A certain sort of something, that feels like a fairytale.

On a morning of little consequence, a young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart was walking through the wind and the grass.

Some would say that he was hopelessly lost; but others might politely suggest that for one to be lost, they must surely know where they had been going in the first place. And so it was, with no destination, the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart strode on. And on. Alone through the twirling wind and the whipping grass, alone on a path that wasn’t much of a path at all.

But winds change, as winds are wont to do; and as the young man walked, the wind turned chill before beginning to howl like a young wolf on the night when it first discovered the moon. Even so, he strode on. And so it was that the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart came upon a proper path.

Well-tread, beaten through the tallest grass; it was formed of sandy brown gravel, circular stones that seemed far too perfect to have been formed in nature. But they were.

At the head of the path, a grizzled fellow with the face of a deflated toad sat alone, tossing bits of gravel into his mouth and listening to the nightmarish sounds they made against the mortar and pestle of his teeth. When he saw the young man, he spat out a feast of chewed-up stones and grinned.

“Howdy hello,” said the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart.

“Salutations.”

The young man had not been prepared. No man, no man could have been; for what came from the vocal chords of that speckled little creature that looked as if he’d been flaked off a taller man’s back, what emanated from the deepest depths of that squat-spud’s throat, was the purest, most melodic trill of a voice that one could ever hope to hear. It was a voice that could send a shiver up the spine of a morning. And so it was, that the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart fell to his knees and vomited tears.

“Er…” said the Toad-faced man.

Eventually, the young man managed to gather his composure amidst the wailing winds, and this time managed to brace himself when he saw the other about to speak.

“You seem a stout chap,” said Toad-face, with the raw power of a thousand arpeggios.

“Aye sir,” said the young man, as he kept his knees from buckling, “Aye sir! I sir, am indeed stout of person -- after all, I’m a young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart.”

The Toad-faced man’s head tilted, as if he were looking for the core of a puzzle box.

“That may be, that may very well be…” the squat-spud Toad-face said sympathetically, symphonically, “But this path ahead, this trodden-spot of sandy-stone…this path belongs to me, young lad. I have little to call my own, but I do, I do have music -- and it turn, I have the path. And in turn, you should turn away.”

Despite the strength of the path keeper’s voice, despite the range of its influence, something began then to rumble inside the young man. The warm air in his lungs began to turn and churn and yearn like a gale, and the firm valves on his heart began to shake and quake and ache like the gaskets of a steam engine. He was angry.
He really, truly was.

“What do you mean?” said the young man, with all the force he could muster.

“I mean nothing,” serenaded the Toad-face, “nothing which is meant as an offense.
“But the path ahead is not one for you, even if you’re boisterous, even if you’re blessed, even if you’re brave -- the path ahead is for those who have music. For those who have suffered to find their voices, who have suffered through the voice itself; for those who have taken the time to sing.”

As this opera came to a close, the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart suddenly found that he could not help himself. He was angry.
He really, truly was.

The warm air in his lungs grew hot enough to boil his blood, and the blood then surged through the firm valves on his heart, sending the young man forward as if he were an engine, a gnashing, burning, hellish engine that charged toward to the Toad-faced man with a singular sense of purpose. The young man grabbed a fistful of the immaculate gravel and rammed it down the squat-spud ugly fellow’s sonorous throat, which caused him to choke and sputter and fall to his warty knees; what remained of his beautiful tones were all but lost in the howling of the first-moon winds. And so it was, that the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart set forward on the path, finally having someplace to go. And so it was, that the young man found himself hopelessly lost.

For the path was long.

So, so long.

Long, and cold, and winding, and dark.

For even with the warm air in his lungs forcing back the frost during the endless nights, even with the firm valves on his heart keeping him always moving, always forward, charging down the countless turns on the sandy-brown path; even with all the efforts of his breath and blood, the young man still had no harmony.

He couldn’t sing his way through sorrow, couldn’t see his way with sound. The young man with warm air and firm valves had no music. And so it was, that the young man grew old.

The warm air in his lungs had long-since cooled.
The firm valves on his heart had worn themselves down.
Still on that path, with that wind howling ever louder,
Still on that path, with that grass growing ever taller.
Still on that, on that…that same sandy-brown gravel.
Still lost.

Until another morning, still one of seemingly little consequence.
The old man had lungs with no air; the old man had a broken down heart.
And so it was, that he could go no further.

He fell. With the wind spinning around him, sending up clouds of dust from the unknown recesses of the tall grass, he fell to his knees. His hands hit the gravel; the stones were surprisingly warm between his fingers. The old man shuddered. Despite the wind, he could hear the sound of his bones. And then, as if it had nothing left, his body fell. Face first. Into the smooth, warm stones.

Which is when it happened, of course.

The last of his breath -- the last, tiniest, hidden puff of air was pushed out from the depths of his lungs. Alongside that, there occurred the last, the last, the last, shakiest, involuntary flutter of his heart. And so it was that the old man, in his last moment, whistled a pure, revelatory note.

The note sang above the scream of the wind; the note tore through the density of the grass. The note spun up, around, and down, forcing everything that stood to lie flat as if in deference, forcing all that were alive to weep as if in shame. It forced the sky to blanche.

The old man was dead. But even so…he might have heard his music.
It was far too far from being lost.
It was nothing but beautiful.

A man adrift in a metaphorical sea; A Moon proves himself to be decent, while still being an asshole; A Triage.

*

Part The 1st:

Looking up, he sees an expanse akin to the face of revelation.
Bright and shining, cold and alive. He thinks that he might look down, look away; perhaps toward his own chest, so that he might watch as it bobs up and down beneath the surface of warm, salty water. If he were to look hard enough, he thinks, he might even see how fast his heart is beating; the way it sends a driving tremor up through the surface of his skin, making a tiny, precious ripple in the sea. But he won’t look. He can’t.
He knows it, too.

There are stars above his head. More than he had ever known with his dullard eyes, taking command of the world there-was-to-know by way of white fires in the sky and blurry doppelgängers in the reflective surface of the gently swaying water. The darkness is here, but the light is all around. He thinks it’s peaceful. It barely moves.
He thinks it’s frightening. It is lonely and devastating.
He thinks it’s quiet. It is.
Oh, it is.

He closes his eyes and tries to listen. There is little wind, right now, and the sounds of the waves are negligible at best. He wishes that they would come down hard, that they would crash around him as if he were the screaming heart of a gale -- he wishes that this was not this place. He wishes that there were motion, right here, right now. He wishes there were things to see. There are, of course. But he wishes nonetheless.

He opens his eyes once more, and looks around. Looking up, he considers those stars again, the way they have meaning in their meaningless fashion. He wishes he could be calm, he wishes many, many, many things. The man pushes his head beneath the surface, and listens to the echo of the sea.


Curtains fall across the scene.

*
*

SCENE TWO.

(There is NOTHING here. Nothing at all. A man, a FELLOW is sitting there in the harsh spot of the single light. As he sits there, he looks up…he looks…he looks up. And then, as if it were natural -- because it is natural -- THE MOON descends from the sky and sits down next to him, glowing with luminous sadness. The fellow turns and gives the moon the slightest of non-committal nods.)

THE FELLOW: Well then.

THE MOON: I suppose so.

THE FELLOW: Is there anything that might be done?

THE MOON: I suppose so.

(He looks over in an irritated fashion, as it would appear that the moon is kind of an asshole. Naturally.)

THE FELLOW: You’re kind of an asshole.

THE MOON: Naturally.

(The moon pulls some beef jerky out of the depths of one of his moon-pockets, and begins to gnaw on it as if he were trying to chew on the cow while it was still wrapped in the hide.

He offers some to the fellow, who DECLINES. Naturally.
The moon shrugs, and throws the remainder of the jerky towards the audience, where it misses all who are seated, instead landing with an audibly wet PLOP in a warm sea. The sea may or may not be surrounded by an uncanny field of stars.)

THE MOON: This is foolishness, you realize.

THE FELLOW: That much I can work out, yes.

THE MOON: I could ask you why, but that would make me the fool as well.

THE FELLOW: You’re not wrong.

THE MOON: I never am.

THE FELLOW: How arrogant.

THE MOON: Naturally. Comes with the territory.

THE FELLOW: Oh?

THE MOON: Such is the way of the boundless sky.

THE FELLOW: Oh.

(Beat.)

THE FELLOW: Is there anything to do?

THE MOON: Not that you could manage, no. After all, there is no actual situation -- no actual problem, no actual trouble. No actual earth-shattering revelation. You and I are sitting here on a pleasant evening, looking out over faces who will never be real, but will always be beautiful.

(The moon gestures outward, sending his own light out against the pressure of the spot-light shine. The light suddenly shorts and bursts, sending the lighting technician diving away, shielding his face from the sparks. The technician’s name is Allen, and you would think him a pleasant enough guy were you to meet him. But you won’t. He’s a lovely man, but this isn’t his. Even if it would be more interesting that way.

The only light is that which the moon provides. His glow is what remains.)

THE MOON: It’s nice, you know. And you’re tired.

THE FELLOW: I am.

THE MOON: You are.

THE FELLOW: Is there anything for it?

THE MOON: Sleep, you dullard.

THE FELLOW: Other than that.

THE MOON: No.

THE FELLOW: It’s just…

THE MOON: No.

THE FELLOW: It’s just that…

THE MOON: No.

THE FELLOW: It’s just that I cannot find a way to abide this. This. This looking up and out and around. Constant vigilance is no way to manage living, especially if there is nothing out there that I might see. Looking towards the uncertainty, staring at it, hoping…hoping that it might collapse into a singularity, if only because that crushing nothing is at least a something.

THE MOON: A black hole is nothing luminous, chap.

THE FELLOW: Not remotely, no.

(He looks down, towards his chest.)

THE FELLOW: But it moves you. It gets you moving.

(The moon sighs, and the force of it is uncanny. Everyone in the audience finds themselves trembling at their very core, as if their nerves were suddenly twisting and writhing like the desperate, frenzied dance of a man set ablaze.

The moon does not reach out, does not try to pat the fellow atop his head.
But that’s alright.)

THE MOON: A body doesn’t stop moving. Not til the end, anyway.

THE FELLOW: But…where’s it going to go?

THE MOON: Somewhere, fellow. There’s nothing more than that.

(They sit there, together. Alone.)

*
*
*

Where I am right now, is a great many places. I’m in my old coffee shop once again, looking over at some unknown who is staring down The Pickwick Papers with an intensity that suggests it troubles him, as his hand grasps his coffee cup and occasionally trembles. There are new paintings on the inside, and out there you can see a fire truck funeral, lorded over by a man in full-Scottish regalia playing the bag’d pipes. It’s a day.

But there are other places, underneath the underneath. Places of wondering, places of question, places of past. Places of inquisition, places of stress, places of unknowing. Places of ticking clocks and pleasant eyes. The places we consider, again and again.
Past and Present and Yet To Come.

There’s a lot to say, you know. About these things, these places, these worries and considerations. About what it means to me, and to the lot of us. About what really constitutes a moment, and what is simply the ephemera that sparkles us towards giddiness without granting us any truth. About the differences. About what we know.
But then again…

There’s something to be said for letting them lie.
Here I am, I think. In the quibbling, maddening, silly places, the wondering bothering irritating place. One finds this place via caustic inertia, the kind that begins in neurotic nervousness, the kind that only ceases when all comes crumbling down. And that...that is no way to move, not towards a place of worth and mirth and gently endearing calls, not the world of hearts and heads and fluctuating voices. That's not how to live, jolly chaps. Constant vigilance is only going to make you weary. So. Hm.

So, yeah.

So stop.
Right now.

Right?

A meandering melancholy.

“You wake up in the morning feeling gloriously alive, with the firm conviction that the problems that’d disturbed you in the past would disappear, disappear, disappear into the midnight of your consciousness.”


Even though I cannot see it, I know that it’s nearby; I lower my skull underneath the intensity of the showerhead, and suddenly, sharply, vehemently, beautifully; I catch traces outside the opacity of the glass, like Hitchcock-flickers that cease to be faster than they ever actually existed.

Even though I cannot touch it, I know that I believe it’s here; I close my eyes and sweat in darkness, intensity doubled by the weight of the summer night, and think, and think, and wait, and think, and get somewhere, somewhere that’s gone the second I open my eyes, the second I move and let a trace of cool air stream-slip over my trembling person.

Even though I cannot know it, I…well. Well.
Even though I cannot feel it, I know -- I know.

I know it’s been about this place for something resembling an age. It has to have been, right up to right now, sweating once again, but with open eyes and willing ears that are picking up the traces of the neighbors that I don’t really care to know, while still paying more attention to the light cast from this busted behemoth that sits on my lap, as it plays songs that endear themselves to me by the strength of their trills on the harmonica. These days, this thing runs pretty hot. It’s a wonder that it hasn’t run itself down. That it stays alive, throughout everything. But then again…we were focusing on something else. But it’s hard to stay with, I think.

I want to remember the quiet times.

When it was morning, when I could look out the window and see the mostly-empty parking lot, no signs of life beyond my own breath on the glass; when I could look about with a grin that might be described as impish, and run, run full-tilt boogie down and around the narrow hallways and open corridors, hearing nothing beyond the roar of caged air turning to wind; being overwhelmed by the way it found freedom around my ears. When I would listen to that, and stop, and think about how it sounded like the inside of a seashell. But all around. Like it was everything. Like it was the sound of my own blood.

That doesn’t change anything. But it seems like something I should note.

I’ve been someplace. For a while. The kind of while that seems almost unheard of, given the state of averages in regards to the business that I’m in. People in my line float about, like dandelions blown off the stalk by a pudge-faced six year old boy, only to get snuffed up by a passing adult in a business suit. It’s not a fool-proof system, and it doesn’t take long for such things to run their course.

Usually.

Hard to trace, something like that. Hard to trace, and harder still to remember. Because something like this, something that lays deep and quivers like a creature in a the solitude of a burrow; such a thing stays there, cold and alive, away from the injustice of open eyes. Unseen, but still living. Still there.

I’m losing the trail. Of the thing that’s been there. Of these words.
You know how it is. Out there, you…you. You know what it is, to be looking at yourself, looking down at a path that you’ve carved in the depth of your chest, so that you might twist your legs up and around, bending your body into something unheard of; ghastly contortions that make use of all the pain brought on by the collision of the calcium pale and the viscera glow, using the clarity of active senses to make it happen as you know that it should, driving your mind on, keeping everything focused, moving forward upon this inwardownward sort-of sorta journey. You know. What it’s like. There.

You know what it’s like to look at yourself.
To know that everything, everything is fine. The rigors of an uncaring world notwithstanding -- because those are things that you’ve long ago made peace with, those are things that you smile at with the wide teeth of a smug bastard, those are things that make you feel as perfect and wonderful as only the purity of a void can -- you know that for you, despite the domineering forces of linking trails and possible options…you know that things have turned out pretty good.

It’s going well, your life. It really is. After all, what is it that people have, beyond the realm of the world and its influence? Hearts, heads, and fluctuating voices.

Things that exist to be clear.

They’re all right there, and right now, they’re all here. There is a heart that is unlabored, a head that cannot form a coherent sentence but still seems to steam ahead, and a voice that sings along even when it’s advised against doing so. But then…there it is. Right there. Can you see it? Out of the corner of your eye, something that trembles at the base of the light that being made manifest by your screen. There it is, right there. Here and gone, but always here. Something that isn’t as brackish as fear, and isn’t as sickening as depression.
Something that you notice, living in the stillness.

A shadow that floats like vapor, obscuring the clarity of certain moments.
This very afternoon, I found myself sitting next to a girl. As a side effect of the books that we each were reading, we ended up discussing both the specifics of narrative savagery, as well as the various initialisms related to the Irish Republican army. Before she left, she asked my name. She had a British accent and eyes that were Illyria-blue.

And there it was. The whole time, there it was.

Years ago, when I was laying back on a borrowed mattress, I remember getting a phone call through the haze of a Sunday morning. It was received, and there was something about it that made me feel, oh, so, special. But now, I can look back.

And there it was. The whole time, there it was.

Recently, during the stagnant depths of this stillness, I had thought something went well. Nothing that had earned a name, nothing real, nothing tangible. Nothing yet special.
Still -- for a bit, I had thought the something was going well. And now, here today…it would appear less so.

And here it is. Right now, here it is.

In my depths, but on my skin. Despite the strength of my many desires, there’s been nothing like a drift towards a place of fury and wonder.
There’s just this.
This stillness.

In the summer heat, I still feel the tremor of a chill.
Here I am, in the Way of the World. Right?
Maybe.

Maybe it’s enough, for now, that I’ve managed to put this down, as chaotic as it might be; and maybe it’s good that soon I’ll find myself enjoying my vocation once more. Maybe it’s true that sometimes, sometimes, sometimes…sitting there at night with nothing but text and layers of stacked memory to keep me warm, it’ll find me and take a moment to blur the clarity of my world.

And maybe, it’s enough to know that I’d miss it, if it were gone.

Because somehow -- somehow, it makes me feel like me.

A minor sequence of maybes.

Weather has come to our city again.

Out of our bleary smoke-choked California sky, droplets are forming, water is falling, landing, splashing on the ground. The earth underfoot is turning dark and thick, as earthworms writhe outward in an attempt to breathe. They’re drowning, they are.
They need the air to keep them going.

Part of me wonders if that means something, even if I know that it really doesn’t. Simulacra and Simulation; “Unless you want it to.”
Maybe it’s a want, more than a wonder.

Maybe I don’t care, and I just want my fingers to be moving.

Maybe I should shut up, and listen to the way the rain falls.

Maybe I should do more than listen.

Maybe I should try something, something more.

Maybe I should try to know it.

Maybe I should slip on my jeans, tug on my socks, jam on my shoes, and walk outward, out into that. Bare-backed and Rain-slicked, all in some attempt to breathe.

Maybe I should get wet.

Maybe I should close my eyes, and get to sleep.

Maybe I should take that time to stop worrying about what is going to happen on the day after the day that is now today.

Maybe I should worry more, instead.

Maybe I should spend tomorrow (which is today) thinking of an explanation. Something solid, something fierce. Something quiet, but not, not, not something cold.

Maybe I should pretend that it won’t come up.

Maybe I should get away from the unpleasant moments of the future, and focus on the sounds of this place, right now.

Maybe I should close my eyes.

Maybe I should listen harder, letting the sound of the traffic bleed through. Let it mingle, maybe.

Maybe I should sing to myself, just a little.

Maybe I should stop singing so much.

Maybe I should be worried about the eyes that look.

Maybe I should sit here.

Maybe I should rest here.

Maybe I should figure something out.

Maybe I shouldn’t.

Maybe…yeah.
I mean…yeah.

It’s like that, out there. The clouds are rolling, making no noise that I can hear; yet I can hear them nonetheless. This is good, I say. The rain has come out of dirty skies. The fires are in the ground, in our hearts, not in our air. It’s a moment to listen, not to speak.

So -- for now -- that’s what I shall do.

A fucking fuck, you fuckers.

Ok.

You…You madcap society of delightful fiends, who run across the countryside with wind blowing through your hair, trying to fight your way towards something sight unseen. Wonderful people, beautiful people, ebullient people; people all over the place, who I can’t manage to lay my eyes on outside of my window that fails to look over the Earth, giving me no sights, but plenty of sounds.

Originally, that paragraph was supposed to lead us somewhere else. It was going to talk about you, and I, and grand wonderful things. It was supposed to segue into a series of sentences that would essentially call David Foster Wallace a cock for subjecting himself to a short drop and a sudden stop, tearing himself free of this moral coil, and proving himself a coward. He had been a lion, but he became a coward.

That’s where this was, a short week ago.
And still…just like I felt when Hunter S. punched his own ticket, it seems that the grand and the great take themselves a notch or two down when they do this to themselves. How I felt, how I feel. But even so, even with that being the case, I just can’t seem to shout.
My eyelids are falling -- I’m becoming weary, with my feet up high and my head laid back. Too tired to scream out about this sort of thing, unlike the week before when I blasted songs about an Aeroplane over the Sea and drove through a sky devoid of stars. There was anger, then.

Not now, you lovely bunch. Not now.
Let us just sit here, you and I.

Let’s sit here, and think about the things that we like and the things that we love. Details and rain and soft loving smiles. Supposedly godly things, things that survive through devilish hues. Things that make the world run rivulets around our spines, like cherished sweat falling down all of our broad backs, making us feel as if a job has been done, has been done so well.

I’m tired, and I’m ill.
My eyes are welling up, and just last week a good friend who keeps getting better sent me salutations that eventually admitted that she wasn’t in a good place. Another friend got shit-canned for no good reason, and all I could do was bake her cookies and listen to her speak. My Dad’s dog died, and My Mom’s Mom has had attacks on her heart. A plane crashed, and a train crashed. High-profile people are making unintelligent pitbull jokes.

But the Mountain Goats are playing on. Cars are running by on the freeway, keeping life after life contained within them, bursting at the seams with sordid and spectacular stories while somehow keeping it all held in. Friends I know are working through the problems that they have, holding foreheads together in displays of meaningful intimacy, all because they want to fight for a world where love works out. People are working, flirting, dancing, moving, driving, making cookies and carrying on.

Somewhere that I can’t see, there is surely another tired person somehow getting by, and a host of sad, sad people still standing up with feet planted firm, looking out the window and learning to stride again in a manner that reminds the world itself of voices singing songs. Way of the World. Right?

Right here.
Right now.

There’s air in our lungs, good world of folks. There’s blood in our veins, surging from our hearts. There’s heat in our bodies, noises in our ears, churns in our bellies, and sensations on the surface of our skin. And I say for you, for us, that these things keep us going. They must. They have to.

They will.

A stageplay that is not a stageplay, that makes no sense but that's ok. -OR- A straight line.

INT: A ROOM - ANYTIME

(A room. A man enters, with hands that shake like they’ve been living through fear. He stares at No-One. He’s looking at us.)

… : Verily, verily, hither and yon. I knew a guy who broke his leg once, doing little more than just walking down the street. When he was on the ground, I took his hand; I held it as he wailed. If I’d seen it actually happen, I’d have laughed.

(A man enters. Another man. Not the same man. How different do you want them to be? That’s how different. Distinct. Separate. They’re similar.)

--- : I’d never have believed it. Not a dash of a snowball of a foundation of a beautiful chance. Where?

… : I stay awake at night, thinking about that. Do you know what that says about me?

--- : Where’d you go?

… : It says that I’m human. A person that lives and breathes in the world we were given. We gave in. We’ve taken. We took it, ourselves.

--- : Where’ve you been?

… : It makes me fear what that means.

(The man turns, looking at the other. The another. The another man. The another man doesn’t flinch.)

… : I think I’m in a desperate place.

--- : Is that where you’ve been?

… : Still there, I am. Verily.

--- : Glad to hear that there is a somewhere. If it were here that I was hearing, I’d be cross. Where did you take yourself, that’s a here to there? Where?

… : Down a ways.

(The man turns back towards us. Addresses. He looks hungry.)

… : S’ further than you’d think. And nearer.

(The one looks back at the another. He looks full. Which one? Pick one.)

… : I’ve missed it here.

--- : Here is where we’ve felt missed. Being missed was not never ever to be our mission. Where we are feels left behind.

… : Verily, verily, hither and yon.

--- : You never made any sense to me.

… : Was I supposed to?

--- : I haven’t a compatriot’s inkling of a semblance of a resolute clue. What’s the sense in something not-sensical? Things have to make sense, Mr. Man. If they do-ent, what’s to prevent the truant-truancy of mindliness? Where we are is where we are to be.

… : The world makes sense. Verily.

--- : Of does it course. Of course it does.

… : So it does.

(The man wrings his hands, as if he were trying to scrape them clean with little else than the particles that betray the visual spectrum. He cannot see them, they cannot be seen, but they have been seen, they have been categorized, they have been documented in tiny notebooks in handwriting as small and neat as that dust in the wind. The man sighs, but it is not a sad sigh.

Listen to yourself. To yourself sighing. Go ahead. I, and he, and you again, and the another, you and I and he will wait. Did you hear it? Was it special? Of course.)

--- : If all we have is the physically material, then all makes sense in the interlocking building blocks aside from the positively ephemeral, which is just a silly serious of stupid scenarios. Silly so silly.

… : He’s not wrong.

--- : He being me who is I. WHO IS yet another.

… : Yes, you are. And no, you’re not. You’ve wanted to know where I’ve been.

--- : I have notes of you, Mr. Sir Man. To leave them incomplete would be practically preposterous to a degree which I cannot found on confounded logic. It’s irksome, to be sure to say the least.

… : You’ve wanted to know.

--- : Yes.

… : Where I’ve been.

--- : Yes.

(The another nods, clears his throat, and bows his head as if he were in silent prayer. The man takes a step backwards, then turns, moves forwards, looking out over the sea of non-committal faces, including you, and yes, including this me that is sitting here. And there. He crosses his arms. He pulls a small bottle of mouthwash from his pocket, takes a small swig, and then swishes it around his mouth, loudly as he possibly can.

[He has a microphone to aid him in the purpose. An old-timey radio mic, lowered from the ceiling like at a boxing bout. It’s his, and his alone]

He looks ready for something. Whether he is or not? You know. It remains to be seen. You know.)

… : I like to speak. I like to make guttural vowel sounds in the depths of my throats. I like it when my thoughts are known, when and where they’ve gestated enough to be worthy of regarding. I like it when I’m worth something.

I could tell you a story. The story that I’m not telling him, this other another. I could tell you of that day before, when I was walking down on the path from whence I had came, singing quietly to myself about days that had never really happened. My ears were plugged with the sounds of my words, and I can tell you that I was nothing if not happy. I can tell you that. As I was walking, my footsteps began to slow, as the path that I was on suddenly seemed different beneath the beating heart of my bare, exposed, pasty white feet. The ground felt as if it were covered in darkness. It FELT like it.

I could tell you that. And you, just as likely could tell me that it doesn’t make sense. Because you’re right -- it doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense, and in the words of the world, it didn’t happen. Undoubtedly, you’d be right. It didn’t.

Even though it did. To me, it did.
How do I explain it? There’s no way to explain it, because it’s not real. That doesn’t matter, but I still know that it means nothing. I felt it, so it matters to me. There’s value to an enigma, even if there’s no true joy to a mystery.

(He bows his head, as the another did, as if he were lost in prayer.)

… : Pointless, but beautiful. Not quite meaningless. If you feel something -- if it makes you feel something, it’s not quite meaningless. As long as you still know. Know the world, I mean. As long as there are still no lies. Verily. Verily. Hither and yon. Amen.

(He takes a step backwards, out of the light. [The microphone rises] Together, he and the another are barely visible in the edges of the glare. The man is breathing harder now, and somehow he can still be heard. The man looks at another. At one-another. Together)

--- : Where are you going, where have you been?

… : Haven’t the foggiest.

--- : Who do you think you are?

… : No one of consequence.

--- : Consequently, you consign yourself towards a conundrum. I hate you for it. I Hate You For It. Make sense, please. Make sense, you git. Make sense, you trollop. Make sense, you anarchist. Make sense, you antichrist. Make sense, you dingo who ate a baby. Make sense, you fool. Make something, something of worth. DO IT.

… : I’ll make what I please.

--- : What pleases you is meaningless.

… : Not quite meaningless. Fall down go boom.

--- : Meaningless.

… : A shapeless man cries out through a rainstorm of tears. No one answers.

--- : Devoid of meaning.

… : He imagines himself in a monochromatic hallway.

--- : Without meaning.

… : He reaches into your face, pulls, tugs, jerks upon it, finding something, anything, everything that can be tugged free. Your eyes are weak, your skin sallow and pale. You fall, because you can. Fall down go boom. Verily, verily, hither and yon.

--- : MEANINGLESS.

… : You think so?

--- : I do, you devilish do-not.

… : You know so?

--- : How can I?

… : Precisely. It’s pointless, but it might not be meaning-less.

--- : Meaning?

… : You fall down. Go boom.

--- : Verily.

(Another falls down. Goes boom. Fall down go boom. You get a headache. It thunders across the stage, cracking the walls, causing lights to shake from the tight hold of their casings, raining down shatterings of glass that fill the air with sparks and shrieks and puffs of smoke. There is darkness, here. Nothing left but. But you and I, and whoever might be up there, doing and being and meaning nothing. Whatever. We’re quiet, now.)

... : Verily.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd -SCENE-

A sullen series of segmented snippets.

First…

The air was crackling, electricity flying through it carelessly, as if it belonged there, not looking for any grounding. It crackled alongside the rain that fell, the two of them locked into each other through some kind of bizarre symbiosis, mutually giving each other purpose, purpose as well as life. They were both alive, both always moving, one falling, one flying. Neither cared about anything else, only seeking to continue their carefree existence. It was in this place, that the men had fallen silent.

…and then…

He was trying to make it work. It was hard, suffering through mornings. Wading through people and their stares. He would try to say what he thought should be said. He did alright. Some of the time. He didn’t know about other times. The person would walk to the bathroom. Or outside. He would get there and look up at the ceiling or the sky. Didn’t matter which. Then he would spit out all that he could. He’d hoped that no one would notice this. If they did, no one told him. He would hack it all out and then walk back into their world. He was home in the dead of night.

…followed by…

His eyes were bad, but he tried. He would lean back as if trying to appear relaxed (for the benefit of anyone who might have casually walked on by), while in reality his muscles were as taut as those of a moonlit tiger; both of them waiting, waiting, waiting for their moment. Milton only wished for things that soared across the sky.

…continued with…

I force myself to remember those things. Sitting here on the hilltop, looking over at my friend Walter, shivering from a cold that none else can feel, but all can understand. Remember those times when the world thought it was wallowing, wading through a knee-deep refuse of horror and discomfort, problems with the air and the water and the feelings and the lives and the people. People snapping down their freshly delivered morning papers, spouting off lines about the abuse and the mistrust and the anger and the deception and the real, honest to golly truth. Mothers marching down the streets, holding signs up in the air, shouting that their children are under attack by the vagrancy and the lies and the vulgarity and the depravity and the hatred. I force myself to remember. But really, I remember the children themselves.

…interrupted with…

P.S.
You can also be kind of a cunt.

…resuscitated by…

“Do you trust me?” Her voice was clear. It didn’t waver.
“Of course I do.” My voice was dry. It crackled out of my mouth, sounding as if I’d been gargling buckets of sand. I didn’t want to sound that way. I wanted to sound like I was standing tall, a man to be counted on. I’m not normally that way, and I’m usually ok with that. Usually. She was looking into my eyes.
I couldn’t look away. My face was locked in, focusing on those two tiny little dots, finding that center as easily as one might trip and fall. And fall I did, I couldn’t help it, my mind falling right down, losing myself simply because she wanted me to.

…connected to…

She was a journalist, you see. A journalist, fair and true. Not one who stood before a cameraman, feverishly checking her hair only seconds before informing everyone on a nationwide network that the building behind her, clearly burning to the naked eye, was on fire. No, she was a true journalist, in every sense of the word.
As he would learn over the course of time, she was a person who had known what it was like to be cast to the icy cold concrete floor of some godforsaken shit-hole of an African schoolhouse, all in the hopes of finding the words of the current insurgent military leader who had been holding his armaments in a house built for learning. If you knew her well enough, you could ask her to tell you a story, and she could then paint a portrait of the time that she had spent with one of the worlds greatest living authors, watching a great man wither away physically while listening to the sound of a once tightly wound bag of thought being torn apart at its innermost seams. And if you had the stomach to listen, she would eventually tell you how it felt to hold the hand of someone who was falling, falling, falling, until the very last moment where his thoughts finally burst open like an already wounded animal splitting apart on jagged rocks. She had felt him go. And she had only let herself cry once the story had finally been done.

…passed on with…

There were trees, where we were. More trees than I was used to. It felt like we were driving down a stretch of classical Americana, Mary-Jean singing silently to herself as she adjusted the wheel with casual, subtle motions. She held her cigarette close inside the car, afraid that she might toss it out onto a patch of incendiary leaves. What a shame that would be. I can just picture it: A single glowing spark from that little tube glowing just a little brighter than the rest of its brethren, its soft orange light hot enough to ruin a patch of the world. Dry leaves, resting for a moment before the next gust of wind carried on with their journey down the road. That single, hungry spark. I wonder what it would be like, driving down this tranquil lane, if all the world were heat and fury.

…and so…

The sheet of darkness covered me, black as the face of perdition.

…anon…

But now, for all that were there to witness it, there was only silence.

…so that’s something.

Right?

A rhetorical question.

Sometimes, there are sallow afternoons.

Where you notice a delicate throb at the back of your head, too small to really take action against, but large enough to occasionally strike you with its pulse, making you shift uncomfortably in your seat. Where your throat closes up, and you can taste something sour creeping in around the edges of your mouth, despite the fact that all you’ve had was water. You remember the water. The water was cold and sweet.

Where you sit silent, and still, and wonder, and wonder, and wonder, and wonder, and wonder, and don’t really wonder about anything worth wondering about. At the end of it.

To-night, under the cover a fresh evening, I went out and bought a bottle of Cool Mint Listerine™ at a 7-11. The man behind the counter -- a man with tired, yellowing eyes -- put the Cool Mint Listerine™ into a tiny, nondescript paper bag that made it seem as if I had bought a tiny, nondescript bottle of scotch. I didn’t think much of it, until I found my way back home. People looking at me, and it, and then making subtle decisions about the life they saw in front of them. For whatever reason, it irked me just a little. The headache at the back of my noggin struck at a sharper 45 degree angle, and I blinked my eyes with a tremendous force brought on apropos of extravagant similes.

All in all, there’s not much to go on. Just another one of those days, as they say. We and you and I, we’ve all been in a place that sits in a position less than the place that we usually hope to be. In our heads, in our minds. In our moods. Sallow days, burning sickly and sweet in the wavering heat of mid-afternoon sun. Days that will surely move on by, like the rest of those things that get easily placed into metaphors of tidal fluctuations. Meaningless, stupid, pointless worries, about a host of meaningless, standard, ridiculous things. There’s nothing to talk about.

So let us talk about something.

Or rather, let me ask you something; something which needs no answer, despite the fact that the host of people who may or may not exist, who may or may not read this website, who may or may not be people that I know; despite the fact that such (existent?) people might actually have an answer that might be declared, the sort of thing that could be enthusiastically thrown out like leaflets into the drift of the common air.

I ask you, compatriots of the electronic variety:

What do you have?

What’s that thing, that illustrious thing that you break out on the already-mentioned-twice days that are colored sickly yellow, the thing that you look over with muddled thoughts with the hope that things are going to be made clear? What’s that thing, the thing that sits in the bottom of some dusty old drawer that is rarely ever opened, seeing as it is only to be opened during those trying times of thought and life where it’s really, truly, genuinely, actually needed?

What do you have when you need something?
What’s the talisman of your life?

I myself have a thing or two. A precious book that has been mentioned within the e-pages as lost, but has now -- at long, long, long last -- been graciously found. A picture that gives me help towards a memory, when I find that I need to remember. When I need to remember more clearly than usual.

And I have a letter.
It’s a formal letter. It was written by a formal someone, serving a formal purpose, one which had been done for other members (but not all, mind you) of my peers. It was something that I asked for, something that I had to wait for. But more than anything else, it’s something which means something to a someone. To me.

It’s about me. It’s someone else, speaking about the things that I have done, and the things that I might do. It was someone I respect, someone who explained how to stand tall despite the fact that he happened to be rather short; someone who could take your shimmering confidence away with nothing more than a wayward glance. If he wanted to, that is.

I have this letter.
It’s there, alongside other things, when I need it.

Where do your feelings go, world-at-large?
What do you have?

A declarative measure.

Alone in a busy coffeeshop, watching with a sense of dreadful interest as a fly perches on my arm, yearning to taste the stink of my sweat. Letting it all move past, forcing eyes to watch the world with whatever willful energy can be mustered. Those days…those days of ever-churning time. Days that are meant to pass on by.

Sometimes, those are all that you get.
Sometimes, those are all that you need.
Sometimes…

All things considered, regardless of what might be said or done in fits of trembling willpower, I remain in this world as a simple sort of man. Simple enough to drink his daily coffee with a smile on my face. I look out on the world I’ve built, and at the man that I’ve tried to become -- I look at the things I’ve done, the things that encompass me when I’m alone in the dark. For the most part, I can see them, and I can live on.

I can see the things that I’ve borrowed, and the things that I’ve lent.
In more ways than one, more types than none, a whole host of things that have seen their way to and from my hands in a manner that sends them up and out, back and forth, back and between reality and meaning and places where things are lost in pits of unquantifiable absurdity, where I can only turn my head round and round in some kind of vain effort to figure out where on Earth I’ve brought self to, after all of this time, after all of these people, after all of their things, after all of my things…well. Where does this go?
There are things to be said, and the night is burning into day.

Running out of moments to say what I sat down here to say. Which isn’t monumental, all things considered; if this remains unfinished, trapped within the walls of a wide-screened laptop with busted-ass hinges, you’ll go on with your lives as if nothing were wrong with your day to day. Everything passing on by, none of your time borrowed, none of my ramblings lent. Way of the World. Right?

Sometimes…

Things were borrowed, things were lent.
Trying to make connections through the use of communication through derivations of ideas caused by wood pulp and plastic and petroleum and sweat and fabric and laughter and chicken and sugar and memories and more ideas and dreams and kisses and breathes and wisdom and timetimetime; trying to, and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes succeeding. And sometimes, some things just end up missing.
Things loved, things lost. Some things more than others.

I can remember a book.
It was mine.

I’d earned it, once upon a time. That tale of ontological nausea, that had been tucked carefully into my bag that one day that I was to do something. With someone. I was to accomplish something. With someone else. Under a sky full of roaring clouds, I was to live my life. The book and I.

Such a day it was to be…
But encouraging Murphy can be a hell of a thing. Know what I mean?
I think you might.

Things happened. Things didn’t happen. Opportunities were lost, and as it was to be, they would never come around again. Money and time, art and life, food and drink, good times, good times -- gone. Drowned in the last great storm that this city has seen.

And there I stood, my book and I, making a journey through the heart of the gale. Stepping, and singing. Loud. Loud as I could, trying to out roar the crying walls of frigid water. The book and I.

When all was finally dry, the book didn’t look the same. The crispness of its pages seemed have been suddenly misplaced, with the all that was left behind being warped and stained, with words that bled around the edges. And just like that, it was a book that had lived. It was mine. And I had earned it.

I lent it to someone.
It was a good deal later -- I’d done a few things, spoken a few words, and she and I had found some memories in the midst of all the rest of our things. I thought, I knew, that she would, could, should read it. So I lent it to her. It wasn’t long after that she moved to Utah. The book and she.

Needless to say, I was a wee bit pissed the fuck off.
But you know what?

Things were borrowed, things were lent. She took that book, that book that had been mine -- she took it, and along the way, she read it. She devoured it. She stared at it, at its pages that had been so lovingly drenched into a sense of beautiful definition, until it began to wrap around her, the pages becoming the things which she was to know, the words becoming that which she was to comprehend. She lived with it, and she lived. She worried, and she suffered. She wondered, and she cared. The book, and she.
She made it hers.

It will never be coming back.
And I would never ask for it. Sometimes, such things work out that way.
Sometimes…

They don’t.
Sitting with days that pass on by. Watching them pass, watching them move. Carrying things with me, alongside my thoughts, alongside my sweat, alongside my plans. Carrying things that have somehow, drifted out of my slender fingers.
Meaningful things, if only to me.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.

Things that were held close to me, that hold within them the dusty scent of a place that I might never see again, of a time that I wish to never have back, but still…that made me a certain kind of me, that drove me towards the type of man that I wanted to be. Something that helps me think.

Things that will never be said. That were never really had, that were never really there to be had. Things that will never be held in my hands, beating like a warm heart under spread-eagled fingers. Things that wouldn’t couldn’t…shouldn’t? Something that I will let be.

Things that burned. Hot as the forge, sharp as the steel.
“A sweet, soft grenade. The stillness of the night.” Something that is missed.

Sometimes, what you are left with is all that you get.
Sometimes, what you hang onto is all that you need.
Sometimes…Sometimes….no.

I sit here, shivering. A man who sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, has the good fortune to make a choice, to try and live, to try and move. Things were borrowed, things were lent. Loved and Lost. Here I am. Saying right here, right now:

I’m going to get them back.

I’m going to stretch out my arms -- and make no mistake, they are long arms -- and reach out towards the things that have gone away. Because after all, we have nothing to live with but the things that we’ve done.

So we try to make it right.

A resting place.

Another night.

Here we are, basking in the warmth of our cathode ray tubes (that are not, in fact, cathode ray tubes) on yet another summer night. Looking for things to do. Things that have been said. Hopes that had been made, some time before.

I’ve got something for you, intranetts.

Something that was conceived as a shot in the dark.
It was a little bit of an attempt at getting out there in the world, utilizing the means of the MACHINE OF DEATH Anthology. It was a shot.

And as is so often the case, my shot in the dark got swallowed up by nothingness. No harm done, no big deal. But still…

I want to lay it to rest. Somewhere other than here, within the humming confines of my extravagantly screened laptop. I want to give it somewhat of a sending off, so that I don‘t feel quite so sad about its humble passing.
It’s a story.

I told it, and it sparked away into another night.

And now it’s being told to you.
One hopes that you might find something to like.

--------------------------------------------

What’s to say about it?


I don’t know. I never know anymore. Just a soft flurry of images drifting ahead of me, ones that I can reach out and grab with narrow outstretched fingers, like snowflakes in a fall. Out there, they stand unique, their own little design made of encapsulated time; and they turn to water in my hands. At first, I didn’t know.

She didn’t tell me. Not at all. And so I went on with my living, not having a glimmer of suspicion of the things that would come to be. The things that would grab my silly little world, and shake it with a thunderous sense of violence that I doubt I can ever truly comprehend. Nor would I want to. She had known something.
She? Jill. Her name was Jill.


And she was my love on this Earth.

Anyone would have told you that she had a certain sort of something on that night I first saw her. At least, when they saw her. I for one had spent the majority of the evening rooted to one spot, staring at the frozen eyes on a statue of a classical Roman. His eyes hitting with a terribly, terribly expressive nature. They made me shiver, those eyes. And then…I saw her, her indescribable presence, and all else was stricken from my memory. She made me quake, back then. She still makes me quake now.

Still. Nothing about her was still, her existence being one of omnipresent motion, one that swept up willing little me into a series of a separate-yet-connected life moments, in a manner of such grand immediacy that to this day, I’m still unsure of how I found such a presence in my arms. I was never much of a…I was never a devastating man. Never the sort that brings someone to stand casually in a doorway, enticing growls building in their throat. She saw something. In me.

So it was that she graced me with that feeling of her omnipresent life. Dances built on park benches and soft footfalls across dewy grass. Sharp ideas and murmurs in our sleep. Quiet whispers and dreamlike sweat in the night. Sitting close together on Sunday mornings, eyes glancing over Times headlines that announced things like: “BLESSING OR CURSE?,” or “PRIME MINISTER TO DIE BY WAY OF ‘INSURANCE FRAUD’: Public Demands Explanation”. Headlines of the sort that occur even now, this very day. Back then, we would disregard and discard such announcements, while we giggled and pulled in for an achingly soft kiss. God…that softness.

During those times her fingers would somehow always find mine. And I can remember…I remember how they would quiver. Gentle and firm, like a babies’ heartbeat.
Those were times when I could feel the world.

But even then, I suppose there were traces. Moments when her touch turned cold, where her terribly, terribly expressive eyes grew dead and distant, like the eyes of that Roman statue from a time before. I can still see her, the image locked in my thoughts. One of those moments. Her gentle and firm fingertips teasing the nearly invisible hairs across the surface of her belly, her voice echoing across time: “Found things still have a way of getting lost. Sometimes.” Sometimes.

I’d thought it would be alright. I’d thought it was just a trace of the world as it was, as it is; a side-effect of people as a collective coming to terms with their own mortality. After all, look at any street corner, any face in the pale gray of the morning. Look, and you’ll see it. We’re all more somber, these days. Still, I was happy. Happy with her warmth, happy with my life. She had been around longer, had experienced far more. And she, Jill had chosen me to be the one she caressed under moonlight, the one she whispered to during warm summer rains.

It was a cold winter storm when I found her at my door. Before then, we’d had countless days of wonder and joy. Yet this night was different, its existence drenched by that raging symphony of angry rain. Water beading on the surface of her coat, water clinging to the thin strands of her beautiful amber hair. She had a look on her face. Such a look. Her arms found their way around my waist, and she gripped me tightly.

She held on for dear life as we fell into the dark. I gladly let her grip her way towards safety, and I can clearly remember the way her fingers tensed on the small of my back. In the warmth of my arms, Jill gently fell asleep. Her hair was still wet from the rain.

Still wet, but not from lack of drying. The warmth of her body and the room caused the moisture to evaporate, slowly, but it was definitely there. My eyes moved over the thin haze that shrouded her head, and I couldn’t help it: It looked like her, a part of her; a part of her was trying to leave. As if any and all of her doubts were manifest above her head, pulling her away into the fog, a solemn funeral for human emotion. I could feel the concept of that, of Jill leaving. It was almost as if it was in my skin, trying to scrape its way out from inside of me like living sandpaper. The sound of that dragged across my eardrums, a terrible, jarring sensation. I didn’t know how I could do it. How I could slake her thirst. How I could make her doubts towards me go away. There was nothing. Nothing at all. So I tried for the only something I could manage. I leaned closer to her ear and whispered, “Tell me how to be in love.” She didn’t answer.
“Tell me how to be in love.”


That night, I had a dream.

I stood amongst a council of grand humans. Gods, even. Standing alongside them, my body covered with heavy armored garments that spoke of me being one of their own. In that place, in the air, one could taste a sense of stability and understanding, a feeling that these beings held on to their world with strength and ferocity of intelligence, with conviction and destiny. It was also only a moment before I realized they were all afraid. They and I.

Before us stood a creature unlike any nightmare. A wolf, yes; but bigger, stronger, angrier, uglier, yet with a kind of beauty realized by anything designed for a single, unwavering purpose. This creature felt rage that this place could barely contain. Its rage was a song in its eyes.

So I watched myself as I walked up and put my hand in its mouth. My colleagues moved toward it, slowly wrapping the creature with a binding that appeared be nothing more than a silken ribbon, thin and long. All while my fingers soaked in the hot saliva, which ran like the broadest river from the glands surrounding my hand. The beast was fettered; the beast fought his bonds. First with arrogance, then with rage. But his thin binding could not be broken, staying smooth and cool as it dug into the cursed flesh.

It wasn’t long before I went blind with pain. Lost in a world not my own, blood coloring the landscape with a disgusting flourish. I didn’t think I belonged. Not in this place, where truth was writ in blood on stone.


When I awoke, I was alone.

It felt like just another morning. Except after I had walked into the kitchen, if only to watch the last vestiges of the rain drift through the wind outside my window, I felt something. A stinging in my hand, as if a malicious insect had attacked during the night. When I gave it a closer look, I saw a miniature speck of red, staring me in the face and daring me to question its tiny world. So I squeezed it. The action brought out a single, gleaming ruby of blood. I swear that I saw it sparkle. It might as well have, anyway. Nothing else did.

Nothing. Jill didn’t bring herself by. Not that day. And certainly not the next.
So the days fell into the nights, and the nights wrapped over the days, mixing themselves until they got softer and smoother, more uniform the longer they went on. They all became the same, those days. Those nights. Those mornings. Those evenings. My useless sense of time.

I would go and stand outside, watching people drive home from somewhere and sit in their cars for a few moments before finally going inside. I would take care to observe the look on their faces, which was often just a touch of weariness after a hard-won day, but sometimes, sometimes, sometimes…it was more. A look of singular, genuine fear. Fear, and wonder. It’s the kind of look you see a lot these days. More and more, I find it hard to take. So more and more, I look away.

Instead, I found myself staring at the back of my hand. Looking over a majestic landscape of miniscule scars. As hard as I tried -- and believe me, I tried -- I couldn’t remember where they came from. None of them, not a one. Not a single memory tracing the outline of their smoothly curved backs. But this one, this new one, it stung. In her absence, it stung. It stings. Like the rain of that winter storm, darting at my face, hurting my eyes. But I stood there, and I endured. There was nothing else. Not from that day on, nothing else to give me a sensation of the moment when she had vanished. No matter how much it hurt, the pain was some kind of something, built out of the nothing of her absence. I stood there, alone against my elements, my own pain and confusion and loss. And yes, I endured.

Except I was breaking apart.


It was a bright Thursday morning when she returned to my door. She came alongside a cool breeze with a touch as delicate and light as a silk scarf. It moved around us as we stood, cold and immobile in my doorway.

I hadn’t a clue how long she’d been gone. My Jill-less world was nothing more than worry and regret, and now she stood there, close enough to touch. Her heartbeat fingers, right within my grasp. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to say.

So, I was endlessly grateful when she spoke first.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’m -- I’m so, so sorry about this.” Her soft voice couldn’t conceal a solemn need for tears. But still, she didn’t cry. Not a drop was spilled.

“No need for sorry.” My voice was pale like milk. And it was real. Whole. My voice in that moment was all of me, everything I had ever thought and felt, all jammed together with a single, uniting prospect: I just wanted warmth again. Warmth. Skin. Her. Sinking into me, faint traces of breath with a touch so gentle, they almost couldn’t be felt. But I could feel them. Right then, I could feel them. Almost as if they were a part of my own body. “No need for anything else. Not now.”

“Not so sure about that,” she whispered.

“Hey…” I moved in closer, dreaming of touch. But she would have none of it, her body suddenly quaking like the heart of the Earth, a fearful movement from the very core of her. That was a bad thing, that day. There was a terrible all-encompassing silence as she composed herself, as if even the breeze that had flowed between us only moments before was in service of her whims. She looked up, her eyes suddenly frozen and clear.

“I did something.”

Out of the periphery of my vision, I saw her movements flow with a certain deliberate pacing, one that seemed, so, so, so…unnatural. For her. It was wrong. Despite the way I had yearned for a reunion, hungered for it like a dog whimpering in a dark corner, it was then that I found myself stricken by fear. Fear, and wonder.

It was a fearful man that watched her reach into the back pocket of her well-worn jeans, watched her fingers come up with something small and thin. It was a rectangle of paper, about the size of a business card; the surface of it colored a mottled gray, like smeared ashes on the last-standing wall of a burned down house. I knew what it was.

These days, everyone does. Oh.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

“I gave it your blood. I gave it a piece of you, because I needed to see.”

Oh. “Oh.” The stinging on my hand suddenly intensified, as if the beast that had taken hold of me with its world-ending jaws had finally tightened its grip, preparing for the true end. Its mouth then opened, wide and quiet, calm as the gaping depths of an ocean crevasse. My feet gave way and I tumbled into that limitless darkness. All while staring into it, looking deep with terribly, terribly expressive eyes. What had she done? To me? To her?

Jill’s hands came together and brought the scrap of contemptible paper closer to her, cradling it against the white cotton that was pulled down over her belly. Her interlaced fingers, still firm, alternately grew tense and relaxed in a series of even, steady pulses.

“What is this, Jill?” my voice cracked as I spoke, “What the hell kind of end?”

“It’s not…”

“Jill.” My voice was bone scraping on concrete. I had to know.

She breathed in. She breathed out. Again and again, as if building up enough rhythm to pull what was needed out of her, like it were latched on somewhere deep inside, someplace hard to reach. She spoke. She had to speak. “I’m still sorry,” she said, “For all of this. Nothing is ever supposed to happen this way. It does, though. Believe me.

“We’re all gonna die, I know that, I know that much. All of us gone, some…sooner.” For a moment she paused, a look on her face as if she might vomit; but she stoned her face and jaws, and made as if she were going to once again look me in the eye. She didn’t. But she came damn close. Seeing it then, I hadn’t a trace of doubt in my mind: There was effort here. A lot of it.

“But now, it feels like -- like I’ve killed you. Even though I didn’t do it, it wasn’t some decision that I made, it feels like I’m a part of it. Your death is in me.” And again, we were draped with a limitless silence.

In that space of time, that little world, I knew that I wanted to say something. Something important, something that might have made it just a tiny, tiny bit better. I’d had it right there with me, the thought in my head, the words in my throat. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t speak them. They lodged there in the base of my gullet, like some tiny animal, heart racing with fear at what might happen in the radiance of the sun. Here, now, I haven’t a clue what it was that I would have said. But it would have helped. I’m sure of it.

“I can’t stand this. Living like this, seeing you like this, knowing that it’s coming.” Jill’s fingers finally stretched themselves out, flat and open, the miniscule expanse of wispy gray standing out as a blight against the glow of her skin. “Could you?”

She looked at me, forcing her presence upon me in a way that I had yet to experience, even amidst all of the life that she had struck me with before. Her eyes grabbed hold of me, One. Last. Time. Those eyes. That hair. Those fingers. That voice. Those memories. That taste. Those feelings. That life, dancing within her. And in that very instant, I felt it all get pulled away. Moments being tugged from the very core of me, heartstrings pulled free and clear; and I knew. She was done. Gone.

Long gone. I stood there, alone, for twenty minutes, cool breeze still bringing the sounds of the world to my ears. It wasn’t until after I turned to open the door that I noticed the card in my hand. Pale gray, this proclaimed death. And hell followed with it.


What else is there to say?
I can see it. There it is, sitting on the edge of my bedside table, a heavy coat of dust nearly camouflaging it against the surface. Untouched by my hand, not since that day when I laid it there to rest. Nothing left to go on. No ground left to tread.

There are times that I find myself coming closer to it, looming my height over that tiny thing, as if I thought I might scare it away. Any time I get close enough to touch, my thoughts turn to ashes and my body falls apart. This won’t do, not at all. I know that much. Now, I know that much.

I can’t bring myself to look. Face-down, the information of me locked in between its own disgusting back and the smooth surface of my own fine oak. I can’t do it, I cannot bring myself to, will myself to, force myself toward a final decision. I don’t know what I want to do. Not since I’ve been left standing alone, just another pillar of salt waiting to return to the Earth. No motion to my moments. Just me and it, waiting for that day to come. And I know it will. I know, as she knew -- the day that I look will be the day that I die.

When I see those words, stamped onto that paper, that will surely be my end. It can’t be anything else.

I couldn’t stand it any other way.

--------------------------

Requiescat In Pace.
And all that.

A turning of seasons (featuring Children of Men. And Christmas).

At last, a season has come.

I can see it now: Driving down a narrow road in the freshness of morning, watching the sun bounce off the surface of a multitude of orange leaves strewn about on the side of the road. It looks as if the road is surrounded by a cheerful blaze, one that dances in the wind like the heart of a fire being stirred. It’s nice, to see such a fluctuation.

It doesn’t happen often, not where I choose to hang my hat. Los Angeles is a land that tends to exist in a state of perpetual uniformity, the Sun hanging high in the air, tossing down overbearing rays that hit the top of human heads like immense weights; and the sweat, it comes from the effort. The effort of enduring it.

But now, the season has changed. A brisk wind soars throughout the wind-tunnels of city streets, drying out my skin until my hands crack and bleed. Rain roars for but an instant, then is suddenly silenced except for a solitary whispering drizzle. And it gives moments. Moments where a man like me can stand atop a parking garage and see the last vestiges of sunlight burn their mark into the suddenly -- wonderfully, oh so wonderfully -- numerous clouds, their enduring moments being a true signal that the inevitable change that the seasons bring has finally come around.

And yes, it is a change. Enough to have you looking into the sky, down at the ground, at your hands; watching that previously mentioned blood seep slowly down along the cracks in your hands, feeling the cells rush in circles, looking for someplace to go, anyplace to flow…but there is nowhere. Because the change, in the air, it doesn’t, didn’t bode well for the sake of the those blood vessels, pumping through the heart with a thirst for sweet oxygen. It changed, and the blood died. You can see that all in the dribble down your hand. In that season changing in the air.

The seasons come…they always come.
And things are finally different. Different enough, anyhow.

Different enough…to give a different kind of chance.

Another movie is there, out there in the world. A movie? A film. A film where men are killed, for no reason other than wanting to help out a friend. A film where people lock things away, treasure them, but don’t allow them to be within a realm in which people, not a person, people could get a chance to care. Children of Men. It’s called Children of Men. And this day, this last night, this morning: I’ve suddenly declared it the best film of the year. #1 in 2006. Five days before its end.

I’d say it’s about seasons, in it’s own special way.

Seasons of trust, seasons of understanding, seasons of hope, seasons of love, seasons of ideas, seasons of oppression; seasons where woman loses the central figure to her uniting metaphor, and man forces himself to cry until all he may cry are tears of hot blood. This is a film where women are inexplicably infertile, and the men have stupidly let lose the damnable dogs of war. A season of the worst of us.

And when that season turns? It turns to hope. It’s that hope that burns in all of us, even if it exists as a mere ember that glows with the faintest spark; it burns us. With unity, with beginning, with the knowledge that things will change, and maybe for the better. Because they must. Because they have to. Because they are going to. Because all that spark does...is burn. A baptism by fire, that lets hope spring eternal, even if it happens to be on a filthy mattress in a room full of shadows, in a city built upon ghosts.

As the seasons always change, there is always a space for hope. For if there isn’t…then hope need not exist at all. And if that were the case, then we -- not me, not I, but every last fucking one of us, as a whole -- are certainly already dead. In all the ways that count.

In all the ways that we get trapped in, which the film chooses to elaborate on via a thematically sound feat of technical bravado, a series of colossal one-ers that drag us down into the putrid horror of those moments, letting us taste the gray, but still, still, still…giving us a frame or two of glory. A sequence that hits us right where it hits them, them, the people in that world eerily similar to our own. A moment where the season hits its stride, and that hope comes into bloom. For an instant, maybe. But it’s there.

They’re always there.

It’s not terribly surprising that this film came out on Christmas Day. But not, perhaps, in the way that first springs to mind. I mean, yes, there certainly are comparisons to be drawn from the concept of the birth of a savior, and a host of other details that might be connected to the concept of the nativity. Hell, I’d even be willing to call it the second best example of the nativity this year (with the champion being the story presented with modern perspective from the point-of-view of Joseph, as presented on the December 15th edition of “This American Life”).

But I, in yet another of my decidedly un-clandestine displays of foolishness, believe I shall declare that this grand display of thematic marketing exists because of one of the underwritten tenants of the Christmas holiday: the unseen truth.

Christmas functions as an excuse, a day where the more timid of us can tell others what they (in all honesty) should already know. Not because they aren’t observant enough, but because people, in all our bravery, never bothered to speak it aloud. A day where we make our season change.

Moreso than gifts, moreso than carving roast-beast and other such things -- for whatever reason, people choose Christmas as a day to finally declare things to one another. Love, for example. And on a grander scale, amongst those things that we all know about, but don’t bother to shout to the rafts on a frequent enough basis, we have the beauty of human hope. People remember it.

They call their friends and wish them love, even if the holiday means nothing to them, even if they’re sick of commercialism, sick of the commercials themselves, sick of the fact that they don’t even celebrate the damn thing; they still look at their calendar and go out to say hello.

The day itself means nothing. But what it makes happen, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes…makes you look out at the world with hope-colored glasses.

Yes, even if you live in a dystopian wasteland.
The wind blows, and the seasons change.

And the leaves, they do green anew.