When the Time Comes

Dan stared, oblivious to the misty pellets being whipped across his face. Looking ahead but at nothing simultaneously. He thought about how utterly alone he had suddenly become. One moment he went to sleep with a partner, a companion with whom to brave the roughest seas together, the next he was awake and desolate. Dan felt filled with spacers, an empty body waiting for human parts to be put in later.

His mind bombarded him. "You're a useless piece of garbage who only spreads pain. Sarah would have been happier if she had never met you. In fact, I bet someone else would have noticed sooner, helped her sooner, she would be alive if you didn't exist. You were born into pain, you carry pain everywhere you go, and your pain becomes infectious, spreading to everyone, eroding the joy from those you love. It would be better for everyone if your existence ended. In one well swoop you can end your pain, and the all the pain you put onto others. The only reason you live is for selfishness. Your own joy. Your own satisfaction. Your own happiness. Everyone else is just an afterthought. Hurry up and die you worthless piece of shit."

The torrents of self-hate beat Dan into the ground. Falling to his knees, he surrendered to whatever further abuse his mind had in store for him.

But the angry voice had quieted and, instead, premonitions of lost futures invaded his mind. He saw Sarah, engrossed in a book, lounging around a sunny room. Dan felt the burning urge to call out to her, but hesitated, he never could bring himself to interrupt her when she was focused. He noticed her pause and look up toward him. The room blinked and Sarah was gone. Her book lay face down, spread open, the spine damaged, as if someone had intended to continue it, but never came back for it.

Then Sarah was bending over a toddler, buttoning the last button on a rain jacket. In a second she finished, and the child bolted out the door in a flash of excitement, Sarah's worn face turns back to look at him, a glowing smile growing. But her eyes, something is wrong with her eyes. Dan gasped, he was staring into the same eyes he had awoken to earlier: hollow, milky, orbs. He clutched his knees. "everything of Sarah is gone, every shred of hope for happiness has disappeared. Even the memories have been corrupted. This torment will follow me forever." But only a small whimper left his mouth.

Transfixed by her lifeless eyes, Dan rose slowly. He stared over the railing. Enthralled at the churning water. As Dan gazed the rest of his body stood at strict attention. He heard grinding, but never realized the sound came from his own teeth. Every muscle was taut. Knuckles white against the unfeeling rail. A gust of wind splashed across his face. Jolted, a voice inside Dan countered, "Is this how you honor Sarah? Through self-serving sacrifice? You may not have been perfect, but you gave her something to fight for, and hope. Continue to spread those things in her name".

Dan collapsed onto the railing, exhausted, torn between the future and the past. He cursed the water for its apathy, and wished he could feel the same. "Why can't I just let me die?" The idea of Sarah burned inside him. "Because it isn't really about you. Sarah's success now depends on how far you can carry it." With that thought Dan slumped down onto the concrete. He scrutinized the small piece of scrap paper still clutched in his fingers. His confession made in the dark.

Dan began slowly tearing those words which had held power over him for so long into meaningless pulp. As each tiny piece fluttered away tears began to stream down, falling into the rushing river, joining the deluge that flowed unending.

                                               fin

Tall Tall Shadow

"Hellllooo. You've reached Sarah's voicemail. Which means I'm not here. Leave a message please. Tthhhaaannkkksss!" SLAM. rattle-rattle. Chunk. 

The coin nested in its slot. Waiting to once again travel its cycle.

Dan stared ahead, listless. He pressed the receiver hard against his temple and felt his pulse throbbing. He ached with each pounding beat. A drilling reminder of the other heart that lay still. His blood pumped furiously through his system and every fiber of his being wanted to tear itself apart. 

But instead he stood, visibly shaking, but nearly frozen. 

Clink.

"Hellllooo. You've reached Sarah's voicemail. Which means I'm not here. Leave a message please. Tthhhaaannkkksss!" Click. rattle-rattle. Chunk.

The normally cheerful melody of Sarah's voice seemed strained. Somehow, different and unlike the thousands of times he had heard it before. 

Clink.

"Hell1l0oo. You've reached Sarah's voicemail. Which means I'm not here. Leave a message....PLEASE....please...." Click. rattle-rattle. Chunk. 

Her voice continued to change. Dan swore he heard her pleading and it shook him to his core. He hesitated, but relented. Clink.

"Hel1l10o0. You've reached Sarah's voicemail. Which means I'm not here... LEAVE!" Click. rattle-rattle. Chunk.

Dan jerked. What?!? 

Clink.

"Hellll0oo. You've reached Sarah's voice-,,,,," Click. 

rattle-rattle. Chunk. Clink.

"H31111000.... Y0U!!!!!."

Dan dropped the receiver and stared at the mouthpiece from where the mechanical snarling had screamed at him. His mind raced. How many of her heart beats had he wasted? How much time had he insisted she spend tirelessly fighting for the miraculous? the improbable? the inevitable? And now she had quietly slipped away while he slept. The final nail in a coffin of guilt, regret, shame, and ultimately self-loathing. 

All those years of fighting had ultimately accomplished what exactly? at best they had given her an extra couple months, months which were also spent fighting. Dan shuddered.

Is this all life is? Delaying death?  

Dan had pondered that question frequently. Without fulling realizing it, he had lightly rested his hand against his wallet. Where a small note was kept. Dan's ultimate secret. Secret even from Sarah. It read simply: "I'm sorry. The darkness has won." 

Almost in a trance, Dan walked from the booth. Completely lost, but knowing exactly where he was going.

Shackles

Dan's automatic feet continued to trudge onward. The rhythmic consistency of friction lulled him into a state of reminiscence. He recalled stumbling out of the hospital, listlessly dragging his feet across the parking lot to access the phone booth that would save him.

Upon opening the booth door, Dan caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass. The puffy red eyes, pale face, and empty stare looked more dead than Sarah's had minutes ago. He continued to gaze into the face as the realization began. She had died, while he slept. After a year of struggle she had slipped away, quietly. There had been no last goodbye, no grand gesture of love or sorrow.

He had brought her into the hospital the day before when her breathing became unbearable to hear. The usual wheezing had never bothered him, but an audible bubbling sound had settled into her chest, and it terrified Dan to the core of his being. Even worse: she could see it in his eyes. His stoic expression could not hide the abject panic that flashed through his mind with every gurgle. And his eyes betrayed it to her. Dan couldn't bear to be helpless and despite her strained plea that, "It's not worth it. Just stay", he had carried her to the car and left.

On arrival to the hospital they were given a room. They had passed a mother wailing for her son who had recently died in a car accident. Despite the woman's justified sorrow, Dan found himself hating her. Hating that there was someone tangible to blame, the other driver, or maybe the kid had been drunk and rolled on the freeway coming home. He didn't know what, but he knew a person's choice shouldered the responsibility. But who could Dan blame?

While the night doctors tended to the acute injuries that had stumbled into the ER, Sarah told the nurse about  the pain in her abdomen, and they scheduled more tests for the following morning. Sarah was predictably exhausted and Dan wanted her to sleep. He still subconsciously held the belief that you will wake up feeling better after a proper rest, even if it was only by a matter of degrees. He willed himself awake while she slept; with every breath of Sarah's the sound of the low guggle shot through Dan, but eventually his determination faded into darkness.

Dan woke suddenly, and was overwhelmed by a gut-twisting realization. His sleep had come during the shallowing of her breath. He pressed the button to call the nurse, but as he looked at Sarah's slumped head reality set in. He was paralyzed, a sliver of doubt remained and he hesitated to check her vitals, as he had done innumerable times during the night after waking from nightmares of her death. Dan's thoughts raced. He pleaded to see maggots, something abominable that would signify fantasy. But there was no horror to be found, only death.

His feet started walking before he decided what to do next. He ducked around a corner outside the hospital and began to retch. As Dan slumped against the stone building he spotted the phone booth, and became aware of being drawn toward it. He shuffled over to the enclosed case. A beacon of safety and the promise of social connection. But it provided neither of these.

Dan lifted the receiver and pushed the coin into its home. He dialed his area code instinctively but then froze. Who was he going to call? Michael? He will just awkwardly say how sorry he is while I blabber, humiliation is not comforting. Dan slammed the receiver and the coin clanked out. He repeated this ritual for everyone he had once known, and felt distant and detached. The extended time with Sarah and her illness had isolated both of them. He could not fathom anyone he knew who could understand his pain. He screamed in loneliness. Gasped for breath in desolation.

Dan grabbed at the receiver and dialed Sarah's cell. He waited for the voice mail and wept when he heard her sweet voice. Knowing that he will never hear it naturally again. He emptied his pockets and remained hunched over the device. Putting coin after coin into the machine as if to stop the hands of time themselves.

So Dawn Goes Down To Day

A very intelligent poet, Robert Frost, wrote a succinct but poignant poem called "Nothing Gold Can Stay". In 8 short lines he summed up the essence of being human. 

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to lead,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

I've been dwelling on all the contradictions of life, the necessities that "life" (within the  Canadian middle class) has thrust upon me. The cliche garbage about social status, life accomplishments, the unspoken metrics of "satisfaction". How they require me to abandon questions in lieu of heuristical answers, soundbites. Classification overtakes exploration. But what is worth it? What is value? I don't know. Maybe nothing is. Maybe I don't want there to be answers. Perhaps I prefer the freedom to be nihilistic. That the ability to shoot down ideology safeguards my narcissistic individualism. 

But maybe I find that any answer inherently and unfairly excludes groups of people in favour of personal self-justification. I have a suspicion that every answer, including the rejection of an answer, is merely a rationalization of a worldview synthesized through self-preservation. There is so much grief in this world that even the thought of focusing on my own life feels like pure, unbridled, insanity. While psychology pushes people back into cultural conformity, into a hierarchical worldview that exists to justify the greed of the few. The greed of us. 

Maybe the fact that nothing gold can stay is a savior. Saving us from having to stare unblinkingly at what we really are. 

Regardless, there is a fantastic song inspired by Robert Frost that fleshes out some of his themes.

Stay Gold- First Aid Kit  It's worth listening to. 

Shuffle

Dan gazed into the abyss of missed opportunities. He stared at the vast collection of moments he had let slip by, the person she could have been, the person he could have been to her. But they could never be reclaimed. So he took all the mistakes, his shame, and cowered with them in the hovel of regret. Holding his shroud tighter than his own skin held him.

For years his nights were an abomination to rest. Over and over he would find himself reliving the years clutched tightly by his mind. In his dreams the trips to new doctors and hospitals were rewritten. Instead of looking to find better treatment for Sarah, they were constantly fleeing from the engulfing darkness. Every road trip was delaying the moment of capture and destruction he knew would follow. But to no avail. Eventually, he would always be caught, and his nightmares never spared him the despair that resulted. He'd awake in a panic, sometimes crying, other times screaming, and occasionally defeated. But the clock on his bedside would always calm him, the bright, digital numbers, yelling at his eyes. The hour, separated on the left of the colon, stood attentively for 60 minutes, only conceding when the next hour was to take its turn on the clock's face. The minutes stood at attention to the all-seeing eyes that sat in the middle, always keeping both sets of numbers in their place.

A voice cut through the darkness that Dan clutched around himself, "Is hell itself experiencing a blizzard?" Dan looked at its owner, his face remained loyal to his true thoughts.

The stranger's expression of bewilderment was apparent, he continued to look at Dan.

"You know, I haven't seen you on our server in...  where did you go..." This bizarre world snapped back to Dan. It was Michael, an acquaintance who he played online with frequently in the past, but they never had been close.

"Sorry, I can't be of much help," to anyone, his mind whispered to no one. "I'm a little tired" and wish I could just give up.

"You ok Dan?" Michael asked, concern showing in his tone.

"It's fine" -ally too much.

"Well if you ever need to talk."

"Of course, I wouldn't hesitate" to throw myself off a bridge. "Now it gets" so that every night is torture.... "better. You" don't know anything. "have known me a long time. But" I barely know what's going on. "it'll be over soon".

"Glad to hear it, I'll see you online later? You've been missing out on some great times." Dan's slow and awkward sentence had apparently satisfied Michael's need to feel that he had extended compassion.

"When I get some time. Good to see you again." Michael continued walking in the original direction, his car, before his senses had detected Dan. Dan could no longer relate to his friend, or coworkers, or anything that people busied themselves with during their daily existence. How could he care about a game when he had watched her slowly deteriorate? He saw the life drain from her sincere eyes and turn into grey, empty, orbs. Listened to the lively giggle disfigure into a strenuous wheeze, until nothing came out of her motionless lungs.

As Dan slipped back into memory, his feet shuffled him through downtown in the city of bridges. The light faded away. Reality was no longer being processed by Dan's attention, he fixated once more on that derelict phone booth.

"Once you get the feeling
 it wants you back for more.
Now it gets ethereal,
Feet ain't on the floor.
One step back you're leaving it,
Jumping at the wall.
Why won't you believe in it
'Till it's gone?"

Bombay Bicycle Club played through the open window of a truck rolling to a nearby stop sign.

John and Tom

I stumbled across a speech given by one of my favourite authors/artists, Bill Watterson. His authentic pondering of happiness, politics, philosophy and so much more in Calvin & Hobbes has forever instilled in me a desire to understand what makes a satisfied life.

Bill taught me to focus on the present, to savour the personal moments between best friends, to enjoy the places our minds wander to throughout the day, to take satisfaction in learning, and to create something for ourselves for no other reason than to create. I learned to not look for fulfillment in prestige or in the eyes of others. And that contentment is in the process, not the product.


My favourite part of the speech:

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED 
Bill Watterson
Kenyon College Commencement
May 20, 1990
 http://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

In Shallow Seas We Sail

I've been confronted by important notions about forgetting recently, which connects to ideas in the novel I read over Christmas that discusses the necessity to forget in order to heal. But it places one in a peculiar situation when you are the one that needs to be forgotten. Or rather, you are the one that has been forgotten.

Our memories are the crux of who we are, how we remember (read: interpret) the past controls who we are in the present. We build upon the structural foundation of the identity we've decided upon (though our options are more like multiple choice questions to the situations we encounter, with the options being the different cultural maps [perspectives] we've been handed, with no real limit to our decisions but the limits we accept). But what happens when the crux of me (of all of us) is meant to be temporary, meant to be malleable for the future (read: present) in order for us to adapt, to cope; destroying, rebuilding, and re-destroying ourselves perpetually.

Why hold onto any past? Because without it we become apathetic and callous to the people around us, to the people who hold onto some piece of us in the vain belief they know the reality of our perceptions and past. We hold onto the past that taught us how to be safe when trouble comes, using our personal maps. Maps that are filled with landmarks and metropolises in a land of fantasy, personal fantasy. None of these places exist, but they tells us what "truth" is. But there's a difference between being able to discuss the civilizations of our past when there are others to confirm the old architecture and the disasters that shattered them in the first place then when confronted with wandering through the wreckage in solitude; a fertile land, turned into a wasteland. Or was it always a wasteland? The present too will become a wasteland. And once we forget it, it will be nothing.

Like us, individuals in a system that specifically needs the individuals it created. But tightly clutching our maps, needing them to feel, but binding us to the ever shifting images on the page. Finding meaning in the forgotten ruins; the ruins that don't exist, which cannot be visited by anyone who wasn't there to see them with us (or who have a completely different picture of the same places). But they need to forget seeing them, they need to look to their own map, while I look at the crumbling piece of paper in front of me.

We will be forgotten, eventually by everyone; until we are the only ones who hold onto a meaningless map, full of directions to treasures that don't exist to anyone else. And only the lucky ones even make it to this stage, when we can see the futility of our maps, the rest die before getting to that point, and are forgotten even sooner. But being remembered has no value. The value is in the temporary landmarks, on the constantly changing landscape. Just because the strings become visible does not change the power they have over us.

This may be incomprehensible garbage, but it too will be forgotten.

I know I've posted this before, but it's relevant.

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them-- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried when you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for the want of a teller but for the want of an understanding ear.
-Stephen king