TRANSCRIPT - Episode 248: Shattered

October 9th, 2023

Kristen Zaza

[Eerie theme music plays]

[Your Narrator:]

Hello, my friends.

It's me again.

The other one.

Welcome.

I would say welcome to the castle, but I'm not sure that would be correct.

I was there. I was there, I was there at least two weeks ago, maybe more maybe less it doesn't really matter anyway. And I don't remember much, but I remember that I was very very upset. I was frantically running through the castle, angry that I was invisible and frightened that I seemed powerless, so I smashed whatever I could. I threw things here and there, I slammed doors and cupboards, I was a regular poltergeist, I imagine. Did someone speak to you anyway? Did you still have storytime? Was it all all right without me? Sometimes I worry that it wouldn't be. That things wouldn't be all right without me, even if only for a little while. I guess that's silly and arrogant and maybe it keeps me from true rest sometimes. But we'll feel the way we feel. Not much we can do about feelings except experience them and just gently watch them. Forgive them, maybe. Learn to love them, even the uncomfortable ones.

But now

I seem to be in some kind of a bathtub. It's empty. Not just of water, but of me, yet I'm in it, one of the many paradoxes of having no body, at least sometimes, and clearly right now.

Around me, there are large, clean white tiles. I worry for a moment that there was such a thing as time after all and I have gone back into it into a different me that lived in a cellar full of these...but I look over and see all the makings of a modern bathroom. A toilet, a sink, a countertop, a mirror, a pink candle burning in a neat little glass candlestick holder, a little black carpet, some towels. And I am confident that I haven't had my invisible organs harvested against my will, or anything gruesome like that.

I don't know where I am.

I hear a tick, tock, tick, tock, tick tock, steady steady steady, on the beat, yet there is no clock in here, that's strange.

I rise up and exit the little room cautiously - there is an orange cat looking in my general direction, he knows I am here but he cannot fix his gold-green eyes specifically on where I am and that frightens him, so he meowls and runs away.

There is a little plant in a little basket on a white wall. There are some other little plants, herbs, succulents, high up on another wall.

It occurs to me that the plants wish they could be outside, and yet here they are

It occurs to me that perhaps the cat also wishes he could be outside, and yet here he is

It occurs to me that I indeed wish that I could be outside, and yet here I am.

I see a balcony

It makes me think of someone

Someone who...abandoned me last week, I think

Ah yes, that's right, I was angry, I was upset, I was haunting myself

The door is open and there is a screen door that remains closed

New apartment, new balcony, same story, with this girl, her laptop open on a blank page, same old story, but where is she?

Through the screen door I can hear cars going by, I can smell the autumn leaves wet with rain, I can hear the rain lightly tapping against the road and the balcony cement

It's so cold

There are plants on the balcony that want to come in

There are plants inside the apartment that want to go out

I turn around as I notice for the first time that that ticking has stopped

And I see a tapestry on the wall.

[Music; a melancholy piano theme]

It's black; there are mountains and a moon and stars in white lines and dots

It feels quite peaceful

It must bring her some peace, the one who lives here, the one whose world I've found myself in momentarily

I wonder if that means she's in the castle?

Maybe we pulled a Prince-and-the-Pauper.

The tapestry is so simple; the stars are just polka dots in a symmetrical pattern. The mountains are just lines of different widths, curving and twisting

I know it was purchased online and for less than it might be worth, it might be made of material that is cheap and flimsy, if there is a human artist then I am certain they were not compensated or credited enough for the amount of peace it gives me and probably the writer who lives here

For all the caveats that pass through my mind around this piece of art that I actually know so little about, All I want is to dive into it

I want to Be There.

Not in there

I want to Be There.

It hangs on a white wall, there's a desk with some random items like a purse and loose papers and a fancy candelabra and a basket full of nonsense and some bins that have yet to be unpacked underneath it

And as I stare into those black and white mountains, I take a deep breath and make a wish

And instantly, almost, a crack appears

Not in the wall or the tapestry or the desk or the ceiling or the room itself

But in the image of the whole thing

As though the whole wall, the whole room, as it appears in my nonexistent eyes, is a screen, a television screen of some kind, and it just cracks

One long, thin crack, at first

But this branches off into web-like tendrils, more cracks forming, smaller, more complicated, intricate ones

Perhaps it's in my eyes

I don't have eyes

Must be in my mind

Think I lost that too

The whole thing

Shatters

Like broken glass

But once it all breaks off into a billion little shards

Behind it all there is black

[Music again - a slow and lazy, sad theme on a strange, distant guitar]

With white polka dot stars

And a mountain range made of white lines of a variety of thickness and thinness.

And a full, starkly white moon

I thought the moon was almost gone

Not here. Here it is always full.

Looks like I did it

I made it to the world of that cheap bulk-made artwork that I adored so much

There are lines everywhere and as I walk along the mountains, the lines move past where my feet would be

So I can tell that I am travelling, but it is difficult, because everything looks the same.

It's a wondrous thing that you've been able to come with me, thank you, thank you.

You know, it's an awful lot like a video game.

Do you know those ones? The mysterious ones that are very dark and very stylish, and you pick up objects along the way, perhaps newspaper clippings or keys or documents with clues, clues about what happened here, clues about where you should go next, that sort of thing.

But the comforting thing about those games - in all their horror indicators and suspenseful atmospheres, etcetera, etcetera - are those clues themselves.

The guidance.

The outside input of an invisible "other" that tells you you are indeed playing the game correctly, why don't you go this way, why don't you follow the thread you're pulling, the one I put right there for you to discover and you did so perfectly?

There's none of that here.

There is no guidance.

I don't know if anyone could live here. Could they?

There doesn't seem to be anyone here.

What would they eat, where would they grow food? Where would they find water? How would they make shelter?

But you know, I don't seem to have any concept of hunger or thirst or hot or cold, so I guess it doesn't matter.

It's just a sea of endless black and white mountains and stars

Nothing distinguishable from anything else.

Those stars are so strange, so round, so stark. The black of the sky and the land is identical and pure. The darkest colour I've ever seen.

I feel strange when I look up at that sky, but I can't quite put my finger on the cause.

I know it's not real

It's a wall hanging that stole my imagination in its simplicity. It's a doodle. And now we're in a doodle land.

So I know it's not real

But you know

Am I real? Is this conversation real?

What's unreal? The images? The ones we're both sharing as we walk together, right now?

What makes this unreal, then? Is it the difference of time between us, is time the only glue that links a human soul to another?

Surely it must be place, then. They must be in the same place together.

I see these mountains. Do you see these mountains? Around us, under our feet? Look at those crazy stars! I think you see them too.

Well then it would seem we're in the same place.

No, but you see we're not physically there.

Hmmm.

Seems

Questionable

That any significant experience in our lives must be dictated by something as simple as physical proximity.

But I could be wrong.

It's beautiful here, isn't it?

Look over there.

There's a soft, orange glow. It's down there, in that little nook, that little dip between those two mountains. Tucked in there. As far as I can tell, it's the only colour in this place. And it's the colour of fire.

Flickering down there, not casting shadows in this otherwise flat, two dimensional world, the fire suggests three dimensions with that light, that flickering. I think the only thing to do is to head towards it.

Yes, if there is fire, there must have been someone to light it

I think

Come along. I hear music.

Fire and music can't be a terrible combination.

Do you ever feel you have to hide yourself?

Do you feel it's hard to express who you are, what it is you live your life for, what you want in this life?

When I feel like that, I find it hard to come to places like these, because I get caught up in believing they're not real if I don't have the one  silly quality of physical presence as we have been made to understand it. And then I miss out on so many wonderful worlds to visit.

All because I was worried about someone else seeing me.

There it is. There's the fire.

There's no wood for it to burn from, no rock circle to contain it. It is not created but rather it is in a constant state of creating itself.

In our physical world, fire needs a catalyst; friction, ignition, combustion, reaction, whatever.

This fire is just there; untethered; floating above this doodle land, real and three dimensional as anything you could open your physical eyes and see right now

Wait

It's kind of difficult to look away from.

There's a gentle kind of humming coming from it.

I wonder what it's doing here.

I don't know if someone put it here, but here it is

And we're not the only ones watching

In this two dimensional landscape, if you sort of look through the lines, allow your focus to relax, you'll see that there are indeed three dimensional creatures

Humanoid shapes

But just shadow, just the exact same shade as the backdrop here

They stand very still facing the fire, but sometimes they sway their head gently back and forth to the music; loll their head side-to-side, up and down

You'd think they were stretching their necks or dancing in ecstasy, if you weren't doing it yourself;

You're doing it because it's easier to see the shapes standing out against the backdrop if you constantly shift your gaze, move your focus

You're moving your head in that unusual way because you're trying to see them, and that's what they're doing -

They're trying to see you.

Hard to tell how many.

If you look up - which some of the figures are doing, many of them are rolling their heads upwards to look at the sky now and then, just like me - you'll see the stars have a little detail in them we must have missed before

Each one is a wide-open eye

Tiny and distant, perhaps, but watching us and the fire with great interest nonetheless.

I don't know how I feel about this

I'm afraid

I'm not as invisible as I thought.

[A little meow]

Hey, hey buddy, who's a good boy?

The cat just rubbed against my leg and flopped down at my feet, rolling on to his side and purring loudly.

I reach over to scratch his belly and say a few quiet, gentle words to him.

I was just staring at the doodle land on my wall, trying to think of a story.

Felt like I lost myself for a little bit.

Busy thinking about white-tiled cellars and haunted balconies

I think I've ended up haunting myself.

That's one way to tell ghost stories, I guess.

It's time for bed, I think.

I better start the process, anyway. I tend to check that the stove is off, the oven is off, the balcony door's locked, and the front door's locked, each at least more than once, probably more than twice, I get a little anxious about this stuff.

As I go to check that the door to the apartment is locked, I hear a little breath outside of it. Just a quick inhale, is what it sounded like.

The door is indeed locked, so I'm safe. I know that I am safe. I feel that I am safe.

But just because curiosity gets the better of me far too often, I decide to look through the little round peep-hole.

I bring my eye towards the little white circle

And through it, I see

Well, it looks like, looking back at me, simply

An eye.

I blink, and it's gone - and in its place instead is a long, dark castle hallway. Empty blackness on either sides of a long red, velvet carpet. A candelabra with a lit pink candle sits on that carpet, waiting for someone to pick it up and journey down it again.

Thank goodness.

[Eerie Theme Music.]

(Host speaks as Kristen:)

Hello everybody, thanks so much for listening to Episode 248 of On a Dark, Cold Night. This is Kristen Zaza, your host, writer, narrator, composer, podcaster, etcetera, behind the podcast. I hope you've had a good couple of weeks since I was last able to release an episode - and I hope you enjoyed this little journey through a few of my worlds that I found myself missing lately.

I would like to thank everyone who supports the podcast on a monthly basis through Patreon - I'm very grateful for your kindness, my friends, thanks so much. If you'd like to support in this way, everyone who pledges $1 or more a month US gets access to my complete and downloadable soundtrack, while subscribers of $5 or more a month US get that, a monthly tarot reading video for all "Kindred Spirit" patrons on the full moon, and a bonus mini-meditation weekly episode called my "Quick Moments". You can learn more at patreon.com/darkcoldnight. You can donate one-time only without any perks at ko-fi.com/darkcoldnight, or by buying a t-shirt or hoodie at bonfire.com/on-a-dark-cold-night. And if you're an apple listener and you'd like to access the Quick Moment bonus episodes through there, you can look up my page on iTunes or search for the Sonar Network to join the Sonar+ Apple podcast channel, where you can get those bonus episodes and lots of other great bonus content from lots of awesome shows for only $3.99 a month.

I'd love if you followed me on social media; I'm on Facebook and YouTube under ON a Dark, Cold Night, instagram at darkcoldnightpodcast, Bluesky and Tiktok under Kristen Zaza, and on Twitter at @ADarkColdNight. And of course if you enjoy the podcast, I would be super grateful if you left a rating and a review on Spotify, iTunes, Facebook, or wherever else you like to rate and review your podcasts.

Thanks again for traveling with me my friends.

Maybe sometimes I'm afraid that I hide in strange little fantasy worlds, and I'm not immune from wondering what that makes other people think of me.

But at the end of the day, only we know what we want out of our strange little lives.

I think we have to just trust ourselves on the way, like a gentle travel partner. Like a guardian angel, or a friendly ghost.

Haunt Our Selves.

Sleep well and Sweet Dreams, my friends.

[Eerie theme music]

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