresponsive. The rippling “screen” was also showing other things: hundreds of corpses laid wasted on a wide, wind-swept desert; decrepit hospitals housing dying patients whose falling off skin revealed rotten muscles and withered veins; inside the pyramids, opulence and lust dominated the scene: people of all ages were mingling together drinking, some breathing, some sniffing through long red tubes or pipes sticking out from the walls, wearing yellow goggles and gesturing as if they were physically interacting with someone in front of them. Madness unleashed. Some of those images reeled too fast for David to register them into his head, but each carried with it a bitter remembrance of something long-forgotten, something that belonged to him somehow. The wind-swept desert, for instance, was similar to the image he had right before falling off the cliff. It felt so vivid, and now he was looking at it again, through the watery screen that the ocean had turned into. Every scene he ws shown bore with it the sick flavor of detachment, isolation, alienation. An unstoppable clashing of minds which were alike and different at the same time, but nonetheless, separated. David turned away from that incredible vision. He felt his mind throbbing, pushing inward as if on the verge of the implosion. He felt a sort of mental kinship with that world, but a part of him was rejecting that feeling, pressing outward, to escape that inference. Is it possible to be one within himself, and one without? David wondered how could such a paradoxical impression be explained. How could he go back to an authentic identity, a truthful, absolute and unconditioned unity? There was no communication whatsoever in the world David had witnessed, and like a virus, he was not experiencing the same condition into his mind. During forced himself to end this inner struggling by suppressing any abstract consideration, turning away from the ocean, looking at the dark silhouette of the mountains in the far distance, and embracing his body, literally, crossing his arms like a psychopath in a straitjacket.