Archives

A barstool.  The naked flesh a nameless woman.  Television.  Cowering under a baleful stare.  Food.  Professional reassurance and drugs.

The thinking man sunk deeper into the cushions of his comfortable chair, riding out his depression.  A thousand ways to endure time, he thought, tested and true.  A thousand ways to forget.  To not exist.

He closed his eyes and felt the velvety material of the chair beneath his legs and forearms.  It wrapped around him, holding him.  Three years, and still memory poured in.

I like sitting here, he thought.  It is all I know.

It slips away, so easily that I have no problem understanding ten years of writing silence.  I am one place, then I am another, knowing not whether to look back or look forward, while the silence, that vast space of time that lies between the two, becomes the first thing to be forgotten.  Life in two steps, the first and the last, the unconscious swing of the leg, guided perhaps by subconscious intent, resulting in a movement seemingly void of any obvious destination.

Where was I going, when I started out?  Did I know?

Answers don’t wait for you at the end of a journey, but instead hide in that place between the steps, nestled away in the time that is so easily forgotten.  I have to believe this, because not once have I ever reached a place that held an answer, but instead always find myself arriving with that gnawing, aching feeling that what I need is something I may have spotted from the corner of my eye as I stormed on past.  It is that thing I stepped over, or around, or kicked on through getting to where it is I am always going.  Where I am now.

I say all this because I feel myself slipping again into silence.  I feel that familiar space building up around me, the comfort of being lost inside myself.  Rising and falling, riding between my own steps with eyes half-closed, arms spread wide like a dreamer in flight.  The answers pass by me, one by one, on the ground far below, but as anyone who has flown in their dreams can tell you, there is no looking down, no stopping, no desire for anything to come between you and the air.

And silence, like dreams, will eventually end, and words will rise as readily as the dream of myself sinks back down to the ground.

“School’s stupid,” the boy occasionally blurts out, then hurries off to check on his new backpack, excited and anxious.  He likes school, but is too stubborn to admit it.  Yesterday he randomly counted off the hours to when it would all begin.  “43 hours until school begins.” “38 hours until school begins.” “34 hours until school begins,” and then finally fell asleep.

A new year and a new school.  The path through his summer that ends tomorrow seems much clearer than my own.  With each announcement of his approaching new year, my mouth formed words, saying something about the adventure of a new school, new friends, and on and on, while my brain did things like calculate the additional monthly fuel cost of getting the boy across town each morning, simultaneously replaying old, faded clips of my own youth, so much of it spent on the move.  By the time I’d graduated from high school, I’d accepted the idea that a new school year meant a new school.  The faces surrounding my childhood were always new and unknown.  People became things to be unraveled, discovered, and understood.  I think of it now as my twelve year lesson in adaptation.

Perhaps all the moving I did as a child is what made this summer so painfully long for me.  The constant worry about money and the idea of another forced move, pushing towards me, seemingly as inevitable as the turning of the leaves, which I know can’t be too far away.  I can’t ever remember struggling so hard to remain in one place, and I’m realizing more and more that it is a battle that my childhood never prepared me for.  I’ve become convinced over the years that a sense of permanence isn’t something we’re born with, but rather something that we pick up along the way through family or religion or maybe tradition.  And to have a sense of permanence, a real sense that sustains and strengthens, and helps guide you through the years, there must be more to cling to than one’s own thoughts.  It is easy to forget that the mind and body are at polar opposites, coming together so few times in our lifetime.  Three that I can think of.  Birth, climax, death.  One is long past for me, and another mostly nonexistent.  The other waits for me in some distant place, anxious for me to catch up, and I think it is this sense of it’s waiting that has me now grasping for permanence, however temporary it may be.  I think my body and my mind may be working together on a fourth thing, although I have no idea what it might be called.  An agreement of sorts where the two of them decide it’s alright for me to spend out the remainder of my days tricked and comforted.  The mind confesses to having spent nearly it’s entire time in that state, and now seems to be inviting the body to join it, like two chairs that are both missing legs, agreeing to strap themselves together and call themselves a couch, hoping to retain a bit of function in their lives.

Sometime today I meet with an attorney to discuss my options.  All that hope, wasted on this runaway train that has no intention of switching tracks.  A shame.  A letdown.  A realization that I’ve reached a place I never thought I’d be.  Past pleading that someone punched the wrong ticket.  Past looking for excuses.  Past looking for solutions.  It’s jumping time, my friends, before this thing reaches the end of the line.  This day may have been a long way in the making, but by God, I see the end of the line now, and it’s coming up fast.  A mountain of stone there’s no seeing over and no going through.  Not this time.  No, this time I jump and start that long, slow walk around.  Jump while there’s still time.

One thing about walking is that it gives you time to think.  Standing here at the edge, one last time, I’m wondering if I’ll remember the sound of this day as I walk around that mountain.  How long will the rumble of this train stay fresh inside my head?

Jump far, I remind myself.  Far enough from this train to escape regret.  If there’s one thing I know, it’s that a person doesn’t want regret tagging along as a companion on a long, slow walk.  Regret never shuts up, and the days become long and unbearable.

My hands grip the edge of this train for one last time.  The steel, cold and hard beneath my fingers, seems more demanding than I remember it being when I first climbed aboard.  The ride grew rough without me even realizing it.  I know this now.  Now that it’s time to jump.

It’s so easy to jump towards money, but no one spends much time jumping away from money.  Maybe I’ll think about that as I walk around the mountain.  I’ll certainly have the time.

I flex my knees and my thighs and calves grow tight.  I don’t remember if my eyes are open or closed, my fingers slowly go loose and my legs jerk us into the air before any part of me can change it’s mind.  And for the briefest of moments, I am neither part of the train, or the mountain, or the ground and that long, slow walk, or even myself.  For a bit of time that I cannot begin to explain, I am part of something else that exists somewhere within the cracks where all those other things join together.

I hit the ground hard, momentum tumbling me towards my future, and when I finally stop my eyes are closed and I can hear the train, already distant, speeding off without me. My face is pushed down into the thick dust, and it’s in my ears and mouth, and already I taste something of what this long walk will be about.  I lie there, still, thinking of that place I existed in for that one single split second, while the shadow of the mountain looms above me, searching, waiting patiently for me to pick myself up.