Personal Archaeology: Infinizine, part 5
“What's past is prologue.” ― William Shakespeare, The Tempest
This artifact was created c. 2007.
Read my introduction to the Personal Archaeology series for paid subscribers here:
Personal Archaeology: Infinizine, part 5
This is the fifth part of a multi-part series showcasing a ‘zine I made c. 2007, when I was 17 years old. I called it Infinizine. It had only one issue and was never distributed—I never even took it to Kinkos. But, as you will see, I’ve been running on the same hamster wheel for a long time.
In many ways, Juxtaposition is, now, what I couldn’t make Infinizine be, then.
Editorial note: Infinizine was my own personal creative endeavor but I solicited art-work and a couple poems from friends with whom I no longer have any contact. I don’t feel right posting those sections without permission or credit, so I will black out any content that was not created by me, except for the cover photo, which I found on the 2007 internet.
Transcript: “Star Colored” (a short story)
As I soared high above the mountain tops I could see the stars. They were brilliant. More brilliant than they had ever appeared on earth. They were tiny rips in the velvet fabric of the sky. They were the empty places where you can be alone. And they called to me.
I reached out for them with both hands as the wind tore at my bare flesh. I cried out. The stars were just out of my reach and I could soar no higher. The tears that leaked from my tightly closed eyelids froze on my skin and promptly shattered from the sheer force of the air surrounding me. I tried to inhale to calm myself but my breath had been knocked from my body long before now. I hadn’t breathed in hours. I hadn’t needed to.
I steeled myself for yet another attempt at touching those blissfully empty patches in the darkness. I didn’t need to look down at my naked form to know that my skin had turned a sickly blue. I didn’t need to see it. I felt blue. It was the only physical feeling capable of penetrating the abysmal numbness that had taken root in every nerve of my body. And I trusted that feeling. The feeling of blue. It anchored me to unreality and forced me to fly higher. I reached again—not with my hands, for my joints had ceased to obey my command—but with my soul. With my heart and with my mind, I reached. I reached higher and higher still and I felt nothing. A vast and perpetually incomplete nothing. This was not the nothing of the stars. This was the nothing of the sky. I needed to go higher.
It was an impossible task. I was literally frozen. My blood had stopped in its tracks. My heart had paused mid-beat. My lungs were suspended in a half-completed state of exhalation. Even my mind had frozen with one thought still burned into the folds of m brain. “Touch the stars!”
And so I went higher. Despite the utter hopelessness of my undertaking, I went higher and this time I felt…nothing.
It was total inexcusable nothingness which granted purpose to everything that exists. It was the polar opposite of purpose. One cannot have light without darkness, and one cannot have existence without nothingness. And I had found that nothingness. It was there…beneath my finger tips.
The same finger tips that had touched grass and folder paper. The same finger tips that had lifted food to my mouth and built sandcastles. The same finger tips that had known the feel of another’s flesh beneath them. The same finger tips that had touched the liver of other more times than anyone could possibly realize. These same finger tips. Mine. They were touching a secret that humanity had not even begun to look for.
The nothingness grew under my touch. It spread slowly at first, but soon it engulfed the whole sky. It was not white. It was star-colored. The blue feeling that had brought me this far was replaced by completion. As if my blood had finished its familiar circuit; as if my heart had completed its final beat; as it my lungs had expelled the last breath they would ever take and could now rest in glorious emptiness forever.
There was nothing left. Not my body. Not my soul. Not my mind. Not any product of these three entities. All of me had vanished. I had ceased to exist.
I had been afraid my entire life. But in that final moment of being I was not afraid. In that final moment I saw the emptiness and it seemed impossible to conceive of anything else. It was as natural to me then, as breathing had been. If there had been the need, I would have fought just as viciously to remain in that emptiness as I would have fought for breath.
My life had been the ending. And this was simply a belated beginning.
Thank You for Being. Here.
I hope you found some resonance with this exhibit. The complete Infinizine series will be freely available to all subscribers—but, as a thank-you to anyone choosing to place an early bet on Juxtaposition’s success, the price to upgrade will be at its lowest during this limited time.
Use the button below to upgrade your subscription for just $5.55/month or $55.55/year1 any time before I release Infinizine Part 5 in a couple weeks. That will be your price forever, as long as you don’t cancel.
Each subsequent Infinizine exhibit will see those numerals count upwards2 until reaching $7.77/month or $77.77/year, which will be the final price.
Will You think about it? You have some time to decide.
If You’d rather stay on a free subscription for now, I won’t blame You at all. You’ll still receive all of my best content—but I sure would appreciate it if You’d take a moment to share Juxtaposition with someone in Your life who might appreciate it.
And as always, You can be read by me via email to juxtaposition@substack.com. I may not respond, but take a look at the “Commun(icat)ion” section of the About Page to find out why You should definitely still write to me.
Substack actually won’t let me set a price this low, so I had to add a percentage discount with a lot of decimal places and it’ll probably force it to round. It might end up being $5.51/month or $55.10/year, which is less satisfying but fine.
Or as close as I can get using percentage discounts, ha.