I am trying to remember what happened
"Three screens light up. Morphing images appear of leafy green. Of a forest, but it bears a strangeness. The sound of something like an echo of a windy night. Trunks softly dancing maybe in a breeze. Or maybe they're actually just dancing. Quietly alive in chaos, moving unlike any forest would, alien yet soothing. Everything is resonating nature, but it's not quite real. Like a memory of nature, or like the images that are projected on the inside of your eyelids, after a long day spend in the forest, the vague shadow of what I used to call a memory in the back of whatever is left of my consciousness now. I am trying to remember what happened. I was… there were trees ... I think I went to a forest. Old, unlike any forest I had seen before. Trees so high and wide – they have seen centuries. Ferns were covering the ground. It was not dark, nor was it bright. I remember shapes of green. Lavish greens, brilliant and bright or dark and murky covering rock and earth and fallen wood. Trunks covered with lichen and moss. I remember the air. Misty, grey. A moistness lying over everything: Wet humus, soggy leaves. Damp earth and fallen foliage. The smell of pine and resin lies over everything. It’s heavy. The farther I walk in, the darker it gets, the more I remember. Mushrooms appear in different shapes and shades. They must know I'm coming. They're poking out their heads right before I see them, unfolding their caps to catch my glance. I pick one in passing from a trunk. It’s small and brown and smells like all mushrooms do: earthy and a little sweet and welcoming. I put it on my tongue to get a taste and without thinking, I gulp it down. I swallow it whole, without chewing so as not to destroy the little thing. Hours later I am still on the path. A dusky ambivalence has settled over me. The path starts melting into the shrub, into the trees and finally the beat of my foot on the path and the shrub around it and the trees on top of me start melting into my breathing. I am concentrating on the slow rhythms of the forest: ONE—the rustling of branches—TWO—a breaking twig—THREE—trunks gnarling in the wind—FOUR—a flap behind a bush—ONE—the rustling of branches—TWO—a breaking twig—THREE—trunks gnarling in the wind—FOUR—a flap behind a bush—ONE—the rustling of branches—TWO—a breaking twig—THREE—trunks gnarling in the wind—FOUR—a flap behind a bush—ONE—the rustling of branches—TWO—a breaking twig—THREE—trunks gnarling in the wind—FOUR—a flap behind a bush— ... I notice how my last thoughts gather into little drops of water on the inside of my head, hanging off of the linings of my brain for a while, softly rocking with my every step – and then finally evaporating into darkness. It is now pitch black."



