From Metamorphosis by Barrett Nash · Volume 2: A Case Study on Consciousness · Book 2: Render Tests.
Content note: Volume 2 is an unretouched record of a real life and includes candid accounts of depression, self-harm and suicidal thinking.
after rapture
Placed just over the shoulder of our man, the man whose perspective will imbue this story with any poignancy it may transmit, we see him re-enter the company of his fellow man after a long departure. Where was he? We don’t know. At this point, we don’t even know who he is, though we do hope to discover more about him very soon.
He is nonchalant, maybe even happy. You get the feeling that perhaps if no one was around he would be skipping and clicking his heels. Maybe this sense of exuberance is not as marked as it would immediately seem, since the utter despair firmly imprinted on the faces of all those people surrounding him sets a somber scene in which our protagonist is most definitely an outlier: a flash of color in a secondary corner of some monochrome scene.
Not noticing the melancholic sea he is lithely flying above, our man keeps making his merry way: even going so far as to jubilantly tip his hat to the elder women he passes. Is he rude? I don’t think so. He seems to just be lost in his thoughts. However, his rapture does not exclude his merriment being noticeable by others, and there is a palpable feel of malcontent percolating through the crowd bordering our man.
Eventually, after one too many hellos with a bit of a wink, an elder gentleman confronts our man. He asks why he is happy. In fact he goes “Why are you so happy?” Except he said it in a manner both more cutting and more formal.
Our man seems unperturbed, not thinking anything of this incursion into his privacy. Our man said something along the lines of he was happy just because it was a beautiful day, and in his opinion there was no reason not to be happy. He said that he hoped he hadn’t done anything to offend the elder gentleman.
The older gentleman was emotional. Restrained, yes, but more emotional than such a simple statement could propagate. He was mumbling those words to himself that our man had just recited: no reason not to be happy; no reason not to be happy; no reason not to be happy.
This scene is not a normal scene. There is something off that is not impossible to describe, but just difficult. The scene is normal, just an average street scene, likely on a weekday; the day is even wondrous for its summer charm: flowers blooming, blue skies, and that sublime smell of fresh cut grass. No, it is the people infecting this scene with a noxious air: a hollowness to their eyes, a leadenness to their step. They are broken. Standing side by side with our man, it is very much the difference between seeing Dorothy entering Oz for the first time, radiating color and playfulness, and beside her the bleakness of Depression-era Kansas bathed in black and white. Our man is alive, but no more alive than any other of that endless yet endlessly joyous breed of people. No, the problem is not in our man’s joy, or even in the sourness of the crowd around him. No, it is the fact that our man is the only joyous one. Where in the normal spectrum our man is represented by an entire range, here, in the spectrum of this crowd, that entire range is missing; all the shades that would normally be represented by this shade are missing too. There is an absence of joy, of even that which has once upon a time touched joy.
The elder gentleman is emotional. Our man is unhappy at causing this. Not unhappy as a person, or with himself, simply with this situation. The syntax of this story may become difficult. Our man tells the elder gentleman that his words mean nothing, that he was just joking around. Inside the head of our man there is confusion. He is unsure of what he said to cause this drama; maybe there was an offhand remark that this elder gentleman is taking out of context, maybe there is some meaning to his words that he did not connote when he constructed the sentence. He wished to make it very clear that he wished nothing but good cheer, kindness and respect towards this elder gentleman, yet, much to our man’s consternation, it seemed that the more he tried to communicate his kindness the more the elder gentleman became disconcerted. Finally, abruptly, the elder gentleman gathered control of himself. He looked our man right in the eye, and said thanks for the kindness, but that the kindness was undeserved. Then, he said something startling: that he, our elder gentleman, did not deserve any such kindness. And that he would have thought by this late date that our man would have realized the futility of expressing such empty kindnesses. Then, after a balefully remorseful glare, the elder gentleman turned on heel, perhaps he was once in the military, and paraded into the crowd.
Releasing a general sigh of relief, the crowd — feeling that this anomaly that had broken its immersion had been exterminated — carried on with the busy nothing of living a life one responsibility at a time. However, the equilibrium was still perturbed: where before it was our man’s exuberance disturbing the crowd, now it was the crowd’s complacency towards the bizarre scene with the elder gentleman that was perturbing our man. He was standing still, where the old man left him. He was not in shock, but rather seemed to be replaying the preceding scene in his mind, trying to put together a puzzle he was not sure he had all the pieces to. Why had the man said he did not deserve kindness? Why had he questioned the sincerity of his remarks? His confusion was radiating into the crowd, subliminally attempting to catch the help of another, but now that our man’s anomalous character had been checked it seemed that the crowd had stonewalled his existence.
He continued walking. The farther he went, the stranger the world. People were universally dismal, this he now noticed, and the air of despair was trying to invade his soul. His genuine good cheer was still strong, keeping the melancholy at bay, yet he was now conscious of the lack of a resonance similar to his own in the wake of his walk. Where was the happiness, where was the exuberance of life that need not be universal but one would hope may make a butterfly out of another kindred soul in all of this. Answers flooded our man’s mind: maybe there was a loss of a particularly hoped-for sporting event, perhaps there had been the death of some famous personage. Our man was aware that he had been away from society for some time. The world can change.
An easy solution could of course rectify this entire confusion! And our man, brave in ways such as this, bit back the bile that all brave men fight through and blatantly fished for the eyes of a casual walker-by. He made his stare unavoidable; he was ignored. Then, he was even more brave and lightly touched the sleeve of a young girl walking by. She had large innocent eyes. They caught his, and she was his, though one wonders to what extent this casual engagement was a breach of some subliminal social etiquette. Was our man a bad man, maybe, whispers through our mind. After all, we do not know him well yet, and watching a happy man be happy gives little insight into the sort of things that might supply his pleasure. We all have our secrets, and we will let our man have his for now. But right now, we must deal with this young girl. If it makes a difference she is lovely, as only the almost full-bloomed flower can be. Let’s get to her. Let’s stop keeping our man and this young girl waiting.
“What has happened to make everyone sad, to make the world grey on such a sunny day?” Our man asked with his eyes while phonetically inquiring if this young girl knew the way to a certain park that I’m not sure existed. Our girl looked at her feet and said some response that may have been a truth to one or both of the answers, yet, was tragically so soft the words were lost even before they left her lips, let alone before they travelled through that treacherous void of space and entered our man’s ear. He of course said “pardon” — except he didn’t. He saw a scene, a scene I have no problem admitting I have never seen, one which our man could not ignore, and which this young girl could not pass off with a mumbled breath either.
The scene was this, or close to this. Our man and this young girl had come to a busy intersection with some form of parade on it. Bisecting our man’s street, the multitude of the parade-like gathering marched perpendicularly in front of them. Maybe I can give this scene a color: it is green. Does that make a difference? The parade is ramshackle, like that which suddenly apparates around the murdered body of an innocent in war. Indeed, there was even a body at the centre of this beast, yet instead of worshipping the fear of death, it was a newborn in a hamper who was being deified. Wearing pink swaddling clothes and a blue bonnet the newborn was wailing loudly for a mother who was far away or refusing to gift comfort. The crowd walking with the infant lacked boisterousness; rather, this was a parade with a serious agenda: a parade that meant something to each of its participants. The seriousness of this scene was undeniable. People coming from our man’s street had gazes fixated on the innocent wailing child. Many persons consciously joined the throng, and others were so lost in the sight of the infant that, unaware of the motivations of their feet, they became active participants in the parade. This scene meant something.
Our man watched the unfolding with a sense of wonder entirely different from the cultish worship that everyone else bestowed upon the scene. He did not join the adoring throngs, nor did he stare captivated and lost at the scene; rather, he went back to looking at this young girl, who was staring at our young man with a questioning gaze which implied something which this narrator at this point is unable to communicate.
She gave him a look questioning his confusion. He gave her a look of questioning, and made a motion to touch this young girl’s hand before shying away. She asked him in no uncertain terms why he was so confused. He answered in very confused terms that he was nothing but confused, and suggested that by the terms in which reality was constructed in his interpretation of the world anybody would be confused. He also added that he had not been in society for a few days, and he mentioned this particularly thorny subject in a manner which would not suggest anything but a plausible excuse for the normalized chaos confronting him.
This girl looked at our man with those large eyes, those eyes that were undergoing a sea change from hostility and questioning to one of understanding. She said, “oh,” and that the last few days were transformational in the world, that she did not know where to begin, did not know if she was the right person to even begin telling our man of the devilry that had saturated the world in recent days. But, she said, she would do her best. She took a breath, rubbed her elbow, fidgeted for a microsecond. Then, she met our man’s eyes, asked him to give her time to give a story known to the universe but not to our man in a manner uninterrupted, then, upon an accepting nod from our man she began a recital which I don’t think our man broke once. However, for clarification of scene, they did gradually drift to a spot more off the street from where their conversation was initially instigated.
“I was walking down the street, six days ago. Well, and this sounds stupid, but, well, it is not stupid, it is what happened. Rapture. Yes, like in the Christian bible. No, please, don’t look cynical, I am not reciting to you any of my beliefs, simply the reality of what has happened. You see that the world is different: think that I am joking? Ask any of these others if my words are true. Please, if you want the truth, trust me, I am no liar, no matter what sins I have committed. Rapture happened. I was walking down the street when suddenly, just like the evangelicals prophesied, certain people walking past me on the road began to levitate. A light imbued them much like they were a mild sun sprouting rays in all directions. Suddenly, with a noise like a mixture of an amen and a thunderclap, various people were being awarded haloes. There was no question that this could be anything but rapture: the bringing to heaven of the worthy by a just god in the last days. I was… I was not an unbeliever, yet, there was no doubt that the beliefs I held were wrong, that all the other religions were wrong, that science was wrong: just like the depictions in those stained glass windows that you have seen in every church, or on so many cheap postcards, here was the reality. Cynicism be damned, it was just like the sermons promised.”
“Myself, I have considered myself to have lived a good life. I was by no means perfect, but I believe that I lived a fruitful life, the sort of life that the secret god of my heart that I prayed to would have thought valid, valuable, and soulful. During rapture, people were not ascending simultaneously. Rather, there were gaps between some and others. Maybe there was some hierarchical list to which some angel was calling in descending order. I waited, thinking I would be called. I watched many around me both ascend, and wait for ascension. Many times I thought the light had chosen me, that the thunderclap of amen had spoken for me, and I would look above my head to see that there was no halo and look below to see that I was not levitating. I waited in this state of frantic anticipation for a substantial amount of time, until, much like one cannot ignore the rise of the sun once it has reached noon, I had to acknowledge that I was not one of the chosen. The knighting had stopped hours ago. There was still a multitude, truly, a vast majority of us non-alighted standing on the street. Some of us collapsed on the street. Some of us cried. Some of us continued standing, waiting for something that was emphatically not coming. Me, myself, I just stood staring. I may have cried, or I may have smiled, I don’t know, but what I do know is that the thought so firmly entrapped in my skull was ‘what did I do wrong? Why was I not one of the chosen? How did any god see me as a sinner? What did I do wrong? Had I not lived a good life?’ My brain was flooding, weeping, transforming. Yes, I am speaking incoherently, but please understand that I have not shared this with anyone. I wish I had not shared it with you, it burns me so deeply; but the words have been said and I want to follow them through. You see, the truth is that I am a sinner. I am a sinner. I have had the examination of my life marked. It did not suffice. I am a bad woman, a monster in the eyes of the creator who irrefutably exists. I am a monster. That despair you feel weighing in the air is the acknowledgment sprouting from all of us left behind that yes: we are all sinners. And you, my friend, the one we’ve decided to call ‘our man,’ you are a sinner too. You are still here, yes? Let your jubilation be finished. Appreciate the despair that is within the rest of us left, your fellow sinners. You have failed. You did not pass god’s tests. You are a sinner, hated by god, doomed to whatever truth there is to the wretched idea of hell. Join us all, waiting to discover hell, realizing wretchedly that if god has taken those he loves to heaven, then what has he for his unchosen?” And this girl was stammering, speaking faster, impassioned, even gesticulating with an infusion of drama which was of an entirely different tone from the bright joyfulness of our man and the drab grayness of the other.
Brightness still infused our man. The wretched news of this girl entered his heart, yet for reasons as of yet he could not communicate he did not feel the self-abhorrence that was clearly the dutifully directed point of this girl. They stared at each other for some moments, short or long in time not meaningful because it lasted just the length of time that it needed to, this girl bug-eyed trying to break the news of our man’s sinning nature, and, then, our man staring balefully at this girl with eyes that were very emphatically devoid of the despair which this girl very much thought would fill our man. What was there in his eyes? I don’t know yet, am not even sure if they really contained anything, maybe the news had so surely shattered the man that there was nothing, just the screen saver of that joy that so recently permeated them laying an opaque screen disguising the vast tracts of nothing that this news had decimated our man’s mind into. Yet, this was not the case. No. No, what was here, or there, time slipping at such an ephemeral pace that what is and what was is difficult to grab a hold of, no, what was there in our man’s eyes was something that this girl did not expect to see: continued joy. You could still say that if he was moving, alone, that he might be skipping: maybe even clicking his heels.
How could this be? It was a question that clearly confused this girl, clearly confused myself your narrator, and indeed even confused our man. He was standing being thoughtful. The thoughts behind his eyes I wish I could jump into but their current was running so fast that it would be dangerous to jump in mid-process: who knows what mental rocks might be exposed, what mistruths might be realized passing by at such speeds. No, we must wait for our man to come to certain epiphanies, to show himself in his dynamism, in his ability to change in front of our eyes, or even more truthfully to remain static, to retain that awe-filled merriment that resonates in his every step: to communicate the joys of his existence despite the harrowing despair that sought to invade his heart.
He said to this girl that he was not an evil man. He said that confusion filled him, yes, but that he still loved himself. That in the litany of his life, he did not know what he would change to more assuage a god that clearly deemed him unworthy. He admitted the acknowledgement that he shared the pain of his fellow men, that he felt a vacancy through his mind that some higher power had not chosen him, had watched him emphatically doing his best to live a life that he would classify as beautiful and deemed his efforts unworthy. Yet, still, again, this perversion had not pervaded his heart.
“How?” asked this girl. And again our man was silent. The answer was not given to our man, just the confidence in the eventual righteousness of whatever that answer is. Our man tried anyway. “I once watched a young boy on glue trip over his own drunken feet, hit his head on the tumble down and lie there immobile, maybe dead, maybe fine. I looked at him, wept in my heart, walked on without helping him, without looking back. I make no claim to be anything but a sinner. My life is littered with moments where I look back and self-loathe the demagogue that I was. What I proclaim is happiness, not that happiness of a sadist who takes pleasure in his own maliciousness, but rather that of the ambitious man, the sort of man who understands the limits of life: that one has to take chances: to roll the dice, and appreciate and deal with the absolute eventuality that mistakes will be made. I was ambitious. I climbed mountains from whose summits I could not see any land that I knew, but rather made my way just following my feet and the survival skills inherent to my humanity. I was told the way of the lord. I knowingly deviated from it. I suppose my punishment is at hand. But so what? I did not spend my life enthralled to the mantras of others, repeating words, actions, and days in the service of the already discovered, the already experienced. I believe that those people lifted up into rapture are happy, but their happiness is very different from that which infuses me. I know no fright of the hell which you proclaim is before me: I greet its eventuality with the same moderate curiosity that I would greet that heaven which was not gifted to me, or the turning to dust which I thought was my eventuality. Will they torture me with pain? Is that the fear of a hell, pain? I will master pain with the same curiosity I would ponder a fresh summer day. I am my own master, I am no slave to god even if he is the true god. Death provides me no fear, life provides me no fear. The only thing I fear is not being true to myself. Of compromising those axioms through which I live my life by trying to conform to some system which does not have the ring of truth singing sweetly in my ears. The others were right in their beliefs? Yes, they were risen. But so what? Eternal life and the pearly gates of heaven to me seem a poor reward for not appreciating that we were in heaven anyway, an ability to live in the infinite moment and appreciate the visual splendor of light playing off a poorly painted wall. Maybe these people will find the meaning of life in their immortal incarnation, but, I pity them. Pity those days on earth where they lived for the glories that they have now attained rather than those glories which were before them. I lived my life true. I will continue to live my life true. I am at peace, much like a mountain, star or running stream: those forces of nature which do not operate in the hope of some different life but rather operate with the same intensity, day in, day out, until their existence in their present form no longer exists. Upon my death, regardless of where my soul goes, I will be forever happy thinking that those molecules that once created my flesh will now be a part of some different mountain, some faraway star, some young bubbling stream. I care not what is the reality, all I care is what I make out of my perception of reality, and under the guise that I am true to myself I will be forever in praise of the wonders of life. Yes, I have sinned in the Christian sense, walked past that poor boy who tumbled. You don’t think his fate has filled my mind, those others’ sorrows that buffet me every day: but I have chosen a higher morality than that of the eternal gods: I have chosen the way of compromise, the undeniable infinite of shades of grays. That tumbled boy an equation whose eventual causality I could not encompass, and I made the cynically realistic choice to avoid the situation: a choice I live with, though now I believe it may have been the wrong choice. Life is full of mistakes. To me, it is not the avoidance of mistakes that is the witness to a holy life, but, rather, it is how we interact with our mistakes, learn from them, learn to be their masters and finally, to rise above them. These men, surrounding us with their despair, they are not sad because they were not brought to revelation but rather because in their hearts they feel like they were caught. They thought they could keep secret those deviances in their hearts and are depressed that god has found them out. Myself, god has seen me as unworthy, but I showed him with honesty everything that makes me, me. To hell with a god that loves me not! I love me. I would argue with god over every decision I have made, in all their vast complexities, and I believe I could prove in every case that I took the course most honorable, one not filled with the laziness of not attempting to tackle the complexities of life nor one defined by a fear of misstep. I have misstepped; I have gone astray; but at least I attempted to walk towards something magnificent. Judge me as you will, girl, your insight just as important as any god’s. Just as likely to make me question myself, just as I believe in the strength of my own position being able to carry me through the harrow of your contempt no matter your loathing of me.”
Well, that was long, neurotic, and not overly cohesive. Clearly the reality of a pure thought passing through the killing fields of verbal expression. But still, if perhaps those words meant nothing concrete the impassioned tone and fiery eyes spoke their own language with this girl. She looked at him while he talked, saying nothing but never looking away from his face, his eyes. Both of them were as rocks in the flowing river of the malcontents flowing around them, that malcontent threatening at any moment to break both their spirits: our man’s spirit being tested in its virtuousness as never before and this girl’s spirit having a flower bulb so ready to bloom, just needing respite a little longer, a few more moments of sunshine on a quickly fading day.
She told him that his words did not make sense, that she disagreed with him and that he was in denial. She said this while staring down, staring to the left, staring to the right. Human weakness, it is how we know there is no true god no matter what he who lives in heaven might proclaim: weakness pervades our souls so deeply that there is no way it can be separated from the model that gave us genesis. Pervades us so deeply that those who claim to holiness are doing nothing but hiding a truth, shying away from honesty. Monsters, all of us: can we not accept it, make peace with it. This girl, she took a step back from our man. Said she was sorry to be the one to carry to our man such unfortunate tidings: she looked him right in the eyes, rainbows sprouting from her sad gaze, eyes that showed a luminosity which was always there and would, we hope, always be there. Then, she slipped into that quiet river of despair floating around the quickly disappearing island of their conversation. She was gone with such an abruptness that our man did not think to reel her in, to thank her, to do something incorrigibly human that would make him exist in her heart as anything but a moment in a day which was quickly fading from her conscious mind and, even that, of her subconscious mind. These two had shared something palpable, but no more palpable than those interactions undergone thousands of times in a life that we ignore. Those little resonances that are the answer to the true holiness which our man proclaimed to adhere to.
Our man stood in the street without that girl for a few moments. His face underwent a certain number of facial expressions but none of them extreme. Then, in the face of glowering humanity and mournful gods our man continued walking down the street. Continued looking like if there were no others around he would be skipping, even clicking his heels. Continued trying with all the power of those infinite universes which constructed the vast labyrinth of his existence to live life as truly as he was capable.
being white
So where is it we are? Well, I suppose I am here, at a bar, writing, and you are somewhere I can’t imagine, even if you exist; yet, we are somewhere together: even if we are not spatially near we are brothers, for we are about to dive into the unknown: myself, creating words that I have not yet made, and yourself, reading those same words which you have yet to read. Maybe we should start now, but before I dive into these current vortexes pulling on my subconscious I want to just enjoy this moment, these pretty surroundings, a wonderful night in a sublime environment. And one which I will ignore, or try to, to complete a task: this task; of writing these words which give me no pleasure, only catharsis.
Well, what shall I describe to you? There has been a haunting in my mind for the last few days, but I fear the artistic inspiration which hit me like a wave has been wasted. I thought it would be here now, when I could manipulate the world to be a perfect environment; rather, I find that it has peaked, crashed, and I am in placid waters. I fear I am going to vainly splash, to try to reawaken the monster that had such potential, but I fear even before I attempt that this feat is beyond me.
Usually when I write, I am strictly fictional; perhaps I am an often invasive narrator, my young ego still tripping you out of immersion, but the writings I create are fantasies, idle constructs I create to give visualization to those colorful emotions swirling through my mind; this shall be different; while yes: it is still an attempt to capture leviathan, that swirling chameleon who so gracefully escapes my tentacles, today, on this blank page, I will rather describe true events. Or at least events based on factuality.
I need to set the scene, which is something anathema to me, something entirely outside of my nature. I like ambiguity. Usually I believe that I could glorify this inclination and try to convince you that what I want is to set a universal scene, to try to create a setting that through its sheer lack of detail may resemble something similar to your own situation, but I am absolutely certain in the not so deep crevices of my mind that rather the reason for such opaqueness is my laziness, my lack of inspiration: unequal to create a scene in the vein of that wonderful image which passes through my mind, and I think: why try? Why make a painting with stick men on a simple sketch where a real artist could create a masterpiece. So I don’t; or, usually, I don’t. But here, here, I will try. Please, forgive my stumbling. Indeed forgive me everything, forgive me all my little ticks, my little imperfections, this imperfect work which I feel will try your patience, will reveal itself as something not worth your time. At least realize I present myself as something human, something weak, something lazy; perhaps the story should be about me, the lazy man, the bad man, the man who wants to be an artist to call himself an artist. And really, arrogantly, all my work is always about me. But for now, in the vein of gaining momentum, let me try to set the scene.
My current surroundings are Kigali, Rwanda. It is October 3, 2010, and at the moment it is 20:09. Why be so exact? I don’t know. An appreciation of the moment, it is still 20:09, some lightning just struck, I am alive, yet now, it is 20:10 and the moment is past, being filed into my subconscious, another memory to forget. But we are still here. I am at a lovely little restaurant by the nunnery where I am living at the moment; I am on a patio on a hill, overlooking a valley, and staring at an angle at the gradual rise to other hills. It is night, still early but black, and the fluorescent lights of this city are rising from the valley and distant hills like constellations: making up for the invisible stars in the sky which their own brightness obliterates. There is the threat of rain, heavy drops crashing in isolated chaotic spatters on my computer, lightning burning my vision and threatening my peace, yet, now that I think of it, a curious lack of thunder. This is where I am, right now. A Sunday, though it doesn’t make a difference, a Sunday where I was at work. But the me, the me right here, who is already a memory, is trying to remember. To name a beast who has been violating my serenity for the last few days, and in the discovery of this beast, hope to name him and humanize him, to deconstruct these pangs of guilt, regret and confusion, and make peace, even if it is, as I fear, a peace built on a construct of remorse.
All we were trying to do was help, but the reality is, too often it is impossible to see the causality ahead, to realize the end domino of the stack you are pushing on. Where do I begin, the beginning, the middle or the end. When my creative inspiration was flowing over me, I was still in the middle, or at least in the middle in comparison to the tertiary stage I’m floating at now. It seemed correct to start there. But now, I do not know, things have changed, the story is the same but the feeling is different and the differences are impossible to rectify. The logical thing to do would be to start at the beginning, but rather I will start at the end: a friend and me, or more correctly a co-worker and me, we tried our hardest to aid some street children. We paid for them to go on a bus outside of Kigali to where they said they wanted to go, to where their grandmother was; we also bought or gave them new clothes, shoes, even a deck of cards and a toothbrush. What heroes, huh? Saving the world, two children at a time. Life is not so simple, or if it is, my conscience will not let me enjoy it.
The reasons for my guilt are simple: I interjected myself into another person’s life, I did this without giving it appropriate thought, I did this on uncertain knowledge of the path to righteousness, I did it on uncertain will and perhaps the wish to escape the situation altogether. I am the worst man, the man who tries to do good but may cause evil purely through lethargy, purely through an inability to give enough of a fuck.
Where does this story go? It is not a story made poignant by facts, this is no Odyssey. Rather, it is this attempt to describe a terrible color haunting my mind, stealing my sleep, morphing me into a weakling, a being I am unable to confront. I suppose the point is to try to confront myself, and in words, I feel like I am whining, trying to make a big deal out of a small little oddity. Maybe I am trying to add romance and adventure to an otherwise bland life. But I am unsure of the validity of this thesis, since in my mind I am still haunted. Maybe give me patience. Maybe, just maybe, I will be able to dredge the right combination of words to make you understand why it is that I am thrown into chaos: though, I acknowledge, that combination of words has yet to appear here.
I am white. Not just white: the descendant of English, French, Russian, German. I was raised Christian. I have a complex. I have the heavy weight of generations of culture leaning on my shoulder, ancestors who looked like me, thought like me. And here, today, in these last few days, I was like a colonialist. I was a man from another culture, a man who did not speak the local language, and I decided to intercept whatever story would unfold for these poor boys, Jean Claude and whatever the fuck his brother’s name was, and in their lives interject my own morality, my own desire for how the story should unfurl. Just like my ancestors, those evil men who through their desire to create goodness created so much evil. Created the borders that divide Nigeria and make it ungovernable, who forgot to make the borders in Congo and make it ungovernable, who claimed that making Africans slaves was bringing them into the true fold of Christ, who still create trade walls which perpetuate the greatest poverty on earth while injecting a tithe in aid and allowing ourselves to pat ourselves on the back: saviors, heroes, the bringers of light.
Am I being too harsh? Yes and no. People who look just like me created massive harm, but also made some incredible creations. Really, there are no innocents in this world. If anyone was to be defined by the actions of even their closest confidants the world would be black: hell: just a reminder of the wonderful people around me here in Rwanda on streets that were slippery with the blood of the everyman; an easy reminder of the horrors in all our hearts.
All I wanted to do was some good. Yes, I have fear of interjection, a fear that I am powerless to define the eventual results of my actions and, therefore, I should seek to be as minimal as possible: that it is unfair to have effect in ways that I can neither entirely perceive nor have control over. Yet, then here, here were two poor boys. Sleeping under a bridge. Dropped out of school. Sniffing glue. Father dead, stepfather used to beat them. Runaways to escape, then again, runaways from that wretched institution that was designed to take care of children like them. Are these kids liars? Want to take advantage of the foreigners who listen to the words that the locals have long grown immune to? But if they are liars, so what? How can someone who is so poor take advantage of someone so rich? We tried to help them. We tried. But we could have tried more. We could have ignored the situation. Never had to deal with it. Never caused potential problems. And besides, any benefits we might impart into this foreign land, no matter how statistically unlikely this conclusion is: it is neutralized in the face of the magnitude of the problem. Great, help two in two million. Why these kids? Why them. But, then, why not these two? Why be overwhelmed, why not affect some for the positive even if it results in walking past the hordes of others. Maybe to save two in two million is the best I can do. And if I destroyed them, sent these young children into the teeth of a dragon, started momentum rolling in an unpalatable way, maybe showed them that there is a market in taking advantage of foreigners, maybe sent them to a place even worse than here? Well, I suppose those are the thoughts keeping me sleepless, making me feel guilty. Making me apologize for spending money, for taking time to help two boys, one of whose names I don’t even remember. I feel myself coming into confrontation with the evils of my ancestors, staring at them, and stating perhaps their evils do not mean that my own actions will result in malignancy; yet, at the same time, indeed by the same logic, I need to acknowledge that I am here, with the exact same emotion, with the exact same hope of goodness of my forebears. Perhaps creating even more suffering.
Is apathy the right route? I don’t know. What is the right choice? To flip a coin betting on heads? Maybe I will get heads, I win, maybe I will get tails, I lose. And maybe I don’t have to flip the coin. I don’t know what is right. I know I flipped a coin this last time, and I will likely never know if it was heads or tails, no matter how much I wish to know. I am sure that coins will be in my hands again, and now, I still do not know what to do. All I know is that I will try my hardest, test laziness, and it may be the struggle of what makes me myself. The paths ahead are difficult, yet, right now, I don’t see how to avoid them, how to simplify this complexity into a reusable formula. No matter what route I take, I will be less the man for it. All I can promise is that I will try harder, whatever that means.
fair love
We’re drunk and she’s naked in my bed and pulling my belt off. She’s ravishing, she tells me to kiss her, and I do, as hard as I can, I put my soul into her and pull back holiness. I touch her breast and her eyes light up and she unbuttons my pants, she is beautiful, she is touching me, how strange to be touched, how wonderful, how wondrous, emotion, life, love.
—
We wake up, we’re hung over, I’m in her bed, and we just lie there looking at each other, both awake, but both afraid to break that silence. She asks me if she was my first, I nod. She tells me I was wonderful. I ask her if she wants breakfast, she silently nods, I touch her shoulder, let my finger run up her neck, to her cheek, her hair, she is beautiful.
—
We’re eating, our conversation is stilted, uncomfortable, it’s dinner, our first date, and we don’t really know what to say. She asks me if I heard that a family was killed in a car crash very near her house last night. I tell her no, that that is terrible, that I’m so sorry, life is tragic, and short, you have to make the most of the short time you have. Our eyes meet. I order two drinks.
—
We’re at the mall; it’s noon; we spent all morning and all afternoon in bed; life is good and beautiful and lovely. We’re walking and I confidently have her hand in my hand, and we’re talking ceaselessly. Yes, reality TV is stupid, I can’t believe people watch that trash. Yes, blue does look good on a girl with blue eyes. Her hand’s in my hand, it’s so soft, she leans against me, looks up into my eyes, and my mouth catches, time stops, don’t ever stop looking at me, don’t ever stop. Please.
—
We’re both quiet. I just told her I love her. I meant to. I meant it. I wait. She looks like she might cry, then she looks up, looks me right in the eye, then tells me she loves me. I say it again; she says it again. Like that, we’re in love. Lovers in more than just bodies. Love we have. It is ours, I can feel it, she completes me, she is perfect.
—
We’re shouting at each other. It’s a fucking stupid idea, it’s icy out, I won’t let her drive around, yes I’m a fucking control freak, but I’m sorry if I give a damn. She starts to cry, and leaves the room and slams the door. I yell good. Then I cave. I go to the slammed door, and I lean against it. Oh, you know I don’t mean to yell, it’s just I’m worried, you’re welcome to go, but what if something happens, what would I do, it would be my fault, what would I tell your parents, what would I do with myself; you know I love you. She opens the door. She kisses me hard. She kisses me harder. She tells me I’m a wonderful man, that she’s so lucky to have a star like myself watching over her, and that she’s sorry for being the fool. She kisses me the hardest I’ve ever been kissed; I can taste blood; she says instead of her going out, we should go to the bedroom, she’s beautiful, eyes fresh from tearing, cheeks still flushed from anger, I pick her up, a bit like a football I suppose, and carry her to the bed.
—
We’re sitting hand in hand, and her parents are looking at me. It’s dinner, and the conversation is stilted, like from that first date. Yes, I’m a university student; yes, I have a good job; yes my grades are good; I would like to be an English teacher when I graduate; yes it is a good profession. Her father smokes, and he uses the cigarette like a maestro’s wand, I can tell he is playing me so that I sing the songs he wants. Even more I can tell he is pleased with my answers. Her mother is staring at the father, and when he looks away, to light another cigarette or whatnot, she looks approvingly at me, and when she thinks both I and her husband are looking away, she gives a conspiring wink to her daughter my lover. We go to the next room, and my heart goes and plays the piano while the mother cleans the dishes and I talk the stock market with her father. It’s a Renoir scene.
—
We’re hugging, she’s just pulled me from my knees and gave me a passionate yes. I wonder if it is ok to cry. I am ecstasy, I am wonderful, I am the happiest I’ve ever been, she is so beautiful, so wonderfully wonderfully beautiful. She cries, she cries my tears, we are one, oh my god, lord thank you for love, for these emotions, let life never be as happy as this moment, for fear I will explode, life, what wonders, what wonder, awe, awe, awe.
—
We’re married. We are middle-aged. I know I am getting older, a few gray hairs, but I look at her, and she is as beautiful as ever, more so, a line or two around her mouth provides her dignity, her hips have filled out to give her a shape, and her eyes have a confidence that was not there when I met her. She goes to the washroom, comes back, and tells me the news we’d both prayed fervently for, our hard work had paid off, life would continue on, our love would have a physical embodiment, we were joined forever, I kissed her, harder than I’ve ever kissed anyone, whispered in her ear thank you, and put my hand on her stomach and didn’t stop.
—
We’re all here around the breakfast table and she’s mad at him, our wonderful little boy, since he has slept in and might be late for school. She’s getting his bag together and giving him a lecture, but it is not mean-hearted, it is parenting, and my heart fills with pride: my family, my wonderful family, my universe, my constellations, everything that I need, everything that I have. I give a laugh, and she looks at me, and sees that she’s being a bit over-stern and starts to laugh too, and my beautiful son, my beautiful son, the son of my beautiful wife, looks at her, then looks in my eyes too, then starts to laugh. We all laugh and I tell them they had better run off or else be late to school. I had to hurry to my own school; teach English.
—
We’re so sad; shattered. He has left us, our beautiful boy, our son, has grown, grown like grass in the spring, when you look out and you wonder how, how did this happen; he is gone to school, in another city. She is crying, I go to her and hold her, wrinkles here and there, grey hair yes, but oh still so beautiful, so wonderful, all I want, and tell her I love her, that we have been good parents, that she is wonderful; I hold her, I hold her weeping frame, let my own tears fall in her hair knowing no one will ever know my sorrow, the sorrow in the creeping recesses at the back of my mind. We did good, I think, we did good.
—
We are old, my son, a man, visits us every winter, he brings his children, and we regale them with stories and games. My wife, my partner, has become frail. She radiates a glow when the kids come to play, three grandchildren, their laughter is infectious, we feel young, as young as our minds feel, we could play their games, we want to play their games, when did we ever stop, why? I see my son looking at his mother my wonderful wife and his face is pained; I look at her a second unguarded and my face is pained; she looks at the both of us, gives a laugh, and continues to play with the grandchildren, her withered frame breathing deeply every breath so deeply; poignantly aware it could be her last.
—
We are separated. She is dead. Died years ago actually, but I still wake up and expect her warmth to be next to me. Terrible start of the day, always realizing you’re alone, then thinking of why. My son visits often, and his children are getting old, thinking I’m a fragile piece of furniture, someone to whisper around. But they are beautiful; what an equation, she and I made so many who will make so many; live forever for sure. But they don’t visit every moment of every day, how could they, they have their own lives, their own loves, their own hopes, their own dreams; I spend much of my time alone; thinking. Sometimes I wonder if it’s good to think. I think that I’ve lived my only life, that the bottle is almost empty, and I suppose it’s natural to wonder if I chose right, if maybe I should have read the label more carefully, that maybe I should have drunk quicker, that maybe I should have drunk slower. My life ends, and I look at the receipt, and I see how it all adds up. I used to dream like everybody else, big dreams, emperor or something. I used to dream of love. Did I have love. It was good. Life was good. Beautiful family. What more could I want. Did I not have everything? What more could I want. What more would be fair to want?
courage
A little boy I’ve never seen before is staring me straight in the eyes, a few inches away from my face. We are both in the middle of the frigid ocean, and I am the one lucky enough to have snagged a deck chair to float on. The boy’s eyes are filled with a hatred neither of us wants to understand.
How wonderful and gratifying it would be to save the boy’s life, but the situation is not so easy. My own body is already permeated in water, and to add any more weight would be to destroy this fragile sanctuary.
Of course I have thoughts of the chivalrous route, of sliding off this deck chair and letting the little boy on, but he is too young to survive up here without me, without my body heat, without my balance. I understand those animals, whose names I’ve momentarily forgotten, who seem so horrible for eating their young; yet, these same animals, by cannibalizing their own kin, are actually insuring the greatest rate of survival. Life is hard and cruel. My heart is hardening.
So what happens now? I’m going to try hard to survive, and I’m going to watch this child die. I wish it weren’t so, but it is so, so let it be. My mind is recoiling, but not revolting, so I can lie here, so still, reviling at the thought of myself while I have already passed the boy off as dead.
Unfortunately, death claws so slowly in those times when its speed would be so wondrous, and words are striking me like a hammer to a cold anvil. He starts with the obvious, the obvious requests to be let on. He is obviously confused, thinking I must not be understanding, thinking that it is his own fault for being incapable of communicating properly with me. He stays a moment in silence, just one fragile moment, his body more mature than his brain, making him act beyond his years to save that which he is. He rephrases his pleas, more servile, more sorrowful. I do not respond. I pray for a breeze to carry my boat away from the desperate look in this child’s eyes. I pray for colder water. I get neither.
The child is quickly begging more and more so. I admire his spirit. I wish I could save him. I wonder if there is a way. I realize I am being self-centered, not risking my life, but the reason a person risking their life is so extraordinary is because most people are not willing to make that sacrifice, and hate me as I do, I am one of those people. I want to live to see another sunrise. I want to have the pleasure of being warm again. I know how to gamble, my mind is twirling the odds, and I am playing this hand safe.
The child is begging, and getting tired. He has stopped asking things legibly, and is just crying, tears formed from evolution, knowing that this strand of the fabric of life is to be exterminated. The boy is not sure why he is going to die but he realizes its eventuality. It is here that from the very corner of my lips, completely unbidden and unwanted, I communicate the only words I’ve uttered since the accident, and the only words I utter after. That simple, inadequate statement of sorry. I wish I could gobble the words up. Better to be the nameless evil than to add bitterness to that fragile glance; how wretched of a wretch I am to make this dying boy realize that there is a real person who is refusing his right to live. How wretched I feel. How wretched I look. Sorrow trapped in time forever.
By now the child has stopped kicking. There is a piece of wood he uses to support his weight. But it is not enough. I can see he is losing his strength. I wonder one more time. What is right, what is wrong. A life for a life, but he will die either way, I cannot save him. The best I can do is die with him. Perhaps take that look of bitterness out of his eyes. I wonder in the recesses of my mind, what is a life worth? Is providing the pleasure to a child of not dying alone a greater gift than any other I might ever provide? Perhaps. Perhaps even likely.
My mind is eating me alive. I know what is right. I know what is logical. I know that in me there is the potential to live another several decades, to do good for another several decades. I also know how few people live good lives. What makes me anything but another statistic. This boy’s eyes are solar eclipses, burning to look at their darkness. I want to have never been here. To never have been able to even fantasize such ghouls. I appreciate death. I appreciate that the world is not a good or bad place, but just exists, and some souls must be no more than pawns.
I slide off the lawn chair, and the child’s frigid eyes get a diffused sense of hope. I don’t say a word, I grab his outstretched hands, pull them tightly, and start swimming into the deep. I carry him down. I carry myself down. The last thing I feel is an embrace from the boy. Desperately trying to claw away, yet desperately holding on, that sense of warmth, that sense of the familiar. We are all the universe for a second. The familiar. And then all I feel is his heat. And I send a silent prayer to any deity who can listen that the boy’s last feeling is my heat. And then I keep swimming deeper.
a game of chess
It’s lunchtime and I’m going to play chess with Kwame. I put the chess board in the middle of the teachers’ table, and the other teachers put their lunches to the edge of the table, thinking not that it’s rude that I’m moving them, but rather looking forward to watching our game of chess. I walk away to go buy my lunch while Kwame sends a boy to go fetch his, and we exchange the usual banter about how the boy could just as easily get mine. Different cultures, we both understand, but the joke has become a part of our routine and we treasure it.
I walk over to the waakye stall and go to the back of the line, however the children push me to the front and the stall keeper has already started preparing my usual meal; I’m not so cultured as to not enjoy some perks and I buy some toffee for the kids who let me go to the front. I head back to the table, set up my white chess pieces, move my traditional first move, then begin to eat my lunch.
The interesting thing about Kwame and my playing chess is we only play each other. There’s no thinking about typical strategy, rather it’s about taking the historic precedents that we’ve built up and an intimate understanding of the other person’s logic and trying to outmaneuver the other person. It’s satisfying and relaxing. Every time we play, I sketch my image of who Kwame is as a person a little clearer.
He always waits an inappropriate amount of time for his first move, believing that since I always do the same first move, he should highlight my recklessness. Typically, however, he himself does something reckless for his first move, like trying to throw me off my game by doing something he has never tried before. However, that doesn’t happen today; today, he does his classic start, leans back, gives a bit of a grin and a polite word pointing out what I know, that this is a safe first move, and then he begins the act of waiting for me to make a move.
Now, for me, the first move is almost a joke, just a part of our vernacular conversation. It’s the second move that is so important to me. This is typically where I diverge, where I can use my usual moves to get myself into a strong defensive position and just keep hammering him, waiting for him to make a mistake. This is guaranteed to be a long and satisfying game, meaning I’ll either whittle him away from his mistakes, or he too will have a strong defensive game and we’ll hammer each other down and it will become a game of few players with lots of space. Or I’ll make a mistake.
There is the other type of game I could play, which is of course offensively. I could begin moving my characters in a way that looks like defense, then put myself at risk while trying to take a greater reward, or just begin playing in a controlled chaos and hope that I keep the balance of the chaos better than Kwame.
I think today I’ll play my defensive game. This is because I have been losing to Kwame recently, which is only because before that I was beating Kwame too often. I got overconfident and sloppy, he got thoughtful and determined. I’ve been embarrassed, everyone watching me lose, and today, I am going to beat him by taking as long as this game takes without making a single mistake. It’s his turn to be overconfident and sloppy.
I make the defensive first move, a signal that I am building up my defenses, and he leans back, and my god but does he look confident and how it grates me! He seems to realize that I’m expecting him to be overconfident, but still he begins to make extremely offensive moves, the type of moves that you’re not sure where they’re going to lead to, you’re not even sure if your opponent does, but there’s that scary chance that openings in your defenses that you haven’t seen are being analyzed and exploited. It’s the sort of game I love to play when I’m on a winning streak, but hate when I want a grinding win. While I set up my defensive walls, which he knows what I’m aiming for since I’ve used this beginning strategy dozens of times, he’s situating his pieces to take advantage of the mutually known holes in my armor.
Well damn him! He is playing overconfident, and he’s left me a chance. It means that my defensive game will be potentially compromised but I have the chance to take out a high-level player with a low-level player and I take it. First blood, his, and he knows he’s been playing too open. However, he also knows it’s too late to stop his momentum now, he has to keep playing in a way that creates disturbances in my mind, play in a way where I leave his strangely formed line a path to the heart of my board, and he starts down this path by passing up killing the player that just killed his, even though it’s in striking distance of more of his players, and instead battering a hole into my defenses.
I look up, and give a laugh. Well if that’s how it’s gonna be! I take another bite of my lunch, thinking that he really did make a nice offensive move. Either way, we both lose a piece, and he gets a hole in my line out of it. But, as the problem with playing such a quick offense so often is, he’s made a mistake in another part of the board with his quick forward moves. I ignore both his player that battled far into my line, and my player in the middle of his line, and put him in check. But not just check, no, this is a sweet move, a check where my checking player can’t be touched, his king must be protected and, best of all, the same player is now in a direct line for striking the player who battered my defenses. He moves his king, I use my player in his line to take out one of his players and put him in check again, he moves his king again, I take out his player in my defenses, and he takes out my player in his midst. It was a major first battle, I still have a relatively strong defensive line except for the one breach, and I have thrown his side into disarray. He makes a joke about how that was not exactly good on his part, and it’s my turn again.
Now I realize that if I can just keep playing the game taking a piece for every piece he takes, I win. I realize my danger now is to become the one who is overconfident, the one who makes mistakes. I can see him analyzing the board thoughtfully and determinedly, realizing he has to play better than me to win. My present move has to be good. It has to show that not only did I win the first battle, but the lay of the land is in my favor, that he needs to reform on my terms.
I move a player to the center of the board as a test. He could easily move a character to take it out in the next turn, prompting me to sacrifice the player or move him back to safety, wasting a turn and taking away my hard-earned collateral from the previous skirmish. But then he would be on offensive again, and he’s not ready for that, no, he keeps making his defensive line, filling the holes, and has basically conceded the middle of the board to me. I quickly move my defensive line forward, filling the breach he made, putting myself into a strong position. The defenses I made while he was playing offense in the beginning are now coming into their own, and moving them forward gives me clear dominance in the center of the board, and enough room behind the front line for the maneuvering of my other pieces. The board is under my control.
We do a few small skirmishes, losing an equal number of pieces of equal value, but remember, I don’t need to win any extra pieces: every piece we both lose just highlights my numerical advantage. Having a one-piece advantage when there’s thirty pieces on the board is not such a big deal, but when there’s ten pieces it’s far more pronounced.
Kwame does not look worried, it is just a game and he has won the last several ones, but the other teachers are getting angry at him for not being more dominant, for his seeming complacency in giving me the middle ground at no cost. They point out isolated moves he should make, but this is not their game: they don’t see the long-term repercussions; really, it is more for their entertainment that they want us to do those grandiose moves which are painful and unrewarding.
It is now time for me to start assaulting him. This isn’t because of confidence, but rather because he’s refusing to start assaulting me and the game is stalling. I use a player that is a bit more important than a pawn and blast through his defenses. It’s giving up my numerical advantage, but it’s worth it as over the next couple of turns I flood him with a few of my most tactical players. I begin destroying his pawn line while he’s fleeing with his king, and I can feel victory in my sight.
But suddenly, it all comes crashing down! I was the overconfident one, and it costs me bitterly. He knocks out my most tactical player from a gap I didn’t see, and in the same move puts me in check. While I take out the player putting me into check, he takes out my second most tactical player. Shit! The board now a mess, both our defenses are in chaos and I can’t tell who has the advantage. I decide that I need to keep pressure on his king to try to keep him boxed in while I reform my defenses, but he is a move ahead of me, putting me in check again. All the other teachers are giggling at the both of us, but more at me since I was so much ahead of him in the game. I feel myself become impassioned, and know that I have to throw that away, that any emotion will lose me the game. I have far more pawns than he does, and I decide to sacrifice some of them. I start that long walk to the other side of the board to try to get another queen, and it scares him. He wastes turns on pawns, and I still have more, and he’s realizing both that killing these pawns has overextended his line, but also that he has no choice. I keep the pawns where they are, on the far side of the board protecting each other and ready to move ahead at any time, and then begin encircling his king. He throws some low players away from the king hoping I’ll take the bait but we both know that he has left himself vulnerable.
This is the time when the game will be decided. We both know it and he’s the one trapped in a corner, dangerously flailing. He decided to take all my pawns out on the far side, and use that piece to try to get behind my king. I let him do all this because I am getting closer and closer to making a checkmate, we’ve each given up a great number of pieces in this battle, but the siege is his end if I break it, while just costly to me if he beats me back.
There are few players left, and we’re each circling the other. But his flailing moves finally strike and he takes out my most key piece left. I don’t know what has happened, but the damage is immense to my cause. He has a big grin on his face, he knows what that was worth, and he leans back apparently sure that this next move of mine will take a huge amount of time on my part. But he hasn’t watched the entire board, so fixated on his move being brilliant he has left his own key player tactically open, and I take him out. He gives a bit of a shout, still in good humor but clearly affected by the intensity of the game, as well as by our fellow teachers’ mocking of him over his dismal performance.
His players left are weak, and while I am not much stronger it’s enough with so few players to make the inevitable unavoidable. This is my favorite feeling of the game, knowing that you’re just killing time until you’re unquestionably considered the winner. Knowing that all there’s left to use is my advantage in further devastating his mobilization and formations, and whittling it down until there’s just the king left.
Oh, I’m definitely cocky now, but that’s ok. I can feel all those other losses slipping from my shoulders, can feel my banter with Kwame becoming more playful, even my moves become almost mocking. He tries a few admittedly well-played moves, but I’m too superior; a well-placed bullet does nothing against a navy. I know so many times my cockiness has gotten me into trouble, but not this time.
And here we are, so close to the end. I have two tactical pieces left and my king, all he has is his king. I slowly but with assurance and even grace chase him to a corner. This is where Kwame knows all he can do is try to force a stalemate, but I won’t give him that luxury. My cockiness is gone as I chase him very slowly and carefully, not trying to knock him out right away, rather making sure that it is a real checkmate. I see my move, I make it, and now it’s my turn to lean back knowing his turn will be a long one. He goes through every single option of where his checked king can go. He goes through them twice. He looks at my players. He looks back at his king. He gives a bit of a grin, says that he has played very badly, and knocks his king over.
All the teachers lampoon Kwame, and I throw in a couple of shots, nothing heavy because this is the first time I’ve won in a while and don’t want my previous failures brought up. But still it’s a great feeling. And then, without even asking each other, we begin to set the board up to play again. This time, I am black.
future youth
Our man walked down the hall, quietly musing, going at an appropriate pace. The hall was clearly in some institution, a hospital or psych ward, one of those places where cleanliness is held higher than godliness; where secrets show up against the white monochromes.
Our man was bobbing his head slightly as he walked, looking at nothing, yet apparently walking to some internal musical beat. He bobbed a little left, a little right. Nothing drastic, but certainly noticeable. He had the countenance of a young boy walking on a slippery pool deck, so ready to let loose his energy but so aware that momentary excruciating slowness is necessary.
I dislike description, but I suppose the countenance of our man will have bearing on this particular story, or at least I imagine so. Our man, who has a name and hair color and all those inessential details, appeared to be near the end of his life. Aged perhaps eighty years, he was stooped and wizened though clearly in good spirits. He was a man who had seen much of the world, who had an aura of calm grace, who in another time would have been classified as having an aristocratic bearing.
Imagine him in this scene, if you will, as a man who has purchased something, something imaginable in our day and age but unimaginable a short time ago. He is going now, through this cheerless institution in a cheerful spirit, with the hope of finally bearing the fruit of this object he has purchased.
He walks down the hall, still, until he comes to the end of the hall, and here he must choose left or right. He casually turns around, looks inquisitively at the attendant behind him and heads left at the hand signal denoted by the attendant. The attendant slows down subtly, so that our man regains the distance in between himself and the attendant he enjoyed previously, and then the attendant, too, carries on.
As our man passes an abandoned waiting room whose uncomfortable plastic seats appear to get little use, the attendant invoked clearly but respectfully “that the room you are looking for is on the right, 1406.” Our man centered in front of this door, which was either made out of metal or thick paint, and raised his hand in the direction of the doorknob and then paused. “Do I need a key, or is it unlocked?” “It is unlocked, we don’t believe locked doors provide a positive atmosphere,” the attendant said, drawing directly behind our man so as to look over his shoulder, so that when the door opened the scene would greet his eyes with the same rapidity that it would our man; with the attendant’s head looming over our man’s shoulder, and our man having his head turned to address the attendant, their lips were so close to each other that imagery of kissing must be invoked, though this is an entirely meaningless coincidence.
Our man opened the door, and was greeted with the sunlight that was so sorely lacking in the hallways. A large window, floor to ceiling, was directly opposite the door and took up much of the relatively large wall. On the other side of the window was a tree, perhaps a maple or an oak but certainly not a pine, that was in full maturity and currently filtering the sun into the room in a particularly sublime way. In the room was a bed: double sized, and that was all. The room felt larger than it was. Doing push-ups, in the middle of the floor, was a young boy, aged perhaps 11, that age right before puberty where one is still very much a boy but you question for how much longer.
The boy was clearly working hard, but not overly exerting himself. The attendant gave a short whistle and the boy stood up to attention with the air of saluting, though his hands were firmly at his sides.
The attendant walked with efficient steps to the right of the man, the left of the boy, so that the three of them were very much an equilateral triangle, and said, looking only at the man, “Since he arrived last week, he has maintained his exercise regime. He has also maintained his strict vegan diet, as you requested. As I am sure you have been informed, his health is flawless and as you can see he is a prime physical specimen.” The man looked thoughtful, asked a few questions of the attendant which were of that minutiae of detail which is not necessary in a story, and asked if he could observe the boy. Upon the attendant’s consent, our man walked up to the boy. Putting his eyes only centimeters away from the boy’s face, he just silently observed the boy’s face for what must have been a full minute. He then began circling the boy. The boy remained motionless, except for blinking, seeming to be either used to or trained for close examinations such as this.
Our old man pulled away, and walked back so that once again there was an equilateral triangle between himself, the boy, and the attendant, and then, while continuing to stare at the boy, told the attendant “I was never so thin at that age, but obviously that is not a complaint. He is perfect, everything I hoped for.”
The attendant nodded, looking neither relieved nor pleased but rather just professional, and said “Then shall we go back to the director’s office, and you can finish signing the papers? We can still arrange the transfer over this afternoon as planned.” “Yes, let’s. You may lead the way,” said our man, and he followed the attendant out of the room, no longer a bob to his step but now a smile on his face. He turned to shut the door behind him, gave one last look to the boy in the room, who blinked once and slowly, then shut the door.
i remember
I come from a place that I do not remember In this place May we call it my home There were colors that do not exist here Fantastic shades that fill my waking mind Yet never can be painted with my tongue To take you there To show you the places that made me Me I will tell again, these same words I will try again to make real The unreal Why? I do not know. I truly do not even think you care But for me, myself I need to attempt I need to delve back into the inside of my mind To again feel that far away life That is not mine to live any longer Indulge me Put up with me and my eccentricities Know by sitting still and simply listening You are giving a lost man A blind man A dying man A happy memory
If I want to describe any one thing I must describe everything Because what is different about my last life Is everything Everything is a degree shy of what would seem normal And the everything that was my everything was normal to me That is an important point, yes The everything is different But it is not different to the us that called this everything home Because it was all we knew
In this place, there lived people The people whom I love, loved and will love Yet who you, my very good friends Have never known And will never know Know that my heart is divided Bitterly And that I say this not because I hate you Rather I love you too much Just as I love those lovely creatures Who populate my dreams Yet are not here How is a man ever to make peace When he is a puzzle Whose pieces can never be placed together
I dream Not every night, or at least I don’t think But they are in my mind many nights Never fantasy Never the future Just the past Those conversations I have had Those same conversations I will never have again Those hands I have touched Whose bearer has aged, withered And even if I was to touch again Would not recognize The world changes And we change with it And what was Cannot be again
A thought just flew through my mind A memory, really Or maybe, how is it I can truly tell? A girl I used to love has perished I heard, and knew Acknowledged and mourned Yet I did not go to the funeral This girl who, she and I, we loved I held her and told her sweet nothings She is gone forever Those words I whispered don’t exist anymore And why Why did I not see her again Why did I not mourn more Please, angel, if that is you Forgive me, or, perhaps Don’t I was not there for you when you needed me Is it true you took your own life? I was not there when you needed me Because I was busy Burn me Torture me I deserve the worst, and beyond Your suffering was heard by me I just ignored you You are the past Not the present, Not the future I just ignored you
Well my friend Where is it I have brought you? I’m afraid very little I could have told you something pretty But instead you see my ghosts Life has been good to me Life has been good to me But life is very long And every step forward Is a step farther away from something else And my weeping daydreams come During a fantastical present Just I remember I remember I remember And I cannot forget
losing infinite
I open my eyes, forgetful, nothing, spinning my drives, trying to boot up. What is the what is the what is the what is the. My mind functions perfectly, I know everything, just, I haven’t remembered it all yet. It’s there somewhere. And it’s flooding in, and here I am, becoming me. Yes, yes, yes. I was asleep; that is where I was, and here I am now, here again. Awoken. Alive. Again. A lovely phenomenon. I wonder what it will be like to not wake up again? If it will feel any different.
Ahhh, it feels good to stretch my brain, to become myself. I gaze around my room, staring at nothing particular, I just don’t particularly feel like shutting my eyes or staring at nothing; else I have to think of something, and at this particular moment of my consciousness that just doesn’t feel necessary.
Now, why am I up again? Is there a reason? What woke me up? There’s no alarm, but I have a sense of urgency. Do I work today? Could I go back to sleep? I don’t know, but I’m uncurious right now, time is slow and I’m sure whatever in the what it is that I’m going to do for this particular burst of consciousness can wait these few sparse minutes that contain an infinite of blissful moments while I rediscover, after the death of sleep, the solemn pleasure of being a human being.
I feel myself remembering my past lives. Not in some pseudo-religious way, it’s still too early for that, but rather, my atoms and cells recall to my mind their endless lives as a part of the universe. I was a tree, and I will be a star; right now I am a human being and all the parts of my body are singing praises, for they, unlike a tree or a star, it is they that get the privilege of being a part of me at the right now, at the this moment. Here. Cus, well, while a tree might rise to the height of a cloud and gaze solemnly at generations of life built in its shadow, or a star might live for a billion passion-filled years, it is only the human, only the human in all the universe, perhaps, who gets this privilege of consciousness. To actually have that gift of not just being an actor in the universe but a spectator also; the only spectator; the spectator who has the inexplicable privilege of seeing the perfection that prevails everywhere.
Ahh, the quiet musings of my fresh mind make me smile uncontrollably for a lifetime or a minute. I forget. I, for a moment or a lifetime, feel at peace. Is this death? Is this life? Is this the idea of infinite or nirvana? Perhaps, I will just slip into one infinitesimal moment and that will be it. Never age, never die, just exist forever right here and right now in this isolated lonely morning. This single second.
The fuck. The fuck. I am standing. I was lying, but I am standing, and I did not tell my body to stand but I am standing and why what the fuck how how. Ok. Cool. Shit. My body is telling my brain. Just chill and let what the fuck just happened register. Why am I standing? Ok. It was because I felt something move on my head, and then the something walked over my face, and the something, some great dark mother fucking thing, eclipsed my eye. My home body reacted, thank you very much body: shaking convulsing wrenching, and here I am standing. OK. That’s logical. I guess. But what the fuck was on my head. And more important. Or at least more critical in my deconstruction of events, where is the dark creature now.
I am on guard. The animal in me pushes my brain down and all I do is hunt. Where. Where. Fucker. Where are you. You can’t hide. Where. Where. THERE. I see you. I corner you. Cocksucker you are mine. I will tear you apart. I am big, you are small, and you have bothered a colossus you stupid stupid stupid
But now that I have caught my prey, I wrench the controls away from the animal within me. The danger is passed, and I need to be in control. I always need to be in control. It was a mistake to give up control for that last moment. I was weak. I am always weak. But that doesn’t mean I will always be weak.
I see my darkness. A spider crawling with ponderous slowness across my bare cement floor. I watch him. For the moment, with danger at a safe distance, I am enthralled. Another living beast. You, yes you the spider, you have motives don’t you. But lo, he is horrible, a nightmare beast. Big and bulbous, with that fur that doesn’t belong to the realm of nature but rather to most surreal fantasy. The fucker had been on my head. The fucker had been on my head. The fucker had been on my head. The fucker had been on my head oh god oh god the fucker had been on my head. I feel the primal me attempt to wrench control, to deal with this situation in the right here and the right now, and I feel close to letting him but NO I will not be defined by the actions of an animal and NO I will not give up control of this situation. BACK DOWN SELF. Now. Now. Good. This is me again. Ok. Ok. I want the spider out of here. Now. Where is a cup and a paper towel; loathsome as the beast might be, I don’t want to kill it. I feel that if some great force like me goes around annihilating smaller forces solely because it has the capability, then why should whatever god it is we eventually discover not deal with vermin such as myself in the exact same manner. A meaningless gesture on my part, but still a gesture, and it is not the impact of the gesture on the world whose impact I worry about but rather the impact on my personal perception of my own soul.
Bam. The spider is dead. The animal inside me leaves as suddenly as it came and I am left with my desolation. Had the spider run towards me all of a sudden? I don’t know. But poor pitiful creature. My sincerest apologies are moot, death has caught you, but I still offer them to the universe as condolence. I have affected the pattern of the universe. I have made a change to the organic structure of life. Me. Any causality resulting from this is the fault of me. I add this thought to the mountain weighing down the back of my soul, and regard the situation that I have wrought.
Like after bad sex, after the passion is ended, there is this hollowness of the aftermath. Every necessary motion a reminder of the vileness of the deed. I grab a dustpan and sweep. Sorry little fellow. Did you have children? Did you have a wife? Do spiders have wives? I attempt to feel nothing but pure sympathy for the spider, but, underneath my façade, in a manner that even my most external emotions recognize, my consciousness is brimming with rage. Yes, I acted wrong. But the mother fucker was on me. He walked over my eye. He destroyed my nirvana. The world for me is darker for both the entrance and the exit of this little giant monster.
I have to go to work. Oh yeah, that’s it, that’s why I’m up. I’m pretty sure. Or at least I’m pretty sure I said I’d go. I guess I’m obliged. I don’t believe any force in the universe that says it’s going to do something should back down from its requirements. I have said I would do, therefore, I should go. If I am to be a force of entropy, then I shouldn’t say I would do something. Unless that is a part of my entropy. But at the moment, I don’t want to decide whether I am, or am not, a force of chaos, and therefore or however or maybe or perhaps, I should do those things I said. Even though I don’t have to. Besides, why not. Why not accelerate my engines to full speed and see where my conscious mind takes me unconsciously.
With the grace of unwasted motion I glide to the washroom. I stare at myself in the mirror, realizing I’m naked. This makes getting into the shower a bit easier. Perfect. Does this even out my experience with the spider? No. But it is the first step in making amends, paltry though it is. It will be many moments before I am at peace again.
Well, anywise, I shower and brush my teeth and say my prayers and think about many things which for me are very interesting, but I have forgotten them, or at least forgotten to remember them. Life is not so terrible, I did have the pleasure of their thought running through my mind, but I do apologize for not sharing them with you, though truthfully I don’t care that much. However, I do feel that it is necessary for you to know that now, I am standing just inside the door of my apartment (yes I live in an apartment) and have just finished putting on my shoes. I am ready to go outside, to go to work, to be alive; to go about that activity of squandering my infinite with the drudgery of waiting for death to take me away again or again or again. I am smiling, I think.
Now, I could be recounting all of this to you for just the sheer pleasure of communicating what it is to be alive as a me. Perhaps I will do this for you one of these days. But my god, that process is slow or endless and by the time I fully explain to you life as it is for my living we’ll have both realized that we never really lived a life: myself, because I spent consciousness trying to pin down with accurateness the atomic workings of a single moment; and yourself because you fell through the hole of my mind and I greedily will not let you out. You are mine. And why would you want to quit something you have started?
Another digression. Apologies. I was thinking this conscious recollection could go somewhere specific, but, instead it will go here. I’m not going to tell you the pleasure of my ride on the bus, or the casual interactions I undergo in my environment with its various interesting objects and denizens. Rather, I want to tell you about this new door, not my front door (that was further up the page and now we’re down here), that I find myself in front of. A door that I don’t know if it is real or fake, if it is dream or consciousness, if I have walked through the door a thousand times or if it is just my fear of walking through the door which makes its other side seem so familiar. What I do know, or what I claim to know right now but please don’t hold me to that, is that here, in front of me is the door. And I have just knocked.
If you’re curious why I am here, at this door, it is because of my work. And I do have the time while I wait for the door to be answered to explain to you what my job is, but really, even if you do care, I don’t care to explain it. Not because of laziness but because it is my life and I would rather think about the freedom of clouds or the specific blue of the ocean than recount my job. I like my job. It gives me a reason to not stop existing. But what it is is simply a job, and really, it is like any job. The door hasn’t opened yet, but that thought is finished. Is it so wrong? Are you curious? The person who would describe to you what their job is, is not who I am, and if that is what you want I would not just ask but implore you to look elsewhere in your reading. You can stay here, I love our communication. But if I am having pleasure and you are displeased then I am greedy, I am robbing you, and while I love you and what you have given me I ask that you leave. Even if you leave me alone. Loneliness is a fear for me, but it is a horror that I can accept.
The door opens and a young Chinese woman opens the door. Without thinking I give her the pleasantries of my work, go through the motions with my body while my mind curiously runs its tentacles over the lady’s body and possessions. Ahh the color pink is everywhere, it hurts my vision but I hear that women and men see colours differently, so perhaps it is beautiful inside her eyes. Oh, there are pictures of a tiniest baby, yet no pictures of an older child. Could it be she has a baby? I accept and absorb everything, my consciousness reveling in the novelty of the surroundings, and I am content that for the moment my moments are full.
But, wait, what was that? My autopilot of conversation is operating smoothly, and I can tell I am talking with her both professionally and with friendliness, but there is something strange in her responses. I don’t understand why, but the penetrating eye every person has in the center of their mind for me suddenly turns to the woman like a spotlight. What’s going on? There is a causal alarm going off somewhere, I can’t tell if it is in the house or in my mind. If there is a fire or if my sixth or seventh sense is telling me to be on guard. But my silent confusion is ended, the lady tells me she has something that has finished in the oven she has to deal with. While usually with people in my sort of work this is a less than subtle excuse to get rid of me, this woman, with whatever strangeness it is she possesses right now, it seems more like an invitation. A welcome excuse to bring me into her home, deeper into her life, if only for right now. If only for the fantasy that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Something. Neither of us knows quite yet.
She is talking to me, but I haven’t really been listening. I now turn my attention to whatever it is she feels is necessary for my knowledge. Ahh. She is a mother, I was right. Ahhh, she is a new immigrant. I guess her language is very foreign, now that I listen to it, I just hadn’t noticed. Ahhh, her husband hasn’t emigrated yet but soon soon soon. And then she, her darling husband, and their beautiful son, they can all be together. Life, for this strange little woman, will be complete again; it will be as in her dreams.
I think that’s what she’s saying to me but it’s hard to be sure. And besides, just because she’s saying it doesn’t mean it has any truth or resonance to it. What I do know is she is lonely. Impossibly lonely. Perhaps I constructed unconsciously the story of her husband being away. Perhaps there is no husband. Perhaps I’m just unthinkingly formalizing the painting which my perceptions have painted, but have interpreted the strokes wrong. What is important is that I am aware of the colors. And this woman is lonely; looking at me with eyes too big for her head, expectantly quivering while I speak, then torrenting out words, mostly nonsensical, when I stop speaking: the dam of her mind has been breached and out flows all that emotion which had been blocked. I wonder idly, perchance arrogantly, when the last time was that a person knocked on this lady’s door.
Blah blah blah blah blah. I feel moderate guilt, this is not the way I promised to perform my job. But I killed that spider this morning, and perhaps if I give a little goodness to this fragile little flower the universe will find some form of equilibrium in how it deals with me. I dunno. I’m bantering though, and I feel good because I’m pretty sure I’m making this little lady feel pretty good. I’m patting myself on the back.
But she freezes for a minute. Stares at me with a mixture of confusion and anger. Why? What had I said? I had asked her where her son was, since the house was so quiet. She is under control again now. But the façade has crumbled. I saw the devil in her soul, and even if this woman herself doesn’t know it, her body knows the malevolence that percolates its fiber. And for a minute, this beast revealed itself to me.
The woman is under control. She goes back to bantering. Her son is a wee bit sick with fever and napping. She is a good mother, so at the first sign of any sort of sickness she took him to the doctor, and the local doctor has told her that her baby has a bit of a fever, nothing serious, just to give him some mild off-the-shelf medicine and to keep him from getting too hot. She is bursting with pride when she tells me that with hard work she has performed the doctor’s orders perfectly. I am feeling strange though. I don’t know why, but I have stopped patting myself on my back. The light is still joyous, the scene still jolly, but something in this woman is a vacuum for sucking up my pleasure and I want to get away from her. Fuck whatever it is that has twisted her soul into that devil below the surface. It is my business, as another human being, to care. To give her my empathy and my support. But I am weak. I am weak and I want away from this tattered little beast. From whatever it is that I’m sure I will discover if I stay much longer.
However, horribly, I find myself walking with the woman through her house. Her endless nonsensical sentences have not stopped, but now, they seem to have accelerated. I know her life story. Word for word. Worse yet, I can recount it. She is burning what she says into me. And she is accelerating. Her momentum is pushing me and my leviathanic self is being pushed off of my calculated route. Stop! Woman. Free me! But. It is too late. For what, I don’t know; though my body is free this lady has dug her claws into my spirit and it would be murder or suicide to extract myself now.
We are walking, not quicker in speed but quicker and quicker and quicker in mental momentum. I find myself talking freely with her. Telling her my waking dreams, about how my job is and why I do it, about my artistic ambitions and my fear that I am too weak to meet them. Her hand out of nowhere is in my hand, I have no idea how it got there. If it was always there. If I took hers, or she took mine, or if just in passing they met sporadically and perfectly. Here they are.
And again, for the third time in this recollection or reconstruction or fabrication or reverie or what have you, I have come to a door. Now, the momentum of my mind, which had been asymptotically accelerating, comes to a seismic halt. The supernova is over and what is left is blackness and bleakness and I have not the ambition or capability to walk through the door. To see what it is that this bizarre little woman has brought to show me. I don’t know. I am finished. I am spent. But! That dyadic relationship between the momentum of my mind and the momentum of my body for the first time in the story but the legion time in my life separate, and I continue stumbling forward, trapping my mind as an imprisoned traveller.
My physical momentum causes me to walk through the door with the little lady without missing a step. I remark on how strange it is that I’m here. A piece of me wonders if perhaps I should sleep with the woman, lonely as she is. Another part of me reviles at the notion. But the majority of me is centered on the crib in the center of the room. Not touching any wall, strangely in the dead center; almost a shrine; maybe, indeed it is a shrine. In the perfect middle of the crib is a baby, perfect looking, of no more than a very short life. A new creature. His features fill my vision and I notice that even as young as he is, even with those misshapen features of childhood, he looks like his mother, and for the first time I realize that his mother is beautiful. Impossibly so. And she is standing next to me. Making quiet cooing noises and telling me with compassion to not wake her little god.
I don’t want to acknowledge the death of the little creature in front of me, and for the moment, or for at least this sentence, I will avoid it. I would perhaps tell you my own love of children, my own dream to one day have some of the little guys myself. But my god. My god. This poor woman. This poor woman. This benevolent murderer. I know the words patricide and matricide and fratricide, but what do you call it when you kill your own son? What do you call killing when it’s not murder? An accident? True, accidents may happen, but if the causality is death the word seems too weak.
The crib is in the center of the room. The baby is in the center of the crib. The baby is lying on sack, after sack, after sack of ice. He is using a bag of ice as a pillow. He has a thin bag of ice as a blanket. He is dead. Frozen. Blue. Perhaps this way for weeks. Oh, the poor mother. Oh, the hope that there is no father to have to suffer such desolation. Oh, a dead cub of humanity, the worst sin. Why couldn’t I have protected it. Oh, my mind is spinning, repulsing and crying. I weep, and I weep and I weep. Oh this poor woman. And, this woman. This woman right now is still whispering to me to be quiet. That her baby is sleeping. That he has a fever and needs sleep and to not be warm. And he isn’t warm, she has been a good mother and made sure, just as the doctor ordered, that he doesn’t become warm. Therefore, what he has need of is sleep. And I must let the little baby get some sleep. The little precious baby.
I slowly twist my brain and my head toward the woman, my brain a blank canvas not knowing how to paint this scene. I stare at the woman. Could she not know? How could she not know. But our eyes meet. For an instant, but in that instant we recognize. I fall inside her and am her and touch the inside of her brain and see that she is empty. She is sleeping. She too is dead. Or if not dead, hanging from a rope, waiting for the emptiness to find her. But! That is but a part of her. Some other part has grabbed the wheel. Is driving with fury and absurdity; has built a fortress of irrationality that everything is ok, everything is perfect, and this crazed demon met my eye, and wanted confirmation and acknowledgement that indeed the world was correct. That she was a foreigner in a new country, a country where a person is to trust the authorities. She has done as those authorities had instructed her. Therefore, by the logic of the land she now called home she had performed the proper actions; even if things seemed foreign and strange, perhaps uncomfortable, everything was foreign and strange for her in this new country. Ahh! The poor little creature.
I collect myself. I know my actions, but I don’t analyze them. The animal that killed the spider fills me again, works to protect me, to save me from harm. It is telling the little woman, perhaps even jollily, how precious the little baby is. How he looks very strong, and if he looks so strong at so young he will grow up to be a very strong man. A great man. Yes, he is beautiful. Yes, that is the perfect name for him. Oh inside I revile the universe; this is not the reality that the sunny day promised. But neither was the spider. Oh little woman, can’t you be free? Can’t you be happy.
Back on the street, here I am, but how? It is over. I feel my mind drifting away from the last scene. Reconstructing it into a paradigm that my memory can accept as the true series of events which just passed. Perhaps I overreacted. Perhaps I saw the baby quiver just a little bit. Of course the baby was alive and sleeping, just as the mother said. I have an imaginative mind and I subconsciously thought the worst just to give my mind some dark entertainment for the day; just to construct a flight of fancy for the sake of curiosity: for the what ifs. I can feel myself accepting this. At least accepting the possibility, and this is good.
I am back home now. Gazing idly at a wall, content. Not really thinking about anything important, or at least nothing that would be classified by others as important, though I am finding tremendous pleasure in my idle thoughts. Here I am on a white horse, king of somethingorother, somebody to look up to, somebody to dream to be and here I am dreaming it. The woman is out of my head. Forgotten with so many other random entropic forces that hammer at the walls of my sanity. Those forces who I have to decide whether I am for or against. Again, today, you are my enemy, and my walls have held. If only barely. I am still myself. I will still go to work at a job which is meaningless, even on time because I said I would. I still live in a world which makes sense. I am still one of the denizens of normalcy, still a progenitor in a justified belief in the logical.
A spider, again, comes out of nowhere. With thought, I repulse my animalistic nature, and step on the spider. He is dead instantly. Guilt hits me again, yes, but it is less than before. More manageable. Why take the chance that maybe this spider will walk over my sleeping eyes also. Why take unnecessary risks in a world that wants to be chaotic. I go outside and rub my feet on the soft grass of a neighbor’s lawn. I think superficially that the night is a lovely temperature, that it is the perfect sort of weather for a walk with a friend; I think in a tertiary way that it was right for me to kill both spiders, but the second was more correct because I felt less guilt for it: that is how the equation works; I think subliminally, in those voids of my soul whose existence I acknowledge but whose location I’ve never been able to map out, of the lady. The mother of the baby. Of the look, just as she was shutting the door on me and had already said goodbye. The look that perhaps was her letting her guard down for a minute, the look of acknowledgement mind body and soul of the sin that she has committed. The self-knowledge of her dissonance. And the refusal to deal with it at the moment. To put it off for a little while longer, just a little. Perhaps the baby had been frozen there for years. Perhaps the world was more crazy than I cared to acknowledge. Perhaps this entire gift of consciousness that earlier this morning I had so reveled in is no gift at all, but the greatest curse bestowed on any character in the universe. The ability to see beauty does in no way negate the virulent despair of interacting with what we used to call the devil. Perhaps the devil is the norm, entropy is the norm, chaos is the norm: these are the true laws of the physical world, and us bastions of rationality, us believers in a world that makes sense, we are the irrational.
Perhaps.