Red--red a passion
a madness an obsession. He had no idea when it started but not a night has passed since he could keep his mind off her hair. The beauty of her hair. Its deep watery vision like water and moonshine--a deep mysterious lake reflecting starlight. And its perfume, something sweet and spicy. It radiated from within that silvery darkness like something from the earth, something from an ancient myth. It could be made into a potion which could tie a person and bind him or her forever. He shuddered at his own madness. What has he come to, envisioning her hair in all its splendor, it blowing in the breeze, the feel of it, the weight of it. He imagined it covering his own body, its softness, its coolness. He could get hard just thinking of the hair. He feared for his own sanity, it is as if her hair has taken on its own life in his imagination, haunting him, taunting him, whispering behind his back, or teasingly laughing a deep feminine laughter of its own, or humming a little tune, seducing him. It is an object, he reminded himself. Yet, it turned into magnificent creatures in his visions, a black serpent with the mark of the northern star on its forehead, a river Goddess of some celestial river where the Gods bathe or a winged demon which was but a shadow and took him into the depths of his own existence. The light, the bright silver blade he could draw blood from her hair and die from it. Some age old secret resided in that hair, a poem, a song, something to ease the pain of his existence. It was a secret, it was a desire. If the hair could attain a form he would wish it a skin, something to cover his own with, to feel it on his skin, to breathe in its mystery.

As he lay on his bed, he felt the heat emitting from his flushed skin, his hot breathe, the taste of desire. His heart racing. He tried to concentrate on something, anything to take his mind of the thought of her hair, the thought of it as a rope around his neck, as a musk blanket of silk to cool his boiling blood rushing under his skin. He tried to focus on the little digital alarm clock next to him, its little red blinking digits, a second, a minute, an hour. Yet he still tossed and turned and the peaceful balm of sleep refused to come. The night was hot and the heat was like a sticky film that permeated everything. The night was coloured by that heat. The night shirt felt tight and scratchy on his already sensitive and expectant skin. He took it off. A light breeze of night air cooled him and offered him a moment of comfort. But that same cool night air aroused his senses. He looked out the window and saw the full moon, that silver flood of light beaming on him and illuminating the fields outside the window, everything was alive and enigmatic. The trees, the earth was calling. And she was calling. He could see her standing beneath that old tree, muscles tense and waiting. She was waiting for him. He saw her hair hanging loose in the still night air, glowing from the light of the moon, it swayed a little as she moved her head. It was the third time she has come to his dwelling uninvited. She came out of the wild, out of nowhere, called by some desire he had no name for. He knew she did not want to be tamed, he wondered why she keeps coming back to him. Did she sense something in him which drew her like a magnet? He felt an electric magic everytime he touched her hair, her taunt skin, that energy which laid waiting to explode in her sent a buzz which filled the night world.

He climbed out his window, landed softly on the grass and approached her slowly. He did not want to scare her away, he could sense that she was still afraid and felt him a stranger who she could not trust still. The moonlight set the world on a white flame, and trees gave off a strange glow, so did her smooth skin and her dark wild hair. He ventured closer to her, she was still. He laid a hand on her neck, she staggered backward a little out of fright and suspicion he coaxed her softly to calm her. He is an experience rider but he was not confident that he could ride her without reins, nor was he sure she would let him mount her. She was, after all, not domesticated, and that made her unpredictable. He could get hurt if he tried to push his way on top of her. He could tell she had a temper and could get aggressive. For now he would just be contented to stroking her neck and her long hair, he pressed his face into her hair and inhaled the wonderful scent of wild herbs and sweat. A new cool breeze started to blow from the trees, he heard a musical rustling in the leaves. She stepped closer, he knew as an experience rider that she was inviting him to mount her. He sat on top of her, felt the strength in her legs and knew if she should break into a run, she would be fast and he could be in grave danger should he lose his balance, but in the magic of the night filled with a pregnant silence, he let himself go and she broke into a run. He felt her hair in the wind brushing his face, and he looked ahead at the speeding world, it felt like he was riding a starlight into an enchanted world of abandonment and beauty long forgotten. In the magic of the night, they ran. Man and beast.

Immortality. What a strange idea. I think it is as loathsome as the idea of an eternity. Only a truly cruel God can conceive of this, and only the truly ignorant would wish for it after such a temporal existence. I am such an improbable creature--something immortal, but not in that flimsy way of the angels or even vampires as concocted by your limited imagination. To be immortal is not to cease. It is not like that despicable and childish fantasy of yours in the vampire, living off human blood. So that when the human race perish, they too as a race would follow. It is not like the afterlife experience, because death is still written in the equation. It is simply not to cease in a tiresome, lonely existence which is solely personal. It is a punishment or a gift tailor made only for you and this burden cannot be shared with another nor can you grace another with this special favour. It is like life, and it is like 'death', It is yours to bear alone. I don't recall the first time. The whole idea of a first is confusing to me. There is no first or last, and all semblance of a linear movement in time, space or whatever you can name is no longer relevant. And memory that protective case around our being no longer shields you by letting some things fall through the gap into the darkness of oblivion. I remember all.

IT is lifetime after lifetime of being and that sudden gap yawning when I am on my death bed waiting, waiting for merciful death to take me in its wings and bear me away. When life's little moments run its eventful mundane images before my eyes; when every choices and opportunities missed make its final bow before the curtain forever falls; when what comes after is that great mystery like some unfulfiled journey across the deep that is when a thought like a bubble rises from the bottom of my being and floats ever so slowly up. what if I have done this instead of a that, how different would my life be. All of a sudden I am back at my juncture in the road at the moment of my decision. I take the other path I have not taken before and live all over from that moment on. I reach the end once again like a film that has almost reached its end, but yet again, I think as my life plays itself before me how things would change if I have done this instead and I am brought back to that specific moment in time like an endless dream I refuse to wake from. Maybe this is the heaven and hell people talk of after death. Maybe this is just death itself. Maybe death is an eternal process and immortals are merely this. An endless combination of the same. Afterall no one ever said death was a fast process, it was suppose to be short and sweet and simple like a full stop. Maybe death only truly comes after I have exhausted all possibilities of my existence perhaps then I can cease to exist and go out of existence like a flame--- after all of my life's variations cease to exist and have died all its possible deaths. Even now I lie here awaiting the end and I think how things could have been different.