The Illustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe

Somewhere I once wrote, in the midst of some pathetic attempt to be poetic, a phrase that I really like: ‘I want to feel strange tongues flowering in my mouth.’ It was a sentence that happened without much forethought but was far more pregnant with meaning than I could ever have anticipated. Then again, how could I anticipate something written without premeditation?

Everyone once in awhile I fashion a sentence, usually by accident, that simply enchants me, and this phrase about strange tongues is one of them. However, that innocent enchantment is somewhat marred by a more ominous undercurrent of meaning. Considering my uncertainty of late in, as Shakespeare would have it, ‘the office and affairs of love,’ a subconscious fluctuation which may have borne the phrase seems far more sinister than it otherwise may have been.

In other words, what in the hell am I on about?

The phrase simply will not leave me in peace but it haunts me. And as I write this, I’m becoming more and more certain as to why this haunting is so fearfully potent. I do have perfect understanding of why I’ve written that statement and I know exactly what it means. Perhaps it’s more obvious than I would like it to be but the meaning to me is painfully self-evident.

‘I want to feel strange tongues flowering in my mouth.’

Sadly, I don’t feel that I am strong enough right now to be so bold. I cannot make that statement’s vagary into solid reality. Instead, I have to hide behind it, treat it like a lover who scorns me but to whom I am irresistibly drawn. It spells out to me everything that is missing in my life, everything will forever be missing in my life, and several gleeful impossibilities in between. There is no way to live a life that would be painted by a brush formed formed from that phrase for it is a self-referential prophecy of heartache and despair.

How can one forever follow the paradigm described therein? It would require a certain type of blasphemous spirit to which I cannot subscribe. And perhaps it isn’t even a steady procession of difference that I seek but one occurrence that is unique each time it is experienced. A certain radiance my current stasis does not, and cannot, possess. I’ve casually placed myself in a dangerous and cruel situation to which I can discern no peaceful conclusion. But such is life; perchance a series of solitary dances with cancers of the dreaded spirit. Unfortunately, these events are never so poetic or romantic. In the midst of them, they’re all-consuming horror stories and in retrospect they’re often regarded as mistakes, many times embarrassingly so.

I simply cannot dismiss the haunting thought that I am doing doing myself a grave disservice at this point. Nor can I ignore the beautiful notion of exciting and strange tongues flowering in my mouth.