Vertical Laws

By Jem Morgenstern

The vertical road stretches above the clouds. Gravity makes no sense. Here, the laws of physics aren’t concrete. Although the people here use the lack of physical limitations to their advantage, they don’t use them to be unfair. Where anyone could walk through a wall, or decide a wall didn’t exist and then see it cease to be, nobody does. Anyone could give themselves more to be more and have more than everyone else, but nobody there seems to feel any need to be more or have more than everyone else. They all have what they need and most of what they want, but nothing extraneous. As anyone would expect from the city of indefinite reality, my stop there was filled with fictive scenery.

Skyscrapers criss-crossed. Clouds spilled out of drainpipes. Pigeons flew in water. Baseballs arced downwards. Square balls rolled perfectly. Boats without sails floated atop a lake of solid concrete. Summer was Winter; it was hot, but it felt right to call that time of year Winter. A mechanic in the toiletries section of the grocery store ordered coffee from himself, reaching their hands between the shelves dividing the aisles, as if it were the countertop at a coffeeshop. A woman’s breasts hung off her chest like strings dragging behind her, clipped to the collars of her two dogs like leashes. One of those dogs stood on its two hind legs, the other one stood on its two hind arms. I openly welcomed a flower to pollinate me and I soon wore petals of my own.

My eyes could hardly believe me and they were confused, but this place felt faultless. I could believe me. Somehow, the atypical Seesaw Lane fit my expectation of reality better than my typical reality ever had or does. The innocuous disorder made me feel as if my being made more sense. I was realistic. I was rational, reasonable, sensical, and normal. Thoughts I had always thought before and had thought were insane began floating up, but instead of thinking they were stupid or unnecessary, they felt sensible. When I realized that, I started digging up all of the old thoughts I buried away: the thoughts that buried me, the thoughts that burned me, the thoughts that made me feel like I shouldn’t think. I thought them all back up and I thought them firmly. I balled them all into questions and I addressed each one with direct answers. I gave myself my answers. I let myself have the answers I was always too embarrassed to give honestly. Do you really know what taciturn means? No. I let myself have answers that I was always too afraid to give myself. Did he love me? No. I gave myself the answers I never accepted because of self-doubt, insecurities, or self-hate. Do I make a meaningful difference in the lives of others, no matter how few the number of others might be? Yes.

In complete honesty, I was dreading my visit to Seesaw Lane, as soon as I saw it on the list of places I would be going to for this tour. I thought it would be dangerous. I thought it would be visually overwhelming. I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I left with a better sense of my own reality. Who I am. Why I think. Why I think what I think. What I see. I know now that the people who criticise this place so harshly only do so because they were uncomfortable learning about their reality. They don’t want to know which direction their gears are turning, what oils them, or what brings them to a halt. They would rather stay in their constructed dystopia, and that could be what’s best for them. For me - and many others - I know the best thing is to be less concrete, accept complications, and know that our subjective reality is as legitimate as the objective reality we all expected but never got.