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The Boy in The Room
The Boy in The Room
A Story About Truth, Companionship, and The Stories We Tell Ourselves
A. 'Yobi' Blumberg, YobiWorks Studios
A. 'Yobi' Blumberg, YobiWorks Studios
Jun 15 · 11 min read
Ever find yourself right where you want to be, yet something nags the back of your mind, some dissatisfaction registered with the way things are?
Being the perfectly unique and awesome YOU, that you are, you decided to do something about it, then dove in, preconceived notions ready in hand to smooth over any unexpected rough spots that may occur in your brilliantly thought out plan!
There is a saying in the service, “No plan survives implementation.”
Those of you who may have planned on one wedding later in your life who now find yourselves contemplating your third (ex). Perhaps 3 months into dating a girl, y’all have a casual conversation about whether or not both of you agree to seriously consider having a child together at some pre-determined, and obvious place in life, only to turn up pregnant 2 weeks later?
You may be fifteen years into a commitment of any kind, and are saying to yourself, “Well, I enjoy it, and I am really good at it, but I don’t love it.”
No matter the situation, many of us will, at some point, find we have committed ourselves to something without fully considering the ramifications of partnering with something or someone that is out of your actual control.
The Boy in The Room posits a Virtual Room where anything you could ever want is at your fingertips, except a friend. Join The Boy as he searches for companionship, finds a commitment he wasn’t expecting, and is faced with a choice he didn’t prepare to make.
____________________________
The Boy in The Room
There was a Boy, who lived in a room, but it was not like any other room you might think of.
In this room, the ceiling was the stars in the sky. All the Boy had to do to see any of them was to look up at the ceiling, then spread his hands slowly apart to zoom in on any one he wanted to examine. He could get close to and even explore any of the planets that orbited any star, traveling through the infinite galaxies that were available to see
The walls in The Room were like travel channel jumbo virtual screens, where, with likewise hand and arm gestures, he could conjure up any landscape or time his imagination could construct.
In The Room, all the boy had to do was utter a word to be swept away where he could swing playfully with mighty Gorggifferens, or explore subterranean depths with lithely Serpintiens as they tunneled through concocted soils of fertile imaginations, or ride gigantic, roaring Tzarias soaring among endless multicolored horizons! Indeed, the Boy could discover entire stretches of fun-filled, fascinating days without end!
Yes, his creations entertained the Boy immensely. In fact, he loved all his creations! Like nothing else, he loved TO create, to experience what he made.
In the middle of The Room, there was an interactive “thing” resembling a small fruiting tree of sorts, that could impart knowledge of what was needed so that he had access to whatever it was he might want to know how to do. All that was necessary was to enjoy ingesting the desired instructions as they came encoded in the form of a fruit that the boy could eat
Anything he wished for at all was his to create, explore, or enliven existence. Yet, despite having all that he could imagine, on top of all the wonders that were his at any moment of every day, what he longed for the most was something he had never had.
The Boy had always existed in this Room, from the first moment he ever opened his eyes within it. What he truly desired was something like himself to share existence with. Something, no someone, that would have their own agency, being, and creative experience. Someone to share with, be with, and who might see the boy in a way his other creations could not.
The Boy knew that suddenly appearing in a room, without explanation, experience, or introduction might be extremely disorienting — frightening even- at least it seemed that way to the Boy when he imagined something of the sort happening to himself.
So, he determined to make this other being with just a bit less knowledge than the Boy already had. In this way, he could make sure his soon-to-be companion adjusted well to the new experience of existence within The Room. When the time was right, he would tell his companion all about the instructional tree fruiting thing, how to work it and such, and then they could REALLY create some fun stuff together!
What could go awry? He had figured out The Room on his own, and this other would have the Boy to teach him. Certainly, to ensure it all worked out, he must be sure to be the unconditional embodiment of Love: love, with a healthy dose of the curiosity that was the marrow of his own being to begin with, guiding and keeping him safe while he Was. He would be what brought him joy to this new one, so that what difference of knowledge in the other there would be could be eventually leveled with his own, through careful instruction in Truth
That is, if he were to properly show this one, what a full-on equal companion that he hoped for could be!
“Alright, here goes!”, he said aloud, and ate some of the fruit with his heart full of love, “No,” he thought, “I must BE Love!” as he swallowed.
Closing his eyes, he began by concentrating on what an image of himself reflected, then bit by bit, meticulously, he willed each part from image to being. In a sense he became the image, then released his thoughts from The Other, and in being, The Other now had his own mind, heart, and humor.
Before the Boy registered the passage of time again, another was already regarding him curiously.
“Hi!”, he said.
The Other stared at him, eyes wide.
“Um, hello?”
“HELLOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!” The Other shouted, then leapt to his feet and started to joyfully explore every single nook, corner, and cranny of the room!
The Boy, surprised, rushed after The Other, talking animatedly offering proper welcome and what-nots, barely keeping up, so that he didn’t register that The Other had stopped right in front of the Boy, who bumped into him with a startled “Oh!”
“I- “, The Other arrested what the Boy was about to say with a long, deep searching through the portal of his eyes. Standing as still as a fawluer, a bird of prey on some distant planet, listening on a cliffs edge, the Boy gazed, unashamed, back into The Other’s questing gaze.
“You know what I see in your eyes?” The Other asked with his voice rising slightly at the end.
“Tell me!” said the Boy.
The Other’s face slowly lifted at the edges of his mouth, mischievously, satisfied, it would seem. “Me!”
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, gathered the Boy up in an all-encompassing hug, actually lifting the Boy from his footing and squeezing significantly, but not painfully, before setting him back down and continuing to hug the Boy for a long minute, waiting for the Boy to return Other’s embrace. When, slowly, haltingly, he did, all fell silent in existence except for the immediacy of their shared discovery of companionship.
Other ducked suddenly out of the Boy’s hold, twisting away back to the walls and calling up his own views of many, many things as he continued his exploration of the room.
Realizing he was still standing where they had embraced, the Boy looked around The Room quickly, then returned his attention to Other, still in the afterglow of their earlier moment, not quiet registering that Other was already on top of the Tree of Knowledge, taking bites out of the fruit “willy nilly”!
The Boy gasped in surprise.
Other stopped midway through his second fruit, having devoured a first fruit already. The Boy looked on appalled, as joy drained from Others’ face like sand swiftly flowing from a broken glass ball.
Knowledge surpasses understanding…
Other’s eyes glazed over in pained confusion. Looking directly at the Boy, a horrifying, unreadable pleading twist on his face, he said, “I am too mean, dirty, and ugly to be in a place like this”. He looked down, then cried, “And I am BARE!”
In a sort of desperation, Other began to look at the ceiling, then the walls, except differently than before, and gesturing like the Boy often did.
Had he-, the Boy’s thought was interrupted.
Other conjured up a dark and dismal cave. In that cave the mirror image of Other appeared, which wasn’t unusual, but- but Other’s image looked confused, skittish, and covered in something, a,…leaves! Other’s image was covered in leaves and branches torn from plants.
They were jammed together by twisting, interwoven limbs, which had gouged Other’s skin, er-the image of Other’s skin, and there was, ..oh, why?
Reflections, illustration by A. Yobi Blumberg with Adobe Fresco
There were several deep scratches, bleeding, and oozing. Other looked hungry, ravenous. What could not be missed was how wrong this was. With Other’s emotions shifting rapidly through him, but registering on the avatar’s face, Other looked, well, more than “out of sorts”,
Other “sat” in a collapse, then stopped speaking. More precisely, he stopped speaking, here, in The Room. Instead this imagined self-image was the only speaking, moving part of Other since piling himself in situ.
Other sits in a “blinding corner”
Other sitting in a “blinding corner” of knowledge, illustration by A.Yobi B.
Soon the Boy understood that Other would not respond here in any way whatsoever, yet spoke in the created existence, as if he were IN the images he was creating. As if Other was somehow, now, the story he seemed to be telling himself.
The Boy was beside himself with concern. Seeming ages creaked by, with Other immobile here, while living all kinds of frightful, violent, and scared lives through the mirror image projected into this created existence outside of The Room they were both actually in.
The Boy didn’t know what else to do. So he continued to BE LOVE to Other. An unjustified hope was all that the Boy could cling to. That, eventually, Other might remember The Room, where he first was. Perhaps remember where he is now and come back to the Boy to release his anxiety ridden reality. It was as though Other had severed himself from where he rightly was permanently.
What had he experienced in his mind? What made him choose to project himself somewhere so bleak and uncertain. Would he return? What would Other come back to? What would he come back for? How would he come back? How could he?
The Boy sat in frustrated thoughts for many long moments. At times seeing where Other was in his imaginations, often turning away from what he could not “unsee”.
He recalled for another time, how, when the — ;
The Boy suddenly froze. Like sun dawning across a barren arctic landscape, dawning understanding shivered the Boy into an idea.
“THAT’S IT!” the Boy cried out; relief clear in his voice.
All Other boy should have to do, was to get to a point of accepting himself, and his surroundings, so that his focus relaxed into a more broad, less “engaged” with every detail before him. Once he began to accept the necessity of embracing the unknown and known, of not attempting to erase all uncertainty altogether, there would be an opportunity.
Other might sense that there was something he knew instinctively, however, he might never understand what that might mean to him subjectively in his conscious mind, since he had a little less knowledge than the Boy. So while the Truth of his “situation” might begin to tickle the periphery of his awareness, if “it” stayed within perception, there was a chance he could begin to sense The Room again, instead of the things he was he believed he experienced through the shadows of his understanding.
Other would need an anchor: he would need to sense the Boy for it to have any means of success. The Boy’s presence would feel familiar, Other would only be able to find the path needed through the Boy’s Love for him. That intention is what kept The Room able to expand into all that Was. Other’s slim chance, if he were ever again to accept himself, was to accept without full conscious focus, that everything simply is, entering a “flow state”, that would chip away at the “scales” covering Other’s senses, to dissipate the illusions somewhat. It could be enough for the merest hint of The Room. If the Boy were ready, then that is all Other might need to “snap back”, to be with him again.
“Alright then! I will be unconditional Love for you until you begin to accept your existence, can begin to accept the truth of it, and Love is unmistakable to sense, so that is what I will do!”
Then the Boy sat next to Other, wrapping his arm around him, and said, “As long as it takes, I will be here with you. Waiting. Encouraging. Cheering you on! I will anchor you here, and once you accept the Truth, then you will begin to See again. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
The Boy squeezed Other, then settled in to watch the mirror image of Other as he struggled to figure his existence out, shying always away from and around the crossing of what, most likely, seemed a vast, dark, and final unknowing between the Others’ shadow life and the reality of The Room where the Other sat next to the Boy, enveloped and enveloping him in Love.
The End.
Next, “Bovine Bob Finally Finds His Voice”, will be released soon with audio narration. In this story we explore the challenges of Bovine Bob knowing something important and trying to share it with others only to discover that no one believes him. What will he do with the knowledge?
Feel free to leave comments or feedback. Thank you!
Respectfully,
Adrian ‘Yobi’ Blumberg
Pilgrim | Trail Finder |
VP with San Leandro Arts Association | LinkedIn | Patreon |
Quora | Medium | YouTube | Podcaster | Live caster | Artist | Instagram |
© YobiWorks Studios
A Story About Truth, Companionship, and The Stories We Tell Ourselves
A. 'Yobi' Blumberg, YobiWorks Studios
A. 'Yobi' Blumberg, YobiWorks Studios
Jun 15 · 11 min read
Ever find yourself right where you want to be, yet something nags the back of your mind, some dissatisfaction registered with the way things are?
Being the perfectly unique and awesome YOU, that you are, you decided to do something about it, then dove in, preconceived notions ready in hand to smooth over any unexpected rough spots that may occur in your brilliantly thought out plan!
There is a saying in the service, “No plan survives implementation.”
Those of you who may have planned on one wedding later in your life who now find yourselves contemplating your third (ex). Perhaps 3 months into dating a girl, y’all have a casual conversation about whether or not both of you agree to seriously consider having a child together at some pre-determined, and obvious place in life, only to turn up pregnant 2 weeks later?
You may be fifteen years into a commitment of any kind, and are saying to yourself, “Well, I enjoy it, and I am really good at it, but I don’t love it.”
No matter the situation, many of us will, at some point, find we have committed ourselves to something without fully considering the ramifications of partnering with something or someone that is out of your actual control.
The Boy in The Room posits a Virtual Room where anything you could ever want is at your fingertips, except a friend. Join The Boy as he searches for companionship, finds a commitment he wasn’t expecting, and is faced with a choice he didn’t prepare to make.
____________________________
The Boy in The Room
There was a Boy, who lived in a room, but it was not like any other room you might think of.
In this room, the ceiling was the stars in the sky. All the Boy had to do to see any of them was to look up at the ceiling, then spread his hands slowly apart to zoom in on any one he wanted to examine. He could get close to and even explore any of the planets that orbited any star, traveling through the infinite galaxies that were available to see
The walls in The Room were like travel channel jumbo virtual screens, where, with likewise hand and arm gestures, he could conjure up any landscape or time his imagination could construct.
In The Room, all the boy had to do was utter a word to be swept away where he could swing playfully with mighty Gorggifferens, or explore subterranean depths with lithely Serpintiens as they tunneled through concocted soils of fertile imaginations, or ride gigantic, roaring Tzarias soaring among endless multicolored horizons! Indeed, the Boy could discover entire stretches of fun-filled, fascinating days without end!
Yes, his creations entertained the Boy immensely. In fact, he loved all his creations! Like nothing else, he loved TO create, to experience what he made.
In the middle of The Room, there was an interactive “thing” resembling a small fruiting tree of sorts, that could impart knowledge of what was needed so that he had access to whatever it was he might want to know how to do. All that was necessary was to enjoy ingesting the desired instructions as they came encoded in the form of a fruit that the boy could eat
Anything he wished for at all was his to create, explore, or enliven existence. Yet, despite having all that he could imagine, on top of all the wonders that were his at any moment of every day, what he longed for the most was something he had never had.
The Boy had always existed in this Room, from the first moment he ever opened his eyes within it. What he truly desired was something like himself to share existence with. Something, no someone, that would have their own agency, being, and creative experience. Someone to share with, be with, and who might see the boy in a way his other creations could not.
The Boy knew that suddenly appearing in a room, without explanation, experience, or introduction might be extremely disorienting — frightening even- at least it seemed that way to the Boy when he imagined something of the sort happening to himself.
So, he determined to make this other being with just a bit less knowledge than the Boy already had. In this way, he could make sure his soon-to-be companion adjusted well to the new experience of existence within The Room. When the time was right, he would tell his companion all about the instructional tree fruiting thing, how to work it and such, and then they could REALLY create some fun stuff together!
What could go awry? He had figured out The Room on his own, and this other would have the Boy to teach him. Certainly, to ensure it all worked out, he must be sure to be the unconditional embodiment of Love: love, with a healthy dose of the curiosity that was the marrow of his own being to begin with, guiding and keeping him safe while he Was. He would be what brought him joy to this new one, so that what difference of knowledge in the other there would be could be eventually leveled with his own, through careful instruction in Truth
That is, if he were to properly show this one, what a full-on equal companion that he hoped for could be!
“Alright, here goes!”, he said aloud, and ate some of the fruit with his heart full of love, “No,” he thought, “I must BE Love!” as he swallowed.
Closing his eyes, he began by concentrating on what an image of himself reflected, then bit by bit, meticulously, he willed each part from image to being. In a sense he became the image, then released his thoughts from The Other, and in being, The Other now had his own mind, heart, and humor.
Before the Boy registered the passage of time again, another was already regarding him curiously.
“Hi!”, he said.
The Other stared at him, eyes wide.
“Um, hello?”
“HELLOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!” The Other shouted, then leapt to his feet and started to joyfully explore every single nook, corner, and cranny of the room!
The Boy, surprised, rushed after The Other, talking animatedly offering proper welcome and what-nots, barely keeping up, so that he didn’t register that The Other had stopped right in front of the Boy, who bumped into him with a startled “Oh!”
“I- “, The Other arrested what the Boy was about to say with a long, deep searching through the portal of his eyes. Standing as still as a fawluer, a bird of prey on some distant planet, listening on a cliffs edge, the Boy gazed, unashamed, back into The Other’s questing gaze.
“You know what I see in your eyes?” The Other asked with his voice rising slightly at the end.
“Tell me!” said the Boy.
The Other’s face slowly lifted at the edges of his mouth, mischievously, satisfied, it would seem. “Me!”
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, gathered the Boy up in an all-encompassing hug, actually lifting the Boy from his footing and squeezing significantly, but not painfully, before setting him back down and continuing to hug the Boy for a long minute, waiting for the Boy to return Other’s embrace. When, slowly, haltingly, he did, all fell silent in existence except for the immediacy of their shared discovery of companionship.
Other ducked suddenly out of the Boy’s hold, twisting away back to the walls and calling up his own views of many, many things as he continued his exploration of the room.
Realizing he was still standing where they had embraced, the Boy looked around The Room quickly, then returned his attention to Other, still in the afterglow of their earlier moment, not quiet registering that Other was already on top of the Tree of Knowledge, taking bites out of the fruit “willy nilly”!
The Boy gasped in surprise.
Other stopped midway through his second fruit, having devoured a first fruit already. The Boy looked on appalled, as joy drained from Others’ face like sand swiftly flowing from a broken glass ball.
Knowledge surpasses understanding…
Other’s eyes glazed over in pained confusion. Looking directly at the Boy, a horrifying, unreadable pleading twist on his face, he said, “I am too mean, dirty, and ugly to be in a place like this”. He looked down, then cried, “And I am BARE!”
In a sort of desperation, Other began to look at the ceiling, then the walls, except differently than before, and gesturing like the Boy often did.
Had he-, the Boy’s thought was interrupted.
Other conjured up a dark and dismal cave. In that cave the mirror image of Other appeared, which wasn’t unusual, but- but Other’s image looked confused, skittish, and covered in something, a,…leaves! Other’s image was covered in leaves and branches torn from plants.
They were jammed together by twisting, interwoven limbs, which had gouged Other’s skin, er-the image of Other’s skin, and there was, ..oh, why?
Reflections, illustration by A. Yobi Blumberg with Adobe Fresco
There were several deep scratches, bleeding, and oozing. Other looked hungry, ravenous. What could not be missed was how wrong this was. With Other’s emotions shifting rapidly through him, but registering on the avatar’s face, Other looked, well, more than “out of sorts”,
Other “sat” in a collapse, then stopped speaking. More precisely, he stopped speaking, here, in The Room. Instead this imagined self-image was the only speaking, moving part of Other since piling himself in situ.
Other sits in a “blinding corner”
Other sitting in a “blinding corner” of knowledge, illustration by A.Yobi B.
Soon the Boy understood that Other would not respond here in any way whatsoever, yet spoke in the created existence, as if he were IN the images he was creating. As if Other was somehow, now, the story he seemed to be telling himself.
The Boy was beside himself with concern. Seeming ages creaked by, with Other immobile here, while living all kinds of frightful, violent, and scared lives through the mirror image projected into this created existence outside of The Room they were both actually in.
The Boy didn’t know what else to do. So he continued to BE LOVE to Other. An unjustified hope was all that the Boy could cling to. That, eventually, Other might remember The Room, where he first was. Perhaps remember where he is now and come back to the Boy to release his anxiety ridden reality. It was as though Other had severed himself from where he rightly was permanently.
What had he experienced in his mind? What made him choose to project himself somewhere so bleak and uncertain. Would he return? What would Other come back to? What would he come back for? How would he come back? How could he?
The Boy sat in frustrated thoughts for many long moments. At times seeing where Other was in his imaginations, often turning away from what he could not “unsee”.
He recalled for another time, how, when the — ;
The Boy suddenly froze. Like sun dawning across a barren arctic landscape, dawning understanding shivered the Boy into an idea.
“THAT’S IT!” the Boy cried out; relief clear in his voice.
All Other boy should have to do, was to get to a point of accepting himself, and his surroundings, so that his focus relaxed into a more broad, less “engaged” with every detail before him. Once he began to accept the necessity of embracing the unknown and known, of not attempting to erase all uncertainty altogether, there would be an opportunity.
Other might sense that there was something he knew instinctively, however, he might never understand what that might mean to him subjectively in his conscious mind, since he had a little less knowledge than the Boy. So while the Truth of his “situation” might begin to tickle the periphery of his awareness, if “it” stayed within perception, there was a chance he could begin to sense The Room again, instead of the things he was he believed he experienced through the shadows of his understanding.
Other would need an anchor: he would need to sense the Boy for it to have any means of success. The Boy’s presence would feel familiar, Other would only be able to find the path needed through the Boy’s Love for him. That intention is what kept The Room able to expand into all that Was. Other’s slim chance, if he were ever again to accept himself, was to accept without full conscious focus, that everything simply is, entering a “flow state”, that would chip away at the “scales” covering Other’s senses, to dissipate the illusions somewhat. It could be enough for the merest hint of The Room. If the Boy were ready, then that is all Other might need to “snap back”, to be with him again.
“Alright then! I will be unconditional Love for you until you begin to accept your existence, can begin to accept the truth of it, and Love is unmistakable to sense, so that is what I will do!”
Then the Boy sat next to Other, wrapping his arm around him, and said, “As long as it takes, I will be here with you. Waiting. Encouraging. Cheering you on! I will anchor you here, and once you accept the Truth, then you will begin to See again. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
The Boy squeezed Other, then settled in to watch the mirror image of Other as he struggled to figure his existence out, shying always away from and around the crossing of what, most likely, seemed a vast, dark, and final unknowing between the Others’ shadow life and the reality of The Room where the Other sat next to the Boy, enveloped and enveloping him in Love.
The End.
Next, “Bovine Bob Finally Finds His Voice”, will be released soon with audio narration. In this story we explore the challenges of Bovine Bob knowing something important and trying to share it with others only to discover that no one believes him. What will he do with the knowledge?
Feel free to leave comments or feedback. Thank you!
Respectfully,
Adrian ‘Yobi’ Blumberg
Pilgrim | Trail Finder |
VP with San Leandro Arts Association | LinkedIn | Patreon |
Quora | Medium | YouTube | Podcaster | Live caster | Artist | Instagram |
© YobiWorks Studios
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