I’m almost out of fuel. My inspiration tank hasn’t been recharged in a quarter. Freedom had its costs. Limitlessness has its length. I don’t know what I’m doing here. There is no purpose for me being here. I set off this journey “for fun” and look at that. It’s pointless. I reached the end of another series of dorpal doors. The next dorpal’s form is just gray, shining, shifting. I don’t want to go there. I’m not ready to die by drowning in a sea of gray paint. My journey is pointless, and I am unseen, all for nothing, kicking rocky crumbs off of the side of a universe. I know this feeling of pointlessness might be holding me back from what is beyond it, just a layer between me and that color I’ve lost again. But hey. I’m farther along than I was. And I’m going somewhere. Or at least, my trajectory has. And so what if we don’t finish, there never was a destination, was there? And it’s pretty, the view from here. It is warm in my suit, even when whatever warmth was kindled in my aura is now a memory. And I know, I know I know I know, I’ve known this whole time that this is only a moment for me to rest.

This is what happens when we’ve started knocking on doors, beating on doors. We put the energy out, the sound leaves our voices and travels, has to reach the bells in the distance to ring out and reciprocate. In the meantime my heart becomes asphalt. This tank will refill, I know. And this isn’t supposed to be a period of misery, but of observation, of reflection on where I’ve come and where I’m going. I know that how I’ve grown now is seen through a filter of my own fantasy, that I am either far more pathetic or far greater than I see myself to currently be, or both of those things, but I would need more data to make those conclusions, far more than is available, and so I know I shouldn’t assume.

In the stillness of time between this breath of my journey, I am given a moment to reflect on where I’ve been and wonder where I’m going. The sound of the golden bells will return after this moment, carrying with them paintings and ideas they’ve captured along the way. I can’t help laughing at myself for how different my words might seem. You begin to appreciate these little things when you’ve been on the path for so long. The gift of allowing yourself to let go of that mental control of static thought that others assume to be a sanity.

So where am I now? Thought inventor, dorpal painter, creative torch. Fancy titles it seems to me were drawn out of a hat. Seems everything is with people. They love this random system we’ve created. Maybe to them it represents fairness. I wonder how these abilities affect our behavior. Without inspiration tanks and dorpal doors, what would people look like, how would they behave? Would they try to be orderly? Would they worship the beauty of the grays? Would they start wars like the ant colonies of old?

Would they take and give matter as clay? Spontaneity, it seems I’ve heard this word so often it becomes dull and I’m not sure when we say it, it means what it means. Spontaneity. Spontaneity. That’s our rating system. “How Spontaneous is your Dorpal?” And how does one appraise Spontaneity anyway? How did none of us ask these questions? How can one thing be more spontaneous than another? It doesn’t matter, anyway. They have me out here, watching the stars, blazing open new dorpals. That is purpose. That is my purpose. No one bothered to ask me why. They told me I have this gift and I should use it so here I am. I open dorpals so that others can travel through them, explore them, appraise them, rest in them, enjoy them. And there have been a lot of great worlds I’ve made! I wonder if I’d want to live in one.

My people travel dorpal to dorpal, until they find the one they want to settle down in. I have created them, and none of them are mine. I have been through all of them, and I am in none of them. I am between every world, gazing on barren rock at glistening stars. My home is the vast infinity of space. I hear the sound I’ve had so much time to learned to recognize, the sound of the inspiration on return. My tank fills, and I wait for the instructions, only then will the ideas become form and tell what to paint and I will be on my way.