Touchstones

By Billy Georgette

Beyond a glass wall, a speculative story on the nature of existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514432211

Billy Georgette

Billy Georgette is a Montreal jazz pianist with a taste for historical matters

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Copyright © 2015 by Billy Georgette.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015920132

ISBN:      Hardcover            978-1-5144-3223-5

                Softcover              978-1-5144-3222-8

                 eBook                   978-1-5144-3221-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/10/2015

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BEYOND A GLASS WALL…

A SPECULATIVE STORY ON

THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE

BY BILLY GEORGETTE

MONTREAL 2016

DARK CLOUDS BEGAN ARRIVING UNANNOUNCED EVEN AS I RAN UP THE HILL. COMING TOWARD ME, MISTY RAINSOAKED FIGURES RUNNING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION… HEADING FOR COVER DOWN BELOW

U p on the hill top, giant stones whistle as powerful winds wind around their circle of strength, tested now by sharp cracks of lightning combined with ground shaking thunder. Sudden turbulence lets loose stinging rain flying off in all directions as pure ozone fills the air.

Held in by the brume, supercharged photons begin forming an audio dome over the hilltop, releasing sounds long stilled as phantom spirits return to recover their turf.

I’m not going to ask, ‘what am i doing here ‘All I know is I’m standing in the centre of this circle of big stones, soaking wet, mud up to my ankles when something made me reach down and plunge my hand deep into the ground. Watching my arm act as if it had a mind of its own, all the while hearing baffling sounds around me entering my head, it seemed that I had arrived at the extraordinary. Abruptly, my fingers wrapped around something hard and smooth, shaped to occupy the palm of the hand. As I let my hand grasp the stone, its shape felt as though I was holding a tool or a weapon, something to grip, something unusual with indentations for fingers along with a notch for the thumb like the handle of a revolver.

Everyone arrives at a point in their daily lives when they’re confronted with making difficult choices. But for me this was truly a tough one, a very hard one that could only play out as follows…

‘Walk away’ or ‘Do what you’re going to do.’

Bright tongues of fiery electrodes reached across the circle touching, uniting the giant stones, unleashing their power along with sounds capable of unbalancing reality into a kind of musical cubism. There I am in the centre of it all, my arm up to my shoulder in warm wet earth pondering (praying) what to do next..

Now on auto-pilot, my fingers tighten their grip around the stone, turning as if to loosen it from its surroundings, soon followed by a slurpy sound of my forearm sliding up out of the well of mud. My first thought was about how calmly my mind felt, even as the chaos around me began to subside.

Holding the stone object upward over my head, shapes floating across invisible lines along with some small white clouds suddenly gather above me, dousing me with warm rain and washing the dirt off of my body. My hands quiver as the stone radiates above me, its glow illuminating the giant boulders surrounding us.

At this point, I have to wonder if the stone isn’t trying to communicate with me, asking me to take it away from this place, away from its muddy grave, patiently waiting for me to respond with an answer.

There are several disturbing facts to consider before making my next move. For one thing, I can’t see myself desecrating a sacred site. I can’t even imagine my role in such an act. And yet here I am in this, a very strange place holding a stone that glows in the dark, high in my hand dropping light into my eyes, tones into my ears, attaching itself to me impulsively with reckless abandonment and persistence, passionately as though I were the embodiment of a long lost lover.

I was literally getting stoned!

Finally I decided to put it back, but as I tried to position my hand over its muddy hole, my arm kept moving away from the stone’s resting place, interfering with my good intentions. Without the mobile ability to move my arm in spite of repeated tries, all my efforts are seemingly useless and unsuccessful.

Much like the time a stray cat followed me home, took up my place, refusing to leave until visitors found him to be an adorable elegant feline so then off it went. But this is far more serious, a far more baffling eventuality. A stone asking me to adopt it, refusing to stay in its place, blocking my efforts to release it, while pointing in the direction of a way out of the circle of stones.

I don’t want a stone, and I certainly don’t want this stone. I’ve never been particularly interested in stones or rocks anyway, other than the flat ones we used to skim across ponds when we were kids. I don’t know much about geology, gemmology or rare minerals for that matter, other than their importance to the scientific industrial world.

Of course, none of the above is true as I am in fact, at this time, becoming an expert on the subject. But I am also clearly in denial about removing this stone from its resting place. My intention was to leave this stone behind, here in its proper place, at least that’s what I thought until I realized that my legs were moving. The stone pointed a hush blue light-beam below my knees, creating a path for my feet as my legs promptly exited the circle with absolutely no input from my conscious mind or my willpower. As a clear blue sky reappeared, the stone and I walked on back down the hill.

It all started soon after I decided to look into my family’s ancestry, more specifically my maternal grandparents’ fore-bearers, all people who thrived on artistry.

My grandfather’s middle name aroused my curiosity,

so I began by looking it up. I get…

BARROW

AN ARTIFICIAL MOUND, ESP. OVER A GRAVE.

Growing up, I spent many happy times with my maternal grandfather, a man as engaging as he was talented. His studio was my favourite haunt, full of interesting objects and people. He was a fine artist, a sculptor known for the excellence of his work. But he prospered as an interior design architect, creating some of our nation’s most impressive public buildings. I considered myself as his wingman, following him around to worksites and suppliers, pestering him with questions, all of which he would enthusiastically answer. It made me proud when my mom told me that I was his favourite grandson. His atelier was classic Rodin, high ceilings with glass skylights. Inside, his three assistants always got me going with their foreign accents and otherworldliness. Like everything else, my grandfather had chosen his three employees as carefully as he created his tools… hand-crafted sheffield steel sculpting instruments that had made him a master of wood, steel, marble and concrete. As a team, they could plaster a ceiling, hang chandeliers, produce magnificent interiors all the while my grandfather was having a good laugh at their foreign comportment, humour being his work ethic.

He developed a polyglot tongue of work with his workers, as all three spoke different languages, heavily accented. I always remember them as being sturdy, dirty and funny as vaudeville clowns, along with my grandfather as their ringmaster having a ball directing his minions. Of course, the conversation was hilarious, a ribald mix of obscenities, observations and opinions, all served up with a side of nonchalance and work related terms.

Cesar was instigator and chief raconteur of the trio, maintaining his seniority over his co-workers Louie and Sylvester, but allowing them to contribute to the meaning of his words, mostly with theatrics and sounds. I often had trouble understanding what Cesar was trying to express in his stories, but fragments of meaning kept shaping themselves around in my imagination, piquing my interest.

These were stories from the old world, tales of mystery and intrigue. I was never quite sure of what they were all about, but they were fascinating fragments of images for my youthful curiosity. Stories of ladies and kings, wolves and wizards, gold and silver, lust and power, cowards and bravos… everything getting etched on my impressionable brain, all while in the company of my marvellous grandfather and his uncommon employees.

Two of them were broadly built with rough hands and thick necks, the third a lean 15 yr. old. All three were masons and stone cutters from the old world, rich in experience not often found in our newer world, but limited none the less in finding work because of language and their foreign appearance. They were however, a perfect fit for my grandfather, lucky to have found him just as he was fortunate to find qualified employees for his ever expanding business of designing interior structures. He would begin by sculpting artistic images on wooden blocks, then transferring them onto plaster forms where they can be duplicated into mouldings, set in endless arrangements. During an installation, he would supervise his men, but