She's arranged on the ground between arms and legs. No face. I don't know why they're always faceless inside these dreams. One more thing for me to crack open. Maybe this is savior complex. Me pulling from the outside to compel myself inside a projection. The picture of a process I engage repetitively. If I am perfectly still life will wash over me. No more rhythm. No more pattern. No more chains.

Pattern is repetition and repetition is a product of inertia. I hesitate. It is not only the nature of the pattern I fear. It's the pattern itself.

Takes an armful of energy to disrupt inertia. To make an object do something it isn't accustomed to doing. I fight to stay on the path of pattern when pattern is the trauma.

My good friend, he's quite a few years younger, asked me how I'm feeling about life these days. I told him a quick story: I go on my rides to this place where the bike path crosses the road. It's not heavily traveled. But I never look when I cross. Just go right through it. Don't even think I've seen a car on that road. Once maybe. But it doesn't really matter does it? Somewhere inside there's that much of me willing to take the risk.

I cycle up another hill. The path travels left then gets lost in trees. When I get there I too will be lost in trees, found only to myself, which is the power in frame of reference. Off the path a rabbit sits still as stone. I stand on the pedals and push. Eyes locked on the hill's crest. No one here but me. Somber reverie because this is the place I go to make good on my vows. Then a drop of sweat wheedles its way to the white of my eye and snaps the trance.

Like the edge of the universe. Cloud dust where things start and maybe end. But mostly start. I enjoy potential energy because it's still. Asks so very little.

I call it real time as if there's any other kind. The part of the universe where I can't process emotion because it comes from all directions. Gets backed up like the 405 at sunset. So I set times to return and explore. Trace them from beginning to end. Like a silk sash through my hand. Tie small knots along the way to mark my progress.

I section off times to feel. Like City blocks in caution tape. When I enter it will be in the same way, like a detective, with uncompromising curiosity. Slowly sifting through ashes and burnt wood for clues. Looking for the story of what happened here. Wondering how I've arrived, again, too late.

That's what it is. A man without a face, two steps ahead of me, setting fire to everything, me arriving a little too late to discern what exactly has happened.

On my bike beneath the sun. Sweating through a black shirt, lemongrass in my lungs. I see motes of dust. Am motes of self. Musical lyrics broken apart and bandaged together while a deer bounds through thicket. I encounter the next stage of life when I'm in motion. Rowing my legs. When I cross a crack in the path and break the pattern.

I'm okay with near-death experiences. A little wreckage. A fall from time to time that leaves my arms scratched and bleeding. If that's what it takes to crack the pattern and arrive new destinations. I am fine with earthquakes breaking interstates. When Earth's groaning insides change the landscape. I listen.

Eleven days later. I dream a woman lying on cracked ground. Maybe it's desert. Probably it's metaphor. I wonder if she's trying to break patterns. If she's befriending them. I wonder if maybe she's not aware of them at all. Red-haired woman lying on the dried bottom floor. Still with the velocity of roses.

It's a way to return to the beginning. Because cracks find their way into everything. Leave them alone long enough and roses become hedges. Then I'm left with a circumference too large to wrap arms around. When I ride my bike I ride it hard. Until all the magic is exhausted out of my legs. Then I break another pattern.

Think to myself there must be a way to stay on the path and break patterns. Think breaking patterns is probably the same as setting them. All this is the problem with three-dimensional living. We exist in four but think in three. Wonder if that, too, can be evolved.

I tell my friend the ending to the story. Because he's concerned. Am I okay? I should not be crossing the road — any road — without looking both ways. Am I doing alright. Because, you know, I've had my bouts with —

I'm not crazy like that. Anymore. I explain. I just ask questions. Find the pattern, poke it till it wakes up. I can't take any chances. Can't let inertia have all control. If there's a pattern I have to know about it. Have to start the circular process of breaking it. And there's always a pattern.

Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman's Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.