IF I JUST KEEP WRITING
MAYBE GOD WILL HEAR
I’m sorry, Dear Reader, I lied.
If you pray hard enough, like I did tonight, with tears pouring down your cheeks1 and a prayer half-formed as you utter it around those wet phlegmy vocal chords, the universe will reach down and a god whose name I don’t know, probably can’t know, will tap the butterflies that rule us all such that, for a second you could easily imagine, they’ll spell out
I T W I L L B E O K A Y
and isn’t that something?
So many of you are materialists, and it’s okay, I was one too2 until I couldn’t be one anymore without lying.
I had a dream as a child.
I’m young, and there’s so many of us, literally everyone on earth, somehow I know this, and we’re on this cliff, mesa, a tall rock-boy with a sheer drop at one side.
I don’t know why we’re there, I don’t know what’s going on, but in that way that children do, I know that Something Is Going On3 and I’m worried, but I’m there with my family, and I hadn’t learned all the ways, yet, that the world can hurt you.
The sky is achingly blue, it’s a beautiful day, the ‘room’ that ‘room temperature’ is always chasing. Somehow there’s no wind, but the air isn’t stagnant.
There’s motion, the crowd is shifting.
A wait has ended.
Everyone, a natural queue forming, walking to the edge of the cliff, and one after another, they’re growing wings, and they’re flying away, until they’re dots in the sky, until they’re gone. Nobody’s rushing, nobody seems like they don’t want this to happen, the same vibe as closing a cupboard, as walking in to another room.
I know I can’t follow them, and every atom4 of my being is rebelling, trying to find a way, trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, why I can’t do what literally everyone else is doing.
The crowd passes the half point, I can see the end of the crowd now, rocky scrabble on a reddish-brown stone surface.
There’s a handful left, people I had some connection to. As one, they’re turning around, walking up, and they fly away, and they don’t glance back, not a single person stealing not a single glance.
My mother is the only one left.
You can cry in dreams.5
I remember my face buried in her shirt, clenching my hands as hard as I can, I can remember arguing, begging, but I can’t remember a single word I spoke, or her to me.
She’s at the edge of the cliff, and she flies, until she’s the only dot in the sky, until I’m alone on a gorgeous windswept mesa stolen straight from some Visit Arizona! brochure mouldering in a tourist center.
Some fucker in a knitted shawl will probably crack open a book with a four digit page number and tell me this represents blah blah blahbity blah.
I wouldn’t, your safety is an illusion afforded by the cold glow of a rectangle and distance that the 20th deleted oh-so casually.6
I’ll tell you another true story, to make up for the headline.7
I went with a group to a haunted house, once. In my opinion then and now, this isn’t a good use of my time; my fear response is very broken.
I argued and pointed out that in the unlikely event something actually scared me8 that nothing good would happen next.
Through cajoling and, frankly, bullying9, I eventually gave in.
In my ridiculous Flecktarn overcoat (they used to be $35 on amazon, sue me), I slowly walked a coed group of cowering friends past clowns, strobing lights and a maze that the hand rule10 quickly defeated.
One enterprising staff member, after not even getting a startle from lunging his face towards mine from a mostly-hidden alcove, grinned mischievously, asked me if I knew what separation anxiety was, got a sincere laugh from me and proceeded to get directly behind me, in front of my group. I played along with the bit, lackadaisically rounding a convenient corner directly ahead after throwing a jaunty grin and wave back at my group.
I knew they were safe, and I knew I’d see them again.
Your reading habits have trained you to expect a synthesis here, a summing up, the point where I smile warmly, and ask you if you think you know what the story means.
Ha, I don’t even have a subversion for you, because what you want is what I want too.11
Isn’t it something to have cried so much that you know the point on your face, in different weather no less, where your tears cool enough so you can feel them on your skin?
“I got better.”
You can learn a lot about someone’s childhood by how they remember this feeling.
Down even to the fields constituting the charges and masses that link to each other through fields to create the mostly empty space that defines the atoms.
Same rule as peeing, unfortunately.
My point is a train will allow me to get within driving distance of beating your ass.
Trust is fragile.
The startle reflex, for you soft motherfuckers, is not a fear response, just by the by.
I am a victim.
Put your hand on a wall, DO NOT remove your hand from the surface, and start walking. You will eventually reach the end of almost any maze doing this.
Do we write because we are god here? Because we get to decide when the endings come? What the endings are? Is this where young dreamers learn that they are safe, when they aren’t anywhere else? If I just keep putting words down, add a comma here, half an idea there, but more, more always more, if this never ends, does that mean none of it ever ends?