I have been writing the story of KINO & The Invisible Territories for nearly two decades now. Ever since that vision in the desert has the story been expanding in my mind, gradually unfolding, revealing itself to me with each passing season. Its always with me. I've written it as a book, a play, a monologue, and again last year as a series of 3 books, yet each time didn't feel like the right one. I have plenty of stories in me, and I usually know how to get them out, but this one eluded me, not just because of the scale of the Invisible Territories themselves, but mostly because I feel its not my story, but yours. All of my other stories were out there for me to live for myself, but this one is of another realm than my own. As much as I could feel it existed somewhere, sometime, I didn't know how to make it real, make it my own, until now. Until you would be coming into this world, my first son. You are yet born, but in a couple of months you will be, and in your mother already you are your own person. I know, I could see it in Jane and AliX when they were born, complete. But you, son, I dreamed of you so long ago, that your journey from the imaginary to our world is nearly unfathomable. How could I have imagined you would ever be here. You had to come from somewhere greater than the imagination, but from love. Thank God for your mother. She has saved me in more ways than anyone can ever know. She, an angel herself, is the proof that God exists, yet she may never know of the God I speak. The One that is all things, that makes all things real, even the imaginary. Everything is real, when you believe. So I believe in you, son. I believe in all things, and I use my faith to guide me, to navigate my life towards my visions, my dreams. And so I pictured you out in that desert. I imagined what your life might be like, how you might find happiness in that timelessness place, how you might have even survived out there. I pictured an older man caring for you, making you shelter, planting a tree and watching it grow with you until it bared fruit, right around the time that you could walk, how that tree would become your world, your home. How it created an oasis for you to explore and take in. How it attracted the rare creature, crawling by, alone at first, then with more, as if life was meant for sharing, as if life created life. Even a bird would sometimes fly above until it would find the ease to land on the tree's highest branch, have water from the spring, and even take bite at the tiny crawlies that might dare find it's sight. Even the bird would soon return with another, and that is how KINO began to want for more, for connection, to know of another like he. His own reflection in the spring would sometimes render a vision of someone other, foreign, but familiar. Someone to complete him. Was he truly alone in this world? Was there no one but him? Even his memories of his caregiver had faded then, and he knew of nothing more than of the tree, and the garden that had grown around it, and the immensity of the desert that cradled him into eternity. At night he would be out under the brightness of the stars. Their light shine down upon him, and he would dream of worlds beyond his own, of lives eternal and ever looping for him to live again and again. Stories, his own, of adventure, yes, but of love especially, of finding others and communing with them. It all seemed possible, out there, like it was happening somewhere he might someday be. He dreamed of it, of those lives, and would let his gaze fall from the sky to graze the horizon. A line of light could sometimes be seen across the dunes, on the brightest of nights when the moon would be full. And he could perceive a kind of shimmer that would sing to him, beckon him towards his longing. He would stare at the lines shimmering across the dunes and as he leaned into them could almost hear it, like a song that may have been growing from inside of him. How else could it be real? And before he could realize it, he had been walking towards the shinning horizon for longer than he could remember, like a sleepwalker following the music in his head. But he was not sleeping, yet he could not stop, for the further he walked the better he heard it, like vibrations upon vibrations dancing with each other, a singing stream of light. Alas, he could feel it coming through him, as if the entire desert was now moving to the song, waves of time that KINO was soon running through, reaching for, up and up another dune before it would subside from under him, up high now, until he could finally see. There it was, as if feeding the light of the stars, a city of light spread across the landscape. Was he dreaming? Could this be real? His feet kept bringing him forward, down the dunes now until he could perceive it ever more. Its kaleidoscopic spectrum drawing the horizon shone up. It occurred to KINO then that this must be the source of the stars, the place of his dreams. And so he walked forward still, until he would finally reach it, the light. It wasn't much louder, once close, but it was more real now, and the light came from below, like the glimmer of the sand, each a tiny line of light shinning up into the twilight. He lifted his hand to touch it as if he might be able to feel it, but it simply shinned upon and through him, as if he was not there at all, as if he had no shadow, as if he was a ghost. He stepped forward still and through, until all he was too was the light, the sound, and the stars. Night had turned to dawn, and dawn would turn to day, and nore KINO or The Invisible Territories were still there. All that there was then was sand, sun, and sky.
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