The Bubble

The gas bubble in my eye was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.  At first, it filled the whole of my vision.  It was clearer and purer than crystal and much brighter than a mountain stream - Swarovski could only dream about such clarity of lens.  Around its perfect orb was a circle of deep, soft black and beyond that fiery red, orange and yellow.  This rainbow-fringed black rim pulsed with my every heartbeat and tipped and swayed, just like a spirit level.  It could make me feel quite giddy, but I couldn’t get off this particular roller-coaster, as the movement was inside my head.

It was impossible to see through this strange bubble: I could only see into it.  It was a crystal ball which held visions: swirling pink, violet, turquoise, sea-green and golden mists formed and reformed more quickly than the swiftest clouds.  Those floating colours were extraordinarily vivid yet softer and truer than any shown by a back-lit computer screen, for all its myriad of hues.  Was this similar to a mescaline enhanced perception?  I don’t know – but the colours were stunning - at once vibrant, deep and incredibly beautiful.

Among this ever-changing mass of gorgeous colour, odd images swam in and out.  I saw a tower with many windows with a brightly but differently adorned clown leaning out of each of them.  An old lady in a flowery and be-ribboned bonnet melted into General Kitchener who, in turn, morphed into a handsome fighter pilot, complete with flowing white scarf and jet black goggles.  Fishes with gaping tunnels for mouths also came and went.  One stuck out its tongue at me, black and forked like a snake’s.  I actually jumped.  Then it too was swallowed by a multitude of intensely coloured, interwoven fractals.

Although the effect was three dimensional, these melting, melding creatures and shapes, kaleidoscopic and ever changing, were seemingly liquid.  My bubble was amazing, so much better than the witch’s crystal I was once tempted to buy in an antique shop.

As time went on, the bubble acted as a magnifying glass and once showed me six fingers on my hand.  Weirdly, the little fingers appeared to be the second and fourth of the six.  It was a ghostly illusion for when I went to touch them, they weren’t there.

Gradually however, the bubble shrunk, until, after about ten days, it disappeared altogether.  Then the world’s actual colours seemed disappointing.  In comparison, reality was flat, dull, harsh and lacking in any subtlety.

© Gill Dunstan

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