Author: Barrett

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 out maneuver 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 either 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 then 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 over confident 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 over confident 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 advantages of the mutually known holes in my armor.

Well damn him! He is playing over confident, 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 know he’s been playing to open. However, he also knows it’s to 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 then 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. Have a one piece advantage when there’s thirty pieces on the board is not such a big deal, but when there’s ten pieces its 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 on 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 then 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 over confident 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 my self become impassioned, and know that I have to throw that away, that any emotion will lose me the game. I have far more pawns then 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 check mate, 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’s 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 stale mate, 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 check mate. 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, sais 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 awhile 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.

“Yeah I fucking said it. I’m the greatest. Everybody knows it. And oh you all look at me, safe in the frameworks of your skulls, and you think I’m nothing, but we both know the secret truth don’t we.”

 

He was spouting gibberish and his flatulence was terrible. He was not a very nice creature, and I sincerely hoped that either he would leave, or just shut up. The bus is only so large, I can’t drone out his banter, and what started out as amusing is quickly becoming aggravating.

 

“See, I live in a park. I go out, I catch a duck, and I eat fucking duck. When was the last time any of you, with your jobs, and your degrees, had duck? Huh? It’s a special occasion sorta thing, and I eat it every night.”

 

“Sir, please be quiet.” Why did I say that? Fuck. Now I’m involved. The ragged looking man looks up right in my eyes, breathing contempt.

 

“Oh, kid with a gold ring said something? What the fuck do you know? When I was your age, I was like you, I was all pretty and dolled up, and I was miserable, and I’m happy now, and if you’re lucky, maybe one day you’ll be like me.

 

“Sir, while that may be true, I’m not asking you for your opinion of me, and the people on this bus aren’t asking for your views on life. We just want to get to where we’re going, and to do it in peace.”
“Scared?”

 

“Sir, I’m neither scared or unscared, I’m just trying to lean back after a long day and not have someone interrupt my peace with his musings on why I should be miserable.”

 

“Well, fuck you, you’re blind, sitting there high and mighty, like you own the fucking earth, but oh, I know you, I can see you, your penetrable heart, the things you think about when you think openly, and I know their darkness. You want me quiet. Superficially, its because I’m annoying you. You think me nothing. Some drugged up brain dead fuck up who just happens to be a drugged up brain dead fuck up whose near you. Well, its not like that. See, I am you. I’m the you that you’d see if you spoke all those pretty fancy words dancing through the back of your mind. I’m the honest you. The you who you dream about being, and look how depressing it is.”

 

Christ. Now everybody’s looking at me with the same expression of resignation they reserve for this guy. How did I get drawn in? Why didn’t I just shut up.

 

“Sir, I don’t want to talk to you. Frankly I’d rather you just not talk. But say that’s not a choice, say it’s a choice between the both of us talking or just you talking, then I’ll choose just you talking, and I’ll sit here, and I’ll listen to some music, and look out the window and frankly try to pretend you don’t exist. You think you speak wisdom. That there’s hidden depths to what you say; You try to make me into you, and I don’t want to rebut you, because to feed you is to satisfy your ego, look at how you’ve made me talk as proof, but the real truth is, the real truth is, and this truly is the last thing I will say about it, is you look at me, and you want me to be secretly unhappy, you want me to be secretly miserable, because in some strange sense, this justifies the way you have chosen to live. However, and in some way I’m sorry to say this: I’m happy. I’m content. I acknowledge the limits of the world, and instead of trying to cast them aside and grasp at the nothingness you seem to have achieved, I live life by the rules of life. So continue sitting there. Blabbering on, that I know nothing, that I am delusional and the universe sides with you, or whatever the fuck it is you think, but realize that every single person on this bus is thinking the same thing in the privacy of their own minds, and that it’s both arrogant and  obnoxious of us to say it out loud. And now I’m stopping, and my stop is coming up, and I can’t perceive myself talking to you again, here or anywhere. Enjoy your day.”

 

Ahh, he got me, I talked, and I talked on his terms. I can sense him building up. Formulating a rebuttal, looking at what I said, and not hearing me. Not even knowing what he thinks himself. Just prepared to give me a lecture on who knows what just because I decided to call him on his arrogance. How great the world would be if everybody would just shut up. I pull the string for the next stop; I don’t care that it’s not my stop. I look out the window and wish I could shut my ears like I shut my eyes.

 

“Oh thanks all knowing one, any other fortune cards to read. You think you know everything, maybe. Pshh. You think you know everything, but look at this bus, you’re the youngest one here, and age really does count for something. Intelligence doesn’t exist, only time, and time is always spent on something, and cumulatively all these people have more life then you. I see your fucking bag with your fucking books. University must be nice. But you’re an ignorant piece of shit. Thinking reading books might teach you life, just shows you know nothing, nothing at all. You want to know something…

 

And I snap. I am just tired. Not tired angry. Not angry, something a word can’t contain. That animalistic urge to howl at the moon for being so bright when all you want to do is sleep. That recoil against the world for being imperfect. I look up. I stare him in the eye.

 

“I don’t want to know something. I never purported to know anything. And I certainly never asked for you to tell me anything. You look at me, and you tell me: we’re the same. And fine, we are the same, maybe we’re all the same, but that doesn’t mean we act the same. You call me ignorant: I think you’re obnoxious; but what we both are is two people speaking different languages who are miscommunicating. You think that I think that you’re on drugs. Well, I do drugs, I understand drugs, and what I really think has nothing to do with drugs, or poverty, or alcohol, or anything peripheral. No, I look at you, and what I see is weakness. Life is like boxing, and you’ve gotta play by the rules, and you’re right, I don’t know much yet, but I’m learning to fight, to stay in the ring. I know the ring is meaningless and the fight is meaningless, but those are abstractions. Doesn’t change the fact the guy is going to hit me. That’s a reality that affects my reality. And I’d vastly rather be myself, somebody whose learning to sidestep, to hit back, to operate in the world around me, then some wretch like you, someone who doesn’t learn to fight, somebody who crouches down and puts their head in the sand saying that now they see reality, yet, what they are really saying is: don’t hit me, stop hitting me, if I don’t see you, if I don’t acknowledge you, I can pretend the pain is pleasure and that my ignorance is enlightenment and oh, how this is wrong, how this is not a way to spend your collective conscience. You want a reality? Here’s a reality. Life isn’t perfect. We operate under imperfect conditions. And you are on a quest in life that you won’t complete, that you shouldn’t complete. You want to swim across the ocean but you’ll barely get away from the sight of land and drown. I am a creature of the land, and I understand that that is a meaningless abstraction, that really I’m an entity and I should be able to exist as anything, but goddamned it, if life’s a fight why pick an unnecessary fight? So I’ll be that creature of land like that creature whose womb I popped out of taught me to be and I’ll operate as a creature of the land and learn as a creature of the land and when some drowning creature like you comes to tell me that I know nothing, I’ll have no response but that you’re drowning, dying slowly and painfully and unhappily while thinking and hoping that everybody else is having the fate that you are suffering. So in a sense fuck you, and I’m sorry to everybody on the bus, but sometimes, somebody sais something that you respond to, and I’m sorry to interrupt your day, and here’s the stop that I pulled the wire for even though its not my stop, but I’ll get off anyway: to avoid this man, and to stop bothering you. Good day.

 

And I get off, and I’m blushing, and I feel like an idiot, because really I just reduced myself to this mans standard, made myself speak his language, and it’s one of those languages that is designed to sound like intelligence but truly sounds like pretension and anyone with a hint of learning can hear nothing but overwhelming ignorance. I truly am blushing, And walking away thinking maybe I’ll go buy some cheap delicious food to distract me until this fades from my short term memory, and hopefully doesn’t enter my long term. And then I look up, and here’s this wretch behind me, and he came off the bus at my stop, and he looks mad, like he might hit me, like he might hurt me.

 

“So you think you’re a fighter. Great, I get it, you think. I already said you think you know everything and here you go trying to prove it. No, don’t you fucking walk away. I swear to god, I will kill you if you walk away, and you already think I’m fucking crazy so that had better stop you. Oh good, you stop, and I’ll walk towards you, and we can settle this man to man. Oh don’t look like you’re going to fight me, you were the one who just talked about life like boxing, so let’s box. I know nothing about you but the fact that you know nothing, and that’s more then enough. Shut the fuck up. I can see your eyes wanting to talk, and I’ll answer your own fucking question. You want to tell me that I know nothing too. Great, aren’t you a philosopher. But really, words don’t speak what I need to say to you. Maybe I should just fucking hit you. Pain can be like a drug and expand your mind; but you, you’re the type of guy who would lap it up to get a clever witticism out. So you’ve got something to say to me. You said things to me. I’m going to respond. I’m not going to hit you. But oh, I want to, to take that smug look out of your eyes. You think I’m the one whose outside of reality, but the truth is I’m disenchanted from reality. You make it all into some philosophical game, swimming and boxing and all that shit. And what I want to do is make you feel pain. Make you get to the point where you can’t play mind games, can’t wonder at reality, make you get to the point where cells are running through your nervous system paralyzing your brain with their resounding feedback. You think I’d say things like ‘you don’t exist;’ well fuck that, what I say is you do exist, right now, and what you are is a pile of cells that have somehow decided to be conscious and that this isn’t a beautiful thing to make you appreciate life but a terrible thing, a thing to make you conscious of the pain and wretchedness that is the fate of everything in the universe. Cells divide, stars explode, the land ruptures. Thank god nothing but humans  have become conscious, imagine the suffering of the universe if it was conscious for the big bang? But oh, we don’t have that luxury. What we have is to be deteriorated, for our cells to die and flutter off, for our bodies to be blasted constantly into decay. Oh, you think I think of life poetically! Nothing is further from the truth. You in your tower of reason is the poet. Me, I sit around, do drugs, talk to strangers, and don’t give a fuck because why should I? I was always dead: from birth on, my body just didn’t know it. I look at you. And you know what I see? Some boy with a comfortable upbringing who tries to be sad to impress his friends, to artificially make drama in his life to make the good times seem better, someone who dreams about sadness and whose greatest dread is reserved for thoughts like ‘do I exist when I die,’ and what happens to my memories. Well, here’s the truth, and I’m not preaching, I’m talking from one universe of cells: one to the other: we are dead. We were never alive, we are walking nothings, and your deciding that this is not the case does not change its reality.”

 

Is he crying? For a second I feel like offering this man my change, I feel like he is a beggar on the side of the street, someone to feel secret pity for. But then I collect myself. I think. I suppose. I have two choices: to run or to talk. I’m a good runner, I could run; but I was not joking when I said life was like boxing and here this man has tried to bloody me and I need to prove myself by showing that both his technique was nothing, and that I can go for the knock out.

 

“You know, I think I like you. I like just you and me and nobody else because I can talk in this brutally honest fashion, this way that I could never if anyone was around because this is just not the way for people to talk. But you want to, so thank you, I don’t like you, but I like the fact that you talk. You are an ignorant, unhappy man, who likely will die with no one around and you might make some philosophical debate about how that doesn’t bother you but everyone wants to die in glory, with people missing you, with people going ‘there goes someone who participated.’ Personally, I want to die surrounded by grand-kids thinking that if life is a delusion, thank god for such a  beautiful imagination. And that’s where we differ. Oh, don’t look at me so venomously, but thank you for not interrupting, I shut up for your monologue and I can see you are enough of a man to give me mine. See, we are the same. Maybe everyone is the same. You say this is all a delusion, and want to search for something concrete. Some underlying reality. Something for you to rest your hand on and go ‘yes, this exists’ and that would be enough; enough to make the decay of your cells and the loss of consciousness manageable; oh you fear death like me; you just think your goal is within reach and it will let you stop the fear. You are more delusional then I. What I say is let the delusions exist. Let me think happiness and have it be happiness and if I spend a life believing I am happy then truly that is a happy life. You think one day happiness might come, and perhaps it will, I don’t know how far you will swim, but I know I am happy, and I shall continue this, and that is a good life. And you mock me, and will continue mocking me, I can see on your lips a rebuttal. But you do not hurt me. In fact, I pity you. Because this entire argument we have is about you trying to take my happiness away and say it is all a myth. What sort of a game is this? What sort of a creature are you? Who would want to take the happiness of another? I cannot spread my beauty onto you but at least I take nothing away, so what I say to you is: stop. Stop blindly fighting life. Trying to hurt everything you pass. You have swum to deep and are convulsing, lashing at me, safe on land, and I look at you. I have pity. The land I am on is not the universe of water: I am not drowning. I would like to save you. But I would take you on land, where you would thrash, where you would hate my helpful arms. You would push me in to those noxious seas and jump in again with me; you would try to make me drown too; to save one I have to let you drown. And this is ok, because I am the one who is happy, the one on land and I know you could save yourself. It is so easy but you will not. And I am going to walk away. And I hope never to see you again, because if I see you again, I will have to feel the remorse of not saving you, I will have to fight your drowning claws again, I will have to futilely talk to you while you try to injure me once more. All you do is scratch and bite and participate nothing; perhaps your scars will be on me forever. But you have scratched enough, and, frankly, you can scratch yourself because I am going to walk away right now, on this street, this street you said I could not walk away from you on, and I will walk into my beautiful delusion and forget you, since you are worth forgetting. I will not say good day, since the day will not be good for you, but I will say good luck because you are taking a different route in life them me, and maybe, if you have good luck, you will touch reality, and I pray and pray and pray that you do, because if not, you did worse then never existed, you existed and squandered and made the universe of yourself unhappy. Now get the fuck away from me.”

 

And I walked away, and he did not come after me, and he was no longer angry. He looked thoughtful for a second, like a man waiting for a bad aftertaste, then opened his mouth to reply, then shut it thinking better. We both knew the truth, and it was that we knew no truth. I think he saw his greed in trying to exploit my ignorance, and I think he felt pain in me trying to reveal his. He looked, for a second, into my eyes, then turned around and walked away. I went back to the bus station, turned on my music, wondered at the beauty of my view, and waited.

“They said his brother paid for the funeral.”

“Mmmmm, Yes they, would they’re good people, those Raven’s. So much done to them, and still they do the right thing.”

“Robert wouldn’t have wanted an extravaganza anyway, this is perfect, just a few of his close friends and family members.”

“It’s too bad Keith couldn’t be here though, brothers are brothers, and business should always take second place to family.”

“Really, don’t date yourself, I remember growing up, my father said he would miss my wedding if it was during his market season. His market was only downtown, Keith is in New Zealand”

 

These people bantering at a funeral, my best friend’s funeral, make me want to leave. Conversation carried on endlessly, gossip with only a pretext of sympathy. Already, I can plan out the entire conversation: start with the sympathy, mention how nice the service is, note how small it is, and how it was at the expense of Bob’s brother David, then the whispering would start. Casual at first, but always accompanied with a lighting up of the eyes, the real joy of the conversation.

Subdued talks of how good it is of David to do all this for Bob, considering all the bad Bob has done. That Bob, always perfectly nice, but died so tragically, so needlessly. If only that Bob had finished his degree, if only that Bob had worked harder, if only that Bob could have been reasonable. I know what they’re trying to say: good riddance, Bob, a nice guy, but what did he ever participate to society, what did he ever do.

My poor friend Bob. It’s been a week since I heard, a month since it happened, and ten years since I last saw him. Likely, I’m the only real friend of Bob’s here, and it’s only a fluke that I ended up coming. Running into a friend of a friend at work, who had been invited, wondering if I was coming to; when she found out I was not invited, she was so embarrassed, like she’d let out a secret, like me, a scoundrel, had no business in mourning

Well, invitation or not, I came. Certainly no one rude enough to tell me to leave, but everyone polite enough to tell me I’m not wanted in as friendly a way as possible. But what do I care of slights, they’ve been hurled at me for years. No, today is about Bob.

 

Bob and me collided in our last year of university. Neither of us were finished our degrees, but the time was over. We shared an apartment, I put an ad in the paper, he took it, that was it, my life changed by me being cheap in rent. Bob would have liked to talk about a little detail like that.

We lived together for four months. We would each have class at nine, and wake up at noon, and the first action of the day was to be eating some Brunch, and looking guilty at each other, like we’d each been caught running down the hall in grade school, knew it was wrong, but still could not understand why this teacher wanted us to feel so bad. The fact was, we each felt so good.

Those months are so crystal clear in my head. The maker of them in a box ten feet away, yet here I am remembering the both of us fighting hand over fist for the last piece of bread, remembering the talk we had where I realized that school was going to destroy my soul, remembering the time he came home and I was shooting up, and he gave me a hug, told me the world was a hard complicated place, and he had to move out.

Years passed by in those months, my entire life passed by, maybe. Everything we did was so alive. Dinner a pleasure to make with music blaring, wine pouring, and new chefs mastering simple dishes as if they were after Michelin stars. Always a joke about the washroom, how it was easier to wear sandals then to actually clean. Sitting in good lighting, listening to good music, talking to each other about anything that flittered through our minds. We did do some action, we went to some amazing parties, saw some amazing things, but when I look back, all I remember is us sitting side by side, and talking. And now that head which expressed so much of itself to me, sits silent forever, feet away.

 

 

Bob, me, and the rest of the world, we all took different paths in life. I walk down a street, I don’t fit in. The rest of the world walks down the street, and there’s nobody who doesn’t fit in, and Bob, well he doesn’t walk down the street, maybe he’s skipping, or running through the forest, or even in the gutter. He does what he does.

I remember Bob suckered me into working at this after school charity with him. He loved kids, knew he’d never have em, and still liked to be around them. Anyway, we’d just finished a few hour session, had a lot of fun, and me and Bob are around the corner having a smoke. Now, something you need to know about Bob, is that he’s a chameleon, he’ll fit in anywhere. But he doesn’t like it when those lives intersect, and when some little tween girl walks around the corner and sees her happy go lucky counselor doing something like smoking, Bob, he aint happy.

She lectures him, saying “You know smoking’s bad for you.”

Bob goes, “What does it mean it’s bad for me.”

She gets that little superior look on her face, that one only 12 year old girls can get, and lectures, “smoking will make you die young, is what I mean by it’s bad for you.”

And Bob looks at her straight, not a hint of a chuckle, but not a hint of darkness either, just stating a fact: “What if I die young anyways, then why would I care about smoking.”

The little girl had no answer, and she took it as a joke. They laughed, and Bob said some shit about how he’d quit just for her. I think he even meant it too, that’s probably the only thing that could make him quit, a promise to a little innocent. She took it as a joke, but it made me think; it wasn’t a joke. Not at all.

That night I asked Bob about what he meant he wasn’t going to live long. He thought about it, you could tell it was a conversation he wasn’t to pumped on. He said “You know, when I was sixteen, I was with some friends, sitting on a rooftop, looking at the city and stars. We were really happy. We had some wine, and we started talking, and I told them that if that was the last night of my life, I was happy. I’d drunk the cup of life, and what greedy person asks for seconds. Everybody said I was bullshitting, that if there was a gun to my head, I’d obviously choose life. And that is true. But that does not contradict that I’ve already lived a full life. That night was years ago, I’m on my third or fourth cup of life now. What right do I have to ask for anymore.”

 

 

It’s been a coupla years now since me and Bob, we last met. It hasn’t been voluntary, at least on my part. I love the guy. I’d see him everyday. No, he was the one that made it so we wouldn’t see each other.

One day, this was after we’d both dropped university, he came over to my house. I hadn’t seen him in about a week, and he never stops over, it was a surprise. He wasted no time with niceties. The first thing he told me was that he would never see me again. He didn’t word it so brusquely, he made a joke out of it, he made it seem natural. But that is what he said.

Naturally, I asked him why not, he got a problem with me, I do something wrong? He told me he was just trying to be happy. That being here, he feels pressure, the weight of the world’s eyes on his shoulders. That he was running away like a little boy, so he could live the life of his dreams. I asked him what that dream was, he told me it was to talk to people. I told him we were talking now, and he nodded, and said how he wished we could just do this for an eternity. He told me that money was a step to happiness he didn’t want to take. That work was something you did so that after work, you would have free time. That TV is something you watch so you don’t see your life. That drinking is something you do, so you feel like you’re doing something. He told me that everybody thought they were going somewhere, making more money, buying nice cars, getting families, but really they’re just treading water. That he wished no ill to these people, but he is unhappy, and why on earth should a person be unhappy. So he was going to leave that which was making him so down. Which was apparently everything.

He didn’t quite word it like that, there was a lot of how he’s the happiest and saddest person in the world, and that everything is balanced. All that bullshit. But he was serious. And that was the last time I ever saw him

 

 

Every now and then, in these last few years, I would see something that reminded me of Bob. A crosswalk where I pulled him back so a bus wouldn’t hit him. A road that we would walk up and down, up and down, talking, and letting our conversation end before the walk. A restaurant where he made the waitress fall in love with both of us. There’s a painting of his life all around me, and I’m stuck seeing new colors every day.

I would see something, and wonder. Where is he right now. Is he happy. Is he better off then the rest of us. Is whatever he’s doing just another way of living an unhappy life like the rest of us. I’d see  things and I’d wonder.

Then one day, I heard about this funeral. Now there’s all these people around us, those faces of the crowd he was repelled from. Everyone looking at the cheap casket, making the motions of mourning, but the silent hiss of superiority fills the room. Here was a man who thought he was better then us, the crowd seems to inhale, and now he is dead and we are not, the crowd seems to exhale.

“Such a tragedy, to die so unfulfilled,” One says.

He was the happiest person I ever met.

 

It’s strange, because I know if there is one time, in my entire life, where it is appropriate to cry, it is right now. This instant. Yet I feel nothing. I simply calmly meet they eyes of the man who has given me a sentence, the man who has taken everything with a solitary sentence, and thank-him for doing all he can. I can tell he’s sorry, but he must do this five times a day. Thank god I won’t live long enough to have the potential to be like this doctor. Sickness is a bitch, but it, like everything has its benefits.

I walk out to the waiting room, and wish that I hadn’t brought my mother with me. She said she wanted to support me, but one look from her overly sensitive eyes and she’s roiling with all that which I keep dead in side. Somehow I feel embarrassed, some subliminal part of me is wishing she wouldn’t make such a big deal about this. But it is a big deal. My life’s just been cut down to a quarter. I should be happy to have someone weep for me.

With all the grace I can muster, I go down on my knees, as if to pray. I meet my mothers eyes, and hold my arms open. She falls into me, me who fell from her, her who made me, me who will leave first. I hold her and don’t think and carry her and don’t think and call a taxi and don’t think beyond what an appropriate tip for the cabbie should be.

 

He was trying to be brave. My heart broke. When you’re trying to be brave, there must be something that you need to be brave about.

I knew something was terribly wrong, headaches don’t last for days. I told him to go to the doctor. They say better late then never, and this is certainly not the case.

As the door opens, I collapse. His eyes are full of unshed tears, his back is straight, and I’ll never be happy again.

He comforts me, or tries to. How can he know my sorrow? I am so bitter, so caustic, but he will never have kids, never have to lose kids. I would take his pain away from him but it is not mine to take. I would die for him but it would do no good. I get to watch him decay. Ash to ash, dust to dust, with my eyes watching the entire time.

 

By the time we get home, after a long car ride without a word outside of politeness, I can tell that he is at peace with himself. Before, he had a solid forty years left. Now he has under one. All he has done is restructure his goals, take out the fat, and he is resigned to living a full life in a fraction of the time.

I still have twenty good years left. That will be nine-teen without him. Does he think of that? Does he thick of all the things I’ve thought to do with him, to see him do, that I will not get to do now.

I’m sitting at what might be the end of my life, and the only thing I can clearly remember is the back of a button. It was from my favourite pair of jeans; the button was pulled out, and on the piece that was imbedded in the nylon, was an imprint of the letter b. I like things like that, things that aren’t necessary, but they still exist. Even if you never notice them, they’re still there.

There’s a lady down the hall screaming. Just “help me, help me,” over and over again, I’d help her, but I have nothing to offer her. Will I end up like that. My life is so close to being over, its been so long, and all I can hear is screaming. She has been here longer then me, she has been trapped in frailty longer then me. All I can think of is if I last much longer, will I be screaming?

What a way to end up. I remember being warned to try hard, or I might end up on the street, or addicted to drugs, or any number of horrible things. I tried hard at my life. I really did. In some ways I did OK. I might never have made my name known to the world, but I wasn’t a bad man. I don’t deserve to be here. Nurses with fake smiles. Doctors who know that I know that they can do nothing for the myriad of little malignacies that plague me. I’m alone, and that isn’t as horrible as you might think, but it might be nice to have someone to talk to.

I was close to having a family a few times. I lived in Africa for awhile, and a girl told me all she wanted was to have a white baby, she wanted nothing to do with me, just to have my child. What would that be like? Knowing that on the other side of the world is an entire person who wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. I regret not letting that young girl have her wish. If my life was average, at least I could have allowed for the possibility of some future wonderful life.

Maybe I believe in destiny. Some people are the pinnacles, but they are only there because endless people casually and unconsciously altered the world to set the stage; otherwise, without some unknown bumkin whose horse got in the way of a whiff of grapeshot, there would have been no Napoleon. Napoleon is nothing, just a strike of luck. Thats the way I see the world, and as I see the last days, I go I just never had a strike of luck. Nothing to do with me, impartial fates, in another universe, I’m living in all the ways I never could here.

This is what old men do. Ponder on the things that have happened, or should have happened. Muse and wonder if the lives that we’ve lived were the correct ones. If the forks were chosen correctly. It’s rather depressing, having a room full of silent people, all wondering how they ended up here.

 

When I was a young man, or an old boy, my family put my grandmother in a home. We were eating dinner at her house, and I was talking about how horrible a place a home is, and was completely ignorant that she was going to be  put in one by my parents. The talk went on, and she could tell I had no idea, and when I asked a question, she would have a big smile, and say that I shouldn’t disparage the future one day I was destined for. It was incomprehensible to me that I would ever end up in a home. Looking back, there was that same incomprehension on my grandmothers face. These are not the futures assigned, these are not the futures that we dream of. I wish we did not put my grandmother in a home. Selfishly, I wish this I suppose.

 

Your email just got through to me. Written three days ago, I still haven’t opened it. I know what it will say. My mouse flutters over it, wanting to open, but I want a few more minutes without guilt. Such a shame. You wanted to see me. I mean a lot to you. And I intentionally avoid you. Don’t let me meet your unjudging eyes: stop worshiping me, I am not worth it.

The pressure of meaning something. To know that you aren’t that flawed figure that stares back at you in the mirror, but rather a figment of anothers imagination. Against all the odds, I lived up to what you wanted of me. And we had some amazing times. Is it weakness that I want out, or strength. No matter what, I am unhappy, and you are unhappy, but still my path goes unaltered.

People change. You’re older then you were. I’m less then I was. How can I remember what we were to each other, when if we meet, I can see my emancipation reflecting from your eyes. I’ve tried hard to live well, and not everyone is meant for happiness. Maybe I spent my best hours making your best hours. Maybe the well is dry. Please, don’t judge me, please, do judge me, please, just make everything not exist. Why, of all the dreams, must this be reality.

Likely you think nothing. Regret in the simplist form, just wondering if I’ve become to good for you. Like perhaps somehow this is your fault. I can feel the lashes that should strike me. My mind is flailed. It is all me. It is all me. It is all me. So please. I cannot tell you, but I can wish it: be happy, and live on, and keep the time when I was most alive, alive in your memories. May the despot I slink towards, never, never, touch those memories.

So I won’t open your email. I so want to. Test myself, maybe I haven’t become what I fear. But take the step forward, and there is no back. I lived. Nobody can say otherwise. You watched me. You are the proof. Life happened here. That is more then some say. I will try to be fortunate.

I’m pretty sure I can see her eyes looking at me. The corner of her eyes meeting the corner of my eyes. We both look away without knowing the other saw.

I carefully move. I’m on a show. Add a little grace to the move of pinkie, a swirl as I open the zipper. Does she notice? I’ll try to look interesting. Look down the road past the front of the bus. Is there any interesting traffic? Probably not, I don’t remember. I was just trying to make sure I made a suitable post card. For sure she has noticed me.

I take out my ipod. Rummaging through my playlist, my hand at an awkward angle, that I hope looks somewhat natural. With her visibly watching, thnking I’m engrossed, I can see I captivate her. I go through my entire artist list, trying to appear both artistically selective, and non chalant. I wonder if she’s impressed by my music taste? I choose a song, and begin to study the scene around me. The bus driver trying so hard to get his sandwich out of his bag while we’re moving. Some girl clearly wearing to tight underwear talking about where the best place for ice cream after Christmas is. A man of maybe 40 I offend by offering him my seat. Sirens reflecting luminously off the glass next to the drivers head; I nearly leap out of my seat to see some sad spectacle; trying hard to look like the type of person who thinks he might be of some help, scouts the scene, then sits back and looks away, clearly not interested in watching the private scene of someone suffering.

I feel so romantic.

The girl asks if I know where Georgia is. I tell her where it is, and ask her where she’s going. She tells me she’s going home. The conversation starts, and she instigated. I guess this was backwards, me preening, her going for the cheesy line, but the conversation started.

We chit chat and bear our souls in the way that only the supremely confused are. She tells me she’s in economics and wants out. I tell her I’m in university and want out maybe. We don’t make eye contact. We both feel that maybe we’re telling to much. Change of topic to where she’s from (Iran), how miserable the weather is (horrible), and how long buses take (really long).

We’re on safe ground but not really sure we want to be. Her stop comes. We exchange names. We meet each others eyes almost, then her friend taps her on the shoulder, they walk off togethor, and I keep riding on the bus, and I don’t look back.

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 its 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 phenomena. 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 contains 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 quite 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 infitismile 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 me 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. Cock sucker 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 ran 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 though 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 dust pan 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 conscious 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 if 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 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 object and denizens. Rather, I want to tell you about this new door, not my front door (that was further up that 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 then to 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 them 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 ladies body and possessions. Ahh the color pink is everywhere, it hurts my vision but I hear that woman 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 spot light. 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 then 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 be 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 to strokes wrong. What is important is that I am aware or 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 a person had 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 it’s 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 levianthic 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 instance, but in that instance 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 either 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 entropotic 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 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 then I cared to acknowledge. Perhaps this entire gift of consciousness that earlier this morning I has 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.

Here I am, somewhere new. A river to cross. I need to get to the other side. Why? Adventure, maybe. I forget the initial why, it has left me, there is only the knowledge of truth that on the other side is the place where I need to go. That this is the way forward.

How will I go? If I had wings I would fly, so easily, I would not even notice the river: it would be nothing but a beautiful sight to appreciate, a break in formless terrain, an addition to the infinite equation of beauty. As a man, there are no wings to fly, just feet to walk on, and while I know beauty is here, even I am absorbing it, yet, what my mind sees is a dilemma. There has to be a solution. There is not always a solution but this is the way forward and I will find a way.

This river, the river, it is not going to be crossed with ease. It is fast, torturous, wide, cold, nasty, dangerous, evil. Lovely yes, but it is a feat. It is dangerous. It is deadly. One slip and the raging river will carry me away. It will kill me. How will I cross it? How will I cross it. My eyes stumble on the massive husk of a long dead tree, degrading back to nature, a behemoth of lives past. Elegantly splayed across a narrow portion of the river I see it as a solution, the only solution that enters my mind. The way forward.

I analyze the tree. I see it as it must have stood in another century, majestic, the king of the forest. Fallen. What was, was, and what is, is, and this tree is now nothing but a bridge, the majesty of yester year not lost but reduced to a residue, an emotion of wonderment at what  was rather then sublime awe at what is. Pity. Lucky, for here is a way forward.

Yes, it is the way forward, yet, this new optimism gives me reflection. While striving to reach the end of my endless path, to finally see the true light of my hidden dream goals, I see the corpses of the past greats, those entities greater then I will ever be whose corpses now litter my path. One day, before I reach my goal, I know I will be something just like this tree. Another fallen. Perhaps I can hope to at least provide the way forward for another adventurer, another seeker of the honest equation. Perhaps all these littered corpses mean something. Perhaps the dream of achievement for oneself is a myth, perhaps the meaning of what we do is simply to be another bridge forward; perhaps, instead of many getting to the end, the point is to work in one great sequence to try simply get one small entity to the end. Perhaps that one will be me.

Staring upon the massive roots of this fallen goliath, I begin to climb to the trunk which will be my plank. I begin to see the arduous danger of my path. A length that seems endless but microscopic in diameter. A walking surface slippery, splattered with the foam of the raging river. What else? Wind. Fear in my heart. The stars have been aligned for me so far, but here, as in every fresh new challenge, I feel the potential that my time is due. That this will be the end.

Should I stop? Could I stop? So far forward from where I began. Would this be a demerit to myself? I try to rationalize. I try to compromise the evil of compromising my ideals with the evil of compromising my mortality with the danger ahead. Life on the river, this could be it, this could be what I have waited for, the tree just a tease at the possibility of a wrong way forward. Life here. The spot is lush. This could be it, this could be it. My brain has rationalized, and indeed it may even be right, but, that unfathomable beast living in my heart screams different. The way forward is not to stop. The way forward is farther ahead. Across the river. Across this tree. Dangerous, yes, but such is the way of ambition, such is the danger of exploration, to fly: to see vistas never seen, perils never thought of. To touch the sun and be burned by its ravenous brilliance. I will cross the river. I don’t have to. Life could be here, this could be it. But I will cross the river.

Climbing with a casual grace from hand hold to hand hold, I reach the top of the trunk that will be my bridge. I stand tall at the top. I feel strength and fear in equal measures locked in a battle for my waking mind. My unconscious mind ignores such petty squabbles and forces my right foot forward. That first step towards oblivion, my route already charted, there is nothing to do now but maintain momentum. My brain is screaming with fear, giving me endless reasons why this danger is not necessary with that very same logic I know will eat me alive if I were to turn back. Death or coward, are those my choices? I could walk away and still be a man. I could walk away and live a meaningful life, even a perfect life. But I will not turn back, I have chosen the direction forward, and for better or worse I will not compromise the logic which led me so deeply already through many endless choices. Forward. Forward. Forever forward.

My left foot climbs, moves forward and falls. My second step landed, just a hair in front of my first step. I am moving forward. My mind is calming. Finding peace. Knowing no longer is it profitable to blanch endless banalities; now, it is only about moving forever forward. Another step. Another step. Another step. It is as slippery as I feared. It is as windy as I dreaded. But. Another step. Another step. No thought on anything larger than the individual motion. No thought at all but: another step. Another step.

A universe of steps successfully planted, I have no idea if I am a step away from the far end or if my mind is simply playing tricks, making those endless steps I am sure I have stepped through nothing more than a figment of my hyperactive imagination. At this point, no different then so many moments before it, and what could have been so many steps after, my landing food touches an especially gleaming bit of bark and throws off my semblance of balance. The slow motion of my life is reduced even more. I can feel my foot searching millisecond by millisecond for a new, safer landing; I can feel my arms wildly trying regain my balance. My brain is clear. This will be the end of me. My brain is at peace. This will be the end of me. Should I have not attempted to climb this log over the river? I feel the time to think. I feel time so compressed that perhaps I have all the time of the world to think over this one point. Maybe, even, this is the afterlife, just endlessly replaying that movement that ends you, questioning for all eternity where it was that you went wrong. I do not need infinite time to come to peace. I am at peace. I made the only choice I could make so that at the end of my life, even though it is right now, I can feel this sense of serenity. To hell with what could have been, to hell with the safe life on the riverside where I could have had a peaceful perfect life, only breaking from the reverie of my own happiness during cold sweat nightmares of knowing that this is not the life I should be living. To hell with living life between nightmares, to hell with a long life lying on a framework of lies. My brain and heart are curiously in agreement, this lack of fear a novel emotion in me. Well, then, death, I knew one day you would come, and truthfully I am bitter with you, taking away this game of life before I managed to move all the way around the board, but, then, so be it. At least I was playing on a board that was a reality I believed in. I am falling into the river. This is death. I am not smiling, but I am not sad. I am simply at peace.

Lying on the bed next to the girl that I love, I think of the transience of life. This lovely girl, a flower just blooming, the treasure of the garden of my soul, is going to die. Soon. She lies next to me, seeming fine, yet we both know wasting on the inside. We don’t talk, some languages are more powerful then speech, and death requires the most perfect communication. Yet, she is scared, and I am scared for her, and she looks me in the eye, lying next to her, counting each finite minute. She wants to talk, and I am foreboding what she will say but I am ready.

The Dying: Do you believe in god?

The Living: Yes, I believe in god, I pray every night.

The Dying: Do you believe in an afterlife?

                Ahhh, those gentle lies we want to caress the world with, to give false promises that the world will be perfect, that things will get better. That life will be that dream we all fantasize about. That there is no reason for fear, since there is nothing to fear. Oh, ghouls, you eat my soul.

The Living: Yes, I believe in an afterlife. I believe that this world is just a test, a dream, for the perfect life that will come after.

The Dying: Please. Please. I don’t want you to say what I want to hear. I want in my last days of life to live honestly. To deal with the realities of life while it is still my reality. You’ve told me many times when I wasn’t…sick…that you don’t believe in an afterlife. You’ve said you don’t believe in god. Me, yes, of course, I want to believe in an afterlife, I want to think that my mind isn’t about to disappear, that all my memories will just cease to mean anything and the universes of my consciousness will cease. I am so scared, so scared. But, to be scared is honest, death is something to be feared. What is worse is a lie, to accept the sweet nothing you’re whispering to me while that last bastion of my soul, my heart, knows the secret fallacies of the reality you have constructed for me. So please, please, be honest. Do you believe in god, do you believe in an afterlife. And why, why, why?

The Living: I don’t believe in God, the god who lives on a cloud or the god who will one day talk to you or shake your hand. I don’t believe in an afterlife, I don’t believe in reincarnation. I don’t want to hurt you, my beliefs have made me choke with fear at the thought of death and I am not dying. Please, please, lovely love, just appreciate the beauty of the universe and trust whatever it is your heart says. Belief is belief, and the hollowness of my holiness is something whose contagion need not blanket you.

The Dying: No, please, please, in my heart I feel that there is no god. That worms will eat the last remnants of my spirit. But I know you to hold little fear in those things you have just said. Please, explain life to me. Share your vision and maybe there will be something that will fill this void, this abyss, in the plains of my peaceless dissonance.

The Living: …..Well……I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to tell you. You are right, I am at peace. If I was to die with you, so soon, I would be afraid, I would be sad, because I have enjoyed this plain of existence enormously, but I think I would be at peace. I think that there is no god, but I believe in holiness, I believe in the pleasure of existence. I think rather than dwell on what could be, no matter how bitter a topic that might be, it is better to confront what has been. We have existed with consciousness. Of all the things in the universe, from trees to stars to electrons to deer to grains of sand, these things may be great of small, live for a few seconds or live for billions of generations of the lives of men, yet, out of all this wonder, it is only us, these little fragile human beings, who have had the pleasure of consciousness. We have not just been alive, but appreciated the fact we have been alive. I think this is a wonderful privilege. I think it is like winning the lottery of the entire universe, and it is selfish enough to demand this existence, to demand it perpetually would be demanding more than is fair from the universe. When I die, I will not stop existing, I will continue on as before, as some molecule of dust, some flower that will never make it past the seed form, perhaps even make up the parts of another human being, but my consciousness will be over, this fantastic chapter of the eternal building blocks that make me, me, will be finished. But that does not mean it did not happen. Much like someone lives a life where he can only do certain things at certain times: graduate once, make love for the first time, be born, hear music for the first time, we get only one life; yet, much like with the things in life that we do for the first time, after losing the virgin encounter with the complexities of life the action does not disappear but rather lives in memory forever. True, when you die, you don’t have your memories anymore, your consciousness does not exist, but in the memory of the world you were real. Every molecule you shed changed the entire course of the universe, its slightness in no way affecting the causality since truly everything is about perspective. To the atoms that make up your body you are a dying god, a burning out universe whose death will forever alter the future of trillions of individual entities. To a star, it will never know you lived or died, yet, one day, our sun will supernova, eat the Earth, absorb all the molecules that were once a part of you, and use you as fuel to generate light that will be transmitted across the entire universe. Death is horrifying, it is taboo, but we will all die. I beg you, truly, to not fear death, or, perhaps, yes, fear death, but in that same way a man fears a wedding or a child fears that first day at school: be apprehensive about the unknown, since truly everything is going to change, but do not think that the book of your existence is ending, rather, it is just the evolution of a new chapter, one written by the same author that created you, just, maybe, the new chapter is from a different perspective, a different point of view.

The Dying: I know what you are saying, and thank-you for your honesty. But this does not quell the qualms of my heart. You are right, I am just one facet of my infinite life. Yet, what does this mean to my waking mind. Perhaps it is nice to know that some faint residue of my resonance will remain, but what makes my mind mournful is my loss of memories, that disappearance of mind, that eternal shutting of the radiant sun in my mind. I will disappear. I am going to disappear. That sunshine which you say I have the privilege to appreciate, I do appreciate, I’m crying with its sublime beauty and I want to spent a thousand more days, a thousand more lives just staring in rapture at such perfection. Why do we have to die? Why can’t we appreciate that infinite which you claim is all around us. What a cruel temptress nature is, to provide such a perfect paradise and we get no more than the faint light of candle to illuminate nothing but a few dismal shadows. To truly appreciate life! Yes, I know, this is nonsensical, that if I was to live for another fifty years I would still have these same intangible fears, haunting the full extent of my transitory mind. But most people can hide this fear, stare at the ground because they know the sun of the truth will destroy their mental sanguine; but, I have no luxury. I don’t want you to feel the horror of my mind. You can stay asleep. But I ask you to just lie here next to me, to hold me, to touch me, to let me feel the full pleasure of existence in this dwindling twilight of my mind. Death is coming for me like a freight train, and I am not ready, but, I am going to shut my eyes, pray to a god I don’t believe in, and ignore death as she wraps me in her embrace. If I want to enjoy these last few moments, I am going to have to be ignorant. I am just not going to think of an afterlife. I am just going to try to exist, for just a few more moments.