I consider my room a cradle. Yes, a cradle, because it is here that an infant sleeps. I refer to myself, of course; I could never share a room with a child, vile things that they are. Why do I consider myself an infant, you ask? A pertinent question, but one to which the answer is obvious: In order to mature, one must develop. And I will be the first to admit a marked lack of development throughout the course of my life. I like to be this way, though - it makes things much easier. No one ever blames an infant for anything; he doesn’t know any better. I’ve not been taught the difference between right and wrong, nor have I been instilled with a conscience; no one ever bothered. Such things don’t spontaneously come into being, like suns. A sun can appear out of nowhere, a fluke, an aberration of fate. Morals and good sense, on the other hand, take cultivation and a caring hand. Mine are like stunted little weeds, forced to subsist and grow only on the occasional passing rain-shower, which often is too much, a deluge that my shallow roots can’t handle. So I just shrivel a little more, day by day, week by week, and year by year.
When I’m in my cradle, I’m warm and safe, swaddled against chills and prying eyes. Instead of a mobile, I’ve got a computer, which I think is much better, though the effect is the same. In my reflection upon the screen, I’m often struck by how much my glazed stare resembles a placated baby, idly watching the turning of shapes. I can even rock myself to sleep, a benefit my size grants me over other infants. I curl up in bed and rock myself back and forth, back and forth; it’s a good thing I’ve got my privacy, otherwise you might think this strange. Yes, my cradle is very nice indeed, and I treasure it above all things.
It is a sad fact that I am occasionally obliged to leave. I work at a technical support center near the campus where I’m a student, which is quite convenient, since I don’t think I would be capable of venturing any farther into the world. People, mostly students, will call in with their computer problems, and I’m supposed to give them answers. Everyday I serve dozens of disembodied voices solutions to idiotic questions. I find it hard to restrain my laughter in the face of commonplace ignorance, and normally I don’t; my supervisor, the blind old badger, has gotten on my case any number of times for this. I don’t care, I laugh even at him, in my mind. He’s even more helpless than the rest, not being able to see. They’re cripples, compared to me, and he’s the worst; the callers might not be able to turn their computers on, but at least they can see the screen and know there’s a problem! (You might not think that’s funny, but right now I’m chortling. That’s right, chortling! It’s a funny word, and I don’t expect you to know it. Maybe later you can call and ask me for a definition.)
I especially like it when girls call - I really cut loose with them. After they pose their query, I’m silent for a moment, letting it hang in the air as if I’m struck speechless by their imbecility. When I do reply, it’s as if to a child; sometimes, when I’m feeling par-tic-ularly devilish, I use a mocking, sing-song tone of voice. This makes them self-conscious, and usually they’ll apologize, which they should, for wasting my time! Although, who am I kidding? I love it. I love how timid and embarrassed they become, though I could never say so to their faces. I enjoy it so much, I sometimes blush while talking to a girl-caller; the anticipation of showcasing my superior intelligence actually makes me blush! At least, I think that’s why I blush.
It can be forgiven if you think me a boogeyman, the type that spends his free time throwing rocks at sparrows. I will not lie, the ruffling of feathers gives me great satisfaction, but only because mine have been plucked already. How can I be faulted for trying a tweeze a few off the backs of others when I am as naked as a Thanksgiving turkey? Men are not meant to run around unclothed. There are things in all of us that we do not wish others to see. For some, it may be a dark deed commited in the past - the intentional killing of a cat, or a falsehood told that brought with it great gains. I can honestly say that I’ve never done anything wrong, however. My life has been one long, unabridged script of mundanity. The thing is, it is not the warts that I hide; I walk with my warts proudly displayed. The purpose is to draw attention away from what truly leaves me ashamed: my meek nature.
I said earlier that I am still an infant, and like an infant I’m weak, easily bothered and incapable of helping myself. If I were stronger, I would not get such a cheap thrill from the faceless confrontations I’m involved in at work; I would go out and find real confrontations, real struggle! As it is, if someone cuts in front of me in the deli-line, or a store-clerk gives me the incorrect change, I whimper and walk away, head bowed. It is not my fault, though; I was never taught to stand up for myself. I can barely walk, and even that was self-learned. My steps are slow and shuffling, and to this day, I have to concentrate to put one foot in front of the other. Otherwise, the smallest crack will cause me to trip and fall. People used to do everything for me, carry me around, wipe my mouth, cover my eyes during the scary parts of movies. If I wanted something, I only had to ask. There were never any trials or tribulations, because the moment an obstacle presented itself, someone would come and knock it down for me. I used to fantasize about what it would be like to take control. My dreams were filled with visions of how I would demand satisfaction for some playground slight, not allowing my mother to call the principal the day after I came home with tears in my eyes and grass in my hair. I’d be thrilled with thoughts of driving my father’s car, or playing football without the fear of admonitions for a scraped knee. God forbid the little baby hurt himself, we can’t have him hurt himself, what would we do? He needs to be smothered, crushed on all sides by protective padding from the horrors of the outside world, blindfolded and handcuffed so he can’t see or touch anything that isn’t white-washed, homogenized, disinfected, and approved with a PG rating by the Cosmogonic Suburbanital Association of Scared Mother Hens. Good Lord, how I even yearned to fail, if only so I could say that I did something, of my own volition! If the homework was too hard, it was done for me, if the science project broke, it was soldered back. All I wanted was some freedom; gimme some truth, dammit! The outside world looked so inviting, and I was kept from it, under lock and key. And now, when I finally have access, I hide in my cradle. Because now the world really is a scary place. I can’t imagine how people deal with it.
They’re funny to watch, though, these people. When I walk around the campus, I always make sure to sweep my eyes quickly from side to side. I know what you’re thinking too, and let me tell you, you’re wrong; it’s not just so I can make sure no one is giggling at my unkempt appearance or shuffling gait. That’s only part of it. The main reason is so I can take it all in, the human parade. I hate it, let me tell you, hate it down to the marrow in my bones. They’re all so characterless, so bland! That’s what it takes, I’ve decided, to navigate the choppy seas of life. The world has been tailor-made for these automatons to succeed. They stay abreast of fashion so they won’t stick out in a crowd; if a name-brand shirt is the standard mark of excellence, then you’d better have it on, by God! Anything less and you are less, too. Their personalities are served up to them, everything from their opinions on world politics to what kind of music they like. Not to say that everyone falls into the same category. I’m merely saying that no one thinks, really thinks about the choices they make. They pick a platform, usually around the age of sixteen, and hang onto it for the rest of their life, tooth and nail. The status quo and the counter-culture are different sides of the same currency, just clubs for people to belong to.
I, on the other hand, am different. I’ve got plenty of time to think for myself and think for myself I have. Some of my opinions are quite original, some, I would even daresay, radical and remarkable! For example, I never go to parties or clubs; why should I? I’m not like the people that do, I don’t seek their approval, and the last thing I want to do is associate with them. They’d probably end up making fun of me, goes to reason, since I’m making fun of them, right? I console myself on lonely weekend nights by sitting and thinking, the fruits of which you’re enjoying as you read this. You are enjoying this, right? It’d kill me if you weren’t. Wait, no, what am I saying? I don’t care, not one whit what you think about me. That’s why I always dress so shabbily, because I don’t care. What do you think about that? My overly large shirts and stained jeans are good enough for me. They may not be the paragon of fashion, but who has the time to follow fashion, anyway? I’m always so busy, and quite frankly, I have better things to do than to keep up with the latest vogue, I assure you! Some people might understand how to dress, but I understand much more. Which do you think is the true mark of superiority?
I said earlier that I hate my peers, but that isn’t so. If anything, I feel no connection towards them. We could be different species, they and I, and the situation would be no different. My character is what sets me apart - suffering breeds it, you know.
I hope you haven’t gotten the impression that I want to belong. I wouldn’t change a thing, if given a second chance. I’m proud of my emotional disfigurement. Are you surprised that I recognize it as such? It sets me apart, it’s what makes me unique. A freak is someone different from the norm, be they an athletically blessed quarterback or a beautiful model. I equate myself with this sort of person and treasure my spite the same way they treasure their arm or face. It’s all I’ve got, after all. What does this make me, then? Am I a nihilist, an existentialist? Perhaps an egoist? I’ve said before that I have no use for such labels, that I needn’t be a member of any club. I subscribe only to the way accorded me by my upbringing. I have ceased to fight against it. Come to think of it, I guess that makes me a realist. You see how easily I contradict myself? The truth is, I don’t know what I am. Perhaps that’s the problem.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Eterne
It was quiet as it can only be on a bright, frosty Sunday. The streets of South, Texas were mostly empty, save for the occasional vehicle meandering to or from church. Fall had passed imperceptibly into winter, and both seemed no more than a fading continuation of summer until this sudden cold snap. School had been cancelled the previous Friday, after a storm blew in the night before and coated the still warm streets with ice. Henry Morgan had taken advantage of this windfall by beginning a new story in his notebook, one that had germinated at the back of his mind for quite awhile. He sat on the edge of his bed, leaning back on his hands with the notebook open on one thigh. He stared blankly ahead, pondering a word or subsequent progression. Suddenly, he exhaled sharply, as if terminating a period of submergence, and closed the book. A ceiling fan, the blades covered with glow-in-the-dark star stickers, turned slowly overhead. From somewhere beyond the bedroom crept the noise of a television game show. Henry stood and padded over the carpet to a blinded window, parted two of the plastic dividers, and took note of the frost that coated the glass on the opposite side. Within the crystalline patterns of ice he imagined he saw a message, a semblance of meaning. As he struggled to decipher the frigid tasseography, Henry absentmindedly raised one finger to his mouth, as if to quiet the already somnolent day. Beyond his window, two maple trees in the front yard stood still and huddled, leaves drooped, as if ashamed of their discordant greenery. The icy tessellation transmuted the trees into fragments, scattered across the glass. Henry traced the course of dispersion and followed one green fleck to the next, noting the occasional disruption of the mosaic by a shatter, shaped like a feather, until he saw the face of a girl looking back at him. Her face was outlined in green, with verdant concentrations forming her irises. Wispy strands of hair were frozen in an eternal windblown moment, and her face, at once cold and severe, seemed to soften the longer he looked at it, until a few flakes turned to droplets and traced a course from her eyes to the pane. Henry smiled and exhaled warm breath on the glass. A fog formed on the girl’s forehead, and with one finger he ordained her “Elisa.” A voice sounded beyond the room over the din of the television. Henry immediately rose and turned, his smile fading into a nondescript expression of contentment as he answered the call to supper.
Henry Morgan once wrote on the inside cover of his notebook, “When nothing is true, everything is possible.” He all at once doubted the veracity of his parents’ claim upon him, the logical foundation of his school’s “good citizenship” rules, and the likelihood that he would ever age beyond sixteen years. That his life was firmly implanted in the moment, and that his reality was wholly formed through perception, seemed to him the most obvious truths. In relation to his peers, Henry could sympathize with the blindly ambitious, note-card wielding, coffee-chugging subset as little as he could the homoerotic, uber-aggressive athletic bunch. School was generally a taxing grind, in which he suffered through the bell schedule and performed the obvious homework for the simple satisfaction of not having to be bothered about it. He loved his parents, but related to them as one relates to benefactors, deferring to their judgment in regard to his safety and health, yet maintaining no sentimental rituals borne of connectivity or shared experience. His sole pleasure and principal diversion was his writing, which he engaged in during every free moment. All of his school notebooks were filled with stories and creative jottings; at restaurants the tablecloth and napkins were fair game for scribbling; his weekends and evenings were reserved as the exclusive domain of his creative endeavors. It was through this medium that he was able to translate his confused perceptions into understandable thoughts and memories. It was there that he took the raw material of his experience and created the world he truly felt at home in.
Dinner was pork chops, mashed potatoes, and warmed green beans from the can. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, who were seated side by side opposite Henry, had their faces turned towards a large television situated on the other side of the room. Between the dinner table and the TV sat a leather sofa, also facing the TV. Henry looked down at his plate. In-between intermittent mouthfuls of food he would occasionally glance up at his parents, who half-turned at regular intervals towards their raised forks. They were an older couple, and could have passed for Henry’s grandparents; both, however, still preserved the vestiges of hearty youth. Mr. Morgan, though gray-haired and bifocaled, had broad shoulders and massive arms. When necessary he could, at least to Henry’s imagining, perform amazing feats of strength. Mrs. Morgan clung valiantly to the remnants of a once great beauty. Her hair, touch-dyed in spots, framed with darkness a light-brown, freckled face. Her aquiline bone structure was apparent in Henry, as was her slender figure. She was his template for understanding the movements and manners of the grand dames and duchesses encountered in his reading. Without realizing it, Henry had begun to stare at them. Mr. Morgan, feeling the boy’s gaze, turned fully towards him with a grin.
“What’s the matter? There something hanging outta my nose?”
Henry smiled sheepishly and shook his head before looking again to his food. Mr. Morgan shrugged and turned back to the TV, while Mrs. Morgan rose and carried her plate to the sink.
Later that night, ensconced in quilt and lamplight, Henry lay in bed and stared upwards. It was at this time, on the platform in the station of sleep, that he tried to manipulate the itinerary of his dreams. Like a vacationer preparing for holiday, he packed the forefront of his consciousness with those images most important for the journey. For Henry, sleep was not a respite from his daily travails, but the culmination of them. He kept his notebook ready on the nightstand, held open by an uncapped pen. Even so prepared, he would often waken in the middle of the night, with some fresh fantasy fading fast on the fringe of reality, and would not be able to properly commit what he had seen or experienced to paper. He was dedicated though, and believed in the necessity of his endeavor; the literary fruits were too beautiful not to pluck, no matter how hard to grasp. Henry sat up and pulled the notebook onto his lap, then took his pen and wrote quickly the following lines:
Time off from school is all fine and good, but this house can yield only so much inspiration. The television dampens my creativity, I think. Tomorrow, a school day, will yield plenty for introspection.
He held his pen and thought for a moment, then replaced the notebook again open on the nightstand. Sliding down under the covers, he reached up and switched off the lamp, then turned onto his side and faced the wall. Held in front of his mind was the image of Sarah, a cheerleader whom Henry often tried to dream about. He was tired, though; the day had been long with nothing, and it was a struggle to preserve the integrity of her image. Soon, his thoughts began to wander and drift like a paper boat. Words and snapshots slipped by one after another, making no impression - or some impression, unremembered feelings that tickled like grass under the palm. Earlier that day he had walked his dog. The streets were empty, the asphalt the same shade of grey as the sky. The dog pulled him forward, eager to go nowhere, while the wind pushed him from behind and urged him in the same direction. A house had made an impression on him as he passed, and now the image of it returned to his hazy mind: a brick house with an arch over the doorway and a large pecan tree in the front yard. His dog pulled, and the wind pushed him past the house, the tree swaying, pecans falling like raindrops to ricochet off the roof. Henry walked, leaning backwards but pushed/pulled forward, the wind in his ears, the pecans falling, bouncing off the ground, bouncing off the roof, filling a birdbath in the front yard. The birdbath leaned to one side, sinking into the ground, and the thought occurred to Henry that perhaps a pecan, hitting the right spot, could knock it over. Henry walked, one hand clenching a leash, pushed from behind, past a house with an arched entryway and a pecan tree in the front yard. A birdbath filled with pecans. They fell from the tree, fell in a downpour like raindrops. The wind blew hard, filling his ears, as Henry walked past the building with the arched entryway, the pecans pouring from the sky, one hand clenching the handle of an umbrella, which he opened and raised over his head. The wind blew, and he clenched tightly the umbrella, Henry walking, the pecans ricocheting off the birdbath and umbrella, filling the birdbath and flowing over the sides. Henry walked in the shadow of the building with the arched entryway, huddled beneath his umbrella, before a fountain overflowing, pecans streaming from the sky and forming puddles on the ground. Henry walked through a puddle and his shoes became wet. The building loomed on his right, with a fountain before it decorated with birds. Henry suddenly turned and dashed through the downpour for the arched entryway, splashing through puddles and gripping his umbrella with both hands. He ran around the fountain and up a set of concrete stairs, struggling to hold onto his umbrella, which filled with wind and fought to escape. Reaching the entryway, Henry stopped to catch his breath, and saw that the building was a great cathedral. Before him the rain coursed down in sheets, speckling the pool of the ornate fountain below. A sculpture of birds rising in flight stood in the center of the fountain, the birds carved one on top of the next from a single block of marble. Its border undulated like a gentle countryside around it, with carved stone birds placed on every rise, some bent as if frozen in the act of drinking.
Henry closed his umbrella and shook it dry, content to wait for the rain to subside. He then turned slowly in a circle to inspect his vestibule, and saw that the ceiling of the entryway rose a good thirty feet in the air before terminating in a series of inlaid vaults. The great recessed double-doors stood almost half this tall, the thickly carved oak reinforced with three evenly spaced, golden metal bands. Round iron handles were affixed on either side of the seam where the two doors met. Henry leaned on his umbrella to peer closer at the doors, and saw they were densely covered with carvings. A motley assortment of hybrid creatures crawled within and without thick strands of ivy, each with their eyes directed heavenward, as if climbing. Satyrs and centaurs, devils and angels, men and women crossed with insects and reptiles, all struggled upwards. Henry’s eyes, filled with fascination and disgust, roamed back and forth over the incredibly lifelike renderings. He followed their progress up the length of the door, which terminated in an inscription carved in stone above the doorway: “Everyone Lives Inside Someone’s Ambition.” Henry squinted and screwed up his mouth, perplexed. Shaking his head, he reached up and pulled the door handle - it didn’t budge. He placed his umbrella on the ground and gripped it with both hands, leaning backwards and pulling with all of his might – not even a rattle. Frustrated, he picked up his umbrella and turned. The rain continued to fall torrentially, with a sweeping roar like the bellow of some beast. A flash of anger passed through Henry, annoyed at his circumstantial entrapment between a gale-like downpour and an obscure, locked door. He closed his eyes as if to center himself. All sound ceased with his vision. When he opened them the rain had stopped. The sky remained overcast, but there was no evidence of the storm; not a single puddle pockmarked the ground. Henry looked down at the fountain, which bubbled merrily, water flowing from the mouths of the encircling birds and jetting in intermittent arcs over those in flight. Pleased, he descended the staircase and approached the pool. Looking down into the waters, he was greeted by the reflection of a grown man. A day’s stubble graced his cheeks, and his short brown hair was streaked here and there with gray. His face was thin, with high cheekbones and delicate features. A bemused expression enhanced the handsomeness of the features, and his sharp green eyes stared back intently into themselves.
Henry stepped away from the fountain and set off down the street before the cathedral. He tapped his umbrella upon the flagstones, now thoroughly enjoying himself among the pleasant quiet of his surroundings. He realized he was in a city that was for all appearances completely abandoned. Buildings constructed in the classical mode lined either side of the street, intermittently divided by wide, open plazas and small parks filled with various fruit trees. Over the street there occasionally passed arched white bridges that connected opposite buildings. Passing overheard at regular intervals were circular platforms, unoccupied and apparently floating of their own volition, moving to or from the direction Henry walked. He came to a cross street and continued straight; his destination was an open green space many blocks ahead.
Henry felt as if he walked through a holy space. The street beneath his feet was sacrosanct, and the buildings were washed white in their purity. Here he felt the connection of God’s finger to Adam’s reverberate through his body with a cool hum. He imagined that this was where he came from, where he would return to, and that the purpose of his earthly life was to bring some aspect of this perfection to the scarred world where he existed as a child. He was alone here, but only because at present he desired it so. He looked forward to the green space ahead, which he knew was a large open park filled with voices and bodies. Henry felt aged like a walnut handle worn smooth, made brighter through prolonged contact; his surroundings, however, were beyond any age. He would name this city Eterne, Henry thought with a smile.
Nearing the green space where the street terminated, he heard the babble of running water. The block ended sharply, with no transition between flagstone and grass, buildings and open sky. Hundreds of people sat in small groups, or walked in pairs, or ran quickly in the open, and their laughter and voices filled the air. In the distance, Henry saw that the grass sloped down to a river, its crystal clear waters flowing smoothly. Far beyond rose a bright silver tower, its polished gleam of reflected sunlight almost unbearable to behold. Henry noticed that the clouds had broken, and as he stepped into the field, among the various revelers, the unexpected sunlight filled him with a rush of warmth and contentment. Everyone was dressed in simple, comfortable clothing, and appeared to be in the prime of their life. As Henry walked among the people, some looked up and smiled to acknowledge his passing, while others continued what they were doing. Henry felt a welcoming spirit manifested in every movement, every gesture, every word spoken in his presence. He picked up snatches of conversation as he walked, headed vaguely towards the river.
“A nation of millions sat in quiet amazement,” said a pretty blonde with bobbed hair to her stately, beautiful companion. The woman smiled and stroked the blonde’s arm before replying, “Celebrations were cancelled around the country.”
The sun seemed to brighten as Henry walked.
“Shopping malls closed early as word spread,” said a well-built man who passed Henry in the opposite direction.
“It was supposed to be a formal and solemn proceeding,” said a woman sitting cross-legged and wearing a sari.
The river gleamed static in the distance, and grew neither larger nor smaller as Henry continued towards it. He no longer looked at those he passed.
“I would ask all of you to return to your homes now,” said a man.
The impression of a surrounding multitude slowly dissipated, though the sound of voices remained. The river, growing brighter while maintaining its distance, became the sole object of Henry’s attention. Suddenly the tower gleamed sharply behind it, bursting with light that reflected into and filled the sky, turning it white. Henry stopped and looked upwards.
“Crowds remained in the streets for some time . . .” said a female voice.
Henry felt himself melting into the blankness overhead, rising up from the green field.
“. . . and police reinforcements were sent to various parts of the city . . .”
The light engulfed Henry, and he felt heavy, drowsy, surrounded by warmth.
“. . . shootings and bombings have become an almost daily occurrence . . .”
His eyes fluttered, and he saw faintly glowing stars materialize against the ether above him.
“ . . . the violence appears to have a number of causes. . .”
His eyes opened halfway, and through blurred vision he made out the slowly turning blades of a ceiling fan, covered with star stickers.
“. . . the ethnic Muslims have complained over the years of neglect and discrimination. . .”
Henry sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He felt painfully alone and lost in the dark. From somewhere beyond his bedroom door came the sound of a television.
“Their insurgency in three largely Muslim provinces in southern Thailand has resulted in over 1,500 deaths in two years.”
He swayed groggily back and forth for a moment, debating whether or not to go back to sleep, then threw off his covers and got out of bed. The sound of his mother’s voice rang out over the newscaster’s monotone:
“Henry! Are you awake?”
Henry yelled back a reply and dressed quickly. As he walked to the door, he stepped on his notebook, which was lying open on the floor. He bent down to pick it up and stopped suddenly, hunched over with one arm outstretched. His eyes narrowed, then widened suddenly. Below his last entry from the night before, someone had scrawled in an uneven hand:
“Frozen roads leave us stranded in our search for shelter.”
Henry shook his head slowly and closed the notebook, turning it this way and that as if looking for some clue. His mystified expression remained unchanged as he replaced the notebook atop his nightstand and exited the bedroom.
The mystery of the added line haunted Henry throughout the day. His walk to school was robbed of its usual pleasantness, infected as it was by the crisp air and his fevered speculations. The answer was in his dream, he thought, his mind returning to this supposition like a needle tripping over a scratch. In the December sky there sat entrenched a monopoly of dull gray clouds. Henry thought he remembered it raining the night before but saw no puddles upon the street. Frozen roads leave us stranded in our search for shelter, he said to himself. Frozen roads were hard to detect when the ice was mistaken for innocent water, a momentary sheen in a headlight or sunray. If someone hadn’t snuck into his room and written that line, then how could it be explained? His feet shuffled mechanically over the sidewalk, his head down. He was like a horse, his path so familiar he could find it in a blizzard.
Henry’s first period was English. After handing in homework, they read The Vane Sisters aloud, though Henry was too preoccupied to follow the story. When his teacher pointed out the hidden meaning in the last paragraph, he only half heard her. Biology crawled by, and Henry’s ethered frog was crudely butchered, the victim of a mind wandering in dissection of ten obscure words. Lunch came and went in a messy blur of faces and chatter. Afterwards was History, which featured a lecture about the connections between time, place, and the vestige called writing. Henry was only half awake, in vain seeking to connect dots on the fringes of his waking memory. Frozen roads. He felt isolated, cut off from the meaning that existed somewhere within those words. Later that evening, he was so distant during dinner that his parents assumed he wasn’t feeling well. They allowed him to leave the table unmolested, and did not question his desire to go to bed early. Henry had, in fact, looked forward all day to the moment when he could sleep. There was not a doubt in his mind that he would return to Eterne, where he believed the source of the mysterious line resided. The problem that remained for him was how his dream had crossed over into the waking world. The potential inherent in this seeming impossibility filled Henry with a wild and hopeful sense of apprehension. He often floated through life as if only partially aware of his surroundings. People called him a dreamer, a space cadet, made fun of him for his long, thoughtful silences, and for the times when he stared into a distance only he could see. The idea that his dreams could, in fact, contain within them some greater reality, some force that could affect and brighten the dull grayness of his small-town life, appealed to Henry in the same way as his childhood fantasies about hidden fairy kingdoms. A shiver of anticipation passed through him as he undressed and crawled into bed.
Switching on his lamp, Henry picked up his journal and opened it to the most recent entry. The subject of his scrutiny lay before him, a jagged and sloppily written line. It appeared to have been written by a child, or someone unused to holding a pen. Henry exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath. It occurred to him that he had half expected the words to no longer be there. He picked up his pen and wrote on the facing page:
I’ve been confronted with the impossible. This morning I woke up and found something written in my journal that I did not put there. My dreams have in some way begun to intrude upon reality, I’m sure of it. I stand on the brink of a great discovery.
Henry reread what he had written and, pleased with it, replaced his notebook and pen on the nightstand. He switched off his lamp and lay flat on his back, eyes wide open in the darkness. Although his desire was to fall asleep immediately, he quickly realized that he was not very tired. His excitement-fueled mind churned forth a regular stream of images and words, chattering like a series of commercial adverts. It was a couple of hours before Henry began to drift asleep, having tossed and turned himself into exhaustion. The words from the added line turned in his head, revolving one past the next, yielding no clues and gradually growing soft and faded. Their meanings blurred and expanded beyond the mere forms of letters to become nonsensical. Frozen roads arranged themselves side by side in numbered rows. Yellow pervaded “Leave Us Stranded”, a dusty town between cigarette orchards. In his search, a pipe, dreaming down which he fell, into venomous gardens beneath the leaves of tulapeas, where, huddled for shelter, children nibbled Oxycontin and stared with ash-filled eyes.
Sunlight broke and cleared Henry’s mind to remind him of his purpose and destination. He stood on a dirt path in a forest. Surrounding him on all sides were immensely tall, white trees, crowned with leaves like albino ostrich feathers. It was a beautiful day, and patches of aquamarine brilliance broke through the foliage far above. Pillars of light descended from these breaches and fell upon the ground at irregular intervals, scattered around into the distance. The ground was swept clean, free of any arboreal detritus. Henry knelt and passed his hand over the grass next to the path. It appeared to have been freshly clipped, and had the silky texture of a woman’s hair. He rose and continued walking, whistling pleasantly to himself, tapping his cane in time with the melody. The path widened ahead into a stone bridge, under which flowed a clear, babbling brook. As he crossed the bridge, Henry stopped momentarily and withdrew from his pocket a handful of small purple orbs. Still whistling, he dropped them into the water one by one and watched them float away. Across the bridge the forest thinned out, and there were houses built onto the trees. They were placed at varying heights, with spiral staircases that wound upward around the trunks and wooden bridges that connected them to each other. It was a raised community, existing between the ground and the boughs; Henry felt a warm sense of welcome, and imagined his own tree house was around there somewhere.
Without thinking, his feet took him towards where he thought the cathedral lay. A stone thoroughfare led out of the tree village, and Henry again saw the familiar lines of the marble city. The bright sunlight accentuated the white stone to render it staggering, like a flash of pain. Henry felt his knees pop as he walked, the platforms floating overhead, and his cane became more than a prop. What felt like hours passed, as he walked aimlessly around, past the same white buildings waxing blinding in the light. He despaired of ever finding the cathedral and was about to take a rest on the curb, when he heard the sound of a fountain. Excited, he hobbled towards the noise, around a corner and through a twisted alleyway. There, upon his exit, he saw before him the plaza, the birds, and the brooding cathedral. Henry stared for a moment, smiling in relief, and then crossed the plaza slowly. The birds again bubbled merrily, appearing to frolic along the rim of their fountain, and as Henry passed them he felt a wave of coolness descend from the sky and soften the edges of the sharp whiteness around him. He paused by the water and again saw his reflection, that of a middle-aged man with a scarf and stubble, and wondered if the lines on his face came from laughter or cares. The cathedral beckoned to him, and Henry turned. The walk up the steps was harder than he remembered. Upon reaching the oaken doors, he saw they were now unadorned. He gripped the handle and pushed; the door opened easily, with a sound like exhaled breath.
What lay before him was a single large room, illuminated a soft gold by hidden lighting. The high ceiling and walls were blank stone, brushed clean and smooth. The floor was laid with iridescent tiles, polished so they reflected those who walked over them. At the far side of the otherwise empty room stood a young girl. Aware that his journey was at an end, Henry walked towards her. She stood completely still, as if made of ice, and fixated upon his approach. Henry had the impression that her sight was an illusion, and that if he moved to the side her eyes would follow him like those in paintings. Her skin was pure white, her hair the lightest blonde, and every part of her sparkled faintly, as if covered in frost. When Henry stopped a mere foot in front of her, he was startled by the sharpness of her green eyes. They stared at one another in silence.
“Did you write in my notebook?” Henry whispered.
The girl remained frozen and impassive. The reply came soft in his ears, in a voice as familiar as his very own:
“Our hopes are the beginnings of all our mysteries.”
*
Ever since Henry was a baby, Mrs. Morgan rose every night between midnight and three to check on him while he slept. When pressed, she would explain her reason for this as a vague superstition, that one morning she might wake and he would be gone, disappeared in the night. She made her way down the hallway to his room, her steps a little faster than usual. Lately Henry had been groggy in the mornings and over supper, and she worried that he might not be sleeping well. Mrs. Morgan carefully opened the door to his bedroom and peeked in. Seeing movement, she waited for her eyes to adjust, then clucked her tongue softly, her mystery solved. Henry, with clumsy and sleep-deadened movements, leaned halfway out of bed, scrawling in his notebook. His eyes were nearly closed, and he muttered to himself. As Mrs. Morgan moved forward to wake him, she caught a few words.
“Beginnings . . . mysteries . . . “ he mumbled, pen scratching.
Henry Morgan once wrote on the inside cover of his notebook, “When nothing is true, everything is possible.” He all at once doubted the veracity of his parents’ claim upon him, the logical foundation of his school’s “good citizenship” rules, and the likelihood that he would ever age beyond sixteen years. That his life was firmly implanted in the moment, and that his reality was wholly formed through perception, seemed to him the most obvious truths. In relation to his peers, Henry could sympathize with the blindly ambitious, note-card wielding, coffee-chugging subset as little as he could the homoerotic, uber-aggressive athletic bunch. School was generally a taxing grind, in which he suffered through the bell schedule and performed the obvious homework for the simple satisfaction of not having to be bothered about it. He loved his parents, but related to them as one relates to benefactors, deferring to their judgment in regard to his safety and health, yet maintaining no sentimental rituals borne of connectivity or shared experience. His sole pleasure and principal diversion was his writing, which he engaged in during every free moment. All of his school notebooks were filled with stories and creative jottings; at restaurants the tablecloth and napkins were fair game for scribbling; his weekends and evenings were reserved as the exclusive domain of his creative endeavors. It was through this medium that he was able to translate his confused perceptions into understandable thoughts and memories. It was there that he took the raw material of his experience and created the world he truly felt at home in.
Dinner was pork chops, mashed potatoes, and warmed green beans from the can. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, who were seated side by side opposite Henry, had their faces turned towards a large television situated on the other side of the room. Between the dinner table and the TV sat a leather sofa, also facing the TV. Henry looked down at his plate. In-between intermittent mouthfuls of food he would occasionally glance up at his parents, who half-turned at regular intervals towards their raised forks. They were an older couple, and could have passed for Henry’s grandparents; both, however, still preserved the vestiges of hearty youth. Mr. Morgan, though gray-haired and bifocaled, had broad shoulders and massive arms. When necessary he could, at least to Henry’s imagining, perform amazing feats of strength. Mrs. Morgan clung valiantly to the remnants of a once great beauty. Her hair, touch-dyed in spots, framed with darkness a light-brown, freckled face. Her aquiline bone structure was apparent in Henry, as was her slender figure. She was his template for understanding the movements and manners of the grand dames and duchesses encountered in his reading. Without realizing it, Henry had begun to stare at them. Mr. Morgan, feeling the boy’s gaze, turned fully towards him with a grin.
“What’s the matter? There something hanging outta my nose?”
Henry smiled sheepishly and shook his head before looking again to his food. Mr. Morgan shrugged and turned back to the TV, while Mrs. Morgan rose and carried her plate to the sink.
Later that night, ensconced in quilt and lamplight, Henry lay in bed and stared upwards. It was at this time, on the platform in the station of sleep, that he tried to manipulate the itinerary of his dreams. Like a vacationer preparing for holiday, he packed the forefront of his consciousness with those images most important for the journey. For Henry, sleep was not a respite from his daily travails, but the culmination of them. He kept his notebook ready on the nightstand, held open by an uncapped pen. Even so prepared, he would often waken in the middle of the night, with some fresh fantasy fading fast on the fringe of reality, and would not be able to properly commit what he had seen or experienced to paper. He was dedicated though, and believed in the necessity of his endeavor; the literary fruits were too beautiful not to pluck, no matter how hard to grasp. Henry sat up and pulled the notebook onto his lap, then took his pen and wrote quickly the following lines:
Time off from school is all fine and good, but this house can yield only so much inspiration. The television dampens my creativity, I think. Tomorrow, a school day, will yield plenty for introspection.
He held his pen and thought for a moment, then replaced the notebook again open on the nightstand. Sliding down under the covers, he reached up and switched off the lamp, then turned onto his side and faced the wall. Held in front of his mind was the image of Sarah, a cheerleader whom Henry often tried to dream about. He was tired, though; the day had been long with nothing, and it was a struggle to preserve the integrity of her image. Soon, his thoughts began to wander and drift like a paper boat. Words and snapshots slipped by one after another, making no impression - or some impression, unremembered feelings that tickled like grass under the palm. Earlier that day he had walked his dog. The streets were empty, the asphalt the same shade of grey as the sky. The dog pulled him forward, eager to go nowhere, while the wind pushed him from behind and urged him in the same direction. A house had made an impression on him as he passed, and now the image of it returned to his hazy mind: a brick house with an arch over the doorway and a large pecan tree in the front yard. His dog pulled, and the wind pushed him past the house, the tree swaying, pecans falling like raindrops to ricochet off the roof. Henry walked, leaning backwards but pushed/pulled forward, the wind in his ears, the pecans falling, bouncing off the ground, bouncing off the roof, filling a birdbath in the front yard. The birdbath leaned to one side, sinking into the ground, and the thought occurred to Henry that perhaps a pecan, hitting the right spot, could knock it over. Henry walked, one hand clenching a leash, pushed from behind, past a house with an arched entryway and a pecan tree in the front yard. A birdbath filled with pecans. They fell from the tree, fell in a downpour like raindrops. The wind blew hard, filling his ears, as Henry walked past the building with the arched entryway, the pecans pouring from the sky, one hand clenching the handle of an umbrella, which he opened and raised over his head. The wind blew, and he clenched tightly the umbrella, Henry walking, the pecans ricocheting off the birdbath and umbrella, filling the birdbath and flowing over the sides. Henry walked in the shadow of the building with the arched entryway, huddled beneath his umbrella, before a fountain overflowing, pecans streaming from the sky and forming puddles on the ground. Henry walked through a puddle and his shoes became wet. The building loomed on his right, with a fountain before it decorated with birds. Henry suddenly turned and dashed through the downpour for the arched entryway, splashing through puddles and gripping his umbrella with both hands. He ran around the fountain and up a set of concrete stairs, struggling to hold onto his umbrella, which filled with wind and fought to escape. Reaching the entryway, Henry stopped to catch his breath, and saw that the building was a great cathedral. Before him the rain coursed down in sheets, speckling the pool of the ornate fountain below. A sculpture of birds rising in flight stood in the center of the fountain, the birds carved one on top of the next from a single block of marble. Its border undulated like a gentle countryside around it, with carved stone birds placed on every rise, some bent as if frozen in the act of drinking.
Henry closed his umbrella and shook it dry, content to wait for the rain to subside. He then turned slowly in a circle to inspect his vestibule, and saw that the ceiling of the entryway rose a good thirty feet in the air before terminating in a series of inlaid vaults. The great recessed double-doors stood almost half this tall, the thickly carved oak reinforced with three evenly spaced, golden metal bands. Round iron handles were affixed on either side of the seam where the two doors met. Henry leaned on his umbrella to peer closer at the doors, and saw they were densely covered with carvings. A motley assortment of hybrid creatures crawled within and without thick strands of ivy, each with their eyes directed heavenward, as if climbing. Satyrs and centaurs, devils and angels, men and women crossed with insects and reptiles, all struggled upwards. Henry’s eyes, filled with fascination and disgust, roamed back and forth over the incredibly lifelike renderings. He followed their progress up the length of the door, which terminated in an inscription carved in stone above the doorway: “Everyone Lives Inside Someone’s Ambition.” Henry squinted and screwed up his mouth, perplexed. Shaking his head, he reached up and pulled the door handle - it didn’t budge. He placed his umbrella on the ground and gripped it with both hands, leaning backwards and pulling with all of his might – not even a rattle. Frustrated, he picked up his umbrella and turned. The rain continued to fall torrentially, with a sweeping roar like the bellow of some beast. A flash of anger passed through Henry, annoyed at his circumstantial entrapment between a gale-like downpour and an obscure, locked door. He closed his eyes as if to center himself. All sound ceased with his vision. When he opened them the rain had stopped. The sky remained overcast, but there was no evidence of the storm; not a single puddle pockmarked the ground. Henry looked down at the fountain, which bubbled merrily, water flowing from the mouths of the encircling birds and jetting in intermittent arcs over those in flight. Pleased, he descended the staircase and approached the pool. Looking down into the waters, he was greeted by the reflection of a grown man. A day’s stubble graced his cheeks, and his short brown hair was streaked here and there with gray. His face was thin, with high cheekbones and delicate features. A bemused expression enhanced the handsomeness of the features, and his sharp green eyes stared back intently into themselves.
Henry stepped away from the fountain and set off down the street before the cathedral. He tapped his umbrella upon the flagstones, now thoroughly enjoying himself among the pleasant quiet of his surroundings. He realized he was in a city that was for all appearances completely abandoned. Buildings constructed in the classical mode lined either side of the street, intermittently divided by wide, open plazas and small parks filled with various fruit trees. Over the street there occasionally passed arched white bridges that connected opposite buildings. Passing overheard at regular intervals were circular platforms, unoccupied and apparently floating of their own volition, moving to or from the direction Henry walked. He came to a cross street and continued straight; his destination was an open green space many blocks ahead.
Henry felt as if he walked through a holy space. The street beneath his feet was sacrosanct, and the buildings were washed white in their purity. Here he felt the connection of God’s finger to Adam’s reverberate through his body with a cool hum. He imagined that this was where he came from, where he would return to, and that the purpose of his earthly life was to bring some aspect of this perfection to the scarred world where he existed as a child. He was alone here, but only because at present he desired it so. He looked forward to the green space ahead, which he knew was a large open park filled with voices and bodies. Henry felt aged like a walnut handle worn smooth, made brighter through prolonged contact; his surroundings, however, were beyond any age. He would name this city Eterne, Henry thought with a smile.
Nearing the green space where the street terminated, he heard the babble of running water. The block ended sharply, with no transition between flagstone and grass, buildings and open sky. Hundreds of people sat in small groups, or walked in pairs, or ran quickly in the open, and their laughter and voices filled the air. In the distance, Henry saw that the grass sloped down to a river, its crystal clear waters flowing smoothly. Far beyond rose a bright silver tower, its polished gleam of reflected sunlight almost unbearable to behold. Henry noticed that the clouds had broken, and as he stepped into the field, among the various revelers, the unexpected sunlight filled him with a rush of warmth and contentment. Everyone was dressed in simple, comfortable clothing, and appeared to be in the prime of their life. As Henry walked among the people, some looked up and smiled to acknowledge his passing, while others continued what they were doing. Henry felt a welcoming spirit manifested in every movement, every gesture, every word spoken in his presence. He picked up snatches of conversation as he walked, headed vaguely towards the river.
“A nation of millions sat in quiet amazement,” said a pretty blonde with bobbed hair to her stately, beautiful companion. The woman smiled and stroked the blonde’s arm before replying, “Celebrations were cancelled around the country.”
The sun seemed to brighten as Henry walked.
“Shopping malls closed early as word spread,” said a well-built man who passed Henry in the opposite direction.
“It was supposed to be a formal and solemn proceeding,” said a woman sitting cross-legged and wearing a sari.
The river gleamed static in the distance, and grew neither larger nor smaller as Henry continued towards it. He no longer looked at those he passed.
“I would ask all of you to return to your homes now,” said a man.
The impression of a surrounding multitude slowly dissipated, though the sound of voices remained. The river, growing brighter while maintaining its distance, became the sole object of Henry’s attention. Suddenly the tower gleamed sharply behind it, bursting with light that reflected into and filled the sky, turning it white. Henry stopped and looked upwards.
“Crowds remained in the streets for some time . . .” said a female voice.
Henry felt himself melting into the blankness overhead, rising up from the green field.
“. . . and police reinforcements were sent to various parts of the city . . .”
The light engulfed Henry, and he felt heavy, drowsy, surrounded by warmth.
“. . . shootings and bombings have become an almost daily occurrence . . .”
His eyes fluttered, and he saw faintly glowing stars materialize against the ether above him.
“ . . . the violence appears to have a number of causes. . .”
His eyes opened halfway, and through blurred vision he made out the slowly turning blades of a ceiling fan, covered with star stickers.
“. . . the ethnic Muslims have complained over the years of neglect and discrimination. . .”
Henry sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He felt painfully alone and lost in the dark. From somewhere beyond his bedroom door came the sound of a television.
“Their insurgency in three largely Muslim provinces in southern Thailand has resulted in over 1,500 deaths in two years.”
He swayed groggily back and forth for a moment, debating whether or not to go back to sleep, then threw off his covers and got out of bed. The sound of his mother’s voice rang out over the newscaster’s monotone:
“Henry! Are you awake?”
Henry yelled back a reply and dressed quickly. As he walked to the door, he stepped on his notebook, which was lying open on the floor. He bent down to pick it up and stopped suddenly, hunched over with one arm outstretched. His eyes narrowed, then widened suddenly. Below his last entry from the night before, someone had scrawled in an uneven hand:
“Frozen roads leave us stranded in our search for shelter.”
Henry shook his head slowly and closed the notebook, turning it this way and that as if looking for some clue. His mystified expression remained unchanged as he replaced the notebook atop his nightstand and exited the bedroom.
The mystery of the added line haunted Henry throughout the day. His walk to school was robbed of its usual pleasantness, infected as it was by the crisp air and his fevered speculations. The answer was in his dream, he thought, his mind returning to this supposition like a needle tripping over a scratch. In the December sky there sat entrenched a monopoly of dull gray clouds. Henry thought he remembered it raining the night before but saw no puddles upon the street. Frozen roads leave us stranded in our search for shelter, he said to himself. Frozen roads were hard to detect when the ice was mistaken for innocent water, a momentary sheen in a headlight or sunray. If someone hadn’t snuck into his room and written that line, then how could it be explained? His feet shuffled mechanically over the sidewalk, his head down. He was like a horse, his path so familiar he could find it in a blizzard.
Henry’s first period was English. After handing in homework, they read The Vane Sisters aloud, though Henry was too preoccupied to follow the story. When his teacher pointed out the hidden meaning in the last paragraph, he only half heard her. Biology crawled by, and Henry’s ethered frog was crudely butchered, the victim of a mind wandering in dissection of ten obscure words. Lunch came and went in a messy blur of faces and chatter. Afterwards was History, which featured a lecture about the connections between time, place, and the vestige called writing. Henry was only half awake, in vain seeking to connect dots on the fringes of his waking memory. Frozen roads. He felt isolated, cut off from the meaning that existed somewhere within those words. Later that evening, he was so distant during dinner that his parents assumed he wasn’t feeling well. They allowed him to leave the table unmolested, and did not question his desire to go to bed early. Henry had, in fact, looked forward all day to the moment when he could sleep. There was not a doubt in his mind that he would return to Eterne, where he believed the source of the mysterious line resided. The problem that remained for him was how his dream had crossed over into the waking world. The potential inherent in this seeming impossibility filled Henry with a wild and hopeful sense of apprehension. He often floated through life as if only partially aware of his surroundings. People called him a dreamer, a space cadet, made fun of him for his long, thoughtful silences, and for the times when he stared into a distance only he could see. The idea that his dreams could, in fact, contain within them some greater reality, some force that could affect and brighten the dull grayness of his small-town life, appealed to Henry in the same way as his childhood fantasies about hidden fairy kingdoms. A shiver of anticipation passed through him as he undressed and crawled into bed.
Switching on his lamp, Henry picked up his journal and opened it to the most recent entry. The subject of his scrutiny lay before him, a jagged and sloppily written line. It appeared to have been written by a child, or someone unused to holding a pen. Henry exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath. It occurred to him that he had half expected the words to no longer be there. He picked up his pen and wrote on the facing page:
I’ve been confronted with the impossible. This morning I woke up and found something written in my journal that I did not put there. My dreams have in some way begun to intrude upon reality, I’m sure of it. I stand on the brink of a great discovery.
Henry reread what he had written and, pleased with it, replaced his notebook and pen on the nightstand. He switched off his lamp and lay flat on his back, eyes wide open in the darkness. Although his desire was to fall asleep immediately, he quickly realized that he was not very tired. His excitement-fueled mind churned forth a regular stream of images and words, chattering like a series of commercial adverts. It was a couple of hours before Henry began to drift asleep, having tossed and turned himself into exhaustion. The words from the added line turned in his head, revolving one past the next, yielding no clues and gradually growing soft and faded. Their meanings blurred and expanded beyond the mere forms of letters to become nonsensical. Frozen roads arranged themselves side by side in numbered rows. Yellow pervaded “Leave Us Stranded”, a dusty town between cigarette orchards. In his search, a pipe, dreaming down which he fell, into venomous gardens beneath the leaves of tulapeas, where, huddled for shelter, children nibbled Oxycontin and stared with ash-filled eyes.
Sunlight broke and cleared Henry’s mind to remind him of his purpose and destination. He stood on a dirt path in a forest. Surrounding him on all sides were immensely tall, white trees, crowned with leaves like albino ostrich feathers. It was a beautiful day, and patches of aquamarine brilliance broke through the foliage far above. Pillars of light descended from these breaches and fell upon the ground at irregular intervals, scattered around into the distance. The ground was swept clean, free of any arboreal detritus. Henry knelt and passed his hand over the grass next to the path. It appeared to have been freshly clipped, and had the silky texture of a woman’s hair. He rose and continued walking, whistling pleasantly to himself, tapping his cane in time with the melody. The path widened ahead into a stone bridge, under which flowed a clear, babbling brook. As he crossed the bridge, Henry stopped momentarily and withdrew from his pocket a handful of small purple orbs. Still whistling, he dropped them into the water one by one and watched them float away. Across the bridge the forest thinned out, and there were houses built onto the trees. They were placed at varying heights, with spiral staircases that wound upward around the trunks and wooden bridges that connected them to each other. It was a raised community, existing between the ground and the boughs; Henry felt a warm sense of welcome, and imagined his own tree house was around there somewhere.
Without thinking, his feet took him towards where he thought the cathedral lay. A stone thoroughfare led out of the tree village, and Henry again saw the familiar lines of the marble city. The bright sunlight accentuated the white stone to render it staggering, like a flash of pain. Henry felt his knees pop as he walked, the platforms floating overhead, and his cane became more than a prop. What felt like hours passed, as he walked aimlessly around, past the same white buildings waxing blinding in the light. He despaired of ever finding the cathedral and was about to take a rest on the curb, when he heard the sound of a fountain. Excited, he hobbled towards the noise, around a corner and through a twisted alleyway. There, upon his exit, he saw before him the plaza, the birds, and the brooding cathedral. Henry stared for a moment, smiling in relief, and then crossed the plaza slowly. The birds again bubbled merrily, appearing to frolic along the rim of their fountain, and as Henry passed them he felt a wave of coolness descend from the sky and soften the edges of the sharp whiteness around him. He paused by the water and again saw his reflection, that of a middle-aged man with a scarf and stubble, and wondered if the lines on his face came from laughter or cares. The cathedral beckoned to him, and Henry turned. The walk up the steps was harder than he remembered. Upon reaching the oaken doors, he saw they were now unadorned. He gripped the handle and pushed; the door opened easily, with a sound like exhaled breath.
What lay before him was a single large room, illuminated a soft gold by hidden lighting. The high ceiling and walls were blank stone, brushed clean and smooth. The floor was laid with iridescent tiles, polished so they reflected those who walked over them. At the far side of the otherwise empty room stood a young girl. Aware that his journey was at an end, Henry walked towards her. She stood completely still, as if made of ice, and fixated upon his approach. Henry had the impression that her sight was an illusion, and that if he moved to the side her eyes would follow him like those in paintings. Her skin was pure white, her hair the lightest blonde, and every part of her sparkled faintly, as if covered in frost. When Henry stopped a mere foot in front of her, he was startled by the sharpness of her green eyes. They stared at one another in silence.
“Did you write in my notebook?” Henry whispered.
The girl remained frozen and impassive. The reply came soft in his ears, in a voice as familiar as his very own:
“Our hopes are the beginnings of all our mysteries.”
*
Ever since Henry was a baby, Mrs. Morgan rose every night between midnight and three to check on him while he slept. When pressed, she would explain her reason for this as a vague superstition, that one morning she might wake and he would be gone, disappeared in the night. She made her way down the hallway to his room, her steps a little faster than usual. Lately Henry had been groggy in the mornings and over supper, and she worried that he might not be sleeping well. Mrs. Morgan carefully opened the door to his bedroom and peeked in. Seeing movement, she waited for her eyes to adjust, then clucked her tongue softly, her mystery solved. Henry, with clumsy and sleep-deadened movements, leaned halfway out of bed, scrawling in his notebook. His eyes were nearly closed, and he muttered to himself. As Mrs. Morgan moved forward to wake him, she caught a few words.
“Beginnings . . . mysteries . . . “ he mumbled, pen scratching.
Work in Progress
I once asked a travelling bum what the most beautiful place in the country was. He had been hitchhiking around for over ten years, so I felt I could trust his authority. He exhaled heavily and stared off into space, shaking his head, as if blown away by the enormity of the question. Finally, he said, “Humboldt County, in northern California.”
As he explained it, Humboldt county was situated right on the coast, riddled with Redwoods and small towns, with temperatures never above 70, rarely below 40, and the best damn pot in the world. In fact, it is the county’s number one export – for strictly medicinal purposes. Eureka has the second largest bay in California; young flesh gravitates around the college town of Arcata. Hipness is ensured through a sprinkling of exiles from San Francisco. When he mentioned this last fact, something caught in my memory. Humboldt sounded familiar, though I was certain I had never been, and it took a few days for me to remember that Dana lived there.
I had not seen her since the move. Her last residence had been San Francisco, where I had visited her once. The second visit fell through due to a stupid argument on the phone a few days before my arrival. We always had a tempestuous relationship, though, strangely, one with its own stability. No matter how angry we get or how much time passes, one of us always eventually reaches out to the other. It’s an acknowledgement of the peculiar comfort you feel around those who have broken your heart. There’s not much more pain they could cause, you’ve already experienced the best and worst that the other has to offer, and in the absence of hope or expectation you can actually be honest. Or maybe it’s comfortable simply because we’ve known each other for so long, and the periodic reaching out simply an act of boredom.
The peregrinations of our relationship notwithstanding, one thing I never expected was for Dana to remarry and move to a small town in the middle of nowhere. But she was always full of surprises.
*
Early in the morning, when the fog rolls in from the Pacific to shroud her house in mystery, Dana likes to imagine that she is dead. A lunatic once told her that everyone was already dead, and that we were all in heaven. She believed him in those mornings when the sea invaded her home and turned the world outside gray. She stood at the kitchen counter and filled a small bag with loose ground tea, which she then dropped into a waiting mug filled with hot water. She carried the mug over to the kitchen table and sat, turning her gaze out through the window. Beyond her front yard, everything became indistinct, uncertain. She heard a car drive by but saw nothing of its form.
Dana had always been an early riser. She enjoyed the solitude of morning, when the only sounds in the house were her own soft footsteps. Her husband, Dan, would not wake until late in the morning, after the fog had burned off. They had been married for three years, and while there was no longer much passion in their relationship, they had gotten used to each other. Dana was aging well. Her weight no longer fluctuated with the gluttonies of early adulthood, and she henceforth would remain petite, fragile-looking, until the day she died. Her pale skin and dyed-black hair made her appear somewhat younger than her thirty years. Her eyes were her most expressive feature, green shot through with gray, the color of a lake on the cusp of dawn. Covering her arms and shoulders were colorless tattoos depicting illustrations from children’s books. She had had them for so long she no longer noticed them; it was always a slight shock when a stranger made a comment.
She took a sip of her tea. The minutes ticked slowly by. She would not move from her seat until Dan stumbled into the kitchen an hour later, yawning and stretching.
*
Dana was born and raised in Los Angeles. When she was twenty-three she moved to Austin to marry a man named Brian. They had known each other as teenagers and remained in touch through college via email and the occasional hook-up when Bryan came home to visit his folks. They shared a passion for mod culture and fashion, scooters, and classic cinema. When Brian one day out of the blue suggested that Dana marry him and join him in his adopted home, she agreed on a whim. Looking back on it later, she would admit to not knowing why she did what she did. She was never particularly attracted to Brian, though he was a very handsome man, and their connection hardly extended beyond the superficial. She had gotten bored in Los Angeles, she supposed, and wanted a change of scenery. She figured he would support her in the transition, their marriage would be open, and that if Brian ever started to cramping her style, she could simply divorce him, which she did, just over a year after exchanging vows. Her relationship with me caused the split.
I met Dana online, through a personals website. We posted ads for the same reason – both recent transplants to Austin, we figured it was an easy way to meet people. I saw her ad, made a witty comment in reference to something in it, and after exchanging a few messages we arranged to meet for coffee. I was stunned the first time I saw her. She was beautiful; she wore a t-shirt that barely covered her rib-cage, and a long black skirt that accentuated her full hips and beautiful ass. As she crossed the courtyard toward my table, the head of every man she passed turned in her wake. We talked for hours that first night; she never mentioned she was married. When her husband called her cell, she played it off like he was a roommate. She later admitted to being charmed by my naiveity. It blew her mind that the population of my hometown was less than 2500. I had never heard of any of the bands she mentioned. The fact that she was from LA impressed my hickish sensibilities; I had never been farther than New Orleans, and she seemed so experienced, already wise and world-weary. I was eighteen.
She gave me a ride home and we arranged to meet the next night for dinner. I spent the entire next day thinking about her, going over in my head what she said, remembering the way she looked at me, how her gaze left me chilled, tingly, and lightheaded. I was convinced that I had met my future wife, that it was not simply the internet that had brought us together, but fate. Although our relationship later evolved, I realize in hindsight that while I was totally enamoured of her from the get-go, I was at first simply an amusing distraction. Just as I had never met someone so culturally astute, well-spoken and charming, she had never met someone as hopelessly innocent and awkward as myself. She was slumming it by pursuing me, a big city girl taking a trip to the country and marvelling at the cows.
We met the next evening at a mexican food restaurant. Soon after we took our seats she mentioned offhandedly that she was married. I was perplexed and disappointed. She laughed at my stuttered query for clarity, and pointed out that she had worn her wedding band the night before. I was not yet experienced enough to notice such things. What confused me was that, even though she made clear she was in a relationship, her flirtatious tone remained unchanged. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Her eyes betrayed interest; my animal instincts picked up on this, my heart raced when she spoke; I flinched when she touched me, which made her giggle. By the time we finished dinner it was dark outside, and I assumed she would go home. Instead, she suggested we go somewhere quiet and talk. I had recently discovered a secluded spot that afforded a gorgerous view of the downtown skyline, and suggested we go there.
*
The summer night settles softly over Austin, a cool hand on the forehead of scorching days. Castle Hill had once been the site of a boy’s military academy. The imposing structure remained, medieval in its façade, yet was abandoned and served no purpose other than as a meeting place for people in need of privacy. It sat on a bluff in the west end of the city, secluded from the surrounding neighborhood by the vastness of its lot. A couple could squeeze through a gap in the chain link fence surrounding it and find a comfortable spot with a spectacular view of downtown. A young man and woman sat together upon the ground, thighs touching, looking away from one another. The man sat stiffly, awkward in his youth and the romantic nature of his surroudings. The girl was more comfortable, and leaned back on her hands to stare up into the sky. Before them a group of high-rises rose into the light-deadened sky like a council of mute, concrete Jehovahs, their eyes a thousand blind windows. The man began to fidget, as if something within him was fighting for release. He adbruptly sat up straight and began to talk, as if addressing the buildings, the streets below, and the sky above.
“Do you ever look at the stars? I mean…. really look at them? They’re beautiful in their gentle twinklings, those constant reminders of our insignificance. We die, they remain, mute witness to the meaningless struggle that is life. No matter how brilliant, how gifted, how powerful, the end result is the same for everyone. Just as it always has been and always will be. While the poets and the generals are rotting in the ground, their deeds forgotten by a new crop of walking corpses, the stars shine on . . . oh so softly.”
The girl looked at him throughout his address, her face relaxed, expression one of quiet care and contentment. When he was done, she waited a moment, his words drifting in the air to settle on the scene, then spoke quietly:
“But we can’t even see the stars. The lights are too bright.”
The man chuckled and looked away. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
She gave space for the silence of the moment to blossom, then reached over and took his hand. He started, then relaxed into her grasp.
“What you said was very beautiful, though,” she said.
“Thanks. Sometimes I just talk.”
“I liked it.”
The girl reached over with her other hand and began to caress the one she held. The man turned to look at her. She lowered her eyes and smiled softly.
“Let’s take off all of our clothes,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Have you ever kissed a married woman?”
“No,” the man said, searching her, his heart suddenly racing.
She raised her eyes to his. He felt himself fall into her, saw himself lost in her, comfortable, warm, and conquered by the power of those liquid pools containing the absent beauty of the polluted urban sky. Without another word she leaned into him, pressed her chest to his and her lips to his. His hands moved to her waist.
*
Things progressed quickly after that. It never bothered me that I was breaking up a marriage. I was impatient for it to happen. I wanted her to belong to me, not him. And she seemed energized by the whole situation. We began to spend whole days together. She didn’t have a job, and I began to skip all of my classes. To Brian, I was simply his wife’s new best friend. I was too young and unaccomplished to be seen as a threat. Things hit a pitch when she and I travelled to Los Angeles together for a weekend. The given reason was that I was going for a concert, and she wanted to come along for the opportunity to visit her family. He was perhaps a little suspicious, but he didn’t show it. While we were there, I took several pictures of Dana, sprawled naked on a motel bed. She left the pictures on her camera, probably intentionally. A few days after we returned, Brian found them. He blew up, hit her, threatened to kill me. She left him and took refuge in my apartment.
*
“I don’t know what to do. You don’t know him, he’s crazy. If he finds us he will kill you.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
“You don’t know him. You’re so fucking naïve.”
“I’m not naïve. And I’m not afraid of him. Chill out. We’re together. Nothing else matters.”
The girl sat in silence, staring at her feet.
“Look,” the man began, “don’t worry about anything. From here on out it’s just you and me. Us against the world. As long as we’re together, everything will work out . . . right?”
The girl hesitated a moment.
“Yeah. It’ll be okay.”
She stared at the floor, her eyes opaque.
*
A couple of days later she officially moved in. I gave her a key. She told Brian she wanted a divorce. We entered into a brief honeymoon period, grocery shopping, buying furniture, going to movies. I felt so proud to be seen with her. She was my prize, and I wore my pride on my sleeve. It wasn’t long, though, before she began to set parameters. We should have separate bedrooms, so we could preserve our independence. Coming out of a marriage, she wasn’t ready for a committed relationship. She wanted to go out, meet people, come to see Austin as her home independently of a man. I agreed. I was so enamoured with her I would have agreed to anything. One night, after going out with a boy we had met together at a concert, she didn’t come home. I couldn’t sleep. I sat up drinking. As I watched the sunrise spread on the carpet in our living room, I heard her come in.
*
(The clear light of a morning that illuminates our anguish can seem cruel, confrontational, a cosmic jibe that pokes fun at our insecurities. We are on display.)
The anguished light of daybreak crept over the carpet toward Doug’s naked, lonely feet. His toes were curled inward, hiding from the light of honest reflection. Upon the coffeetable there was a glass with more whiskey in it than the bottle that sat beside it. He sat, shirtless, coated with a thin sheen of sweat. He had stopped thinking hours before; he sat mute, not longer expectant, but resigned, sickened by the reality of his situation. She hadn’t even bothered to call. She would have known he’d worry. But she didn’t care. He was a fool. She was heartless. He had given his fool heart to her, and she didn’t care enough to let him know she wasn’t dead. The door behind him opened and clicked shut again. He jerked around.
“Dana? Jesus, fucking christ.”
She appeared rosy, ebullient. Her smile beamed forth to shame the incipient sunlight of the accusatory daybreak. She appeared enlivened by the early hour. He was a wreck. They were both drunk.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he slurred, rising from the couch to face her.
“Out with Beamer,” she began, her smile fading somewhat. “You knew that.”
“I assumed you would come home. You wouldn’t answer your phone.”
“Well, you shouldn’t make assumptions. And my phone died.”
They stood and stared silently at one another. Dana’s smile had collapsed into a firm line. Doug looked at her, visibly wavering, wanting to trust her. His lip began to tremble.
“Oh jesus,” she said. “You fucking child.”
The tears began to flow from his eyes as he stood facing her, clenching and unclenching his fists. She shook her head slowly back and forth, as if unable to stomach her swelling disgust.
“You fucking whore,” he croaked.
She stood and let her eyes travel up and down his quivering form. They settled on the bottle behind him.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“What were you doing all night?”
As he explained it, Humboldt county was situated right on the coast, riddled with Redwoods and small towns, with temperatures never above 70, rarely below 40, and the best damn pot in the world. In fact, it is the county’s number one export – for strictly medicinal purposes. Eureka has the second largest bay in California; young flesh gravitates around the college town of Arcata. Hipness is ensured through a sprinkling of exiles from San Francisco. When he mentioned this last fact, something caught in my memory. Humboldt sounded familiar, though I was certain I had never been, and it took a few days for me to remember that Dana lived there.
I had not seen her since the move. Her last residence had been San Francisco, where I had visited her once. The second visit fell through due to a stupid argument on the phone a few days before my arrival. We always had a tempestuous relationship, though, strangely, one with its own stability. No matter how angry we get or how much time passes, one of us always eventually reaches out to the other. It’s an acknowledgement of the peculiar comfort you feel around those who have broken your heart. There’s not much more pain they could cause, you’ve already experienced the best and worst that the other has to offer, and in the absence of hope or expectation you can actually be honest. Or maybe it’s comfortable simply because we’ve known each other for so long, and the periodic reaching out simply an act of boredom.
The peregrinations of our relationship notwithstanding, one thing I never expected was for Dana to remarry and move to a small town in the middle of nowhere. But she was always full of surprises.
*
Early in the morning, when the fog rolls in from the Pacific to shroud her house in mystery, Dana likes to imagine that she is dead. A lunatic once told her that everyone was already dead, and that we were all in heaven. She believed him in those mornings when the sea invaded her home and turned the world outside gray. She stood at the kitchen counter and filled a small bag with loose ground tea, which she then dropped into a waiting mug filled with hot water. She carried the mug over to the kitchen table and sat, turning her gaze out through the window. Beyond her front yard, everything became indistinct, uncertain. She heard a car drive by but saw nothing of its form.
Dana had always been an early riser. She enjoyed the solitude of morning, when the only sounds in the house were her own soft footsteps. Her husband, Dan, would not wake until late in the morning, after the fog had burned off. They had been married for three years, and while there was no longer much passion in their relationship, they had gotten used to each other. Dana was aging well. Her weight no longer fluctuated with the gluttonies of early adulthood, and she henceforth would remain petite, fragile-looking, until the day she died. Her pale skin and dyed-black hair made her appear somewhat younger than her thirty years. Her eyes were her most expressive feature, green shot through with gray, the color of a lake on the cusp of dawn. Covering her arms and shoulders were colorless tattoos depicting illustrations from children’s books. She had had them for so long she no longer noticed them; it was always a slight shock when a stranger made a comment.
She took a sip of her tea. The minutes ticked slowly by. She would not move from her seat until Dan stumbled into the kitchen an hour later, yawning and stretching.
*
Dana was born and raised in Los Angeles. When she was twenty-three she moved to Austin to marry a man named Brian. They had known each other as teenagers and remained in touch through college via email and the occasional hook-up when Bryan came home to visit his folks. They shared a passion for mod culture and fashion, scooters, and classic cinema. When Brian one day out of the blue suggested that Dana marry him and join him in his adopted home, she agreed on a whim. Looking back on it later, she would admit to not knowing why she did what she did. She was never particularly attracted to Brian, though he was a very handsome man, and their connection hardly extended beyond the superficial. She had gotten bored in Los Angeles, she supposed, and wanted a change of scenery. She figured he would support her in the transition, their marriage would be open, and that if Brian ever started to cramping her style, she could simply divorce him, which she did, just over a year after exchanging vows. Her relationship with me caused the split.
I met Dana online, through a personals website. We posted ads for the same reason – both recent transplants to Austin, we figured it was an easy way to meet people. I saw her ad, made a witty comment in reference to something in it, and after exchanging a few messages we arranged to meet for coffee. I was stunned the first time I saw her. She was beautiful; she wore a t-shirt that barely covered her rib-cage, and a long black skirt that accentuated her full hips and beautiful ass. As she crossed the courtyard toward my table, the head of every man she passed turned in her wake. We talked for hours that first night; she never mentioned she was married. When her husband called her cell, she played it off like he was a roommate. She later admitted to being charmed by my naiveity. It blew her mind that the population of my hometown was less than 2500. I had never heard of any of the bands she mentioned. The fact that she was from LA impressed my hickish sensibilities; I had never been farther than New Orleans, and she seemed so experienced, already wise and world-weary. I was eighteen.
She gave me a ride home and we arranged to meet the next night for dinner. I spent the entire next day thinking about her, going over in my head what she said, remembering the way she looked at me, how her gaze left me chilled, tingly, and lightheaded. I was convinced that I had met my future wife, that it was not simply the internet that had brought us together, but fate. Although our relationship later evolved, I realize in hindsight that while I was totally enamoured of her from the get-go, I was at first simply an amusing distraction. Just as I had never met someone so culturally astute, well-spoken and charming, she had never met someone as hopelessly innocent and awkward as myself. She was slumming it by pursuing me, a big city girl taking a trip to the country and marvelling at the cows.
We met the next evening at a mexican food restaurant. Soon after we took our seats she mentioned offhandedly that she was married. I was perplexed and disappointed. She laughed at my stuttered query for clarity, and pointed out that she had worn her wedding band the night before. I was not yet experienced enough to notice such things. What confused me was that, even though she made clear she was in a relationship, her flirtatious tone remained unchanged. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Her eyes betrayed interest; my animal instincts picked up on this, my heart raced when she spoke; I flinched when she touched me, which made her giggle. By the time we finished dinner it was dark outside, and I assumed she would go home. Instead, she suggested we go somewhere quiet and talk. I had recently discovered a secluded spot that afforded a gorgerous view of the downtown skyline, and suggested we go there.
*
The summer night settles softly over Austin, a cool hand on the forehead of scorching days. Castle Hill had once been the site of a boy’s military academy. The imposing structure remained, medieval in its façade, yet was abandoned and served no purpose other than as a meeting place for people in need of privacy. It sat on a bluff in the west end of the city, secluded from the surrounding neighborhood by the vastness of its lot. A couple could squeeze through a gap in the chain link fence surrounding it and find a comfortable spot with a spectacular view of downtown. A young man and woman sat together upon the ground, thighs touching, looking away from one another. The man sat stiffly, awkward in his youth and the romantic nature of his surroudings. The girl was more comfortable, and leaned back on her hands to stare up into the sky. Before them a group of high-rises rose into the light-deadened sky like a council of mute, concrete Jehovahs, their eyes a thousand blind windows. The man began to fidget, as if something within him was fighting for release. He adbruptly sat up straight and began to talk, as if addressing the buildings, the streets below, and the sky above.
“Do you ever look at the stars? I mean…. really look at them? They’re beautiful in their gentle twinklings, those constant reminders of our insignificance. We die, they remain, mute witness to the meaningless struggle that is life. No matter how brilliant, how gifted, how powerful, the end result is the same for everyone. Just as it always has been and always will be. While the poets and the generals are rotting in the ground, their deeds forgotten by a new crop of walking corpses, the stars shine on . . . oh so softly.”
The girl looked at him throughout his address, her face relaxed, expression one of quiet care and contentment. When he was done, she waited a moment, his words drifting in the air to settle on the scene, then spoke quietly:
“But we can’t even see the stars. The lights are too bright.”
The man chuckled and looked away. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
She gave space for the silence of the moment to blossom, then reached over and took his hand. He started, then relaxed into her grasp.
“What you said was very beautiful, though,” she said.
“Thanks. Sometimes I just talk.”
“I liked it.”
The girl reached over with her other hand and began to caress the one she held. The man turned to look at her. She lowered her eyes and smiled softly.
“Let’s take off all of our clothes,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Have you ever kissed a married woman?”
“No,” the man said, searching her, his heart suddenly racing.
She raised her eyes to his. He felt himself fall into her, saw himself lost in her, comfortable, warm, and conquered by the power of those liquid pools containing the absent beauty of the polluted urban sky. Without another word she leaned into him, pressed her chest to his and her lips to his. His hands moved to her waist.
*
Things progressed quickly after that. It never bothered me that I was breaking up a marriage. I was impatient for it to happen. I wanted her to belong to me, not him. And she seemed energized by the whole situation. We began to spend whole days together. She didn’t have a job, and I began to skip all of my classes. To Brian, I was simply his wife’s new best friend. I was too young and unaccomplished to be seen as a threat. Things hit a pitch when she and I travelled to Los Angeles together for a weekend. The given reason was that I was going for a concert, and she wanted to come along for the opportunity to visit her family. He was perhaps a little suspicious, but he didn’t show it. While we were there, I took several pictures of Dana, sprawled naked on a motel bed. She left the pictures on her camera, probably intentionally. A few days after we returned, Brian found them. He blew up, hit her, threatened to kill me. She left him and took refuge in my apartment.
*
“I don’t know what to do. You don’t know him, he’s crazy. If he finds us he will kill you.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
“You don’t know him. You’re so fucking naïve.”
“I’m not naïve. And I’m not afraid of him. Chill out. We’re together. Nothing else matters.”
The girl sat in silence, staring at her feet.
“Look,” the man began, “don’t worry about anything. From here on out it’s just you and me. Us against the world. As long as we’re together, everything will work out . . . right?”
The girl hesitated a moment.
“Yeah. It’ll be okay.”
She stared at the floor, her eyes opaque.
*
A couple of days later she officially moved in. I gave her a key. She told Brian she wanted a divorce. We entered into a brief honeymoon period, grocery shopping, buying furniture, going to movies. I felt so proud to be seen with her. She was my prize, and I wore my pride on my sleeve. It wasn’t long, though, before she began to set parameters. We should have separate bedrooms, so we could preserve our independence. Coming out of a marriage, she wasn’t ready for a committed relationship. She wanted to go out, meet people, come to see Austin as her home independently of a man. I agreed. I was so enamoured with her I would have agreed to anything. One night, after going out with a boy we had met together at a concert, she didn’t come home. I couldn’t sleep. I sat up drinking. As I watched the sunrise spread on the carpet in our living room, I heard her come in.
*
(The clear light of a morning that illuminates our anguish can seem cruel, confrontational, a cosmic jibe that pokes fun at our insecurities. We are on display.)
The anguished light of daybreak crept over the carpet toward Doug’s naked, lonely feet. His toes were curled inward, hiding from the light of honest reflection. Upon the coffeetable there was a glass with more whiskey in it than the bottle that sat beside it. He sat, shirtless, coated with a thin sheen of sweat. He had stopped thinking hours before; he sat mute, not longer expectant, but resigned, sickened by the reality of his situation. She hadn’t even bothered to call. She would have known he’d worry. But she didn’t care. He was a fool. She was heartless. He had given his fool heart to her, and she didn’t care enough to let him know she wasn’t dead. The door behind him opened and clicked shut again. He jerked around.
“Dana? Jesus, fucking christ.”
She appeared rosy, ebullient. Her smile beamed forth to shame the incipient sunlight of the accusatory daybreak. She appeared enlivened by the early hour. He was a wreck. They were both drunk.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he slurred, rising from the couch to face her.
“Out with Beamer,” she began, her smile fading somewhat. “You knew that.”
“I assumed you would come home. You wouldn’t answer your phone.”
“Well, you shouldn’t make assumptions. And my phone died.”
They stood and stared silently at one another. Dana’s smile had collapsed into a firm line. Doug looked at her, visibly wavering, wanting to trust her. His lip began to tremble.
“Oh jesus,” she said. “You fucking child.”
The tears began to flow from his eyes as he stood facing her, clenching and unclenching his fists. She shook her head slowly back and forth, as if unable to stomach her swelling disgust.
“You fucking whore,” he croaked.
She stood and let her eyes travel up and down his quivering form. They settled on the bottle behind him.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“What were you doing all night?”
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Windows
Jeremiah and Elizabeth huddled beneath an awning at a bus stop and watched the rain come down in sheets. They turned as the wind changed to avoid getting soaked. Jeremiah valiantly shielded Elizabeth’s body with his own when a particularly hard gust made avoidance impossible. The two of them were practically inseparable. Jeremiah had short brown hair and a face slightly older than the rest of his body. His high cheekbones hollowed out his features, and it was only when he laughed that his youth became apparent. Elizabeth had the sort of body drooled over by fifteen-year old boys. Her long, straight blonde hair framed a face made striking by its simplicity and the openness of her features. Her blue eyes seemed to bear a permanent expression of quiet alarm, implanted and reinforced by the stares she received while out in public. Jeremiah loved her, and though they had been together for a time, remained thrilled by the curves of her body. A sudden change in the direction of the rain caused her to lean into him, and Jeremiah felt a rush of contentment as he lowered his arms around her waist.
They had decided earlier in the day to go for a walk, their destination a bookstore a mile or so from their home. Elizabeth wasn’t much of a reader, but loved getting out and about for exercise. Jeremiah also believed in the necessity of long walks. It had been during one at the beginning of their relationship that sparks flew and their fates were sealed. Since then, each believed the other their perfect complement, and their days drifted by with the gentle monotony of waves on a calm sea. Neither could imagine a time without the other, yet their relationship was without assumptions for the future. Jeremiah and Elizabeth existed in a state of innocence, too young and unburdened to care about anything but their present happiness.
A bus slowed as it approached the stop. Jeremiah whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. No, she wanted to keep walking. They could just wait until the rain died down. Jeremiah felt the flicker and glow of contentment. He kissed her neck and waved the bus on.
Elizabeth leaned into Jeremiah and settled her head on his shoulder. There was a time when she wouldn’t have given a guy like him a second glance. He was thin, bookish, somewhat standoffish; the complete opposite of her “type.” There was an innocence about him, though, a sweetness free of pretension that inspired a fierce devotion in her. She wanted to take care of him, and felt needed in a way beyond the mere physical. They had met as coworkers. One day Jeremiah had approached her on a break and they had begun to chat. It turned out that they both played tennis in high-school, and after much stuttering, in a sudden rush, with his head down, Jeremiah asked if she would like to play sometime. Charmed by his awkwardness, she accepted. At the current moment, standing with Jeremiah at a bus-stop amidst a downpour, she was thankful she had.
They held each other and said nothing for a quarter hour, until the rain began to relent. Jeremiah squeezed Elizabeth’s hand – ready? She smiled and kissed him on the lips. They joined hands and took off running, laughing and jumping over puddles, their hearts racing as the rain again began to pick up. They reached their destination, the recessed entryway of a closed office building, just as the downpour resumed in earnest. A clap of thunder heralded their accomplishment, and they leaned against the glass doorway, breathing heavy through their smiles.
The wet and cold drew Lizzy’s nipples out against the thin fabric of her t-shirt. Jeremiah’s eyes fell to them, and he coloured slightly, thankful that the rain would keep passersby to a minimum. Lizzy laughed and wrung out her curly, bleached locks. Her red lips quivered behind the curtain of hair, with a movement like animals hidden in brush. She shook her head quickly from side to side, sending droplets flying in all directions, then threw herself into Jeremiah’s arms. When he released her, she immediately turned her radiant expression out towards the rain.
Mutual friends of Jeremiah and Lizzy couldn’t understand what drew them together. Lizzy was rambunctious, almost silly, and could come across as much less intelligent than she was. Jeremiah, on the other hand, seemed to cultivate an air of intellectual aloofness. His ideal evening consisted of a bottle of wine and a good book; hers, which typically took priority, was of drinking and loud music. They presented an odd pair, storming down sidewalks, club-hopping late into the night – a petite, sparkling blonde, all laughter and sex, with her gangly and distracted boyfriend, uncomfortable in his own skin. Jeremiah saw his life as a series of distractions, of which Lizzy was the most enjoyable. The morning after an evening with her was typically time spent in regret; he had trouble justifying such fun. Lizzy saw going out, the thrill of discovery, the vibrant interaction with one’s city and peers, as the part and parcel of life. Everyday details were accoutrements to her identity as a hipster, from the color she painted the walls in her apartment (irony is a shade of green), to her choice in boyfriends, constant variations on a theme of thin, self-conscious, and creative.
Down the block a change in a traffic signal released a stream of vehicles that passed before Jeremiah and Lizzy one after another, plowing through the downpour with the sound of breakers on a rocky beach. Jeremiah sought out the driver for each, focused on them as they passed, then snapped back to the next, his head a typewriter recoiling on its carriage. Lizzy, bored with the rain, stared downwards and fidgeted, scraping pebbles against the sidewalk with the soles of her shoes. A casual observer might guess that the young pair were strangers, brought together momentarily by the shared need for shelter in a storm. Given a moment of quiet, a distance would develop between them, as if the circuit connecting them broke down in the absence of banal chatter. One could characterize their relationship as electric – powerful and charged, yet ephemeral, capable of dying in an instant. They stood in silence, each engaged in their own repetitions, totally oblivious of one another.
The rain began to slacken, and with a touch on the shoulder Lizzy drew Jeremiah out of his thoughts. He smiled sheepishly and followed her into the drizzle. She walked quickly, and Jeremiah had to hurry to keep up. They trotted onwards, their pace increasing with the size of the drops. A fat splash on the forehead suddenly blurred Jeremiah’s vision, causing him to stop and blink his eyes. He saw her now dashing through a downpour, across an intersection and towards the covered dining area of a small fast-food restaurant. He chased after her, barely beating the changing light. When he reached the table, Eliza was already sitting down, watching him with an ironic smile, a picture of composure. The rain had darkened her clothing and hair.
“I thought you’d never make it,” she said, eyes twinkling.
Jeremiah stood a few feet in front of her, looking away to the right as he struggled to catch his breath. Eliza turned her gaze downward, smile unchanging. He glanced at her. He often wondered where she got the right to that smile. Her alabaster face, smooth and beatific, was flawed only by that cynical, ever-present turn of the lips. She appeared to him like a statue of the Virgin, set up in the foyer of a brothel.
Jeremiah moved to sit, and Eliza scooted over to make room. Seated next to one another, the pair instinctively adopted the same posture and expression. They appeared, each staring at the ground, like a single sculpture endowed with reflective symmetry. Eliza appeared immobile, a natural outgrowth or meditative animal, heedless of the scenery or passing glances. Jeremiah gave a passable impression of this, save for a twitching around the corners of his mouth. He appeared generally as a somewhat hollow impersonation of his companion, a papier-mâché Eliza. When she moved, he moved, and her emotions seemed transmuted through his medium; it was as if she manipulated him with invisible strings. Neither thought anything wrong with this; they were simply well connected. Alone, in the rain, a solitary couple in a patio seating area, they may as well have been siblings, the last of their species, stranded on an island in the midst of a deluge.
There are few places as depressing as a fast food restaurant on a rainy day. The bright red plastic table where Jeremiah and Eliza sat seemed to float on the prevalent grayness like a toy boat drifting down a swollen gutter. Eliza seemed at home; the combination of her severe beauty, black hair, and children’s book tattoos mirrored nicely the contrast between the primal storm and the empty kitsch of the 1950s style drive-in. Jeremiah looked like a soaked terrier. Eliza felt drawn to his vulnerability and relative naivety. When she placed her hand on his, or allowed him to hold her closely, it was with the acquiescence of a distant, yet obliging mother. Jeremiah sought to lose himself within her, to atone for the deficiencies she made him conscious of through emulation of her person. Her tastes dictated everything from his clothing and music to his posture and views on sex. When she fucked him, she was fucking herself, a manikin created in her image. If asked, however, both would identify the other as the love of their life. Hers was the love of a creator for her creation; his that of an ignorant primitive for a remote and unknowable goddess.
Surrounding them was an expanse of concrete and asphalt, populated here and there by other solitary and shared lives. Each was a drop of mercurial color on an otherwise featureless landscape, like puddles of motor oil scattered over a parking lot. Across town a couple walked through a park, holding hands; they seemed in a daze, blissful smiles written across their faces, eyes filled with warm complacency; they were aware of neither their surroundings, nor that in a week they would break up. Their mercurial drop would split, spread apart, two halves would shiver with uncertainty - and then each would gravitate to another, collide, swell towards a seam, and meld. The flux of this action, performed by the multitude over and over, lent the asphalt and concrete the semblance of life.
These movements of months and years were often observable in miniature over the course of a single day. At that moment, huddled together amidst the storm, Jeremiah and Eliza felt closer than they had in weeks. He had an arm wrapped around her, she leaned into him, eyes closed, a soft smile gracing her lips. His other hand rested on her thigh, and he stroked lightly his fingertips over the red fishnet of her stockings. Their relationship was tempestuous; like the storm that raged about them, it was furious, turbulent, a gauntlet that they ran in expectation of lulls. These breaks, which lasted anywhere from an hour to a week, filled them with drowsiness and cast a warm pall over the world. The edges of their contention disappeared, and their eyes, so often hard and opaque, became soft, translucent but for the face of the other. Each of these moments was for Jeremiah a glittering jewel stored close to his heart. When he closed his eyes and thought of her, these memories supplied the images representative to him of her; when he imagined their future, he drew upon this stock of images from the past.
Lost in his thoughts, Jeremiah failed to notice that Eliza had stood. The rain had tapered once again, and she was already walking rapidly down the sidewalk. He rose and followed, falling farther behind as her pace quickened. She began to run the moment he broke into a jog, as if to frustrate his efforts. With a crack of thunder, the sky suddenly opened and crashed down upon him. Jeremiah called after her, but she gave no sign of hearing, and turned the corner at the end of the block. He called out again, but the intensity of the downpour drowned out his voice, and he felt himself frustrated by distance and cacophony. Soaked to the skin, Jeremiah stumbled forwards, feeling, yet refusing to acknowledge the trickle of warmth amongst the rain streaming down his face. Reaching the corner, he turned and saw a bus-stop. It was vacant, save for a newspaper left on the bench. Looking further down the street, he saw it was empty. Taking shelter, Jeremiah sat next to the newspaper and hugged himself, shivering in his wet clothing. He had not expected her to wait for him. Wherever she had gone now, and whatever form she took, was not for him to know. As he sat alone with his quiet, murmuring thoughts, the chill began to lessen, and the rain began to flag. He began to notice people moving on the sidewalk to either side of him. An old man appeared on the bench, and down the street a mother walked hand in hand with her child. The rain ceased, leaving in its wake a heavy humidity. The cloud ceiling broke, and the puddles dotting the street came to life with captured sunlight. Jeremiah sat and looked at the puddles, marveling at how quickly a little attention from the sun could bring a stagnant pool of water to life. He imagined that in each of them he might see his face reflected, painted gold, like the specter of a better self, seen through stained glass. Later, when confronted with his solitude, he would remember the girls with whom he had huddled out of the rain, and saw in each of them not a loss to mourn, but the temporary vision of a different life, a window of possibility that was open for a moment, then shut. A bus approached slowly and stopped. The doors opened with a hiss, and Jeremiah and the old man rose to enter.
They had decided earlier in the day to go for a walk, their destination a bookstore a mile or so from their home. Elizabeth wasn’t much of a reader, but loved getting out and about for exercise. Jeremiah also believed in the necessity of long walks. It had been during one at the beginning of their relationship that sparks flew and their fates were sealed. Since then, each believed the other their perfect complement, and their days drifted by with the gentle monotony of waves on a calm sea. Neither could imagine a time without the other, yet their relationship was without assumptions for the future. Jeremiah and Elizabeth existed in a state of innocence, too young and unburdened to care about anything but their present happiness.
A bus slowed as it approached the stop. Jeremiah whispered in Elizabeth’s ear. No, she wanted to keep walking. They could just wait until the rain died down. Jeremiah felt the flicker and glow of contentment. He kissed her neck and waved the bus on.
Elizabeth leaned into Jeremiah and settled her head on his shoulder. There was a time when she wouldn’t have given a guy like him a second glance. He was thin, bookish, somewhat standoffish; the complete opposite of her “type.” There was an innocence about him, though, a sweetness free of pretension that inspired a fierce devotion in her. She wanted to take care of him, and felt needed in a way beyond the mere physical. They had met as coworkers. One day Jeremiah had approached her on a break and they had begun to chat. It turned out that they both played tennis in high-school, and after much stuttering, in a sudden rush, with his head down, Jeremiah asked if she would like to play sometime. Charmed by his awkwardness, she accepted. At the current moment, standing with Jeremiah at a bus-stop amidst a downpour, she was thankful she had.
They held each other and said nothing for a quarter hour, until the rain began to relent. Jeremiah squeezed Elizabeth’s hand – ready? She smiled and kissed him on the lips. They joined hands and took off running, laughing and jumping over puddles, their hearts racing as the rain again began to pick up. They reached their destination, the recessed entryway of a closed office building, just as the downpour resumed in earnest. A clap of thunder heralded their accomplishment, and they leaned against the glass doorway, breathing heavy through their smiles.
The wet and cold drew Lizzy’s nipples out against the thin fabric of her t-shirt. Jeremiah’s eyes fell to them, and he coloured slightly, thankful that the rain would keep passersby to a minimum. Lizzy laughed and wrung out her curly, bleached locks. Her red lips quivered behind the curtain of hair, with a movement like animals hidden in brush. She shook her head quickly from side to side, sending droplets flying in all directions, then threw herself into Jeremiah’s arms. When he released her, she immediately turned her radiant expression out towards the rain.
Mutual friends of Jeremiah and Lizzy couldn’t understand what drew them together. Lizzy was rambunctious, almost silly, and could come across as much less intelligent than she was. Jeremiah, on the other hand, seemed to cultivate an air of intellectual aloofness. His ideal evening consisted of a bottle of wine and a good book; hers, which typically took priority, was of drinking and loud music. They presented an odd pair, storming down sidewalks, club-hopping late into the night – a petite, sparkling blonde, all laughter and sex, with her gangly and distracted boyfriend, uncomfortable in his own skin. Jeremiah saw his life as a series of distractions, of which Lizzy was the most enjoyable. The morning after an evening with her was typically time spent in regret; he had trouble justifying such fun. Lizzy saw going out, the thrill of discovery, the vibrant interaction with one’s city and peers, as the part and parcel of life. Everyday details were accoutrements to her identity as a hipster, from the color she painted the walls in her apartment (irony is a shade of green), to her choice in boyfriends, constant variations on a theme of thin, self-conscious, and creative.
Down the block a change in a traffic signal released a stream of vehicles that passed before Jeremiah and Lizzy one after another, plowing through the downpour with the sound of breakers on a rocky beach. Jeremiah sought out the driver for each, focused on them as they passed, then snapped back to the next, his head a typewriter recoiling on its carriage. Lizzy, bored with the rain, stared downwards and fidgeted, scraping pebbles against the sidewalk with the soles of her shoes. A casual observer might guess that the young pair were strangers, brought together momentarily by the shared need for shelter in a storm. Given a moment of quiet, a distance would develop between them, as if the circuit connecting them broke down in the absence of banal chatter. One could characterize their relationship as electric – powerful and charged, yet ephemeral, capable of dying in an instant. They stood in silence, each engaged in their own repetitions, totally oblivious of one another.
The rain began to slacken, and with a touch on the shoulder Lizzy drew Jeremiah out of his thoughts. He smiled sheepishly and followed her into the drizzle. She walked quickly, and Jeremiah had to hurry to keep up. They trotted onwards, their pace increasing with the size of the drops. A fat splash on the forehead suddenly blurred Jeremiah’s vision, causing him to stop and blink his eyes. He saw her now dashing through a downpour, across an intersection and towards the covered dining area of a small fast-food restaurant. He chased after her, barely beating the changing light. When he reached the table, Eliza was already sitting down, watching him with an ironic smile, a picture of composure. The rain had darkened her clothing and hair.
“I thought you’d never make it,” she said, eyes twinkling.
Jeremiah stood a few feet in front of her, looking away to the right as he struggled to catch his breath. Eliza turned her gaze downward, smile unchanging. He glanced at her. He often wondered where she got the right to that smile. Her alabaster face, smooth and beatific, was flawed only by that cynical, ever-present turn of the lips. She appeared to him like a statue of the Virgin, set up in the foyer of a brothel.
Jeremiah moved to sit, and Eliza scooted over to make room. Seated next to one another, the pair instinctively adopted the same posture and expression. They appeared, each staring at the ground, like a single sculpture endowed with reflective symmetry. Eliza appeared immobile, a natural outgrowth or meditative animal, heedless of the scenery or passing glances. Jeremiah gave a passable impression of this, save for a twitching around the corners of his mouth. He appeared generally as a somewhat hollow impersonation of his companion, a papier-mâché Eliza. When she moved, he moved, and her emotions seemed transmuted through his medium; it was as if she manipulated him with invisible strings. Neither thought anything wrong with this; they were simply well connected. Alone, in the rain, a solitary couple in a patio seating area, they may as well have been siblings, the last of their species, stranded on an island in the midst of a deluge.
There are few places as depressing as a fast food restaurant on a rainy day. The bright red plastic table where Jeremiah and Eliza sat seemed to float on the prevalent grayness like a toy boat drifting down a swollen gutter. Eliza seemed at home; the combination of her severe beauty, black hair, and children’s book tattoos mirrored nicely the contrast between the primal storm and the empty kitsch of the 1950s style drive-in. Jeremiah looked like a soaked terrier. Eliza felt drawn to his vulnerability and relative naivety. When she placed her hand on his, or allowed him to hold her closely, it was with the acquiescence of a distant, yet obliging mother. Jeremiah sought to lose himself within her, to atone for the deficiencies she made him conscious of through emulation of her person. Her tastes dictated everything from his clothing and music to his posture and views on sex. When she fucked him, she was fucking herself, a manikin created in her image. If asked, however, both would identify the other as the love of their life. Hers was the love of a creator for her creation; his that of an ignorant primitive for a remote and unknowable goddess.
Surrounding them was an expanse of concrete and asphalt, populated here and there by other solitary and shared lives. Each was a drop of mercurial color on an otherwise featureless landscape, like puddles of motor oil scattered over a parking lot. Across town a couple walked through a park, holding hands; they seemed in a daze, blissful smiles written across their faces, eyes filled with warm complacency; they were aware of neither their surroundings, nor that in a week they would break up. Their mercurial drop would split, spread apart, two halves would shiver with uncertainty - and then each would gravitate to another, collide, swell towards a seam, and meld. The flux of this action, performed by the multitude over and over, lent the asphalt and concrete the semblance of life.
These movements of months and years were often observable in miniature over the course of a single day. At that moment, huddled together amidst the storm, Jeremiah and Eliza felt closer than they had in weeks. He had an arm wrapped around her, she leaned into him, eyes closed, a soft smile gracing her lips. His other hand rested on her thigh, and he stroked lightly his fingertips over the red fishnet of her stockings. Their relationship was tempestuous; like the storm that raged about them, it was furious, turbulent, a gauntlet that they ran in expectation of lulls. These breaks, which lasted anywhere from an hour to a week, filled them with drowsiness and cast a warm pall over the world. The edges of their contention disappeared, and their eyes, so often hard and opaque, became soft, translucent but for the face of the other. Each of these moments was for Jeremiah a glittering jewel stored close to his heart. When he closed his eyes and thought of her, these memories supplied the images representative to him of her; when he imagined their future, he drew upon this stock of images from the past.
Lost in his thoughts, Jeremiah failed to notice that Eliza had stood. The rain had tapered once again, and she was already walking rapidly down the sidewalk. He rose and followed, falling farther behind as her pace quickened. She began to run the moment he broke into a jog, as if to frustrate his efforts. With a crack of thunder, the sky suddenly opened and crashed down upon him. Jeremiah called after her, but she gave no sign of hearing, and turned the corner at the end of the block. He called out again, but the intensity of the downpour drowned out his voice, and he felt himself frustrated by distance and cacophony. Soaked to the skin, Jeremiah stumbled forwards, feeling, yet refusing to acknowledge the trickle of warmth amongst the rain streaming down his face. Reaching the corner, he turned and saw a bus-stop. It was vacant, save for a newspaper left on the bench. Looking further down the street, he saw it was empty. Taking shelter, Jeremiah sat next to the newspaper and hugged himself, shivering in his wet clothing. He had not expected her to wait for him. Wherever she had gone now, and whatever form she took, was not for him to know. As he sat alone with his quiet, murmuring thoughts, the chill began to lessen, and the rain began to flag. He began to notice people moving on the sidewalk to either side of him. An old man appeared on the bench, and down the street a mother walked hand in hand with her child. The rain ceased, leaving in its wake a heavy humidity. The cloud ceiling broke, and the puddles dotting the street came to life with captured sunlight. Jeremiah sat and looked at the puddles, marveling at how quickly a little attention from the sun could bring a stagnant pool of water to life. He imagined that in each of them he might see his face reflected, painted gold, like the specter of a better self, seen through stained glass. Later, when confronted with his solitude, he would remember the girls with whom he had huddled out of the rain, and saw in each of them not a loss to mourn, but the temporary vision of a different life, a window of possibility that was open for a moment, then shut. A bus approached slowly and stopped. The doors opened with a hiss, and Jeremiah and the old man rose to enter.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Poem IV
Your lips are a fragment of my soul
That alighting on my cheek
At the corner of my mouth
Color the world in the shade of my dreams
Surrounded we are painted
An impossible ideal
Manifest for the instance
Of a kiss
An angelic perfection
We the divine
So that when I lift
My eyes heavenward
All I can see
Is you
That alighting on my cheek
At the corner of my mouth
Color the world in the shade of my dreams
Surrounded we are painted
An impossible ideal
Manifest for the instance
Of a kiss
An angelic perfection
We the divine
So that when I lift
My eyes heavenward
All I can see
Is you
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Poem III
Sunday morning, white light through curtains
Illuminates a vista upon youth
A child waking in a quiet house
And finding sanctity in solitude.
It remains that soft-focus bedrooms
Dust-streaked air and nebulous quiet
Are a cradle for creative wanderings
Hatched weak and watery from dreams.
Yet adult vanity places value
Higher on poems, stories, miniatures made
With tools once held in much smaller hands
Employed on a monumental scale.
Illuminates a vista upon youth
A child waking in a quiet house
And finding sanctity in solitude.
It remains that soft-focus bedrooms
Dust-streaked air and nebulous quiet
Are a cradle for creative wanderings
Hatched weak and watery from dreams.
Yet adult vanity places value
Higher on poems, stories, miniatures made
With tools once held in much smaller hands
Employed on a monumental scale.
Monday, January 14, 2008
We Need A God Who Bleeds
A young man and his father sit at a table over breakfast. The young man is on break from college and holding forth enthusiastically about his ideas. The old man listens thoughtfully.
“People always say that God put us here and God can take us away. I say that we put God up there and we can take him way.”
The old man peels a banana.
“Think about it. Think of all the wars that could be avoided, if we just got rid of the God idea.”
“People’ll always find something to fight over,” the old man says slowly.
“Yeah. But it’d be one less thing. One less thing that people would kill for. One less thing that people would take a bullet for. When did God ever take a bullet for anybody?”
“I seem to recall a little something about him giving his only son.”
“Yeah? Well, how many people have given their only son for him? Do you think Mrs. Jones down the street wanted to give God her only son’s leg? Do you think these Iraqi women on TV, wailing at funerals, want to give their only sons to Allah? No. They feel compelled. Call it fighting for honor, or freedom, or whatever. It’s all draped in God, and without that moral certainty, no one would fight. I say God needs to fight his own battles. Smite the infidels, or whatever. God should take his own bullets.”
The old man sits for a moment and ponders what his son has said. Then he takes a long drink of orange juice and clears his throat.
“Well son, it sounds to me that what you want is a god who bleeds.”
01/28/05
“People always say that God put us here and God can take us away. I say that we put God up there and we can take him way.”
The old man peels a banana.
“Think about it. Think of all the wars that could be avoided, if we just got rid of the God idea.”
“People’ll always find something to fight over,” the old man says slowly.
“Yeah. But it’d be one less thing. One less thing that people would kill for. One less thing that people would take a bullet for. When did God ever take a bullet for anybody?”
“I seem to recall a little something about him giving his only son.”
“Yeah? Well, how many people have given their only son for him? Do you think Mrs. Jones down the street wanted to give God her only son’s leg? Do you think these Iraqi women on TV, wailing at funerals, want to give their only sons to Allah? No. They feel compelled. Call it fighting for honor, or freedom, or whatever. It’s all draped in God, and without that moral certainty, no one would fight. I say God needs to fight his own battles. Smite the infidels, or whatever. God should take his own bullets.”
The old man sits for a moment and ponders what his son has said. Then he takes a long drink of orange juice and clears his throat.
“Well son, it sounds to me that what you want is a god who bleeds.”
01/28/05
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
