A professor rumored to possess a life-changing machine...
A search for a remote and eccentric king...
A hiker meets his deceased grandfather in the wilderness...
A state-funded spa for ghosts...
A man wakes up in an alley and spends the day in search of how he got there...
A woman seeks to relearn how to dream...
Drawing from the influences of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Christopher Nolan, these and others make up Steven Muir's mind-bending collection of short stories.
A professor rumored to possess a life-changing machine...
A search for a remote and eccentric king...
A hiker meets his deceased grandfather in the wilderness...
A state-funded spa for ghosts...
A man wakes up in an alley and spends the day in search of how he got there...
A woman seeks to relearn how to dream...
Drawing from the influences of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Christopher Nolan, these and others make up Steven Muir's mind-bending collection of short stories.
You went to bed with the strong determination to get an early start. Enough are the days of laze, of seeing a chipper sun and a powder blue sky out the east facing window from your bed and yet turning over again for another round of indulgent sleep. Tomorrow will be different, you say: I will reap the many splendored glories, oft-praised virtues and logistical advantages to waking up early: to get in a morning walk before work, to have ample time, slow and easy like molasses, to sip a cup of oolong while reading, or to sip while doing nothing at all, replete with time like someone with a freezer full of provisions in the fall; to align with the sun and that oh so important circadian rhythm you’ve heard about, to shower and shave unrushed (though perhaps while listening to Rush), stretch, practice breathing exercises, prepare, enjoy, and then thoughtfully clean up a satisfying breakfast like a sourdough toad-in-the-hole topped with micro greens and sauerkraut. Maybe you’ll even have the time to research a place you’d like to visit this summer, some hitherto unknown supremely enticing ecosystem at a different latitude. It’s all there, your perfectly satisfying feel-good productive yet relaxed morning. Can you pull it off? Can you turn one morning into a continuous habit?
Your alarm, a not-so-abrasive three bars of a standard samba, echoes from your phone at the far end of the bedroom. Though most sounds or devices to wake you up come off as really quite rude - ripping you from the world and story of your dreams with the cold and heartless indifference of waking punctuality, this one, this tone is a least offender. Now comes the hardest part: to part from the loving warmth of your nightly cocoon, to feel the discomforting temperature differential of the air beyond the blanket, to face gravity again - weight, balance, resistance, solidity. To face the ongoing trials and tribulations of daily life, a rush of reasons to both get up and to stay in bed...no. You don’t have to do this, and you know it. You
don’t have to think of everything you have to do today and for days more all at once, and right this moment face the sheer cliff face of reality, its expectations across time all felt right now together, no. This sense of overwhelm needn’t be. Instead you, the wiser, know to face it a bit at a time, one step at a time. First foot forward, and only that: what is to be done now, in the quiet, tender hours before you head off to work. That’s it, bit by bit. The linear day stacks realistically as places and happenings are encountered, not hours before, when breakfast hasn’t even been had. It would be unhelpful, actually, to try and consider everything there is to do at once. How many balls, after all, can you sustainably juggle? Not even three.
There - the hardest part is over. You’re up and moving. The alarm is off, the bed is made even (you don’t always make your bed in the morning, but you always feel good when you do) and you’ve stretched a few nearly involuntary morning stretches, butt out, arms up, deep body yawns. Your body temperature is increasing again, your blood pressure is rising from the lull of life supine, your cerebrospinal fluid is...doing something. It's there, and you heard in some podcast semi-recently that it's important.
Fresh out the shower, toweled off and fresh of face (your shaving cream pleasantly tingling), you make yourself a cup of tea. Best not to dive right into the coffee - something you also heard on a podcast recently. Water boiled and poured, you place the kettle back on the stove top, and hear a knock at the door.
Stopping in your tracks, you pause, ears perked and head slightly turned to hear again, yes again, three quick solid knocks. You continue to wait, another ten seconds perhaps, before slowly and cautiously approaching
the door. You wait, listening attentively for a few seconds more before opening it and stepping outside to be blasted by cold and dark, a pronounced absence of the light and of heat you had inside. Even the sun
is still sleeping. You enjoy the cold air for a moment, on your face, in your nostrils, as you realize that there is no sign, no sign at all of whoever knocked on the door; no fleeing person in sight, no sputtering car ignition, no bodies, no steps, no sound except for the gentle swish of the occasional car passing by on the road, people well-established in their early morning routines heading off to a job that demands their pre-solar presence, or coming back from one, brave nocturnal folk.
This very moment you’ve stepped outside proves to be the very end of night’s third trimester, for you see the first ray of the new rising sun peak out over the distant horizon. Like a laser it beams right to you and as if through you, as you see it faintly illuminate your porch, trailing indoors behind you and into your apartment, a buttery yellow arc slowly widening. The light warms and wakes in a way that the artifices of centralized gas heating and LED bulbs simply cannot compete with. Like the spearpoint of heaven’s army descending upon the earth, the single light beam beaming forth from the horizon expands gloriously by the moment. It is like a bridge to the motherland, to the origin of all things. It calls you forth - the warmth, the light, yellow now orange now pink. On the other side of the sky, to the west, you notice the ghostly fading moon waving goodbye. Closing the door to your apartment behind you with one hand, you start walking
forward towards the increasing light. You cannot rationalize why; it just feels right. Like a magnet you are drawn towards the widening arc of the
dawn, without resistance, without complaint, utterly compelled like a babe to the breast, like a moth to the flame.
Ignoring roads, shoulders to roads, road barriers, white and yellow lines, your bee-line towards the sun takes you across state route 34 in front of your apartment complex and into a patch of woods. The morning light caresses the sides of thin trees, rolls casually across fallen ones being swallowed by grass and decomposing forces. Here it widens with some open space, there it is eclipsed by leaves gently shaking in the cool a.m.
breeze, trees receiving their wake up call. The frosted mud of the sometimes marshy forest ground crunches satisfyingly underfoot. Teaming orange now with the light of day, it will soon begin its daily thaw. Having
come too near, a few chickadees and bush wrens flit about in a cute panic, sounding their chirping alarm. Their homes of rose bush and blackberry have just recently begun leafing out for the year. The small, vital green of their baby leaves - they too long for and soak up the sunlight like a free all-you-can-eat buffet.
Reaching the edge of the woods, you realize that following the sunrise has brought you to your favorite local park, where you like to play frisbee with friends, walk around easily on dates, sit in the grass and read. But you’ve never been here at this hour, never seen it in this light. You think you’re the only one here until, advancing further into the park, you see a group of people under the shelter in the middle of the main field. You squint your eyes: they’ve formed a circle and expand out from the shelter, keeping the
shape while widening. Do they see you? Have you disturbed some mysterious morning meeting, secret and solemn? The part of the circle
facing you is coming closer, just as you somnambulantly take a few slow steps forward yourself. Is this some sort of occult pact or ritual, one you, an outsider, aren’t supposed to see? Who are these people, and why are they gathered here at dawn, within the first few minutes people are legally allowed to be here?
Suddenly they stop and stand in place, the circle now perhaps sixty feet in diameter. Surely you can be seen by some of them. You’ve stopped moving too, frozen in curiosity and a light but pressing apprehension. They all turn inwards, backs to you, and begin, it seems, to play a game.
They’re taking turns calling out, after which various members of the circle race across, high-five someone else moving and take a new spot at the circle’s edge. You know this game. They’re playing Common Ground, a fun
way to get to know a group of people. They continue, going round the circle, taking turns calling out things they’ve done, things they can do, places they’ve been, pets they have or grew up with, favorite colors, foods, other preferences. As they run about, you can hear their laughter, see their smiling faces. You look at your watch. Still some time before work. Now the question grips you - do you join in? Are you feeling bold enough?
Calmly and silently you walk up to the group playing the dawn game. Finding a place gracefully between two people who yield space easily - an
invitation implicit - you join the circle. They both look at you briefly, smiling and nodding their heads kindly, a gesture of welcome. The unquestioning ease with which you join the game informs: it is not ‘as though’ or ‘like’ you belong; you do, truly, belong. You are welcome.
Now it is your turn to call something out to the group. You look to the sun as you think, closing your eyes, engulfed in the now omnipresent light of the new day. Oh joy, you think, oh joy, you feel, look where the sun has led me this morning: to connection and to joy.
Steven Muir's book is quite a unique collection of stories. On reading this book, you are entering a place which is slightly surreal but not incomprehensibly so; the writing is strong in terms of its structure and direction; it has an veneer of mystery which is not always easy to penetrate; and it will leave you thoughtful. That's how it was for this reader anyway.
The title of the book is not where it starts but we soon learn about Professor Nim and the influence that he has over two of his students, Vishwanath and Vivienne who are in competition with each other to become his star pupil or apprentice and gain further insight into his possibility collapser, a machine that he has devised. I have to profess that this read more like a philosophical discussion or bandying about of ideas than a story but that's not to say that it's not interesting. The ending felt like I'd been led towards enlightenment whilst also being left completely bewildered at where it dropped me off, which may not be everyone's cup of tea from reading but I quite enjoyed the uncertainty.
And this was really how I felt about a lot of the book.
As I said previously, I feel like this is a collection designed to promote thought: it is a collection of stories, yes, but they are unconventional and some have a dream-like quality to them, almost like the author is sharing his own personal visions or that he is imparting a viewpoint from which he would like us to see things and is doing this through the characters that he creates and where he places them.
Some stand out ones for me are Solus Nakami where a girl appears only the narrator can see; Grandpa Seraphic which begins almost like a poem but then expands into something quite lovely and for those of us who have lost elderly relatives, it is a story that offers hope and the possibility of future meetings with those no longer here; and At the Ghost Spa - no further explanation needed. Indeed, there is a lot of this let's-look-behind-the veil feel to the whole book: what we see is not all that is there, and how can we reach beyond to experience what our human-ness in the every day fails to reveal to us? How can we access that?
A very different read.