sit on the cool grass and feel the morning dew slowly seeping through the fabric of my tattered blue jeans, the water feels refreshing against my hidden skin, it makes me feel part of something greater than just my body. I feel connected with my surroundings on this cool Ohio day; that the line where Earth ends and I begin is bridged by the cool liquid caressing the bottom of my sore legs.

The hill rises up like a gigantic hump from some camel; impossibly round, as if designed as the perfect hummock-so perfect that it looks unnatural to me at the moment. The sky above me roils invisibly with air currents; eddying in the valleys and hills around me, mingling with the auburn tinged countryside, both gradually changing the shape of the other, like some gross exaggeration of yin and yang.

Stop thinking? feel. Breath? it is there, real. There is no need to analyze why the two interact, why there is water moist against my skin, why I analyze at all about anything. Just feel, please, just love what this is. Then, I surface out of the pool of my own thoughts, come gasping for the air of separation from mind - or maybe I dive into a pool of consciousness. The sky floods my vision like water, and at this moment I'm connected to all that is below and all that is above, existing as not so much a body, but as light, reaching across the landscape, as expansive as the fields around me and the sky above.

I lick my lips, as if hoping the vision around me exists in all senses: smell, touch, taste, smell, and time. My tongue lingers over my chapped lips, burnt by the wind whispering to heaven in lilting tones. I feel my lips as a badge of honor, for I was able to hear the music - the wind - that caused this pain; and its beauty was such that it scarred me. In fact, I hope to be able to keep this badge forever; permanently ingrained in my being. But time, that ubiquitous sense; unseen, takes the scar away, as eternity takes my breath at its enormity.

The black velvet cloak of night is flung over the horizon as I walk from the hill back to my home in suburbia, to take my place in society. My car is stationed at the entrance of the small gravel road extending like a gravel ribbon wrapped around the hill. I slowly ease out onto the roadway and with a careful flick of the wrist, my lights lance out in front of me, cutting gigantic swaths of illumination across the pavement.

My car rushes forward amid the night sky. I can imagine what I must look like from a distance: a disembodied pair of headlights approaching in some ethereal splendor, softly vibrating with speed. And so I rush forth, back into time, regaining that sixth sense that I had tried so diligently to leave behind on that hill in the mottled countryside of autumnal Ohio.

The apparitions scorch past me in rhythmic counterpoint to the continuous roar of wind; the headlights are the embodiment of their inexorable thrusts of steel approaching in the opposite lane. My wild-eyed beast snarls with primal fury, its muffler the victim of some horrible carwash mutilation days (maybe months) before. I had meant to fix it, but there had been no time for such trivial concerns. I had a life to live, obligations to fill, and a muffler? well, wasn't the least of my worries. I judiciously punch the gas and I surge forward as the world begins to bleed together into an awful shade of gray, indistinct and intangible, existing only in my accelerated time. My car roars in indignation. What am I rushing to? Why do I watch my speedometer creep towards the right? Why do I race towards death?

An epiphany: Why do I die while I am alive? Because I am told to. I have been taught to die a little each day, taught that we die as we begin to live; taught to dig my ditch. I have become so worried about my future and my past that I have forgotten the present. In the present we do not die - or maybe we are just not conscious of it. On the hill, I had been empty of all thought and worry - the only thing existing was the panorama stretching before me into eternity and the thump of warm blood coursing through my ears. My body nested in the hands of nature and my mind floated in the clouds. Time drifted in and out of my mind, like a gentle wave. Time is a human construct. We designated those minutes, those hours. How could something as arbitrary as a spinning globe allow us to base our lives unyieldingly upon its revolution? The car growls, my mind races, the world melts past my window. My ditch grows deeper.

Tick? tick?My watch continues to methodically announce the passing seconds, I look down and hopelessly observe the second hand advancing around the white face, in the crystal I can see my distorted face reflected like in a funhouse mirror. Tick? tick?Seconds fall away like water through my fingers, the harder I try to make it stop, the faster it disappears into the past. I stare disgustedly at the watch and contemplate how useless it is. Certainly it accurately measures the agreed upon length of seconds, minutes, hours, days, et cetera. But I have been in seconds that lasted longer than minutes, minutes that have lasted longer than hours, and hours that have lasted longer than days. At that point, my watch becomes useless because it doesn't match my perception of time. When I truly live in the present, time stops in my consciousness, and yet my watch continues. Why can't we have a new watch? One with only one hand and two positions: life and death. The hand would remain motionless until one day, when it would sweep forward to death, and with that motion strike you dead. There would be no set time, no second hand announcing the endless march towards death. There would be no warning, no time for preparation. No, only a watch face and two positions. The watch face would have no markings; it would be up to me to determine how to measure it best. I could constantly look down and be reminded that I am alive, not dead. I'm alive.

Stoplight ahead, just starting to glow in garish ruby-red brilliance. I apply pressure to the brakes and my car begins to slowly scrub away speed. I drift to a stop at the intersection. I flicker of light appears in the corner of my eye; I turn my head to investigate. An elegant woman sits in the car next to me, with a glowing cigarette in her hand. I'm enthralled. How symbolic, I think. The human race is now able to hold fire between our fingers, able to bend it to our will. How ironic, that I now see harnessed power of fire, resting in the long, graceful fingers of the unharnessable spirit of women. The incongruity makes me smile. Smoke wafts up around her head in a smoky halo, lit from below by the dashboard's pale green hue. She smokes, I watch, the light changes to green. A horn blares behind me and I begin to blush. How long had I been sitting with my mouth agape? Once again time had ceased to exist in my perception. I had been in the present.

Tick? tick?time begins again; I am now conscious of the light of civilization present all around me. Over there: a Formica glazed Mecca to instant gratification; proudly selling food so detrimental that you feel as if you have cheated death by simply surviving the meal. To the left: a store advertising low prices for one day only. The road continues ahead, lined on all sides by more temples of time, cars weave in and out of their parking lots, scurrying like ants. The lights of the temples and the headlights combine overhead into an orange gauze-like aura. The corona above reminds me of a wispy fire raging in the night sky. Come down? burn this all away? burn away time and all its manifestations. Let the trees whisper to heaven. Let the wind blow in my face. Let Babylon fall away.