Anthology Complex III by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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M.B. JULIEN
eventually, so I get up and leave my apartment and walk down the hall to Lynne's. I knock and wait for a reply.
I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. But no one ever answers. Maybe she's at her mother's. I go back to my apartment and catch sight of something outside the window.
The Filipino family with the adopted Korean son that Tao had told me of. A closer look, and I realize that the Korean kid is wearing the exact kind of headphones that I own myself. When I go to check if I am still in possession of mine, I see that I am not, and that someone had too, stolen my headphones. I'm not really angry, but for the time being, I am confused.
Some time passes by and when I hear the van and the family sound back up, I walk downstairs and pretend to check my mail. What I'm really doing is observing the Korean kid and the headphones he's wearing, trying to see if it has the same scratches as mine.
When his mother though, sees that I am staring him down, she walks into the apartment building and confronts me, even though I am the one who should be doing the confronting.
She starts to talk to me in broken English and every once in a while slips in a few words of her own native tongue. “What?,” I try to ask, and then she starts to raise her voice at me. I laugh a little in my head once I put two and two together and figure out that she thinks I'm a child molester. She exits the apartment building still talking and with a little snot coming out of her nose. And we're going to be living in the same building.
Great.
It takes another twenty-four hours for my stare to die down, and soon after I find myself nodding off into sleep.
The dream that I had was interesting, unlike any other dream I've told you about before. In the dream I saw that I had died in the hole in my backyard, and soon after I rose up as if a spirit out of my body.
In the air I found Jesus, who was patiently waiting for me. When we met at eye-level, he began to speak to me, saying "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
Before I left Jesus, I saw that his hands were pierced, and I knew then that he had died long ago on the cross and I was speaking to his ghost.
The earth under me suddenly disappeared and I was now in the middle of space, surrounded by stars and planets, and not a moment too soon I landed on a type of neon-electric pathway that went as far as my eyes could see. On a sign connected to the path read “Dahij Miyamahs,” which I later learned translated into “The way to Heaven” in English.
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I traveled on the pathway for two thousand years, seeing many things that space had to offer, and towards the end I came across two brothers. Simon Peter and Andrew, their names were.
What Simon Peter and Andrew told me before I entered through the first gate was that God is not a deity. That he is not an intelligent being who created everything I saw now.
That he was not all-powerful. They told me that he was, instead, a metaphor that was held in the highest regard of literary achievement. That he was the sole entity that you would see at the end of your life, who would change your life. And after hearing this, I entered through the first gate.
Once I had entered I saw that I was now in a sort of control room that was filled with hundreds of switches, and there I saw the same Jesus I saw before, and this he said to me,
“Do not listen to those, who instead of casting out demons, cast out bodies, for a woman came to the church seeking to rid her evil ways, but they denied her, wanting no association with her. These words, truly I tell you, are for them, and let them hear these words.”
When he was done he pointed to the second gate, and on the second gate it read “So he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.” And as I went to go through it I was blocked, and I saw that God appeared before me.
“Why shall I let you into Heaven?,” he asks. Here I have the black silence, and when the dream returns, I find that I am in Heaven, but it wasn't the white Heaven you and I always see in the movies. It was very much like the Earth from which I had traveled from, but there seemed to be less suffering, and something about it was harmonic.
As I wandered through Heaven, a young man followed me around. After a while I finally asked him who he was, and he revealed to me that he was my younger brother. I looked at his face, and asked him if I could touch it, and he said yes. What was most strange to me was the fact that my heart rate increased as I went to touch his face, and seemed to tell me that even in Heaven, was there mortality.
“You are filled with the holy spirit,” my brother tells me, “come with me to see God.”
I followed him all through the world until finally we came upon a throne, and there sat God, and to his right was his son, the Christ. I saw that his pierced hands had healed, and when I then looked at my own, I saw that my hands too, had healed.
Jesus came down from his seat and came to speak with me, but as he approached he took a different form, and became a different man. By the time he got to me, I saw that he had now masked the face of the penitent thief, and with his hand on my shoulder, he says,
“If you shall walk with Jesus, he will save your soul.”
While this is all happening, I can feel the presence of God in my mind as he stares at me from the throne, but his being has no pulse. This is when I realize that the God who is 133 | DAHIJ MIYAMAHS
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in Heaven, the one so many people pray to from Earth, is the Dead God. He had lived many millenniums and in that time completed a magnificent project, and once he grew old and died, he was enshrined into it and became ageless.
A screaming comes across the sky and almost deafens me, and when I change my focus from the dead God back to the thief, I see that Jesus had come back to form and his hand remained on my shoulder. His expression, I had seen before, long ago in “The Soothsayer.”
I think Jesus had the kind of love that was more melancholy than anything else, as opposed to what most people think of when they think of love, such as the connotated goodness. I think Jesus's love spanned more on a sad love that came from a deep and dark place as he witnessed the people around him suffer. The love he had to offer was different, because he knew he wouldn't be able to stay with these people, he knew that he would die soon. This type of love is in opposition to many other types of love, such as the marrigal love, where you intend to spend the rest of your life with a partner or partners.
That kind of love, knowing that you're going to die, that's the love that is on the higher level.
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Chapter 92
25.0.0.71.0.0
1:3:10:92
THEY say a dream takes place only in the mind, and yet in that mind are there a vast amount of experiences. In that mind is there a wide expanse of space, and who's to say which is the greater world; the one we know or the one in dreams, between Purgatory, Limbo, and the edge of the universe.
A screaming continued across the sky and sept to deafen me. When I awoke I saw that I was in a white room. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor. Nothing. Nothing but white space. A white room where even the shadows ran from themselves.
I walked in any direction for an unknowable amount of time until I began to see something of form in the distance. Walking over towards it, I began to see that it was a statue. Standing before it, I saw the form of my father, and he stood there solemnly, eyes downcast and with his hands meeting behind his back as he contemplated good and evil.
To the right of his statue was another statue, this one of Jesus, who seemed to have a blue aura about it. And to the left of his statue was another statue, that one of Satan, who seemed to have a red aura about it. And no much later than when I arrived did they begin to speak to my mind.
“It is objective that light is blue,” Jesus says to me. “It is objective that light is red,”
Satan says to me.
Thinking on what they said, I saw that I was removed from the white room and my father's statue came alive as we walked through a world that seemed to resemble Earth.
It was when we began to walk down a hill that my father began to speak to me, saying “You are filled with the agog spirit,” and as we walked down the hill he pointed to me all those who were sinners, and soon after, all those who were saints.
“You shall walk through this world until the day of your judgment, and your fate shall be decided by the works you did in it,” he tells me.
I stayed with him for a time until I decided I was to go on my own, and I must have traveled for two thousand miles, seeing a large portion of what this world had to show me. I saw both the good and the bad that humankind dwelled in. I saw thieves who stole, prostitutes who sold their own flesh; I saw farmers who grew food for the needy, healers who cured the sick, and when the day of my judgement came, the Sun soared high above the clouds in the sky, but the Sun was eclipsed by the Moon.
“Knock, knock,” says Lynne's door. Another day, no answer. Walking twenty feet back to my own apartment, I felt something strange. I'm not sure what one would call it, but it was some kind of sense of failure.
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way he knew how to express love was to work hard. During the last year of his life, when he was really sick, he played solitaire in his office for six hours a day. My main memory of him is his silhouette reflecting off the wall of the corridor by the light of his computer screen.
This isn't about the human condition as much as it is the human connection. I've been an outsider my entire life, I've never felt my heart pound for another person the same way it pounds when I am writing. Not ever, not one single person, regardless of their sex, age, race, whatever. I don't think it's people, I think it's just me. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Why is it so difficult for some people to connect to others in a sense that is truthful? To connect, not physically, but emotionally, of the mind, and under a state that is pure.
I have no one to share my life with, not at that degree. I have no children to leave behind. All I really have are these fucking words and these damn expressions that I never give. These expressions that keep me searching for a heart of gold.
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Chapter 93
LOST PARADISE
1:3:10:93
THEY say a dream is only a dream, and yet in that mysterious dimension, an idea can grow and affect the real world. It can reach beyond its limits to bring about change or devastation, and who's to say which is the greater realm; the one we know or the one in dreams, between Hell, the ocean and the mind.
The rain began to pour as I walked into my bedroom. I went over to the window, stepping over a pool of water and then closed the window shut. I heard the sound of a thousand droplets hitting the glass as I walked away and went to sit at my desk.
I woke up a sleeping computer and decided again to go over the photos Lynne had sent me months ago. They were photos that Claire had taken during the roadtrip, I'm guessing because she felt like a fifth-wheel and didn't want to seem like someone who was just simply crashing a party that she wasn't really invited to.
They were actually very nice pictures, the quality of them made me wonder if perhaps Claire had always had an interest in photography and had even taken a few classes.
I especially liked the one of Sara, crooked laugh and caught by surprise by the camera as she brushed her teeth in a motel's bathroom. Then there was David and Lynne who in their complete boredom couldn't get the motel's television to work. Why would anyone think those things actually work.
Perhaps in a counter-attack, someone took Claire's device and snapped a picture of her as she walked out of the motel's bathroom. Her hand saying no and taking up half the screen, it seems like it's the people who love to take pictures are the ones who never want to be in them.
Outside of their motel room were many more pictures. Of one was Claire who stood outside and smoked a cigarette, taking a picture of Fairview's night skyline.
There was also the picture of Lynne and I, the moment right before she caught my hand to look at a low autumn Sun. I might have to burn this one.
There were dozens of photos that were taken while on the highway, most of the landscape nature covering wide fields and city buildings. Two of them being the cows we saw. There were also a couple taken in Greenville, of the buildings we saw collapse.
For some reason she didn't take too many at the carnival. Maybe her battery was running low. But one of them was of Sara and David co-riding in one of those bumper-car racers. Man, I wish I could actually show you this picture. I've never seen David so happy.
Going along I found that there were a few pictures I missed, but in particular, there was one video. Not sure how I didn't see it before.
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I play it to find that it was a video Claire had recorded while we were all alone at that park. It was of Lynne, on the swings, swinging as high as she could to keep up with Sara and I.
I've seen a lot of people smile, a lot of people laugh, I've even seen some people laugh without smiling, but watching her swing back and forth with that look on her face, I realize that there are some expressions that can't be captured in words. There's just no way to describe them. I would like to find the right word to use, but I'm not sure that there is one.
Either way, that look of glee that she had has stayed with me for a long time. It was genuine. Uncompromising. Real. It was probably so because she felt like she had found a life partner who would help her raise the two people who were most important to her in this world. Knowing that you have someone who will always have your back, it's an indescribable gratitude. I see that now.
I played the video over and over again, watching every part of her face. Even with pictures, videos, you can't really go back to these moments. They only happen once. I can read any one of these compositions notebooks as many times as I want, but I can only write each of them once. I guess this is why they tell you to live in the moment, because if you don't have someone to catch your hand at the right time, you'll miss a moment that you will never get back.
Thinking back on years I thought of my own family. How I was never at the side of any of them when they died. Never having the chance to say goodbye, they simply vanished, as if into a dream.
A screaming continued to echo across the sky, and I saw that the spirit of my deceased body had risen out of the hole in the backyard and into the air.
While towering above the neighborhood, I saw a sign in the distance. “Hade's Inferno Bridge,” and directly behind it, a bridge that gapped into the unknown. As I got closer and closer to the bridge, everything around me began to disappear, and once I was able to touch it, I saw that I was in space, and before me was a neon-electric pathway that seemed to have no end.
I began to walk on the pathway and sometime later came across another sign.
“Hyacintho amet mora framboise, bleue xiav, pos sinine vaarikas zmeura albastra,” it read which I would later find translated into “Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
When I got to the end of the trail, I saw a demon whose grin grew heavier as I approached him. He shook my left hand and said to me, “I am called Belphegor, I have been waiting for you.” He looks into my left eye, seeming to sense my soul, and he then tells me that I am filled with the spirit of sa ki mal.
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A door then appears behind him that reads “Devil's Nest,” and he allows me to enter through it, and when I am on the other side I find myself in a dark cave that is swallowed in ice. There is only one way to go, and as I travel down that one way I begin to hear voices. This didn't surprise me. With the road that I was on, I knew that my destiny was Hell.
I passed through two doors, and on a map in one of the caves I saw that there were five remaining, but I was to only pass through one more, and when I did pass the third one, the ice was gone and was replaced with a lake of fire.
There, way off into the distance, I saw the dead Satan, who sat on a throne and one by one counted off all of the residents of Hell. He pointed at each head, and the time came when he pointed at me and saw that I had just arrived, but there was something different about my arrival. I could see it in his soulless eyes.
And as he sat there, staring into my being, a woman came up to the side of me who had half of her face burnt off, suffering from the great fire that came from the lake.
Looking at her face, really looking at her face, I saw that it was my mother. She fell to my feet, flames crowding her backside, and spoke to me in a language I couldn't understand.
I was not allowed to stay with her, though, as Satan then appeared before me and told me to follow him. We walked through the fourth door, which was much like the preceding door, and there we both stay on a rock as Satan told me things that I had never known. This is exactly where the black silence occurs, some type of blackout, and when I come to I see that Satan and I have left Hell and are traveling through what seems to be Earth.
“I knew who you were the moment I saw the mark on your thumb,” the prince of darkness says to me. “There's a shadow in you, and I'm not the one who put it there,” he finishes.
For a while we walked through the world, and the air here was distasteful. This world was filled with suffering, and every person I saw had a grim look to their appearance. If there was rest of the mind anywhere, it certainly was not here. This place, it was haunted by the memory of a lost paradise.
“Those who you have met before me, they have spoken of my name as the one who is called the fallen angel, but alas, look at all those who I rule over. In my fall I have acquired the world, and surely, it is better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
And as we walked, Satan pointed out a specific individual who was toiling away in their own strife, and this he said to me right before I woke up. “If the road you followed brought you to this, of what use was the road?”
I drooled a little bit on the keyboard as I lifted my head to see the computer too, had fallen asleep. I left the room and quickly saw that it had stopped raining. I left my 139 | LOST PARADISE
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apartment, and again, I went to Lynne's door. I knocked for a while, raising the power just incase they were home and just didn't hear me, but I never got an answer. So instead of continuing on with the futile attempts of knocking, I decided to put my face to the door and tried to look through the peephole. “How long was I gone?,” that's what I asked myself as I tried to see anything other than black.
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Chapter 94
THE AWAKENING
1:3:10:94
“IT'S unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.” These words appear on a television screen and eventually fade out to reveal a coach who is standing on his field. The stadium, Copper Field, it is empty, but for a moment the coach stares down that long field and can hear the roar of a thirsty crowd.
A commercial break ensues, but when the program returns, old footage of the coach speaking could be seen on the screen. “We need to change the way we play the game,”
the coach says to his staff. “We don't need first-rate players with huge contracts, what we need is a system that utilizes the players' talents individually but comes together as a whole like clockwork.”
The coach continues, “Juggernaut teams can fall to underdogs because they rely solely on the talent of the individual. If we can create the right schemes with the right players, and give them a system that fits them all dynamically, we can make average players outstanding. We won't be relying completely on talent, but on schemes for every situation. I guess what I'm saying is we need to create a hybrid culture.”
The old footage stops playing and a sort of introduction to the program begins to play.
Dozens of voices, faces, images, cascaded onto eachother to tell a great story of wins and losses.
There is a road to the championship game that all players must take. No one is exempt from it. This road is paved in patience, teamwork, dedication, and it will humble any person who walks it. Yes, this is just a game, it's as simple as a field and a ball, yet, it is as complex as the human spirit. It's a sport, a business, and sometimes it's even a religion.
The volume of the television is lowered by a nurse who enters a room that Joe is currently residing in. She walks past Joe, past a curtain, then arrives to tend to a victim of a recent stabbing. The man was brought in only moments earlier and was victim to drug and gang-warfare associated violence.
Once she sees that the man is okay, she goes over to Joe and checks his monitor.
Afterwards, she goes to the foot of the bed and begins to remove his socks and then replaces them with a pair of clean socks. She then moves over to the side of the bed and starts to remove his pants, but before she can, she notices a blink in the corner of her eye.
When she looks up at Joe's face, she sees that he is awake.
Joe looks directly at her but is unable to speak any words. The nurse takes his right hand and starts to speak to him, telling him that he was in a hospital. After she's finished talking, he begins to murmur a few words but she can't completely understand him, so 141 | THE AWAKENING
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she moves in closer to listen more carefully, and he again begins to speak. “Water,” he says in a dry voice.
The nurse returns with a paper cup of water as she helps Joe to sit up, and little by little she gives him some of the water. About two minutes later, a doctor comes by and checks Joe. He does various tests, and then later that night, he phones Kathleen and tells her that her son is finally awake.
At this time, Kathleen's health was at an all-time low; she could barely see out of either eye and had a difficult time breathing. Her health was in such decline that she had to hire a caregiver. Karuna, she was no longer around as she had found employment in another state assisting teachers.
Kathleen was overjoyed to hear the news as she still maintained her hearing, but even that was beginning to fade out. The next morning, the caregiver drives Kathleen to the hospital and then drives her wheelchair to Joe's room. At the time that they arrive, Joe is sleeping, but it is not too long after that he awakes again to find his mother bedside.
For the first time in well over a decade, Joseph looks into his mother's eyes. He doesn't recognize her at all; the silver linings in her hair, her wheelchair-bound physique, but despite this he knows who she is, and even though all Kathleen can really see is some kind of form that has recently been emptied, a form with no content that only resembled a shape, she knows who he is.
When the caregiver sees that Joe had waken up, she feels uncomfortable and promptly excuses herself and leaves the room, telling them that she would be back with some refreshments.
Once she had left, and once the mother and son had locked eyes again, there was a very brief pause, and perhaps it was because this was a strange situation that not even life could have prepared the two for, or perhaps because it was the two were filled with emotion that they didn't know how to express, but this brief pause led to a type of relieving and joyous laughter. Kathleen did her best but could not hold back the tears as they rolled down her cheeks. Nor could Joseph, being affected by her affection. Nothing had to be said, everything was in what they did. It was in the exact moment that he took her frail hand that she took his, and together they held on to a dream.
I'd say there were a million reasons why they both cried, but I think the main reason was because that moment of coming together meant he forgave her, and at that same time, perhaps for the first time in his life, he felt accepted by someone he loved. He felt accepted, for who he was, what he was, and why he was the way that he was.
In still a dead and raspy voice, Joseph begins to speak to his mother, telling her that he heard pretty much everything. He knew that he was unconscious but there were many times he could hear all of the things going on around him. He heard her when she tried to 142 | THE AWAKENING
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tell him that his father had passed away. He heard her when she talked about her recent diabetes diagnosis. He heard her every time she asked him to wake up.
He told her that he could have woken up anytime he pleased, but that the place he was in was a place that he had to go through.
“At first I was alone in a dark room. It had a door. I went to the door but I couldn't open it. And after a while, after I turned back around, I saw some kind of box figure floating in the center of the room. It was more like a Rubik's cube, a large cube that contained thousands of smaller cubes. It wasn't colorful though, like a Rubik's cube, it had only black and white pieces, and the contrast it had was like, I don't know. It was like stars in the sky. I could see myself looking in on myself as I looked in the cube, and like some all-knowing thing I knew exactly what this place was. Everything here in this world is like a byproduct of time. If something is new, it will get old. If something is born, it will die. But back there, looking down at that frame, I don't think time existed. It was like I was looking into some type of eternity and in that state of mind I could understand it. It wasn't governed by a mode of existing or not existing. It didn't have to be real, but at the same time it didn't have to be fake. It was nothing and something at the same time, something I can't compare to anything else. The one thing I know for sure was that this frame held everything in the universe in place. So I kept looking at it, looking at it, looking at it, not knowing that slowly it was absorbing me in, and when I was fully immersed in its dimensions that's when I felt him. I didn't know where he was, but I could feel dad. He was filled with a type of pain, a type of sorrow that I didn't know people could feel. I felt with him, and I knew that in his pain there was only one thing that he wanted, only one thing that he needed. He needed me to forgive him,” Joe says as he begins to sob, “all he wanted was to be forgiven. I didn't hesitate at all, I told him it was alright, I told him that I loved him and I told him that every thing would be okay, and that's when he left. I let him go and I couldn't feel him or his sorrow anymore. It just vanished. And at the same time I was out of the cube and back into that room, looking down at it again. I turned around and went to the door and I could open it. What I realized though, was that the lock to the door was on the inside. All I had to do was unlock it and I could have left at any time, but I think what that meant was, was that dad was on the other side of that door, trying to get it, but it was locked for him, not for me.”
The doctor knocks on the door and Kathleen tells him to come in. He walks in with some papers in his hand and says he has good news, that there is nothing wrong with Joseph. No brain damage or anything of the sort and that he would be able to check out sometime this week.
Two days later, Joe is able to walk and has been greenlit to leave the hospital. His mother had stayed with him for the duration of the two days and she was to finally take 143 | THE AWAKENING
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him home. Or he was going to take her home, I don't know. Either way they were leaving and going home.
Joe wheeled his mother through the halls and finally got outside to see a taxi waiting in the distance. “You know how you said it looked like stars in the sky?,” she asks Joe.
“Yeah,” he replies. “I remember when you were younger, I would tell you about verses from the Bible that talked about the stars. I remember how I would always tell you stories about the stars as they shined in the nightsky. You really loved it, there was just something about them that you were drawn to. But I think what you saw back in that room was about one story in particular,” Kathy says, “it's the oldest story, really.”
That story was about the story of light versus dark. It comes in a variety of ways, but fundamentally, it is always the same. A bitter struggle between what we perceive to be good and evil. There are, however, broader ways of looking at good and evil. One might explain evil as not the act or the offense itself, but the lack of knowledge that leads to the action in question.
Many times will we magnify one little thing about a person, and many times will this one little thing become the very thing that identifies this person, but there is more to a person than one of his or her parts. You cannot determine who someone is by asking them a few questions. You can't decide who someone is by receiving the answers to these few questions. People are more complicated and more complex than that. The only way to understand someone's true identity, aside from mathematics, is to sit down and break bread with them. To sit down and for once let them do the talking. To just listen, for a moment, to someone else's story.
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Chapter 95
“TODAY LAST YEAR”
1:3:10:95
LAST night, I had a dream. In my bag I carried four gems. “Agrometnaz,” which was teal and in the shape of a prism; “Parturimetnaz,” which was crimson and in the shape of a cube; “Biotametnaz,” which was onyx and in the shape of a sphere; and
“Thanatometnaz,” which was porcelain and in the shape of an icosahedron.
I am walking on a bridge, leaving one island and on my way to another. Somewhere on this island is hidden the fifth and final gem that I need, which I believe is colored chartreuse. I have no idea what it is named nor do I know its shape, but I know that it is tied to time.
There are physical laws that govern mass in our region of the universe, and some scientists speculate that in other far out regions, the physical laws we know here and now might change. That is to say, trillions of lightyears from Earth, gravity might behave differently, or it might not even exist.
There is also speculation that physical laws may change over time, and in a sense, even evolve much like the physical counterpart of evolution that animals and plants endure. I suppose that would mean that things like gravity are able to reproduce, as strange as that may sound, or are at least perhaps affected by the things around them.
If there are physical laws for mass, is there a possibility of there being other types of laws for things without mass? Things of the abstract nature? Things like time?
Imagination? Perhaps even love and hate?
In the physical world and on Earth, if you suspend a pear in mid-air and then let go, of course due to gravity it will drop to the floor. So now take something abstract; what kind of laws do you think might govern it, if any at all?
After walking all through the island, I began to walk on its shore and there I spotted a boat. Off into the distance and in the ocean stood a clocktower. I'm sure the gem is somewhere in there.
I get into the boat and begin to paddle through the waters, and with each paddle I find that darkness falls. And when I am only about fifty yards from the clocktower, I start to see a form standing in front of the door. It is an old woman, and she is staring directly at me. Her difficult and cold stare is what causes me to wake up.
Looking into the mirror, the stare is gone. My eyes are no longer owl. I walk into the room that houses the composition notebooks and I begin to write down the clocktower dream. Once that task is complete, I go downstairs to check my mail and find that it is stuffed. I thought I checked it a couple of days ago.
I pull out all of the mail and on top there is an advertisement of a huge sale that had 145 | “TODAY LAST YEAR”
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already passed. Electronics, appliances, clothes, food; everything was going and this was my only chance.
I shuffle through and find some of my bills, and among the other mail were again things of the advertisemental nature. This is when I hear the sound of a car door closing from the parking lot and I glance outside to see who it is. When I get a better look, I see that it is Lynne, accompanied by David, and they are peering into their trunk searching for something that I'm not sure of.
Eventually I see Lynne lug out a luggage bag and David takes out a backpack and puts it on as they begin to walk towards the apartment building's front door. I stand there, wondering if I should run.
She opens the door and when she sees me, I can tell she is somewhat startled, but she doesn't stop walking. She looks at me but doesn't break her march, nor does David. Once she is past me, she slows down, almost looks my way, and then says “I can't talk to you right now,” and then she walks up the flight of stairs. After she says this, David somewhat looks at me and I can tell that he knows that I did something to upset his mother.
I wait a good while downstairs, and once I hear their door close, I go back to my apartment and throw away all the junkmail. I spend the next two hours thinking. I knew it. I knew I should have kept to myself. It always ends the same. Every fucking time. You think things are going to be different this time? Why would they be? Nothing about you has changed. You're the same misanthrope you were many years ago. I've gotten worse. I got worse. I am worse.
Two more hours. The same thoughts keep repeating and echoing in my mind. It gets so bad that I start to see the walls closing in on me. They keep closing in, and in, and in, and now I'm hearing a loud beat that continues to beat, and beat and beat.
I got fucking worse. I got fucking worse. The beating changes a little and the funny looking man on the television screen catches my attention, and then slowly I hear the beating sounds turn into knocking sounds, and when I open it Lynne barges in.
“I told myself I would never let another person control me,” she starts yelling at me,
“I told myself no matter what, this is my life and only I am in control of my life. Me and no one else!,” she raises her voice at me, “I told myself if anyone ever puts their hands on me I was done with them. I'm not even angry that you disappeared, or that you went away without telling me. That's none of my business and I am not entitled to that, I understand that about you. I understand that I shouldn't expect anything from you. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't push you away and that I wouldn't intrude on your privacy. I said to myself, 'Let's just see where this goes, and if it works out then it works out, I'm not going to force anything this time,' and for a long time I was happy with our relationship. I was happy with whatever we had. I was happy because I thought you were 146 | “TODAY LAST YEAR”
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happy. I'm not mad that you disappeared, I'm just frustrated because you hurt me physically. When I left the house I felt my heart shatter into a million pieces. You scared the shit out of me, you hurt me physically and you broke my heart. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to think. I thought you were different. I don't like feeling like this and I don't want to feel like this. Why couldn't you just talk to me!,” she raises her voice at me again, “I can't do this anymore. I won't do it. I have a million thoughts going through my head all at once and I'm hurt. And I'm tired. I'm sick of having my hopes smashed. You have no idea how crushed I am right now, and how fucked up I am because a part of me feels like it was my fault. That I caused you to grab me like that. A part of me feels like I deserved it, and I just feel empty inside now because you were my light,”
she begins to sob, “I'm heart-broken. I know I keep saying this but you hurt me and you broke my heart.”
She's winded and can barely stand up after what she says, so she finds her way to my couch and sits down. She stopped crying for a small while, but it was after I told her that it would be better for her if she found someone else that she began to cry again.
“I don't have anyone else,” she lowers her voice as she stares at the ground below her,
“I'll never find anyone. I'm just broken. I'm not right. I don't know what's wrong with me,” and after a medium pause, she says “I'm sad that you would say something like that.” She looks at me, “I feel nauseous, because when you say something like that, it means you don't see me in your future. I don't want anyone else. I don't want anything else. I'm past that. I just want you.”
“Okay,” I say. She looks away from me and then back at me, “What do you mean
'Okay?'” I think for a while, “I don't know. I don't know what you want me to say to that.
Alright. I understand what you want, and I also understand that you know not to expect anything from me. I just. I don't know. I like you a lot. I like being around you, which is more than I can say for most people. You're not like any other person I've ever known. In a philosophical sense, I mean. You're a beautiful person, you make people smile even if you're not smiling yourself. If I had to be buried next to someone for the rest of eternity, right now it would probably be you. I do want you to be in my future, I would actually be depressed if you weren't, but even though that's the way I feel towards you, it doesn't mean I can pack a bag and run away with you. I'm a very private person. I don't trust myself around you and definitely not around your kids. I will never be able to make that commitment. Part of me wishes I could, but that's just not who I am.”
She continues to sit there, staring in front of her and thinking about what I just said.
After a while she takes a piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolds it and starts to look at the paper.
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off my chest. I don't think I've ever yelled at anyone like that,” she says, still speaking softly. “I told you I started writing, right?,” she asks. “Yeah,” I reply.
She continues, “Well I wrote you a poem. A while ago. I didn't know what else to do.
I felt awful so I just sat down and kept writing one night. It was hard, 'cause I'm not that great at it. Not at writing, I mean. It took me a long time to come up with some of these lines and I even had Olya read it to make sure I wouldn't embarrass myself if I ever gave it to you. I still don't want to give it to you because I'm afraid you'll laugh or something.”
“Alright well just hand it over so I can see,” I laugh. She gets up hesitantly and walks toward me. Before she hands me the poem she wraps her arms around my body, and I guess because I have to, I wrap mine around her. I can still feel her heart, and it's still beating.
We both let go and she hands me the paper, and so I begin to read:
-Used to believe that your home was always going to be your home-Wasn't till I met you that I realized how sad I was, and how alone-Before then I just couldn't see that I was truly on my own-I was to blind to see that I had to leave there, else I wouldn't have grown
-I want you to know that before you, I never found a place that I felt I belonged-I was always lost or out of place, always felt like I was wrong-Maybe it was because I was too weird, or maybe because I came on too strong-And so before I knew it, the ship sailed, I was too late and it was already gone
-Then you came into my life, like a river that would run me dry-You taught me how to love again, you taught me how to cry-You made me stronger, then you made me weaker, I thought you became a lie-I miss you, and I hate you, and a small part of me almost wants to die
-I don't care, I'm yours even if you're not mines-I just want to see that ship again just one more time-I want to know that it's not over for me, that I can rewind-I need you to touch me again, and tell me that everything's fine
-If you asked me where I'd go tonight, I'd go back to today last year -When you held me in your arms and I cried all those happy tears-And for the first time in my life my heart had found its home and had no fear-And we danced the night away, not in some paradise, but just here, right here
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When I look back up, I can see her patiently waiting for my critique. “Am I good enough?” That's the thought bubble that I saw form above her head, outlined in insecurity.
“You spelled some things wrong, but that doesn't matter,” I say. She rolls her eyes at me. “Did you just roll your eyes?,” I ask her. She looks back at me. “Roll your eyes at me again,” I say as I walk up to her with a stern face. She rolls them again.
I grab her and pick her up into the air and somehow we land on the couch. We wrestle with each other and she tries to break free; she can't help but laugh like a little kid throughout the whole match.
Five minutes later we are both sitting on the couch and she's laying on me awkwardly.
“You have half the fucking couch why are you so close to me?” She mocks me by getting closer.
The apartment is completely silent as we both just sit there. “We went to a wedding,”
she says, “that's why we had those bags. It was my cousin's wedding and she lives in another state.” She says she didn't really feel like going but Emily insisted. “I might be the one woman in America who isn't a big fan of huge weddings. There was like over two-hundred people there. I mean I'm happy for her, but that was like a thirty-thousand dollar wedding. I think I would have done something else with that money, but that's me and I'm poor so what do I know.”
I must have dozed off because I woke up sometime later and she was gone. There was yet another knock at my door, one I had never heard before, and when I opened it, it was David. He had a video game controller in his hand and he walked inside explaining to me that it no longer worked and hoped that I could help him fix it.
We worked on it for a while, and throughout the whole thing, he talked to me. “I heard my mom yelling at you,” he laughed. It wasn't a general laugh, he was laughing at me. But as I'm fixing his broken controller, he puts his hand on my shoulder after he sees my sawn-off fingertips, and then he says “Don't worry.” He then starts to giggle, then finishes, “I too was alone.”
I laughed a little once I realized that Dave was quoting “Green Monster Jam,” a movie he had seen earlier and probably more than ten times.
“She yells at my dad too sometimes,” he says. Dave stops there, so at that point I asked him if he still had nightmares. He told me that he hadn't had a single nightmare ever since I gave him the dreamcatcher, and that he took it everywhere with him. “Goan folk made 'em fer kids, so da Devil don get too close.”
Two down, and so I only had one person left to reconcile with, but she didn't come home for another few days. Once Lynne told her that I was back, Silvio dropped her off.
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door. I knew it was her.
I opened the door and she jumped into my arms. “Where were you?,” she asked, she didn't let me answer, “I waited a million years for you.” I still don't completely understand why I'm one of her favorite people.
I let her down and we walk into my living room. As I go to sit down on my couch, for some reason she goes to the window and looks out. I ask what she is doing but I don't completely understand her reply.
She then begins to walk towards me and opens her folder to show me a bunch of drawings she had made while I was gone. For the second time, I am caught by surprise as she sits directly on my lap.
“This one is you,” she says after she flips through a bunch of them. It was a childish drawing of an individual sitting alone at a table. I laughed, mostly because she couldn't understand how much that told me about what she thought of me, and I told her that I really liked it.
After she shows me the rest of them, I ask her if she wants to watch television, so after she puts her folder down I end up giving her the remote. She leans back into me with the back of her head against my chest and starts to flip through the stations. It wasn't until after a while that I realized that I had wrapped my arms around her small body.
An individual who is physically unsubscribed to the world attempts to understand what it means to be human. They attempt to understand the human spirit and what might drive it to do the things that it does. Even though they are completely disconnected from the entire world, they are completely connected to the very fabric of existence. Our ability as humans to challenge our purpose and our existence is a milestone in biological achievement.
Sara continues to browse through all the channels and eventually stops on a station aimed for children. Butterflies and eagles and moonbeams and fairy tales, riding with the wind. When I'm sad, she comes to me with a thousand smiles that she'll give to me free.
She must have been tired because it wasn't that long until she was in and out of sleep.
She'd fall asleep for a minute and wake back up to continue watching her show. And maybe with the last amount of energy she had left, maybe with her last breath, she put her hands on top of mine and said “I love you” in a sleepy voice.
I stared at the wolf on the television screen before me for a moment and thought about what she said. I started thinking about my daughter who died young and about how she never made it into this world. “I love you too,” I said to Sara, and then she fell asleep.
I felt like she was a part of me. Something so beautiful in such an ugly world. We all look for things to save us, but I think it's the difficult way to salvation that we all miss.
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don't see it when it's there. Man, I know I haven't changed, not really, but I know I'm not the same. I feel like someone else.
I grab the remote and switch to the news channel to find a crowd and an empty stage.
Everyone was waiting for the new president to make his way to the podium and deliver his speech.
Feeling Sara's warm body reminded me of being back in the hole in my backyard.
The freezing temperature that I had to endure. Knowing that death was not far from my design.
Mister Nosleep taught me that death isn't the end, that it's the beginning of a chain reaction that will catch you if you're not careful. He taught me that none of us are who we appear to be on the outside, but we must maintain appearances to survive. There was however something Mister Nosleep didn't teach me. Something he didn't know, couldn't possibly know. Watching someone or something you love corrupt and go astray causes the ultimate disconnect from humanity. It leaves you an outsider, forever looking in, and in your pain you search for company to keep.
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Chapter 96
APOLITICAL CHANGE
1:3:10:96
I am honored to stand here before you on this historic evening. I am forever indebted to this supportive crowd. I look at each and every one of you and I see a crowd that is full of people who come from all walks of life. I see people who have come together for a singular purpose and cause, despite the high amounts of miscellany.
The equative phrase for this is “melting pot.” A phrase that has powered our great country for well over a century. This crowd is only a microcosm of America itself, only a small sample. There are people from all over the world here, who come to settle here for better lives. They think of their children and they immigrate to America to furnish a better future for them, a future that they themselves failed to attain. A future that they themselves perhaps were never offered.
And while it is great to be a melting pot, to be diverse and multi-cultured, such a concept poses threats. We have all seen it. Whether it be of class or race, we have all witnessed the terror that can come from multiplicity. This terror will not simply go away.
It will not vanish into thin air. And on the day that America is tested, we will either soar high or we will fall to the fire beneath us. We will triumph, or the fire that fuels the melting pot will overcome the pot itself.
I am a soldier by trade. I have led many men into battle. I've been in a war where when we returned home, great crowds greeted us with cheers, and I've also been in a war where when we returned home, even greater crowds greeted us with enmity. And I'm sure what was on every soldier's mind at that time was the question of whether or not they fought for a just cause.
This is a question that we all ask ourselves, every day. Do the things we do matter.
Are we living our lives with virtuous intention. Can my life really have an impact.
Today, right now and more than ever, the things we do will shape the course of our future. We are in a state of time where every thing matters. No battle can be jettisoned or the entire war will be lost.
We aren't in conflict with other counties, but we are in great dissension with the human abstintion. Poverty spreads throughout our country as an epidemic. Violence of all kinds hide at every corner and strangles the lives that could have been. Lack of education turns a would-be contributing member to society into a transgressive burden.
Environmental dilemma needs to be taken off the back-burner, or else it will be our sons and daughters that we leave the problems to. We need to find better solutions to preventing terrorism, domestic and from abroad, because the current way is not working.
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around with guns. They don't wear uniforms and they don't carry intelligence that you can intercept. Yet, they come with a force that can cripple nations and bring them down to their knees. They are indiscriminate in who they charge, and their adjudication is without mercy. This is our great war, and now is the time to act.
We have gathered on Providence Trail here this evening, and we speak about our future, both near and distant. This trail carries the history of many a great men and women who were destined to be recognized, not because fate would have them do good things, but because with colossal faith they pursued their destiny even in the face of adversity. Let it be noted, if you give a person purpose, I promise you with all that I have to offer that they too will accomplish great things.
This is the land of opportunity, but I am not certain that I can say there is equality in that opportunity. You do your best but sometimes it isn't enough, or sometimes someone else makes sure that it isn't enough. You don't get a fair shake and the same shot at life, liberty and happiness that others get. I understand this, every part of it, and my tenure in office will be staunch to fixing this.
I know there are a lot of people out there that are dubious of my position as the president of the United States. I know a lot of you are thinking I will be just the same as any other politician. These are the exact things you should be thinking, until I and my office prove otherwise. Until crime is reduced and educational programs are expanded.
Until unemployment is no longer one of our most prevalent of statistics and equality is delivered on every facet of opportunity.
We have enough experience and I can make the arduous decisions. We will get people back to work. Back to school. We will deliver optimism. No more desperation, we must make way for the new way. The better way. We are the strongest and most powerful free society in the world, and our nation is poised for greatness. And we will reach greatness as long as we are focused and provide real opportunity for all Americans.
The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members, and if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. While we are all on our own trail, we must take the time to make room for the stranger, to take up the case of the stranger, for this is where true grace lies. Not only should we endeavor to make America greater, but the world greater. We have been put in the position to make a better world for every peoples of every nation, so let us not underemphasize our own stance in the world.
Let us stand up for justice, and for truth, and let us understand that while power is in the hands of only a few, human reform is in the hands of all those who seek it, and this is where the true power lies. And so when you show us the pictures taken throughout all of America, and you show us your tired, your poor and your huddled masses yearning to 153 | APOLITICAL CHANGE
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breathe free, you are showing us not the America that has been left behind, but the America that will rise. But to get there, we must understand that we cannot fight this great and pugnacious war with guns and bullets, we must fight it with the power of human reformation.
When you rewrite a law, you simply rewrite the way a person breaks that law, but when you rewrite a person, you no longer need that law. We must take new approaches to our social issues, and must always remember that those who make peaceful revolution impossible surely will make violent revolution inevitable. Bring equality to opportunity and justice will speak for itself.
A woman once said that every dream begins with a dreamer, and that you should reach for the stars. I believe each American, at some point in their life, should write their own declaration of independence, not to declare their independence from America, but to declare their independence from that which blinds them from the truth. To declare independence from that which blinds the eyes of a person who could have been visionary.
I am nearing the denouement of my trail here, so I will finish with one final message.
This speech was intended for anyone out there who believes that perhaps, we were all born with the moral obligation to leave behind a better world than the one we were given.
Praise those who take this Providence Trail. Thank you, goodnight, and God bless America.
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Chapter 97
FILE 1 OF 3, “BLOODTHUMB”
1:3:10:97
THE president readjusted his blue tie as he walked away from the stage, waving at his supporters. A part of me wondered if he was serious. If he would actually bring change or not. He talked about the human abstintion, which I guess is good. People should know what they're up against.
“The human abstintion is described as humankind's conflict with various types of social issues, such as but not limited to; poverty, discrimination and environmental degradation, and is compared to but contrasted against the notion of traditional warfare which might include two or more conflicting nations, in the sense that the human abstintion cannot be fought in the same regard as traditional warfare, in such that where the opposition wears a uniform, social issues are not readily visible in every situation and are often elusive to human capability. While the human abstintion is in part concerned with problematics, the idea in itself calls to human reformation as one of the possible solutions to these problems, and attempts to inspire more creative and innovative ways to dealing with many of the world's collective social issues.” Acinnatirb's Notalogy, page 40
highlighted.
Corruption would also fall under these issues, and when you have things like fixed elections and you realize that your vote doesn't really count, abstintion comes knocking on your door.
Sara laid asleep in my arms and I wondered when Lynne was going to finally come to pick her up. Night had dawned and her little yellow shirt was losing its color.
I picked up the remote and began to switch through channels, at one point passing through a documentary that detailed the bitter rivalry between the Crips and the Bloods, and at another hearing of an anti-hero who would say “The good guys dress in black.”
What I would eventually land on was a program that depicted the hardships of a sports organization in a type of interview format, and being interested, I raised the volume just a bit.
“What makes this story unlike any other sports story I've ever seen,” the name of sports analyst comes up at the bottom right, Al Summerall, “is not the fact that it was David versus Goliath, or the fact that a team came together at the most important time.
What made it different actually had nothing to do with sports at all; which was the fact that the city this team played in at the time was in a state of eventual urban decay. And that even though the fans had no hope, not for life and especially not for a championship, this team persevered. That's what really makes this a unique story that everyone should know about.”
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I was curious and wanted to keep watching but it was getting late and had to get Sara home. I got up with her and carried her across the hallway. Yeah, it was a very short distance, but it gave me a lot of time to think.
By now you've realized that I have no answers for you. Not on life and especially not on death. Your journey is your own. There is a good chance that you will spend many nights alone in the dark, waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Someone or something to come along and give you concrete and undeniable answers, but I'm almost certain you will always get shortchanged, and instead of getting those answers you'll get something like Sara. That's the best that life and the universe has to offer you.
Sara is not what I've been looking for my whole life, she's not the answer to all my questions and she is not the reason for my existence, she's just a little girl. She's just a little girl the same way a rock is just a rock until you pick up that idle rock and throw it at a can, and in that moment that it is gliding through the air, you gave it a purpose.
The text has often been used as a metaphor for life's difficult choices, and many see the boat as referring to one's self or a group with which one identifies. Rowing is a skillful, if tedious, practice that takes perfection but also directs the vessel. When sung as a group, the act of rowing becomes a unifier, as oars should be in sync for the progression of a rowboat. The idea that human beings travel along a certain stream [time] suggests boundaries in the path of choices and in free will. The third line recommends that challenges should be greeted in stride while open to joy with a smile. Some have questioned the song's implied necessity to row one's boat downstream. This may in fact be a commentary on the paradoxical nature of time's arrow with respect to man's free will in a universe of materialistic causality. The final line, "Life is but a dream", is perhaps the most meaningful. With a religious point of view, life and the physical plane may be regarded as having equivalent value as that of a dream, such that troubles are seen in the context of a lesser reality once one has awakened. Acinnatirb's Notalogy, page 298
highlighted.
The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye, until we meet again. Not my words but the last words of a deceased poet. The sentence was seen in a scene on a wall from a maze dream. Section 2 compartment 19.
I got to Lynne's door and turned the knob to enter the apartment and when I get in I see Lynne sitting in her kitchen working on something. “Is she sleeping?,” Lynne asks. I nod my head and make my way to the kids' room where I find Dave watching television.
I lay her to rest beside Dave, and before I leave I stare at Dave. He stares back and eventually asks, “What?”
After a long pause of making Dave feel uncomfortable I started to say something.
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and walked out of the room, hearing Dave softly laugh in the background as to not wake his sleeping sister.
Walking back through the living room I went over to Lynne and on the wall behind her I saw one of those gay ass “family” board things. You know what I'm talking about, the ones with a bunch of short life-motivators on them. “Be happy, today is your day.”
“Cherish every moment.” “Laugh out loud.”
“Where's Claire?,” I asked her. “We honestly have no idea,” she replies, “after we got back home from the roadtrip she said she needed to go somewhere and she hasn't called since.” “You're not worried about her?” “She does this kind of stuff all the time. She'll be back and then gone again, that's just who she is.” “But didn't you say she had issues or something?” “She did. She does, I mean. But I think she's better now, like a lot better.
She had a lot of fun on the trip.”
I think about what she says and for whatever reason I remember the program that I have playing on my television, so I find a way to leave and get back to my apartment.
After I open my door and as I'm walking to the couch I hear a whisper in my ear. It sounded like Sid but I couldn't sure.
The occurrence reminds me of a dream I had thirteen months ago. It was one of those dreams that I wasn't in, and instead was simply viewing. It took place at a phone-booth near a gas station that was in a mostly country town. A lady detective who went by January Levinson dusted the phone-booth for fingerprints and later used a listening device to intercept a call that was made earlier that week.
The call did not connect and instead a message was left on the answering machine, and after listening to the message, Jan realized that this was a call made to the “Bat-man,”
the serial killer she was chasing.
Who the message was left by, she couldn't figure out, but she had now learned that there was a good chance that the killings she was investigating were not committed by one, but two individuals together.
For the ninth time, she plays back some of the audio. “Yes, I'm still tired, but I've already paid quarters and I'm giving you a nightcall to tell you how I feel.” “If not, just hang up now. Keep it in the back of mind though, that I'll be watching you. Every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I'll be watching you.” “That's how I know that when I try to get through on the telephone to you, there will be nobody home.”
Jan later phoned her old-time partner on the case and revealed this new information to him, stating that she believed that the two homicidal maniacs had a falling-out and were now taunting and haunting each other. She theorized, considering their nature, that they were now perhaps even hunting each other, and to the victor went the prize.
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assignments. Five of us, myself included, infiltrated the base beforehand, and the other twenty would invade the prison with warfare as soon as I made the call.
Once inside the prison, I sent out the radio signal and immediately the five of us began to search the holding cells. We opened all of them, freeing any prisoners who inmated them. A lot of them walked out like mindless zombies, never knowing what freedom was. We must have gone through about fifty holding cells in five sections, and not too long later, the alarm was sound and the civilians knew we were here.
Stephanie helped me ram the door to a prison cell down and what I saw on the other side paralyzed me mentally. The civilians had completely removed any body that Ramix had from the waist down. I ran over to her and picked her up and began to carry her, and later on she told me that they mutilated her because of her constant defiance and lunatic behavior.
Once Stephanie, Gary, Sterling, Corey and I made it out of the prison building we saw the war that was raging outside. The outsiders had overrun the civilians and their prison base and sought to free all those who were unjustly enslaved.
“This way,” John the Citizen shouts out to us, and we follow him as he strikes his targets with his bow and arrow. As we run, I can feel the warm and infected breath of Ramix on my shoulder, “This is the beginning of the end,” she whispers on me.
We walked into my office and I had the patient lay down. One of her family members also attended this session, as well as three others who were mainly there for regulatory purposes. After grabbing my notepad, I sat down and began to speak to her, but because of her brain trauma, she could not speak back as she had a hard time relearning the English language.
“No,” I nodded my head left to right, “and yes,” I nodded my head down and up, and when I saw that she understood, I looked back at my notes.
There was a supposed scandal at the White House, break-ins and the exposing of classified information, and inside my patient's head were all the truths. I just needed to find my way around her mind.
I presented to her several pictures of the scene where she had been hit by a car. “I just want you to look at a few pictures with me,” I tell her, “tell me if you see something familiar.” I hold up a picture of a grayscale picture, “This one is dark, but it's a picture of a building near Middle Bank. Do you recognize it?”
She nods her head sideways, so I show her the next picture, “This is a photo of D.F.R.
and Jule Rea, your gentleman friends, do you recognize them?” She looks into their eyes and I can see a glimpse of recognition in her cognition, and soon after she nods up and down, then says “I recognize them.”
“Good, that's a great sign,” I reply. I now hold up a picture of EsNecil's company 158 | FILE 1 OF 3, “BLOODTHUMB”
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logo, a company which she worked for, and her employee identification number, “This is the name of a small store that sells and fixes different types of things for people, like watches and bracelets, does it ring a bell?” She nods her head sideways and says “No.”
“You don't remember standing in front of it?,” I ask.
At this moment her family member asks me if they could talk in private, and so in a corner of the room we whispered to eachother. “This isn't working, she's not saying anything of any value. She doesn't remember the street, she doesn't remember Will-A-Bee, and all of this stuff may pull her deeper into her trauma.” “Just two more questions, and then we can end this session. I just need to ask her about the plates and about the replacement medicine the doctors are giving her now since they see her brain is beginning to function normally.”
The family member allowed me to continue because we both knew what we needed was inside her head, I just had to find a way to unlock it, to make her remember.
“You don't know if you've been here before, or if you're repeating things. You're sitting on your porch and you don't know why. You've lost your sense of time. You want to ask questions, but you forget which ones you wanted to ask. The one thing that could make you remember those questions is if you wrote them down while you were thinking of them. If you made notes of them, then maybe you'd remember. But sometimes when you go to write them down, you forget what you are doing and wonder why you have a pen in your hand. It's like you just woke up, doctor. You have a pen in your hand and you don't know why.”
Hello, goodbye. I walked down the steps and through the hallway of the first floor to find that the mailman was delivering mail. He had already seen me so it was too late to back out, and it was about five seconds later that I finally reached him. He nodded at me, as I did him, and I soon sought to pass by him. It was when I noticed that he was putting mail in my box when I told him that those were meant for me and I would just take them now. And as he handed them to me, he gave me mail that didn't belong to me.
“This is for 1B,” I told him, and went to give it back. I soon learned that he suffered from dyslexia, alexia, really, and he apologized to me. “You know what, I'm good friends with the person who lives in 1B, so I'll give it to them for you.”
I took my remaining mail and I walked back into the first floor and to give Tao his mail, I realized that his name was not exactly on it, that it was instead a May-ling.
“Knock knock,” the door said, and it creaked as it opened. It was not Tao but a woman, and for a second I paused before I said “Sorry, they gave me your mail.” She took the mail and said thanks, but remarked on the fact that she had never seen me in the building before, and then promptly introduced herself as May-ling, shaking my hand in the process.
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I asked her if she by chance knew someone named Tao, and she said “yes.” She was Tao's girlfriend, “We meet through internet,” she told me. I then asked her if he was in and she said “no,” that he was “on business trip for new job.” “Alright, it was nice meeting you,” I told her, and I went away from that place, away and far away.
The next day, sometime in the morning and around ten a.m., I heard a moving truck pull up into the apartment's parking lot. I looked outside and saw Mary leaving the front door of the building with Anthony in her arm. After a while and after one of the men left the truck, she began to talk to them and started signing papers, and it wasn't long until the men began to bring things out of her apartment and into the moving truck.
As they loaded the truck Mary stayed out of her apartment as to not get in the way and instead stayed around the second floor where she talked to Deana and Mike about where she was headed and why.
While I heard muffled conversation between the three, I also heard crackling noises that came from right in front of my door, but when I put my eye to the peephole I see nothing. I hear it clearly but I cannot see it, not until I open my door to find Anthony sitting down and playing with a racecar.
When he looks up at me I can see that I startled him, and soonafter he stands up and begins to walk away, forgetting his toy and looking back one time to make sure I am not following him. He gets to Mary and hides behind her, staring directly at me, but I couldn't say if it was fear or if it was curiosity.
Once she sees me she ends her conversation with the neighbors and begins to walk towards me as Anthony follows, walking with his own type of stutter-step.
“I thought you moved or something,” she says. She tells me about her promotion and how she had to relocate, and at first she never quite notices how Anthony is hiding behind her, but when she does, though, she picks him up and tells him not to be afraid.
“Can you say 'bye-bye?,' say 'bye-bye.'” She keeps shaking his hand and trying to get him to say it but for some reason he won't.
I pick up his racecar and hand it to him and he takes it, but he still doesn't want to talk to me. At one point I felt like Ah Zabenyaning him but he probably wouldn't have liked that. Mary sees that he is being bothered and eventually gives up and says goodbye to me herself and begins to walk away. It was as she began to walk up the flight of stairs to the third floor that I saw that Anthony was still staring at me, and like shy babies often do, he moved his lips, but didn't necessarily talk, as he finally and faintly said bye-bye.
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Chapter 98
THE CITY OF FOUNTAINS
1:3:10:98
ABOUT two years ago, I had this dream. I am walking towards a book store. I pass by a statue of a demon who is fighting an angel, and just beyond I see a crowd of people who are burning books. Walking past the burning pile of literature I saw that the nature of most books being burned were those that contested free will. What is free will, and do we have it? Do we perceive free will in the correct accord, or are we looking at it the wrong way?
Is life no more than reaction. Assuming the circumstances and forces are equal for every occurrence, every time you hit a tennis ball with an N amount of force, it will travel a Y amount of distance in a C amount of time. Every thing is predetermined to a certain accord. From the sub-atomic scale to the cosmic scale, every thing in the universe behaves and is based off of reaction.
This is the time when you will want to ask yourself, are you truly conscious? Are you actually aware? Do you make your own decisions, or are you that tennis ball simply reacting to what came before, clouded under the cape of predeterminance.
Past the burning, I heard a bell as I entered the book store, and once inside I saw that it was a comic-book store.
The clerk. The moment he sees me he tells me to go around back. In his back room he shows me the video tape. The man covered in darkness was here. Right here, in this store.
I've been to two different cities. Numerous towns inbetween. Where I sleep is random. On benches. In the sewers. Roofs. It's not comfortable, not one bit. But being out in the world when the Sun is down is a constant reminder. Criminals hide in the darkness.
They clock in when you clock out, but if you work overtime you'll see them. You'll see him.
The video tape. It showed everything. The fantastic and brutal murder of four whores in the nearby parking lot. It was him. Had to be him. There are just some things you know. Instinct. Like waking up in the morning and knowing it had rained during the night.
I now understand why the white shade chose me. I get it. I get it now. It was always me. It was always anyone who was willing to become his metaphor. Anyone who was willing to lose their life to save the world. What the white shade knew then, and what I've only just learned now, is that on every path there is an awakening. There is a checkpoint on the side of the road where you will make a decision and it will decide the course of your fate.
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The video tape. I took it and left the store. Said my goodbye. When I got outside I saw that the burning pile of literature was replaced by smoke and ash. Have to find some place to lay my head. Continue the search tomorrow. Stay patient, don't waste time on shooting stars. He can run but he can't hide.
Where am I? What city am I in? Look at the skyline. Are those fountains on the top of that skyscraper? Yeah, I know what city I'm in. The city of fountains, Kansas City.
This is our third spring. The birds are back and the Sun suspends itself above in the air as a free spirit. Sitting in my bedroom and looking out of the window I am touched by the beautiful view of the world. Spring! Rejuvenation! Rebirth! Every thing's blooming!
All that crap.
And then suddenly a strange “knock knock,” strange because it doesn't sound like it's coming from a door. I leave the room and enter the living room and as I'm going for the door I notice Jack at my window, he appeared to be standing on a ledge.
“Come on, let me in man,” his voice barely breaks through the window. I walk over and open the window, wondering what the hell he's doing. He enters my apartment,
“Finally, you're home... I was beginning to think you left town.” He then reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a compact-disc case. “I want you to give this record a listen, I think you'll like it,” he says. I take the CD from him and then ask him why he didn't just come through the door. “Landlord fixed the lock to the building and I didn't have my keys.” “Why didn't you just buzz me?,” I respond. “How did you even climb up here?,” I ask before he can answer.
“Look, man,” he points at the case, “just listen to the album and tell me what you think.” He pauses. “I told you that I'm part of Cloud Hemingway now right?” “You didn't.” “Their two main guys left so the drummer and bassist called me up. We worked on this for a while and I kind of became the frontman. Lyricist, guitarist and vocalist. It's a lot of work but these guys let me have complete creative control.”
The album was called “The Second Mind” and their label was Reclipse Records.
“What's this cover?,” I asked. He told me that the cover design was created by someone from Reclipse Records and that it was called an Enzmic. On a blackground, there was a perfect white circle, and on the 45th degree of the circle, or in the upper right corner I should say, was a small white dot, and going through the small dot are two white lines; a vertical line and a horizontal line that meet perpendicularly at the dot to form a lowercase
“t” or a cross, and their lengths are the radius of the larger initial circle.
“Yeah, this shit is really out there man,” he tells me. He tells me about how the band used to put twenty-plus songs on a single album, and that this album itself only had ten songs because he wanted to focus on each song and give each track depth in order to 162 | THE CITY OF FOUNTAINS
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create a dynamic concept album. “Each song is developed and is its own experience.”
Jack doesn't leave for another ten minutes as he goes on and on and on explaining to me that the album was about life and death. Remember how I told you Lynne's face lit up as she told me about the colors of roses and their meanings? Jack's face is almost the same way. When someone gets to talk about something they love, like their passion, they won't be able to hide the inner child in them. In a way that's what passion does, it keeps that part of you alive. It keeps you young. You don't want to grow old you say? Then I suggest you find your passion.
Aside from life and death, I found out that it was about many other things as well.
Self-identity, loss, the many forms of violence, drug abuse, the passage of time, healing.
As Jack was leaving, I flipped the case and began to read the track listing.
1. Alcoves 1:30; 2. The Shades of a Distant Life 2:43; 3. God's Triangle 3:30; 4.
Monolith 6:53; 5. Rediscovery Road 4:15; 6. Canvasology 6:30; 7. The Hero with a Thousand Faces 7:51; 8. Hourglass 3:24; 9. Saturn Stalemate 3:50; 10. Free Spirit Dire Raven 1:45
The Second Mind by Cloud Hemingway. “I was definitely going to give it a listen,” I thought to myself as Jack went back out through the window. Maybe somewhere in it I'd hear myself.
As I went to go to set down the case my phone began to ring. “I went over and picked it up,” said hello? It was Brandon, calling to tell me about the state of my house. How there was a good chance it had been robbed by thieves who left the home in shambles. I told him that I already knew about it and that I would take care of it, then he goes on to tell me about how it might be something personal, because the same people completely destroyed my car as well.
I was honestly surprised, and it showed in my voice. Black outs. Memory spots. I had no recollection of ever destroying my car, but then again, memory is a funny thing.
Like a computer that stores hundreds of photos, the human brain stores memories that can be retrieved when needed. But these aren't the only places where the concept of memory exists, there are a countless number of places, and I think the most complex of memory is the universe's memory.
In computer science, a parent process can spawn a child process, but the child process can never have information that its parent process doesn't also have. The parent process, however, can have information that the child process does not also have. Now this is just an idea, but if the universe is the parent process, and an organism with the ability of 163 | THE CITY OF FOUNTAINS
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memory is the child process, going by standards mentioned earlier, the universe itself must also have the ability of memory.
How would universal memory work? When an atom moves from location 5 to location 4, does the universe register and record that atom's distance traveled? Does the universe also store other types of information, such as the loss of a proton? Where is this information stored?
What if time behaved much like light, and after the universe records each process into its memory, it then shares that information with organisms who are evolved enough to interpret it. We retrieve its information and now know that the little lion has moved from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain.
I wonder what would happen if the universe itself began to have black outs and memory spots. If the universe's memory began to fault and it couldn't remember things as well as it once did.
What if there are other universe systems that sometimes asks for information from the faulty universe memory in question, like how you might ask your friend what time you both left that party last night because you can't remember, and your friend, being the universe with faulty memory, gives you an incorrect answer.
At that point, we are at the mercy of our own universe, and our reality as we know it could be a complete lie.
Everyone stares into the complex, but each person sees something different. Much like how every one views the world differently. I think this is why your guardians tell you that you are unique, not because you're actually unique, but because your perception on the world is unique, and that in itself is what makes you unique. I don't know.
Oh yeah, right, before I forget. When you add up all the numbers, it only ends up totaling up to one thousand.
After the phone call talk with Brandon my brain began to tell me that it was mildly hungry, but when I entered my kitchen I saw that I was out of my favorite cereal.
On my way to Chase Mart I got a breath of fresh air, something that was uncommon in the asylum, and only about a few yards away from the store I saw two helicopters fly above me in the sky. Wonder what happened.
I think it was maybe seven years ago that I killed the mayor of New York City.
Geoffrey Harharwood, who me and my partner convicted of corruption in our own court, he got what was coming to him.
Trying to escape from the security detail posed harder than we initially anticipated, but I managed to pick up my wounded partner and we escaped from the back window of the office and onto a low roof. It wasn't too long until there were helicopters in the air 164 | THE CITY OF FOUNTAINS
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who began to search with their searchlights.
At this moment, the dream made a change, and I was no longer in the perspective of myself. Instead, I could actually see myself and my partner from the perspective of one of the helicopter cameras as me and my partner made our getaway. It was an infrared thermal camera and sought to make our escape impossible.
I made the mistake of taking off my happy theater mask, which would later on come back to haunt me. My identity would be exposed and for a long time I would be America's most wanted criminal.
It was exactly five months later that the authorities caught up to us in Colombia. In those five months we became well known by Colombia's poor, so much that the residents there began to call us “the Robin Hood paisas.”
I believe if you give a person food and water, then everything else will follow. More important than love, more important than knowledge, more important than contentment, is food and water. You simply can't function without them. I think if you start there, you can help a person grow a better future.
In Colombia we found asylum, refuge. We didn't have to wear masks here, we didn't have to conceal our identity. But the thing about Colombia... Is that it's where my partner died. Colombian officials, aided by American officials, they caught up to us and they killed him. And it doesn't matter if your intentions were good, criminals don't get proper funerals.
Day before he died, he told me something that I haven't forgotten since. Something about terrorism, and I guess you could have called us terrorists 'cause that's what we were.
In some kind of a warning sense, he told me that if a person uses violence to cause a revolution and they succeed in their campaign, they should understand that their new world will be based and founded upon violence. He told me that the methods you use to bring about change will root themselves in the new world.
I think he told me that because he knew Colombia would be his last stop, and that if I made it out of there alive and he didn't, I would then become driven by true hatred. “Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.” He knew that I was driven by emotion, so he gifted me that quote, and seven years later I'm still here thinking about it while he's six feet under in a Colombian grave.
In the cereal section I can't find my brand, so when I go up to the clerk, I ask him if they still carry Lucey Goosies, but he says no. I end up buying some cereal I have never tried before and when I get home to eat I find that it's not so bad. ask if jfk was a communist here. While eating I can hear the television in the living room as a 165 | THE CITY OF FOUNTAINS
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documentary program plays. Its focus was on that of the Christ, and continue did the host, to speak of his life.
You and I, we've discussed a lot of things now, and I'm sure you've probably disagreed with some of the things I've said. I don't mind though, it's good to question everything. It's the people who question everything that eventually understand that life is a puzzle. You are thrown into a maze and at the beginning you don't know what it is, you don't understand anything, but as you grow and as you learn you adapt to the world you've been thrown into and you begin to understand that life itself is a puzzle to be solved.
You start to recognize patterns and at some point you'll see the maze for the walls. It's very difficult to read between the lines, the stories and the compositions, but when a person applies themself to life, and after they solve the maze and find its exit, they'll look back at their former self and see how far they've come. And because they struggled, they won't simply boast about their ability at the gate, they will instead walk back into the maze to help guide others through, even if it may mean getting lost again.
Last year Lynne told me that her favorite flower was the dandelion. She said it was her favorite because it was such an average flower. “It's such a common and under-appreciated flower,” she'd say. And looking for its symbolization, she read nothing unique, so instead she decided to give it a real meaning, even if she was the only one who knew about it. She told me that she decided dandelions would represent a person learning of their destiny. The common and under-appreciated, average person, going through their life, and on a particular day, becoming aware of what they had to do.
When Jesus finally arrived and the people saw him, and they knew him, knew who he was, they thought to themselves, “This is what we have been waiting for!” But they couldn't have known that even Jesus, at some point in his life, was confused and lost.
That even Jesus at some point questioned his own purpose.
You see, Jesus, like any other person, was most likely not born with the knowledge of his destiny. He instead had to learn of it, had to become more and more aware of it as his life developed. Like a human, he was thrown into the world and knew nothing about it, but alas, he learned.
Look, what I'm trying to say is, if you're reading this now, then your path hasn't met its end, and that it's possible that your story has yet to be realized. If even Jesus, who is God, lacked the knowledge of his fate, how much less are humans that they would know of theirs? Even God had to solve this puzzle.
After the documentary ends I walk into the room that houses the compost books. I look at the library as I've done many times before. “Man, how the hell did you get here,”
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I think to myself. Are there others out there that suffer from the anthology complex like I do? Question mark.
I pull out the chair from underneath the desk and after sitting I open the drawer to take out Notes. I think to myself as I open the notebook to a blank page, “It's been almost fifteen years of solitude and contemplation.” And like that I find that my thoughts have begun to spill onto paper. “At times I almost dream, that I too, have spent a life the sages'
way.”
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Chapter 99
PAGE 5 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS” + THE ENDLESS RIVER
1:3:10:99
“AMAZING grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” This was an epigraph written on a tombstone found in over a hundred and fifty dreams. Every once in a while I'll browse through the graveyard looking for some kind of memory.
“It seems like there are more than before,” I said to Lynne as we stood over the Peace Lilies she had sown over two years ago when she first moved here. As we waited for both Sara and Dave, she kneeled down and continued to tend to them.
“They're regrowing really well,” she says, “and their spathes have a healthier white color to them.” “Their what?...”
She looks up at me, for a long moment, and as I wait for her to respond, I find that she never does. For a while she just stares into me, as if she wanted to ask a question, and then finally she looks back down at her flowers, saying “You know...,” but never finishing.
Some time goes by, and thinking of Sara, and to break the awkwardness, I told Lynne that when Sara came by the other day she sat in my lap for the second time. She laughs, still tending the flowers. I asked her if that made her uncomfortable, and she says absolutely not, but does also tell me that when Silvio dropped Sara off, he told Lynne not to let any of his children near me. This created a longer, more awkward pause than before.
She gets back up and faces towards me, and as the Sun shines in her eyes she begins to smile, “Hey do you remember how we woke you up that one morning and made you spend the day with us?,” she laughs, “We barely knew you then. Now that I think about it that was kind of a weird thing for me to do.”
I did actually remember that day. It was the first time in my life that I ever gardened.
What I don't understand is why she would think I would forget a day like that. She must understand that by now, and even then, that she is special to me. Not special in the romantic sense, not even special in the special sense, but special in the sense that here in this lifetime, my door was the one that she came knocking on, and whether one lives by fate or by coincidence, the fact of the matter is that we were both standing here now, and it didn't happen any other way.
Maybe she just doesn't realize that I'm more like her than she thinks. Like two sides to a silver coin.
With the Sun still in her eyes, she asks me if we were still planning to watch the Sun rise tomorrow morning. Don't think for one second that this was my idea.
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Had it been Maria who asked, I probably would have laughed at her, but it was Lynne. She got me to garden, she got me to paint; simply put, she had a way about her.
When Sara and Dave finally came down we all got in the car and headed for the home. During the drive I had two things on my mind: The wasteland it had become after I left it, and my desire to sell the home.
Five minutes away, I sort of kind of began to look at Lynne in the corner of my eye, just watching her. Wondering why she was still here. “Thank you for coming, I appreciate it,” I said catching her off-guard, and she looked at me as she nodded her head, but didn't say anything. I understood then, that that was the first time in my life that I ever asked anyone else for help. I was always somewhat proud but in a humble sort of way, but that was the day I finally let her in and she took care of everything. She took care of me, and as soft as this may sound, she took care of my heart.
We arrived at the home and got out to see the wasteland I had imagined. I almost didn't want to proceed. Too many ghosts. Too many ghosts. Many ghosts. But I didn't have a choice. Lynne proceeded towards the house and so I followed.
As she walked before me, I saw her the way I saw her in a dream I had of her two long years ago. Wearing a bright yellow dress and walking with a slight limp, she guided me down a dark hallway and freed me from an internal struggle that kept me prisoner, and her aura told me that she would always be there for me. Would always be there to comfort me in my times of sorrow.
Eighth year, December 2nd, I had this dream. Roach and I walked back down Sodom and again took the weird passage way back into the town in which we had come from.
Along the way we saw graffiti we had never seen before, “They tell you what to dream,”
spraypainted in black on the wall.
Once we get into the town and then into the city, the dream starts to fade, but what I could remember was the fact that Roach was now gone. I could remember him telling me, just before he left, that he was glad I spent all that time with him, glad because it made him feel like he wasn't crazy. It made him feel less alone, knowing there were other people like him in the world who felt the same way he felt. I can still hear him saying in that distant voice, “Life is about finding like-minded people so that together you can grow.”
Even though those were his words, there was still something off about him.
Something I couldn't put my finger on. I just couldn't completely understand him, because people like him have something inside of them. Something to do with death. I feel like even if he did succeed in whatever he was trying to accomplish, he still wouldn't be whole.
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knowing what would happen to me next. I overcame the fear of leaving home, and giving up my home, and the fear of being out in the world and completely lost. I didn't know where I was going, but I think that's the best way to get someplace you've never been.”
He told me that that was the saddest day of his life, that he didn't want to leave, but that it was something he had to do. He said being that low in life, he had no where to go but up.
Once he'd gone I saw that I was alone and walking towards a crosswalk. On the corner there was a woman who was handing out advertisements, and not wanting to pass her I crossed the road. It wasn't until I got to the other side that I realized she was not actually handing out advertisements but words of wisdom, of life.
Someone had taken her card and then discarded it onto the walk. When I picked it up, and read the backside, it read “Little Minds Have Little Dreams.” Curious, I waked back over to her and asked her about her card.
I was stunned to find out that she had many cards that resembled the notes of Roach.
Some of them had the exact same wordings as his, and others were some she had come up with herself. And of course, as I asked her more and more questions, I came to the revelation that she was just like me; she had received a note from Roach and wanted more in life.
“I quit my job and I left my boyfriend. It just gave me a lot of time to think, and then I did a complete u-turn, because I needed more in my life. I needed more than just the same old routine. I can honestly say I want to actually do something before I die,” she said to me as we talked on the bench.
I later learned that the note she had received was indeed from Roach, but not directly from him. She came across it on the mirror of a women's bathroom in a city bar. It had his quote on it, but it wasn't his handwriting. This told me that people had begun to recreate his notes and started to pass them on, leaving them in random places.
As we entered the parents' home we saw the death valley that was Lynne's garden. I destroyed her work, I destroyed something that took her a full year to create. And yet, and I can't say this enough, she was not angry but grateful that she even had a space to call her own. A stasis. A sanctuary. An asylum.
The kids continue on inside but Lynne and I walk towards the darden and observe the dlowers. As we turned a corner we were startled by a bird who was walking about in another part of the garden. An eagle. I think it was the first time either of us had ever seen one up close.
It basically walked around for a while as we watched, knowing we were there but paying no attention to us. After enough time it went around another corner of the house and we followed, and there was a look of relief on Lynne's face when she saw that I 170 | PAGE 5 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS” + THE ENDLESS RIVER
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hadn't stomped and yanked and pulled on all of her creation. I don't know how I fucking missed them. I was sure I got them all.
A family of healthy and surviving zinnias, that's where the eagle led us to right before it flew away. As she looked at them, she remarked on not the head of the flowers but on the green of their stems. She wasn't sure, but they seemed to have been in better shape than when she last saw them.
Zinnias are a favorite of butterflies. A while back butterflies represented fate. Zinnias sometimes symbolize consistency. If Lynne is the butterfly, what does that tell us about her?
“I'll just start over, I've done it before,” she says. I look at her and ask her if I did anything to ruin the soil here, and if that was case, if it would be more difficult to garden.
“It's okay,” she says. It feels like I just apologized without actually saying sorry.
Probably still thinking about her old garden, she asked me if I had a piece of pen and a paper. I actually did, so I said yes and took a pen and pad out of my pocket.
“Okay, now write this down because I'm only gonna say it once. Are you ready?,” she asks, and I say yes, but am confused. Nonetheless, she continues, “We start over every day, but the only thing that matters is who we start over with.” And then she went away from this place, far and away.
I continued to stand there, thinking about what she said. The truth is she started over a while ago, she was just waiting for me to catch up with her.
I eventually joined them inside the trashed home and found Sara and Lynne tip toeing over glass in the living room. I asked them where Dave was and Sara told me he was in his room. When I got to his room I saw that he had begun to clean it, begun to clean the horrible mess that it was, but I told him to stop and to join us downstairs.
Downstairs we all made plans on how to go about the mess, working in teams of two.
Fast forward one hour and we were actually making progress. All throughout the morning and early afternoon we worked. Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share, clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere.
At about two-fifty we all took a break and sat on the floor in a part of the home that was now clean. “Are you still going to make the treehouse,” Dave asked. I looked out the glassdoor and into the backyard and saw the unfinished treehouse, and also saw the pile of dirt from the hole.
“Work hard to gain your own salvation,” this was the final piece of advice given by the Buddha to his monks. In a gallery of faded memories, a long time ago and in a place far away, this was my family. I'm still not completely sold on fate, but if it's out there somewhere, then I guess this story, me meeting these three people, it goes down the same way every time, and in some golden hall there are framed pictures on the wall of all the 171 | PAGE 5 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS” + THE ENDLESS RIVER
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things we did together.
I got lost in my thoughts until I heard Lynne remark that working on the tree house was a good idea, and that her and Sara would finish up in the home since they were almost done.
Dave and I got all the tools and woodwork and headed outside for the trade of carpentry. All throughout the session we exchanged film quotes. Maybe an hour later, as we were both up in the tree, we saw Sara come out with a pitcher of water. I told her thanks and as she walked back inside I noticed Lynne working in the living room.
To be honest, she looked like a maid. Sweeping, wiping things down, putting things back in place. Tilling the fields like a peasant, like some kind of servant. What I hate most, what hurts me most, is the fact that that wasn't far off from the truth. What she does for a living is serve people, as a waitress she waits on people to tell her what to do. It sucks that the people who she tends to will probably never see her as more than a servant.
That they will never see her the way I see her. See that she is so much more.
“Your mom is as tough as nails,” I said to Dave still looking at his mother. He thinks for a moment, then asks, “What movie is that from?” I laugh.
Somewhere around five Lynne and Sara had completely finished with the house and came outside to see how we were doing. We were almost done, and with their help we finished at six. I was tired as fuck but we still weren't done. The last piece of work we did was help Lynne prepare the grounds for what would be her new garden. I was surprised to see that even Dave helped out, as he was not one for gardening. It only took thirty minutes, and so at six thirty we all went back inside to eat and drink.
After we ate, I surprised the three of them. It must have either been sometime right before the roadtrip or very shortly after it, I honestly can't remember, but at some point I had decided to buy the three of them gifts.
I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it was because at the time I was a bit confused as to who they were to me. I am not their parent and I am not her spouse, which made the whole relationship a bit unusual, so if I were to go back and into my own psychology, I would say I bought them these gifts as a way to make up for my inability to accept them as my children and my wife.
I will not bromide you with the banalitic facets concerning the gift of Dave and Sara, for it was a simple computer, the purchase made forth because they are growing up and there is a wealth of knowledge on the internet. They were, however, ecstatic, to finally own their own computer despite the fact that they would have to share.
The real gift was the one presented to Lynne, because with this gift, everyone won. I told them to stay in the dining room as I went to go get it, where it was placed hiddenly in the living room. As I searched for the box I could hear the voices speaking from the 172 | PAGE 5 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS” + THE ENDLESS RIVER
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television. Someone must have left it on.
“Some people think they only have one chance at success, but this is not true,” the coach says, and being television, after these wise words it goes straight into commercial.
“I got you some new shoes,” I say as I walk back into the dining room with the box in hand. Like myself, Lynne wasn't really that much into shoes, but the look on her face told me that she was still delighted. Yeah she didn't get the joke either at first, but after she opened it she found her new prosthetic foot.
Way back when I told Emily that I thought it would be great to get her daughter a new prosthetic, so she sent me one of Lynne's old feet and I gave it to a specialist who had one custom designed. I told him that I didn't just want another plastic foot, I wanted something more no matter the cost. I told him that I wanted its recipient to feel like a new person. Or better yet, like the person they were before their undoing.
David and Sarah kept shouting at her to try it on, and I think through it all she didn't know what to think. A person like Lynnette doesn't want your money. Doesn't want your car, doesn't want your nice big fancy house. I mean, that's not to say a person like her wouldn't take those things if they were offered to them, but she would be just as happy living with you in a cardboard box. I could tell from one side of her face that she didn't want to accept the new shoe because of how much it may have cost, but the other side of her face told me that she knew she couldn't reject it because she knew this was my way of telling her that despite my demeanor, I did genuinely care for her.
“How do you put it on, I don't even know how to put it on,” she says nervously as Dave hangs over her and the shoe. I told her to take off her plastic foot and to sit on the chair behind her, and after doing so I took the new shoe out of the box.
The model was fairly new and made out of a type of flexible elastic rubber metal that was developed by scientists in Germany. It wasn't like her old one, which had toes and resembled a human foot, it was more like a shoe with no features on it, just plain gray, and if you slid your hand across its entire surface it was completely smooth. I had stroked it many times before.
The bottom, much like an actual human foot, was a lighter shade of grey and was made completely of rubber. The top-potion input was also made of rubber and the same shade of gray. The body of course was made of the flexible elastic rubber metal and came pretty close to imitating the functions of a human foot.
As I put it on her, I explained all the parts to her and how to put it on correctly just as the doctor explained to me. Just as I finished, we all heard the air pressure release and knew her transformation was finally complete. “Nice kicks, mom,” Dave remarked. “It's a perfect fit,” Sara commented.
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at me and walked directly towards me and when she got to me she hugged my body, and softly whispered “I do.” “You do what?,” I asked.
“Mom you walk funny now, I think it's broken,” Sara says. “Yeah, I don't think you put it on right,” Dave says. Dave and Sara were so used to seeing their mother walk with a limp, that when she no longer had a limp it was strange to them. I don't even think Lynne noticed it at first, but after a while of walking, we all saw that her slight limp was completely gone.
People give eachother gifts multiple times throughout the year, but often that gift is meant for the sole proprietor. These gifts cannot be compared to the gifts that improve the lives of everyone.
Lynne spent time chasing Sara and Dave all throughout the house for at least ten to twenty minutes. When she finally caught Sara, she picked her up and put her on her shoulders, and as she started walking towards me with Sara on her shoulders, she looked at me and started making strange sounds as if she were a monster. I was overcome with joy and I could not hide it, the sight of seeing Lynne play with her children. I never knew she had it in her.
“Wow, I've never seen you smile like that,” she says to me, “I feel like I just discovered the biggest secret to the universe making you smile like that.” I remove the smile.
After a while Dave got a soccer ball and we all kind of kicked it around until Dave's stupid ass kicked it too hard and destroyed the painting of Christ on the wall.
This gave us the idea to go outside, seeing as it was still somewhat light out.
Fortunately for Lynne, her tennis shoes were the correct size for the new prosthetic, and soon after we all headed into the yard.
It was Dave and I versus Lynne and Sara, the adults as forwards and the children as goalies. We set up some bushes as spishak goals and start the friendly exhibition match.
For some time it was one on one, Lynne and I, and for a while we were equally matched. We knew she lost her limp back at the home, but playing soccer here, we all saw how well the prosthetic really worked, and how well it reanimated her. She ended up scoring the first goal, but only because Dave wasn't paying attention. I had to yell at him to stop spinning around and to get his head in the game. After the second goal, I called him a bum and asked him why he let a cripple score on him. And after the third, I removed him from the goalie position and put him out in the field.
It was three to zero, and now the adults were goalies and the children were the forwards. We continued to play into the dark as we witnessed a low spring Sun. Sara was no match for Dave, but he could only score two goals on Lynne. She had numerous blocks, some of them with her new shoe. One of the blocks I think clinked with a metal 174 | PAGE 5 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS” + THE ENDLESS RIVER
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portion of the ball, not really sure what's metal there, and we all laughed when Sara exclaimed that she was a little bit robot now.
We ended up losing four to two, but don't tell Sara I let her score on me. Once darkness came we called it quits but stayed in the backyard. Since the kids were having so much fun, Lynne decided to let them stay up despite having school the next morning.
We mostly sat and swung on the long wooden swing and talked about the day that was behind us. Sara did a lot of the talking and at one point asked Lynne if she could draw something on her new prosthetic. She went inside to get a marker and then came back to draw on her mother's foot. Butterflies and hearts, probably just like she saw on the television.
I think it was almost midnight when we finally went back inside and the kids went to sleep. Of course, the night was still very much young and Lynne and I still had plans.
After she did that parenting thing, having them brush their teeth, having them choose whether or not they want to shower now or in the morning, putting them to bed, she came back downstairs to the kitchen. At the time, which was now two in the a.m., I was in the basement reading over some of my notes. I eventually went back upstairs to find her working on paperwork in the kitchen.
As I walked by her she somewhat shouted out to me, “??? ???? ???? ????????, '??????
?????'” I walked into the kitchen and asked her to repeat herself. “You know that painting, 'Starry Night'?” I got closer and saw that she was reading articles that were probably printed from the library.
“I do.” She continues, “I've been reading about it and it says here that the painting was actually a view from the asylum that van Gogh was staying in. A view from his room.” She hands me the article and I begin to read. She had at least twenty pages, not just on van Gogh but on the history of art. She later told me that it was part of a free class she was taking.
I sat down and joined her as we educated ourselves, and for at least an hour we read and talked about all the strange people who had walked this Earth before us; from Beethoven to Poe to Dostoevsky to Shakespeare.
At three a.m. she asked me if I thought the kitchen would have a good view of the Sun's rising. I really didn't know but I said yes anyway, there are very flew places where the Sun doesn't shine.
Once we were done with the papers we started talking about Sara and Dave's treehouse, and all the talk made Lynne want to go out there and actually see it, to go inside of it and see what it was like. As she's getting up to leave she asks me if I happened to see her purse, she had misplaced it sometime during the cleaning.
“What does it look like?,” I asked. “The tannish one I stole from your mother's case,”
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she jokes. “I thought I saw you putting it in the hallway closet,” I said. She goes and checks but through all the rummaging she still can't find it, telling me it wasn't there.
I got up and went over to her and moved her out of the way so I could look myself, and the whole time she's saying she checked there, she checked there, she checked there, too. In the end it wasn't in there and she said she would just search for it in the afternoon.
I went back into the kitchen to read more as she left the home through the glassdoor to enter the backyard and examine mine and Dave's work. Must have been twenty minutes until I realized she wasn't coming back.
A Freudian slip, without going into much detail, is basically a way to the truth via error. Like when a woman blurts out another man's name during intercourse and only after does she realize what she's done.
Putting my hand on Lynne's shoulder to gently move her out of the way so I could search the closet, I felt her flinch. It wasn't noticeable, movement of a millimeter, but it was enough for someone like me to notice. I'm not sure if she was conscious or aware of it herself, but something like this is very telling. She's seen me in a way that no one has ever before.
I glanced at the ovenclock to see that it was almost four a.m. and she still wasn't back, so I went out there to check. I exited through the glassdoor and made my way through the yard, watching the bright white glow of the high full Moon as I walked.
When I got to the tree I whispered her name and she replied, telling me to come up. I climbed up the wooden plank steps and entered into the treehouse and found her sitting in one of its corners with a pot of zinnias. She was looking out of the treehouse's glassless window and into the Moon. “It's beautiful, isn't it?,” she remarks. She just couldn't leave.
I sat on the opposite side, thinking about how people like her romanticize everything and add an idealist view to even the horrible things in life. We lay roses on the graves of our loved ones but that doesn't change death itself. People who try to search for the best in everything will eventually rise to a rude awakening, because there are just some things you aren't ready to see.
“Did you love Maria?” Turning my face from the dark sky to her, I could tell this was just one out of a million questions that she wanted to ask me. Even moreso, out of the million, this one was the one she felt was most important to her.
“Have you ever heard of the poem 'In The Valley Of Darkness' by Konrad Joseph?,” I asked her. She says no, so I continue.
“The poem is about a man who is slowly going insane. When you first meet him at the beginning of the poem, he is delirious and doing a lot of walking, and in the poem he crosses roads with two people during his journey; Satan and Christ. By the time he meets them, the world is now apocalyptic, and speaking to both of them they both make indirect 176 | PAGE 5 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS” + THE ENDLESS RIVER
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comments about his face and how delirious he appeared. Eventually they both go far away and the man continues his walking, and at the very end, he crawls back into the hole that he came out of.”
Once I'd finished came back that awkward, awkward silence. We simply sat in a treehouse that wasn't ours, and for a long time we said nothing to eachother, but the time did come, once the Moon was on the horizon and hiding behind trees, that she started to say something.
“You know I had that dream again.” “The skyscraper?” “Yes, except this time the party was on a ship, and you were there, but you weren't there. I was outside and alone at the head of this huge ship and everyone else was inside the ship where the party was going on. The ship was leaving a wide river and entering a massive ocean, and I went towards the edge where I could look down into the water and looking down I realized I was wearing a white dress. Something happened and I really wish I could remember what it was, but I can't. The only thing that comes back to me is that I started walking towards the very front, to the tip, and I walked up these kind of mini-stairs.” “You mean the very front front, where it meets at like the V shape?” “Yes, the V shape. There were small stairs there, so I walked up them and when I got to the very edge I could see every thing as the ship entered the ocean. I could see the ship cutting through the waters, the waves crashing into it, I could feel the wind blowing through my dress, the sound of the waters raging, and because the ship had an enormous height, when I looked into the sea it felt like I was flying. I remember looking back to make sure no one was watching me, and letting go of the pole so I could outstretch my arms. Being there, feeling what I felt, it was just one of those things you can only get from a dream.”
The Moon was gone now and it was pitch black. She was still talking about her dream, but in a way at the same time talking about her life. She talked about how much she's grown, how much she's learned. She talked about how much more she had to grow and the long road ahead of her. The long road of growing as a human being, because she knew she was not quite there yet.
She talked about how much she learned about herself in the past two years. How she was sensitive and felt so much of everything, anger and joy, and about how she just wanted to be able to control it better, to be less emotional. About how she wanted to be a better person, better mother, better friend, better sister. A smarter person, a better gardener, better painter, better poet. To become more healthy, to eat better. It started to sound like someone winded her up and then let her go.
“Okay Lynne, I get it, but you need to start in one place and go from there.” “I know, I know, I've just never felt this worked up,” she says as she gets up and crawls over to the side of me, “I know what that dream means now.”
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As we sat next to eachother time continued to flow. What do they say? Time's fun when you're having flies. We continued to talk into the night about anything and everything. It was like we were strangers, like we had never met before, as if this was the first night we had ever met. We told eachother things we had never told anyone else, things about our lives, our pasts, funny stories. For hours, we just simply talked, and before either of us knew it, the sky slowly began to change color. It must have been around six thirty a.m. by now.
As the Sun rose, the stars disappeared, but then again I suppose only in the darkness can you see the stars. Irony.
The period of the rising, we stopped talking completely, and at one point she took my hand into hers. All we did was watch as the skies and clouds slowly changed colors behind the low spring Sun; pink, yellow, blue, and as I held her hand together we shared our most beautiful moment together. I know because her pulse beated in a way I had never felt before, and because the same was true of my own. We were connected, not physically but of the mind, in a sense that was truthful, pure, free, and interrupted only by my need to fart.
This moment was unlike any I have ever had, and was eternal, in that it was in the Sun, in nature, in the world and in people. And as we sat there, two lost souls into one, something wonderful came to light the way.
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Chapter 100
THE COMPLEX
1:3:10:100
“YOU thought I was gone. You thought I was not around. You thought I left you alone. But look up at the night sky. Just look up at the night sky. You will see that I am everywhere, everywhere, shining down upon you.”
During the misty morning, Lynne exited her apartment, closing the door gently, and walked through the apartment building with an ease she hadn't experienced in six years.
Opening the front door to the building, she felt the cool breeze of the air.
It had been quite a long time since she'd worn these black shorts, which were outlined in yellow, and it had been an even longer time since she went running. Jogging around her block, she saw some things she had never noticed before, partly because her mind was always preoccupied with something else, whether it concerned her past, or her future.
Today, though, while running she noticed every thing, now that she had an easy mind to focus on the present. And among all things, what she noticed most was the long road before her, something she was unable to see before for lack of wisdom, and such is in the beauty of wisdom and foresight, to know these things at the deepest level.
One can buy lipstick, but one cannot buy beauty. Such is reserved for the highest mountains and the greatest lakes, but most importantly, for her smile. Though bearing pain, and being weighted down by life, it was always in the way that she smiled; the heart of a champion.
As I stood in the room that houses my composition notebooks, standing before the shelf, I counted each of the notebooks and came to the updated number of five hundred and thirty-two. Multiplied by two hundred gave me one hundred and six thousand, four hundred pages, and that multiplied by two hundred and fifty gave me twenty six million, six hundred thousand words. This was my life's work of eighteen years.
I must have been around sixteen when I had my first obsessive-compulsive disorder outbreak. Poor grades, lethargic, I just didn't care about anything. Years later to now and here I am standing in front of the only thing I have ever accomplished in life. I would not be offended if you called me a failure. The truth hurts, but it is still the truth.
I suppose if anything's going to kill me, it's going to be the anthology complex. But you see, this is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about time, when I'm talking about poverty and inequality, when I'm talking about futility. A decade and some change of looking at yourself, and these are the things you think about. These are the things that haunt you. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
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President's Feelings, I wanted to play my part in helping change the world, but year by year those Feelings receded and reclined until they were gone. I learned that life and the world, and even myself, was not painted in black and white, that I couldn't just will things into being. I paid a steep price for that knowledge. I paid a steep price to learn that the idealists, the dreamers, they always lose. And I learned that unfortunately for us, humankind is the incurable disease. Humankind is the incurable disease. The incurable disease. Human kind is an incurable disease. Human-kind is an incurable disease.
I took composition notebook #532 and attempted to fit it at the end of the last row, but there was no doing so. There simply was no more space. I guess it was time that I bought a second bookcase. Standing there thinking about the long road before me, I thought of the many dreams I had yet to have.
Though tomorrow is not promised to me, it is tomorrow that I will have a vision. I will be aged by thirty years, dressed in a robe and traveling with a staff down a dirt road.
I will find a town named Enoch.
In the town I will tell the people that I look for a man named Barnabas, and they will tell me of his home by the sea, and a child shall take my hand and take me to his hut.
When I show myself to him, he will have already known of my coming and he shall tell me to enter through the center.
I will sit down and talk to him about the one they will call Messiah. “When do they come?,” I will ask. “Their birth will be of the time when the world needs them most,” he will reply.
“How will I know it is them?” “By their fruit, you will know them.” “Will there be loud horns and trumpets played to celebrate the birth? Will there be a plentiful feast so that all peoples know the one has arrived?” “No. It shall be one of a quiet birth. It shall receive no recognition.”
“How then, will I know to begin my search?” “There will be a period of darkness. For three complete hours, the Moon shall cascade and block out the Sun and all land shall become dark. Then the period of darkness shall end, and the Sun shall return, and then you will know that the one called Messiah is alive.”
After I leave his hut, I will make my way into a desert, a desert that I will travel through for twenty-seven years as a wanderer. And among the day of darkness that has been foretold to me, I shall stand on a rock upon a hill, and on that desert-cliff I will witness the eclipse, and for three hours, the constellations shall be filled with the stars. I will know then, from this ecliptic sight, to begin my journey for the search of a humble and quiet birth.
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