A blank page.

~open~

Picture a book.
In this book, there is a man.

A bit tall, a bit thin, a bit too concerned with things that he cannot really control.
He’s sitting quietly off to the side of his world, nestled gently within a nook that he’s claimed as his own. He isn’t doing much except for enjoying the state of a day that has yet to begin. Yes, it’s quiet. Quiet and still.

He takes a moment to look outside of the window. It’s an overcast morning, the sky swirling in place like a spoon stirring the milk left over from morning cereal; and the man wonders what his day is going to be. Puzzles out the possibility. Looking out at that sky, the one that stretches out farther than his fingers ever could, there might very well be a promise of things to come. He knows this, and he knows that it’s alright.

He does.

It’s when the man hunkers down with his sciencentric Roast Beef hoodie wrapped around him for warmth against the server air that he discovers it. The thing that will change his day. The thing that scratches its fingernails down the length of his back, leaving deep scars that make a game of tic-tac-toe when combined with marks of a time long since gone by. It hurts.

“I’m blank, today.” he says.
There isn’t a thought in his head.

This shocks and confuses him, a flurry of tangible nothings within his head that wither and die the instant they try to connect with anything, delicate butterflies falling dead onto the frozen ground. Blank. He’s blank. And within that nothing, he finds that he is afraid. The fear rip-roars through his body with a strength that makes him feel as if his very life is being torn from his bones, fire-gnashing thunder-crashing dynamite machines destroying all he has ever hoped to be.

“Where am I going, where have I been?” The question echoes throughout the space around him, and his eyes widen when he sees the space that he occupies. No longer is he nestled in that quiet nook, body surrounded by humming fans and light-streaked blinds; no, this time he sees the page. He sees the book. He sees where he is. In this book, there is a man. And the page he’s on is blank.

Blank.

Is that a good thing? Hard to say. Thoughts should be running through his head. Right here, right now. Right here, right now. Right here, right now. Thoughts. Right here, right now. Ideas. Right here, right now. Plans. Right here, right now. Dreams. Right here, right now. Thoughts. Right --

Damn.
Nothin’.

So much nothin’. So much that it overwhelms him, his body now heaving, an all-encompassing motion that gives his body the appearance of the need for vomit, but with the desire comes nothing else, no splatter of sickening color to give the space some cruel-but-welcome sense of definition. The man cannot figure it out. Figure anything out. So he does the only thing he feels that he may manage -- he tries to outrun it. He tries to run away from this nothingness, to bring himself to a place where his hand can touch a pureness of thought that grants meaning to this empty world, filling it with colors that will spread like light across a night-stained mountain. So. He runs.

Runs into the edge of the page, heaving himself against the edge of the world. HEAVE. HO. RUN. TO. Forcing himself to try to change this world, running his fingers along the edge, trying to find a new beginning, a different theme, a chapter title, a place with definitions beyond that color of uniform white empty that hurts his eyes, hurts his eyes, hurts his eyes hurts his eyes --

The page turns. Blank again.

Damn.
Nothin’.

Nothin’ except that same feeling. His heart undulates in his chest like a gasping fish; but not icy cold, no -- burning hot. And oh so warm. It’s a good thing, that warmth. But where…where did it come from?

“Where indeed?” The voice comes from behind him, like a splash of water exploding over the back of his head. The man whip-turns around, his eyes blurring, trying to pull focus on the thing that sits there amidst the blank, the new thing that might. Give. Something.

It’s a woman. She’s sitting there, quietly munching on a slice of French toast, a hot cup of coffee throwing delicious steam into the air before her. She’s calm. And she smiles.

“Hi.”
“Hello,” the man speaks, his voice cracking slightly, “who might you be?”
Another smile. “I think you know.”

She reaches behind her back, and produces a tall coffee mug as if from nowhere, one that the man regards with a twinkle of recognition in the corner of his eye. It is -- it was -- an old sort of friend. One thought lost, once upon a time.

“I -- where did that come from?”
“From you, I suppose.”
“Really?”
“If you want it to, honey.”
“I -- I think I do.”
“Then why not? Let it be. Have a taste.” Her small hand reaches out to offer the steaming cup to his not-yet-ready fingers. He hesitates, but…not in a bad way. His eyes wide, his head steaming in a manner similar to the liquid in the colorful cat coffee mug.

His hands reach out, and take the mug from hers. Their fingers touch, for but a moment, and he’s embarrassed to note that his hands are cold. So cold. But she still smiles, and lets forth a quick and welcoming laugh. It’s enough to make him tremble.

The coffee transfers its warmth into the surface of his fingers. And then deeper, and deeper still; penetrating down to the bone, like nutrients seeping into the surface of the Earth. He raises it to his face, and warms his lips against the cup. He tastes.

“It tastes like --”
“ -- it tastes like sunrise.” The woman walks closer as the words escape her lips. The man merely nods, then gulps down another swig of burning, watching her movements. His mouth goes dry. He tries to speak.

“Build me, make me,” his voice shakes with traces of long-lost hope, “make me something good.”

Her voice responds, the soft coo of a turtle dove:
“I don’t need to, baby. You already did that yourself.”

And suddenly, they, the pair of them, are back in the nook, the sounds of their advancements muffled by the continuous drone of the servers. And the man, the man, the man…he can feel thoughts. Thoughts in his head, rushing about like rapids crashing through the rocks. Definition and depth, swirling about with a frothy sense of its own self. It’s a good thing.

Outside, the sun rises.
It's bright.

~close~

A feeling.

I had to.
I had to do it, that very night.
I had to do it, that very night -- I had to wander around that town, out in the night, out in the cold. Stopping and scribbling and hastily scrawling on white sheets of notebook paper, my fingers trying to outrun the cold that was grabbing them by their roots.

When I felt like I might stop, I moved.
Started again.

It happened a few times, more times than I can even be bothered to recall. And so, I do not bother. I focus more on the other things: On the frigidness of the air; on the light borrowed from unattended windowsills, creeping up to them as if I were tackily stealing a cooling pie. I focus on that which I had to do.

It got done. It really did. I felt something inside me that had been crashing around my subconscious for far longer than it ever should have; crying with a sound like the hollow echo of an incarcerated man, running his tin cup over the bars of his frigid cell. Keeping it trapped nearly ruined me. So I, I, I set it free. I had to.

It was in that action, that I remembered.
Everything.

I remembered who I was, in the words that clawed their way from me as if they had some manner of demonic compulsion. I gave those words everything, shoving my whole body into that unassuming collection of seven pages, the pages that were wrinkled and cold after the song of the night.
But still -- they shone.

Brightly.

Days like that are a wonder.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility to say that sometimes, every once in a collection of whiles, we all have our days like that. Days of being wild, days of living in a way that doesn’t exactly burn a hole through the Earth, but still -- you know. Days that mean more, because they’ve done something. To your life. To your thoughts. To you.

One of those days might have occurred. Now.
Here, in this place. It might have occurred. It’s hard to know for sure, without the clarifying passes of time gone by to truly let me know. But right now, I’m in this scratchy chair, with John Danielle and his Goats of the Mountain crackling out of tiny laptop speakers; right now, I can feel it. I can feel wonder. The wonder of the day.

And for whatever reason, despite the way that things tend to happen, despite the way that people usually feel…the day appears to have continued, to have gone on. And on.
I wonder if I can feel?

I can.
I have to.
I have to, because, because…
Because something might be happening.

Something is happening.
To fuckery with all of the times before, when I didn’t know what was going on within myself, with all the times where the world seemed clear but was really lying through yellowed teeth; to hell with the lines that past experiences have drawn in the sand.
It rained, today. I laughed, today.
Something is happening.
It has to be.

I can feel it. I can feel the same twinges that happened within me that very afternoon, when I knew that I would have to stop my life in the evening, if only so I could find something new in the world of graphite and wood pulp. That day, I knew. I knew with such madness, that I could drive myself towards being the kind of man that I am today. Before then, I’d wanted it. That day?

I felt closer to it than I ever had before.
From the heart of that wonder, I found something in me. Something that I liked. Something that in a way, is alive, even though it’s invisible to the naked eye. Something that meant a change. Something that still means the world.

Yes.

There is wonder, here. And if you see wonder, wonder that you can hold with your hands and hear with your ears, wonder that crackles like a fireplace in a winter household…then you might not be able to do anything but let it warm you. When you feel like you might stop, you move. Let it start you again. Whether it be noon, night, or morning.
It’s beautiful to be in morning.

That’s where we are. We’re in a day that feels like morning, sun barely peeking over the edge of the horizon, clouds across the sky suddenly shimmering gold. You can look at many things, so many things in life. You can make a lot of choices. You can see a lot of things occurring everywhere. But when you see this this, you cannot deny it. It’s shining.

Brightly.

There’s a life to be lived here. Whatever that means, whatever that brings. Whatever the future holds. Something right now is happening, and that cannot be cast aside. It’s a beautiful thing.

A bolt of lightning strikes my heart, and I shiver as it leaves me cold.
But still -- I’m warm.

A moment of clarity?

It’s a common practice.

We take the things we see, the things we know, the things we do. The things we are. We take them, and we gather them together in a pocket of our mind, so that we may carry them around with us, day after day after day after day. Hoping that they’ll clack together and make a single spark, a spark that for one instant will give us enough light to make it clear.

I’m carrying something.

At first it was an image, something that I had picked up in a flash-frame of existence; a moment that my eyes saw as special, and my brain chose to remember. And despite my thoughts about it now, I can be certain of the reason that it was chosen to begin with. The image that I beheld, that moment, struck me as something to remember, something that I could look back toward in later years and say “Yes.”

It was something beautiful.
A face with soft features, lightly tinged with a rim of red light. Looking away.

It began as an image. Something beautiful to keep with me, just a nice thought to turn to on days when the sun burns down and the world feels like it’s preparing to boil over. It’s something different, now. Something different than it was initially meant to represent, all because of something else. Just another spark, and suddenly that moment -- that moment became clear.

Just what became clear? What sense did I reach, through the addition of sudden context? Somewhere that we haven’t quite reached. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Apparently, I don’t smile very much.

People have said it of me. They’ve spoken of how my face doesn’t fit the cheery disposition of the collected conversation, of how the structure of my cheeks and the look in my eyes appears to telegraph sadness. I’ve never really noticed. But only recently, I decided to think about it. To think of a face. To make clear the notion that a face without a smile doesn’t always carry a frown. So what does it carry?

Why, nothing at all.

It’s our face. OUR FACE. Not the face that reacts, the face we wear in accordance with the context of situations. Not the face that serves to declare our perception of events, the one we bring to the roundtable discussion for the purpose of scowling when someone chooses to bring up the issue of creationism. Think about it. Think about how people see the things that your face says, how they think it makes you clear. They look at it, and they perceive. Perception shapes reality.

But that doesn’t make it real.

Look in the mirror, at your face that presents nothing. At the face you have when you’ve been quietly sitting in the dark, mulling over whichever possibility has darted out at you like a lizards tongue. At your shoulders, neither stiff nor slumped, simply there. At your malleable self. Is it clear what that will become?

Or is that what we are to begin with?
I think, I guess, I assume… it’s the real face. The one we have for ourselves.

The one that we keep when we’re locked in our own worlds.
The one that has no context, so that it cannot be easily understood; and for that reason, is the one that speaks with more clarity about what we want and who we are than any simple smile or frown. Something that takes work for any who wish to puzzle it out. Making sense of accumulated data, putting pictures on words and forming words into cogency. Finding clarity. But does clarity always mean quality? Is that what we need, just blocks lined up in a row, ready to be shot down by some hillybilly with a daisy air rifle and a "YEEHA!" welling in the depths of his throat?

It's just another thing I've been thinking about. Maybe it doesn't make sense, which brings us to the point, in some wackitudinal post-modern roundabout manner. Maybe it sounds good.

Maybe it doesn’t.

But whatever the concepts are, whether or not the reality of my perception isn’t real…the malleable self is there. And every so often, it comes out from underneath the underneath, a moment of silence in the midst of all the talk. Whenever that face comes out, all can become clear, if you take notice.

It’s certainly something beautiful. Just like a face with soft features, lightly tinged with a rim of red light. Looking away.

Looking away.

There it is. The instant where all could have been known, if I was only observant enough to bother knowing about it. But guys like me always think things are going well until we’ve been told that they didn’t. So it was, that the moment was gone, existing only as an image until this morning. This morning when it came back to me. When the image slowly morphed into something else. Perception reshaped my reality.

And so it’s trapped within me, that moment, that image, that impression. A face with soft features, lightly tinged with a rim of red light.
Looking away.
I’d like to think that it matters. It's a rare thing when I understand the context of any little anything that I suddenly find in my life.

That hasn't changed, not this day.

But thinking -- not knowing -- something doesn’t change how things are. Could be I’m wrong. Could be I’m here, making mountains out of molehills, musing about images that might have said something with the quiet of human expression.

In truth, it probably means nothing.

But there is still something. Even amidst all of this, all of this confusion and searching, wondering and thinking, hoping and dreaming, my malleable self can find something that molds it into a smile.

Someone said that they respect me.

And respect is real, if it’s been earned. As it stands, I’m not sure if I’ve earned it yet. But I can most certainly give it a try.

And that -- that is clearly something beautiful.

A fond farewell. -OR- A personal matter.

A Personal Matter
Novel by Oe Kenzaburo, published 1964

There was once a famous Japanese author. He had made a name for himself by becoming one of the youngest authors in the countries history to be awarded one of its most prestigious achievements for new fiction, and was seen as a mind to be watched, a person with a future of brightness and wisdom.

In 1963, this author had a son. He was autistic. The son of the brilliant writer, the son of the new face of fiction, the son of the author who would someday earn himself a Nobel prize; a broken mind, borne of the brilliant seed.

So the writer wrote. He wrote himself a book within which he could let his feelings do battle, let his sadness and his love and his distrust and his understanding all come to violent confrontation, so that the fighting need not take place on the field of his own head.

The boy’s name is Hikari. “Light”.

I wonder.

“Well, here I am.”
From “Firefly,” episode 13 “Objects in Space,” teleplay by Joss Whedon

Within the foundations and the battlefields of our varied lives, there will always be things that remain with us. Varied bits, matching the varied lives, small instances that flit before us in a glimpse, yet somehow find a way to stay inside of us with an uncommon fury, gripping onto our ourselves so that they will never be forgotten. Phrases, images, thoughts. Words. People. Ideas.
Big and small, affecting all.

I’m sure you know what I mean. You’ve all had that moment, where a clingy wisp of perfume, where a single glance from a person that you’ll never see again, where a single line at the end of a book, where all of these things find a place in your mind. Where they alter you. Only slightly, only kindly. But enough.

Enough so that you stand straighter, think clearer. So much so that your you isn’t the you that it was before. These things have a way of lasting.

Like a threadbare couch sitting in a stagnant basement, one which has the power to give you words. Like a single word whispered into your ear, when your body is drenched in sweat, and the word is full of a devastating sweetness. Like the single image of a couple that you have never spoken to, but has lingered in your mind for at least 8 years. Like the patient stride of Studious Jane.

I wonder.

“I had a friend.”
From The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., pg. 264

I've been gathering those in my head lately. Little lines, things remembered from the massive conglomerate of useless trivia that takes up my brain power and makes it difficult to remember anything actually relevant. Relevant to the real world, to anything else but those moments that stay there, locked up in my head. But they're in there. And in that case, I might as well use them.

This is something that I’ve been saving for quite some time.

My personal matter.

This is for me. And truly, this is for that friend of mine. This is my goodbye. My fondest of farewells, my chance to purge this sense of wonder that threatens to overwhelm all my other senses. My reminiscence towards someone who moves through life as a whirlwind, even if she’s sitting still. This is me working something out, a last hurrah towards someone whom I might never see again. Someone that I only knew for a short time, one who -- in all honesty -- probably never thought quite so highly of me as I did of them. No one ever does.

But that is of no consequence.

Not to me.

Not ever. Not when I had a friend. A friend who managed to work her way within my psyche, just like the words, just like the ideas. Just like the devastatingly wonderful sound of the rain striking a plate glass window. And to my great surprise, she stayed awhile. It isn’t often that something like that occurs, a changing of timelines wherein Bernstein’s woman with the white parasol stays upon the ferry. A moment that becomes moments.

Once upon a time, I had a friend.

“She was nice to me.”.
From Sin City a.k.a. The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller, pg. 157

Once upon a time.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who was standing in a place she did not wish to be. She wanted movement, she wanted grace, she wanted a place to be where her feet didn’t hurt, and where hoboes didn’t stop to ask if she’d have sex with them.

It was within those walls that I first caught a glimpse. Like so many others, I walked by, yet another in the endless stream of foot-traffic that clomps in and out of that establishment each and every day, and like so many others, I caught a glimpse. And like so many others, I wished that I could know her.

I wasn’t unique, not with this feeling. As I would later learn, many people had wanted to speak to her, to sing her praises, to run their fingers through her hair. And with so many of these people, she had simply shaken her head with a nervous laugh. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That was the end of that.

Have you ever had that feeling? That sudden desire to know someone, to really talk with them? A sudden yearning for information and intimacy, coming as if from nowhere, a feeling directed towards someone that you’ve never spoken with, and have only barely seen. It happens, sometimes. Sometimes. And yet, when such a sudden situation makes its way into your vision, how do you deal? How do you speak? How do you make yourself known, make yourself separate from the endless torrent that never ceases, even on this very day, while I sit watching clouds roll in? That is something that I cannot know.

But somehow, it was something I managed.

And so it was, that amongst all those other people, standing in a place where I would periodically get shooed away by a portly man named Kyle, I made a friend. She was nice to me. It happens.

Oh yes, it happens. It happened. And yes, I made other friends during that time. Not many, no. But some. Some of those friends I still speak with, and some of them vanished completely. Some of them make sarcastic jokes at my expense, and some of them I have never met in person. Some of them I would leap up and drive to at 3 am to give them a book which I thought would make them feel better.

But none of them. None of them affected me quite like this.
And the truth of the matter is, the reason is hard to say.

“It’s sickening/ How comforting/ The privacy of the mind can be”
From “How Much Longer,” lyrics by Max Collins, performed by Eve 6

It’s not that I don’t know why, at least to some degree. It isn’t truly difficult, not when the person in question is intelligent and open, sometimes giving and sometimes reserved, sometimes joyful and sometimes very, very tired. Not when the person is one who has a quality that draws others toward them, sending their thoughts into a fray akin to an ocean in a storm. For some reason, this friend of mine is one that is loved by all. Even when she doesn’t want them to.

But it’s the reasoning that I’m speaking of, and my own reasons are my own. As with so many things, I’m not quite sure what they are. I know they’re in there, awash amidst all the others, churning in the aforementioned stormy ocean. Yet that doesn't make them easy to see. Even when they’re easy enough to feel.

I wonder.

“Why would anyone want to cry for me?”
From Dance, Dance, Dance by Murakami Haruki, pg. 5

I wonder, as I remember. I remember moments, times with you, my dear friend.
I remember moments, sitting outside, letting rain fall on our heads as we chatted about so many things, even when some of them amounted to nothing at all. I remember moments, running inside, carrying groceries after I gave you a ride to the 99 cent store. I remember moments, moving through the night, as you tried to talk emotions out of me, even as I was clamming up.
I remember moments, when I was alone, and you called me out of the blue for no reason other than to talk. To me.

I remember moments when you wanted me to leave you the fuck alone.
Sometimes I didn’t, sometimes I did. I never claimed to be particularly astute. For that, I apologize. Even when I don’t. Does that make sense?

Who knows. Call me overly-sentimental, call me a witless prat, call me whatever you want. Whatever is said, whatever is laughed, it will not, can not change my love for my friends. That, I do not wonder. I know.

“Is that what freedom is?”
From Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, pg. 156

Did I, do I, love this friend of mine? Of course. As a man with a small amount of friends to begin with, all the friends that I truly have are ones that I would happily do anything to support, legal or no. If they really need it, they will get it. A friend is a friend is a friend.

Was I, am I, in love with this friend of mine?
I could have been. It would have been the easiest thing in the world. If only she had wanted me to. But you see, that’s how friendship works. So many people have come to me, partly in jest, and partly serious, asking me if I was hanging out with one of the best friends that I had ever had in order to enact an elaborate scheme to get into her pants.

Thoughts like that make me too damn sad.

I’m overly sentimental. I am indeed an asshole. But I will never be that much of an asshole. I have a friend. That much is enough. Let that be the end of that. And so on.

“The stuff that dreams are made of.”
From “The Maltese Falcon,” (by way of William Shakespeare) a film by John Huston, released 1941

So it was, that I had a friend. A good one, a great one, a grand one. An honest one, a free one, a wonderful one. Once upon a time, the friend wanted me to go someplace with her. She wanted me to join her and her boyfriend when she moved on from this place. She wanted me to live a dream. And oh, how I had wanted to. I still want to. But I know, I never will.

Because this friend of mine has dreams. She has ambitions, she has talents. She can dance. She loves to dance, she was trained to dance. She dreams of dance. And once upon a time, her dreams came true. She danced on stages big and small, viewed by people, one and all. She danced here. She danced there. She taught others, she reprimanded others. She danced.

She was living her dreams.

Until she came here. A place where she couldn’t dance. Not with the freedom she wanted, not with the talent she had. A place where dreams come to die.

So it was, that I always knew that she would leave.

Because honestly, what monster would command the dancer not to dance?

“…but who shall command the skylark not to sing?”
From The Prophet by Kalil Gibran, pg. 55

Who indeed?

Who would cry over the loss of one who goes forth in search of their happiness, their contentment? Their dreams? Who could deny their friends the pleasure of such a thing, even when it hurts? Even when your head screams at you as you sit in the dark, or when your eyes grow moist as they stare at the clouds, hoping for the brilliance of the rain to come and wash you clean.

Yes, there is sadness. Yes, there is regret. Yes, there is writer’s standstill, and yes, there is frustration. Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. Way of the world. Right?

I’ll probably never see my friend again.

“So it goes.”
From Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., various passages

At least, that’s what the realist in me says. For this happened, once or twice. A friend was had, a friend was lost. A friend was hugged, a friend walked away. A friend, or two, vanished into a metaphorical mist, never to be seen again. Not by me.

Oh, she’ll probably return. Despite the degree of discomfort and discontentment, there are ties here, ties that bind, ties that will pull her back. Her laughs. Her loves. Other friends. Such things will cause her to return.

But not to me. Which honestly -- I suppose is just fine.

Because I still have my memories. I have my moments, I have my times of regret, as well as those of happiness. I have moments where I helped her, alongside those when I annoyed her. Memories of smiles and frowns. Of sickness and health. Of good ideas, and bad ideas. I have places, I have reminders. I have things which are mine, and mine alone. Which is more than some can say.

And I have stories. Always, the stories.

“It’s the stories that make it real.”
From Transmetropolitan issue 41 “There is a reason,” by Warren Ellis

A story, then.

The day before she left, I managed to find her in a coffee shop. It’s the place that we would hang out, sometimes where I’d be silent and she would read, or where we would sit outside, me lighting her cigarettes so she could smoke and I could smile. It’s actually where I’m sitting right now. And out of the top of my field of vision, over the edge of this glowing screen, I can see the setting for this little tale.

A friend was sitting there. She was sitting with another friend, who was also indeed a friend of mine. The three of us sat, we talked. They talked, I listened. I threw in a word or two, but mostly it was the pair of them, happily speaking of phone calls and drinks, of nights since passed and those yet to come.

And there I sat, taking it in. Breathing in the situation, looking everyone in the eye. And smiling. I was smiling, then. It happens, sometimes. In any case, this other friend left. So there we were, just me and her. Sitting quietly.

She was glancing through a book that I had given her, so I took that moment to stand up and fetch myself a refill on my cup of coffee. I was short on change, but still carefree, so I asked my friend if I might have 15 cents to make up the difference. Refill get.

When I returned to the table, she had received a phone call, so I left my steaming cup of chicory resting before her, and took my leave to go use the facilities, that dingy little room at the back of the place that never ceases to be adorned with crumpled paper towels. I washed my face. I left the water there, if only to cool my fevered brow. When I left the commode, the entire room filled my eyes.

She was gone.

“That damn near stopped my heart.”
From “Changing the World in Japanese,” an essay by Tim Rogers

A room full of people, but lacking one person. A world outside, where people sat and smoked, laughed and talked. Yet missing the sound of a certain kind of laughter. A small world that was just too damn sad.

A world where I stood there, staring at the steaming cup that rested upon a table, with no one guarding it. A world where the last words I had spoken to one of the greatest friends that I have ever had consisted of five words. “Do you have fifteen cents?” A world where she said nothing.

What a world.

And then, as if from nowhere, she appeared. Coming forth to give me a second chance at a goodbye. A last hurrah, a last moment where I might let her know how much she means to me. So we sat. We talked, a bit. We drank our drinks, and I ate the final piece of the croissant that I had been neglecting for at least 20 minutes. Until she had to go.

As she was stepping off, she said to me that she might be going out for dinner, or something that evening. Maybe going to a bar, maybe a place with lots of people. Not my cup of tea. But still, she might call me to go. And then, she began to walk away.

Until I ran outside behind her. She stopped. And quietly, we hugged.

It was wonderful. We stood there, tightly gripping each other, her head resting gently against my shoulder, my face close enough to her head to gently tease her hair with my breath. We stood there, hugging.

And she whispered something to me. Nothing complex, nothing that would change your world if you were to hear it. Nothing shocking, really. But what she said meant something to me. It meant quite a lot. And because of that, I choose to keep it with me, if only for awhile. This moment, those words are mine. Simple words, coming together. They mean something.

And as we stood there, small drops of rain began to fall lightly on our shoulders.

“Where we’re standing right now, in the ruins of the dark, what we build could be anything.”
From Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, pg. 293

That was the last I saw of her. After that moment, she turned and walked into the distance, wisping away amongst the gray of the afternoon. She’s gone now. Is that it? Is that the end? Is that the end of this story, the final battle on the plains of my mind, winning the war, decimating my sadness?

I don’t know. But if that is it; if that is the end of this, and I never see her again til the end of days, I must say…a damn fine end it was.

So here we are. My friend, I love you. I’m going to miss you. I’m going to miss your laugh, your face, your fingers, your mind, your thoughts, your ideas, your words, your pictures, your boundaries, your goals, your ideals, your dreams, your insomnia, your stillness, your focus, your smile. Your fweckles. Your pale, pale eyes. Good lord, your eyes.

Live your life, wherever it may be.

“Is this a key to immortality? To purpose? Moving speeches from moving lips as we move through space (but are lost in time)? Does it matter?"
From “Round n’ Round,” by me, Philip Horrell, pg. 8

I wonder.

Sayounara, fweckles.

A eulogy of sorts.

Her name was Pamela.

She’s dead now.

But she was alive, once. She was alive, and like oh-so-many people who were alive, who are still living, she had a story. Everyone has a story. And everyone has a story worth telling.

One somewhat gray afternoon, in the winter of 1983, a girl was born.

Her name was Pamela.

At least, that’s what it would eventually become. But on the day that she was born, she had no name. She only had a face, a face with dark eyes that glistened as if they had been washed over with morning dew. She was born without a name, and it would be a great while before she was given one.

Her parents were somewhat different from the norm, in that they believed that names were elusive creatures, things that they hadn’t the right to bestow upon their new pride and joy. A name was something that held wickedness and intelligence within its fragile fingers, things that brought down storms and raised up buildings. A name was something important. Important enough for her to choose on her own.

And so it was, that time passed by. Time went on, and the nameless girl crawled her way through the world, still not speaking, so still not giving herself a name. And as she grew, so did the world. Governments shouted at each other, people quaked and people cowered, insults and lies showering the globe with the insolence of their existence. But she didn’t care. She kept right on growing, as the world did nothing but continue to shout itself to its own inevitable destruction, not bothering to watch something truly important unfold.

And so it was, that she learned to speak. But time is not simple, and the first word she spoke was not her name. It was something that is considered trivial, but in that moment, that moment where the genesis of her words occurred, the one thing that took priority over her world was this: “Duck.”

She was at the park with her mother. She had been alive for two years and four months. Her eyes still gleamed as if they had been moistened by the morning dew. And she grew older.

It was a sunny morning in April when the fateful day finally arrived. Her mother had just gone down to the local supermarket in search of some eggs, getting ready to make a fine breakfast to get the weekend off on the right foot. While this went on, the young girl without a name was sitting on her fathers knee, telling her a story about how he had once found himself almost steeping upon a sleeping baby rattlesnake. His face contorted as he spoke, trying to get a different expression to emerge from his daughter. But she merely sat there, concentration holding itself between her tiny eyebrows, her eyes locked on a point that her father could not make out.

At that moment, her mother slipped on a patch of wet floor that had yet to be graced with a sign warning of its presence. As she tried to gain her balance in mid air, her head came in contact with the edge of a can that was part of a display of canned peaches. She would die in the hospital six hours later.

The nameless girl spoke: “I think Pamela is a nice name, Daddy.”
She was 6 years and 1 day old. Her birthday present had been a shiny red fire truck.

As she grew older, she grew smarter as well. She wasn’t exactly the quickest on tests, nor was she the slowest. But the people around her could tell that she had something within her, something that was always working, some kind of hidden mechanism that churned on and on behind those eyes of hers. She never told them about it. She wasn’t the type to, and they knew it. Just like they knew that she could see beyond them, to things which were far more important. And they loved her for it.

People are not always quick to accept those with eyes like hers; but every once in a great while, a person would also have something else, something within them that matched the intelligence which burned beneath their surfaces. Something that has never really been defined, but draws people with a quiet elegance, with a sense of empowerment, with ease and grace. And so it was, that while Pamela sat staring into the distance, smiling only when the world truly needed it, that she became the charming center of the world nearby.

Time passed.

And as time occurred, so did her stories, as will happen as life moves on.

When she was eleven years old, on a trip to the zoo, she caught her first real glimpse of an emperor penguin. She found that she loved it, and she felt that it loved her. It was a feeling that would last for the rest of her life.

When she was fourteen years old, as she was hiking in some woods with her best friend, a somewhat chubby girl named Jill, Pamela stepped off the path and stepped into a rusty bear trap, a relic of a year gone by. Jill would help her down the mountain, and would never tell her friend how much it amazed her that she didn’t shed one tear, despite the clearly terrible pain. Pamela would have a slight limp that would last for the rest of her life.

When she was seventeen years old, she lost her virginity. Two days after the senior prom. The boy was named Wilmer, and she had made him wait until after prom, for no real reason other than to watch him squirm. They would date for about eight more months after that. And then she would move on.

Like her, life moved swiftly. Buildings fell, and people lived. Buildings grew, and people died. Et cetera, and so on, so it goes. Time passed.

On a perfectly average day in the middle of February, Pamela had planned to meet Jill at a local record store, where the two of them would spend hours upon hours just browsing. They never seemed to buy anything, but that wasn’t the point of it, they just enjoyed each others company. But she never arrived. She was hit by a speeding Chrysler as she attempted to cross the street on a perfectly legal green light. Her dark, wonderfully deep eyes never saw it coming. And so it was, that they lost their gleam, the glisten that made them look as if they were covered by a fresh morning dew. Even without her, time passed by.

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There really was a Pamela.

She really was born in 1983, and she really died in 2005.

You probably didn’t know her.

And truth be told, neither did I.

But other people did know her, and they cared about her. They cared enough to mourn, and they cared enough to remind themselves, as well as other people, that their friend had died.

This wasn’t her real story.

But I hope that whoever she was, she would have enjoyed it.

Because everyone has a story. And everyone deserves one.

Right?