December 16, 2013March 22, 2019 admin

A BOUT OF VERTIGO

Guest Writers

A BOUT OF VERTIGO

IN

A

SWIRLING DUST STORM

ON THE ROAD

TO

THE

HOUSE OF THE DEAD
By Dr. Mel Waldman

The eerie road is an elongated mansion with many rooms.

The scent of seething cinnamon and blueberries on hot oatmeal rises from the earth.

Listen to the mammoth house. It is a celestial symphony, a gold coffin, a majestic tomb.

Dust sails above, drifting toward the road. But soon it swoops down and swallows me, giving birth

to a swirling dust storm, reeking of fire and burnt flesh, an ocean of fierce crimson and dazzling whiteness that consumes me. I disappear within its whirling womb

of dust, and inside the vertiginous vastness, I suffer a bout of vertigo, spinning above the dust-covered earth

around an imaginary axis inside a dust devil hidden within the monstrous storm, and within this whirlwind that moves around and upward toward the Heavens, I dance with this dancing devil and no one sees me, for my pulveratricious face transmogrifies into a whirling vortex of dust inside my swirling tomb.

I’m mad, of course. Insanity’s my game and my middle name, for I suffer a bout of vertigo and yet, I dance with the dust devil in a swirling dust storm on the Road to the House of the Dead. Now, I trudge across the dust-covered earth.
The eerie road is an elongated mansion with many rooms,

an incomprehensible labyrinth moving infinitely in all directions, but willing itself toward the Heavens and Earth.

When I reach the House of the Dead, Being & Becoming merge into a mystical metamorphosis, as I listen to the mammoth house. It plays Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I no longer exist. I am a ghost, a swirling sphere of dust, nothing more. And yet I remember. Dancing with the dancing devil and swirling with vertigo, I sail toward Eternity’s Room.

I am dust.