My good friend and strong supporter, Jason, has taken it upon himself to buy me a new HDD for my laptop and re-install a new operating system. This is a huge thing for me and I can't thank him enough for his help. I still have a WiFi issue with the laptop but can now use ethernet and work offline at the library, where I was not able before. The logical conclusion to draw from this is that I will be able to do many times the amount of writing I have been doing from now on. It also helps tremendously with my business efforts.
The following has been developing in my mind for several weeks now. I have done a lot of social commentary in my posts here and I thought it would be different to present something that is exclusively (maybe excrutiatingly?) personal. It wasn't until tonight (July 2) that it finally reached completion as a concept and it took no time to simply pour it out.
As I said in some of my very first posts (see "Why IWallk"), a writer needs time to compose. My whole job is writing. I am disappointed sometimes when a walk doesn't last long enough, because I leave my "mental business" (composition) unfinished. The following could not have been written without about (literally) a hundred miles of walking under it. THAT really IS why IWallk. Frankly I was often ridiculed at the beginning of this adventure and called "crazy" for suggesting that time spent walking could actually be productive. Slowly, gradually, but with results that I think are finally becoming tangible, I am proving my original premises.
As people who have kept up with the writing here may notice, the following is a new kind of style for me, or maybe an evolution of what I have been developing thus-far, or MAYBE just a one-time thing. I think it came out well, despite its rather large helping of melancholia. It might even be worth a second or even third reading as I have stuffed it with multi-layered, multiple and hidden meanings. I've also tried something new for me. You may notice that I have integrated what I'm going to call “random rhyme” in to the prose, along with what is meant to be some occasional alliteration and assonance. there is also the liberal use of repetition on both concept and phrase.
Those with a penchant for complexity and density of meaning should enjoy this as much as those who simply want to have a good cry with me. Also, please bear in mind as you read along that this is NOT fiction. I will be very happy to hear or read any comments and I would put any donations offered to good use, starting with a trip to the grocery store.
* * * * * * *
Is there violence in a sunrise? Calm in the fog of war? Why can't I just forget what was, but is no more? Some things exist despite the expectation – even the glaring reality - of an opposite. These things are painted over each other, fresh latex, milky-white. But as the paint dries and the fragrance of its newness fades, the last layer does always show through the new layer, just a little bit. And no amount of coating and re-coating seems to cover the writing on the Wall, if it was laid down in younger, happier years. If there is no past, certainly the after-images of a sharp imagination can work as well as memory. What is the difference? To me there is no difference.
I am exhausted. Fifteen miles (at least) passed under foot today. Another day of movement--constant movement. Lately, there are only brief rests, then more movement. Mine is a soul struggling to be seen without words, worn on the outside of my body...replacing it...somehow.
The light keeps dimming as I sit fighting off the soft, but persistent, breath of sleep that keeps washing over me. The cellar is comforting with its dehumidifier humming, like a white noise, contrasting with the stillness waiting to be animated by moments that never arrive; waiting in every corner. Thoughts meander like small streams across the desert of my fading consciousness. They bespeak – as always – my life in the NOW. I have been alone for so long that I have begun to rely on myself for everything, even companionship. It is a self-imposed, solitary confinement that I accept in order to be “free,” whatever THAT means. I tell myself it means freedom from the pain of being left alone by someone else. It is easier on my heart this way. Or is it?
And recently sleep touches my senses like a narcotic flower. Yes, it is seen and its fragrance is apparent, but I am not altogether sure when it has taken me over. There is no clear line of demarcation. I only know where the border lay upon waking the next day. Sleep is my woman. She is my mate (in every sense). She longs to be the narrator of my dreams. She is driven to bring me to them. And she has come to me every night in the past few months. Or is it years—decades? She is all the women of the past. She is also the subject their content, split into innumerable personalities. Those past times function now only as fiction. There is no proof that they ever existed.
These split personalities in fact sirens of the dream voyage; voices, combined to form a song that is more like a visionary opera; one beautiful female face in the midst of melody, remind me that I was once happy. They lure me back, out of this beige numbness, this zombie's path, to a narrower and better-defined path. A tunnel, a passage, something like the green fields of heaven open up... And the bleakness of fruitless wandering gives way to the confidence of the young man that I once was. That is, perhaps, when I was a hero in the making, instead of a has-been, in the fading.
*
Her delicate fingers touch my bare chest. She hugs me from behind as we doze in and out. She is small, hardly able to reach over my shoulders. Her warmth is like peace itself. I chuckle and turn over to see her pretty smile. In the dim, moonlit purple of the night, we are together. Gone to bed early. But we are too in-love to sleep. We join as one, like we always do. Her green eyes are shining, caught by the street light on the other side of our bedroom window, as it is filtered through the July leaves of the plum tree in the yard. The leaves are rustling, whispering, dancing... Her hair is short like it's always been. Strawberry blonde sometimes, orange at other times and straight as the teeth of a comb, it moves as if it is a liquid. And we move like waves upon a shore. We are fighting for the union, and happy to be conquered by the little death.
In the shallow after-glow she draws-up close again and kisses my lips...open, soft, candy-breath. Awe....... It's been too long... Far too long... Why do I feel like it's been so long, while she is actually here beside me?
Under the peach-colored sunset, I roll down the window and toss my apple core out into the grass. The car sits as still as a monument. I'm looking at the back of her head as she is distracted by the fireflies blinking, mating. Her hair is golden and as long as it's always been. She wears my windbreaker over her old-fashioned, light blue dress. She is tanned, in cotton; always clean, soft and dry. She has butterfly lashes. Her blink is like a flight through the garden, to a flower, to a thought.
So many early mornings have I watched her sleep. Dreams pull her lids tight as her eyes dart back and forth, watching the images of the far-away scenes in her mind, when she too is next to me...but so far away. A morning star. She likes to sleep inside my arms. She dreams of us, while I dream of her. She is so beautiful that I don't feel like I'm even there with her. Am I there with her if she is dreaming somewhere else? But for now we are wide awake right here in the car.
When she turns to face me beside the dashboard I see the street light shining past me from behind my back, shuffling shadows, pink and buzzing, bouncing off the silk of her cheeks. “What?” she asks inquisitively, brows bent in a playful look of surprise about the expression on my own face, which must make me appear lost in thought.
“Nothing...” I say, knowing that won't be a satisfying-enough answer. She smiles-out that Light of hers, looking something like a child on Easter morning, and slowly shakes her head. I have to say it, “I just love you so much; so much that I can't even believe we are here together right now. How could I have found someone so perfect? I will never let you go.”
She blushes a bit and then glows with a contented shrug and a huge smile. I hear her musical laugh and she quickly scoots over across the front seat, throwing her arms around my neck. She kisses my cheek, my chin and then my lips.
We have been driving all day. And it is so nice to be home and in our living room. The gig went well and my mind is filled with images that are still wet from their birth, still getting used to becoming memories. There is a feel to the afternoon; something unreal to the afternoon. But I can't quite put my finger on it... It is not hot, yet it is clear and brilliantly sunny. The wind is mild, but I can tell it is much stronger far above us up in the clouds. She happily collapses down on the couch. Her hair is so black that it almost looks blue. Shoulder-length, like it always is, half of its satin pillow is tucked behind her left ear, like usual. Sunglasses are perched like a headband upon that beautiful crown. Dark brown eyes seem to pull me in to her. I want to live inside her the way she lives inside me. I sit down beside her and sigh intentionally.
She reaches up and gently cups my shoulder in her hand. Then it falls upon the middle of my back. It feels so good. “I love you, you know?” she coos, slipping up close beside me—my partner. We both face forward, looking across the room and through the large bay window. Her hand continues to push out the tightness of my spine. She pushes it all away. Then she tips her head to the side, resting it on my shoulder. I relax for the first time in many, many days. It has been so long since my mind was at peace... Too long... Years... Maybe decades?
It is grassy and the blanket keeps blowing up on one corner. But we don't care. We lie there like small children, pointing out the animal-shapes of the clouds. Walnut locks tumble over my neck as she buries her face there. Her hair is just as fine and wispy as it always is. There is breath in my ear...whispers, hot breath...giggling. It is just past noon. The bluster of the wind seems to be pushing us closer together. Her shy smile reveals deeply cut dimples, making her look cute and innocent and her skin is so fair that its pulsing blood colors it from beneath, flushed and rosy.
What a voice she has! It is so feminine. It massages my ears; a symphony of heart strings on harps. Just hearing her speak turns me on. I think to myself that even whenever we're apart I can still hear her speak and sing. Our picnic on this hill is our romance. Our romance is the picnic. And I keep thinking I'm alone, yet all the while she is with me. Right? She has been with me? Right?
* * *
Shivers. Rainy tears glide down the window pane. The lump in my throat has not yet blossomed into the white lily that marks the death-like weeping over a permanent departure. There is a note on the table. It is folded. It is the only thing on the table. I know what it says. I don't need to read a single word of it. The rain pours down now. It seems to be throwing itself to the ground. I hear my own thoughts as if they are being played back to me from some future tragedy. But it isn't the future I see. It is just a note on the table. In the yard, the plum tree cries and all it's fruit falls to the ground.
She is gone. I offer my soul to any devil that would take it, just to have her back. But Caligastia just doesn't appear. I have to cough just to know that sound still exists in the world. Iwallk down the hallway...the narrow passage. I look in the bedroom and her indentation still ruffles the sheets of our bed. She will crawl back into that same spot tonight. Oh... No. She won't. She is gone.
I drive to work and smell her perfume in the car, left there like a sweet ghostly promise from her that she will be back. But I know she won't be back. She will never ever be back.
After the long ride back from work I am happy to be home again. Or am I? I enter our living room. There is the couch. The bay window focuses the blue of the calm afternoon sky upon the floor boards. My spine is tight. For a moment I close my eyes. Keeping them closed I sit down on the couch. Fingers push... They PUSH! No. They don't. It is just the pillow behind me.
And when Iwallk up the hill beyond the field I pass by our blanket. Why is it still there? It's corner flaps over from the breeze. It is the breeze that whispers in my ear now. The giggling is gone forever. And the voice – the symphony – reaches its climax. Or... is it just that last note I remember, of an overture, fading beauty ringing through an empty hall?
Surely she will be right back... I can hear her coming over the hill. No... No.
How can such a love die? How can such a pretty face be dissolving so completely? Why have decades passed like days, while each day without her is like a decade? Her touch—it lasted so long. Delicate fingers... Perfumed collar bone... Freckles spaced-out like the little dipper in the small of her back... dissolving...completely dissolving.
Now it is only her hair that remains vivid to me. Her hair is flowing; threads from the fabric of Paradise...lost. At once it is short, strawberry blonde, long, golden, black and blue, a fine walnut, just like it always is...like it always was...so shall it always be...tumbling over my neck, spilling across my skin as spilled tea. Forevermore it will always frame the kiss that my lips are ready for. No... No.
*
The radio on the clock announces the new day; the old day; the tired day. The dehumidifier hums its white-noise harmony. And my eyes open like they always do lately...lonely. I can't help fantasizing about what was...in my dream just minutes before...but is no more.
All the while I understand that I won't even be able to move from this chair – having completely missed my chance to sleep in my bed - until the dream is buried deep, back under the soil in the yawning grave of my unconsciousness.
I want, with all my heart, with all my soul as I awaken, for the dreams that seemed so real to just continue on, even if they just remain as dreams. I must also bury the fleeting thought that maybe there is a way to dream...in...ever-last? But morning has broken...my heart...like it always does lately. And I am too proud to sleep the darker sleep.
In my life, the excruciation of growing guilt has given way to a more numbing regret. The former was hell, so the latter seems to be better somehow. Somehow? Yes, there is less pain with regret. Could it be that over forty years have gone by and all I've really learned how to do is fight off the hell of guilt just to end up accepting the purgatory of regret? Is it true that all I have to show as I enter my fifth decade on earth is a past that seems now to never have existed at all?
Orange sunlight licks the tips of the tallest trees now but it is a cold light and the questions are ceasing to be rhetorical. Yes, I guess there can be violence in a sunrise.
I pull on my ripped hiking shoes, pull up my worn-out shorts and button-up a fresh shirt. The sunglasses are in the middle pocket of my backpack, where they always are. The iPod is in there too. I tap my hand against my back pocket. Almost forget to grab my wallet and I laugh to myself about how I am going to make $9 last 9 days.
The house is still quite above me and I gingerly click the latch of the door, venturing across the cool and darkened room adjacent to mine in the basement, then up and out, through the bulkhead and into the rising mist of daylight...into the fog. Time to go back to war. But my mind, though it remains marooned without the intimacy of another, is still MY mind. And there can also be calm in the fog of war. I need to make it so. I WILL make it so.
The wind feels good as I gain my momentum. My shadow is long and stretches out on to the road in front of me, cast into the unknown. The sun warms my back, like a fiction from the past. I'm learning to survive without expectations. I'm learning to become immune to disappointment. But I don't like it very much.
So, for a few minutes I let myself venture back mentally to the light of the dreams I had so recently forced myself to forsake... where it is comfortable. The road disappears, the trees bend out of sight, the despair drifts away and I am holding her again...all of them...again.
Fantasy in the midst of hardship is a guilty pleasure perhaps...but, for the moment - as Iwallk into another day - it is one I do not regret.
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