Author's bio:
Patryk Rebisz is a writer and filmmaker from Poland, who came to the US in his teens. He studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art, quickly giving up the solitude of the painter's studio for hectic irrationality of the film set. Since then he works in position of director or cinematographer.

His first feature-length documentary "Shoulder the Lion" premiered at Hot Docs winning multiple awards at various prestigious festivals earning acclaims for pushing the visual boundaries by numerous critics.

In his free time he designs camera and lighting accessories to speed up his productions, fixes his vintage 70s car, reads about meaning of life and dwells on how form shapes human perception and how that prism always distorts reality.

He lives with wife and two children in New York City. Birth of the first-born inspired him to write. In his first novel, "Thorns of Immortality," he explores if there is ever a chance to experience the world outside the self, revealing ultimate irrationality of Truth.

Personal statement:
Since I was a little boy, I always questioned if it's possible to think outside of imposed structures of a being. At first the thought was both terrifying and grand in its ambition, can one think outside universe; outside of God? Later, as I grew older, I was still fascinated by this question. On a practical level, I knew that the answer verges on impossibility - whatever it might be, one simply couldn't be sure. That never stopped me from thinking about structures that define immediate reality asking if one can hope, searching for freedom, to at least go beyond something that's tangible - can one surpass the "here and now"? I started to consider more immediate boundaries of being, realizing that for most mortals the grandiose prospect is of no interest as they escape awareness of even the most obvious constraints.

This conclusion depressed, putting my ambition at odds with crowds but also propelling personal research into why this oblivion overtakes their soul. Is there something intrinsic to the human condition that restricts our own potentiality by limiting our perception? I must admit, it wasn't easy to accept those preliminary findings as it further cemented my contempt for the masses. The humanist within, someone who loves the possibility of humanity even if not completely OK with the actuality of where particular individuals were heading, wanted to find a redeeming quality in their approach. Trying to defend this nearsightedness, I kept reaching blind alleys. I fought two battles: trying to respect the masses by finding the causation in their lethargy; but also fantasizing about the crowds striving to better themselves - or at least to notice that possibility. This, of course, introduced a hypocrisy, was I any better than the masses I condemned?

This question lead me on a journey to discover how human thought changed over the centuries, how some ideas flourished at certain times while others not fit the formula of the age, were left to decay on the floor of oblivion. I studied the rebels who miraculously stumbled into general acceptance. All this was done in a context of looking for meaning that surpasses the time one is chained to. Raised with a healthy dose of art history, I kept believing into certain immortality of ideas and searched to confirm this assumption within myself that indeed some concepts matter beyond brevity of one's lifetime. The deeper I dug, the less certain I was. Knowledge was robbing me of stubbornness that produced comfort. That led me to thinkers accepting this fragility of ideas, who against their own secret desire for meaning, embraced frailty of humanity and their potentiality.

Those ideas coincided with my personal journey into darkness. Reaching life's midpoint, I kept finding more and more proof that longing for immortality of ideas is a false religion. Profound depression overtook me that tinted any desire to matter or strive. Torpor set in that went against life. I kept dreaming about personal past, when the world was filled with possibilities that fueled actions. Birth of my first born child both lessened the pain and in some way added salt to the wound. Will my son ever find meaning or is he doomed to lead a similar life of quiet desperation at the hint that nothing matters after all? This book was a search for my own salvation as well as a road map for his journey. Mortality is still a distant abstraction but its clouds loom in the distance. Looking at the peaceful body of my sleeping baby, I searched for sense behind fragility of the body. This lead to strange conclusions where this imperfect vessel of humanity is the very definer of meaning we all search for.

I won't hide that I aimed for the book to matter beyond its text - I wanted to addresses the most profound questions of existence: why do we keep on living and if we can ever dream outside of the universe; why do we dream of immortality and how we relate to the infinity through our death. The story condemns the mass culture's preoccupation with trivial banality that's meant to matter only now as a way of avoiding those big questions. It stabs at the masses by speculating on the political, economic and social structures of the future created by this avoidance. The book conciders needs and desires of beings detached from the constraints of reality - the Others from another universe, contrasting the dreams and desires with those of ours, paralleling the God of our universe with that of theirs.

Though I'm born image-maker, I decided to explore those ideas in words instead. I wanted to escape the imposition of the visual medium, whether painting or film, limiting my expression. In the process, of course I found writing's own barriers. I had to re-learn the craft of projecting images to the readers through words. To help with setting the mood, I needed to see the places and be certain that some of the grand ideas I strove for could exist in actuality - be seen with one's eyes. So for the first time since giving up my original profession of painting, I picked up a pen to draw what the text tried to describe. The images you will find accompanying the text are not illustrations but rather inspirations that helped me steer my search for concreteness of the text.

-- Patryk Rebisz