It will rot you, you know, rot you from the inside out. Your pain. Your memories. I became convinced the only way to survive without becoming a hollowed out husk of a human being was to light yourself on fire every single day, letting your pain and suffering and loneliness and confusion and dissatisfaction be the kindling for your fire. Allowing the insides of your lungs, your heart, your organs…incinerate themselves with the shadows of the past and be reborn in the power of the present. Lick the ashes from your lips and taste the new day.
Chaos stuck a hand into the ether and swirled it; within this action a thousand souls ached for something they could not name, a thousand souls exhaled their last breaths, and a thousand souls lost lovers to war, famine, and unspeakable acts. Chaos looked into the void and stretched pleasurably at the actions she inspired.
Order watched her sister with an eye trained to right all wrongs. Order, the second swing on the pendulum of existence, tasted like cold mountain air and looked like a rushing river.
Within the slow exhale of the universe, the tiny dots of matter known to humans as planets spun on invisible axises and entropied, slowly breaking down in physical time and space. Each breakdown caused a pleasurable ripple in space time, each shudder of dust a moan of elation among the dark matter and points of light. Chaos licked the curtains of dust from her lips and smiled, causing confusion and car accidents as she did.
Order built bridges and pushed tulips through the soil, allowed water to condense from clouds into rain, and brought children into the world.
Chaos puppeteered the erosion of mountains and the patterns sand made after each tide, the way lovers tired of each other after weeks together, and the patternless void of space.
Order alone brought things into fruition; Chaos alone brought them crumbling down with the slight of her hand.
The hilarious thing about humans was how literal they took the concept they called “time”. Time, ticking away endlessly and imposing rules on everything like some maniacal Mongolian ruler wielding a stick called age and entropy he beats everyone over the heads with constantly. Humans, in their comical and horrifying NECESSITY to classify things and create rules in order to pretend they understood things, took time so literally it could embarrassingly be said it was elevated to a god-like status in their eyes. People wore time keeping devices on their wrists and everyone’s home screens and mobile phones proudly displayed the hour on glowing screens.
The funny thing was, humans, on some level, knew that time was while perhaps not an illusion, was not necessarily something subject to hard and fast RULES. When anxious, sad, or hungry, most humans experienced time slowly, and painfully. Seconds ticked by like delayed drops of Chinese Water Torture to the mind. However, when having fun, time seemed to zip by like lightning. Some humans, especially while intoxicated and amongst other humans to which they related, could spend hours together only to realize the hours had passed as the sun began to rise. Likewise, when in the company of a lover, humans regarded time as almost coming to a foggy, pleasure-induced standstill.
Aug 25
Musings on Time, 1
Twenty seven steps from the back of the van to the bridge
Eleven steps from the bridge’s edge to the secret point at the second junction where suicide jumpers made their final decisions
One step over the railing from A to B
A being your life
B being your death
It was cold that night on the riverfront.
“You’re going to give us the money or this is the end of the walk for you,” Olin growled, the wind whipping his words away almost before I could hear them. I grunted, ready to die. I never planned on paying back that money. I always knew this was how it would end.
My alligator loafers were slippery on the edge of the bridge. Olin’s hands were clammy and felt like vices on my biceps. “Why are you making us do this, man? Why end it like this, over nothing?!”
I thought back to the month leading up to this moment: the nights of crying myself to sleep over her absence; remembering all of the horrible things I said to her in anger and jealousy; burying my hurt and rage over the death of our daughter in harsh words and drunken nights were she wailed “it wasn’t my fault, I know that you blame me but it wasn’t my fault”. Truthfully, I never blamed her…but something felt so GOOD about letting her think that I did.
The riverfront yawned below me, hungry for another sacrifice to the winter gods it represented. Olin’s team sat huddled in the van, probably playing cards, waiting for his return. He would either be alone and quiet, or with a sniveling broken man crying for another chance. I vowed to make it the former.
I lurched towards the water, Olin’s hands a memory on my Zegna suit jacket. I saw my daughter’s face in the water, crying out for me to hold her, cuddle her to sleep like I used to on the nights I wasn’t working. I thought about my wife walking out on me, thought about the money I borrowed with no intention of paying it back, buying $3,000 suits and $8,000 rugs for an apartment I had no intention of returning to. I had drunk a hundred bottles of Boerl & Kroff, eaten a thousand jars of caviar, slept with the city’s toned and tightest call girls. None of it soothed me at all. None of it mattered.
I felt my little girl’s hands on me as I hit the water. An icy grave for a broken heart.
The feeling of rejection swirled inside of him like a riptide, threatening to drown out any other emotion besides abject despair and complete, terrorizing loneliness. Every morning at dawn and every evening at sunset he walked alone, watching others he felt no connection to drive around in fossil fueled cars and on death wishing bikes, all screaming for purpose and getting no response in return.
The mirror showed a face full of lines and want; want for approval, want for comfort, want for love. He had experienced many different kinds of affection in his lifetime, but he was unsure he had ever been loved. Most people felt this way; lonely, dejected, separate from others as well as themselves, but he did not recognize this and felt no association to them. The world, full of puzzle pieces meant to fit together seamlessly in order to create a picture of unparalleled beauty, continued to operate under the idea of detachment. Everyone felt it, but no one knew what it meant.
For her, feelings were pools to sink into to hide, away from the harsh glare of the sunlight and opinions of others. Every breeze gave her pause, every look made her quiver in anticipation something would hurt her, or worse. She walked around knowing separateness was an illusion, yearning for connection and peace, running mostly into those who were too rough and too stupid to fondle such delicate skin. Her pools kept her safe, and kept her from experiencing true joy.
Her face showed sleepness nights and an ever growing need for validation, from someone or something or the end of the world. Her eyes were tired; blood pooled darkly beneath them as a sign of impending doom. Her skin was pale and paper thin, like a doll someone made and forgot to play with. Aching and yearning for a touch, a caress, a whispered word in the night, she stayed up for hours reading words and dreaming dreams where she was choked with sea water and tendrils from pea plants.
Inside one is the key to love, affection, and validation;
Inside the other is the key to protection and peace;
The longer we stay apart, the farther the puzzle pieces drift away…
My mother came from Boston, bred into a family that never spoke about their emotions and pair-bonded based on hedge funds and educational backgrounds. She ran away when she was 17 and never looked back, despite losing a trust fund which was whispered about at the dinner table once I had gone to bed and the wine was being poured in billows.
My father came from Santa Cruz, a child of the sun and the cold, meager waves that crashed onto the shores in a hippie town. He doesn’t know who his father was or remember his name. His mother died years before I was born, and he never spoke of her. I saw a picture, once; she looked like my mother. Long, dark hair and eyes like lipid pools.
Freudian.
The two of them did the best they could in the balmy Southern California wasteland we can San Diego; Dad worked for the gas company and Mom worked part time at the local library. Neither of them ever seemed to want for much, content with just themselves, each other, and me, their first born and only son. We had a small apartment they still keep, a balcony with a tiny garden where the marigolds I planted in 7th grade still bloom.
Most children rebel against their parent’s attempts to control; I never rebelled, per se, but I knew that their staid life was not for me. I enrolled in the Navy the minute I turned 18, anxious to travel and see things I could share with my parents in an effort to get them to break out of their routines. I could never understand how two people could be so content to simply drink wine and grow flowers and sleep 8 hours a night…
The Navy was nothing like I thought it would be. I sat at a desk for 6 hours a day and wandered the decks of ships by night until I couldn’t think anymore, passing into dreamless fits of sleep, waking shiny with sweat, laden with secrets I could never remember come dawn. The women were classless, obsessed with climbing ranks, and most of the men were boring automatons who were there for the free college money and sign up bonus. I grew restless; weary. I felt different from these people; never superior, just…different. I yearned for something formless; nameless. I yearned for…life?
In Panama I found something I had never felt before; a sense of peace and belonging. When the ship set sail, I stayed on land and became a deserter. I stopped writing home, stopped calling old friends on mobile phones. I started walking the city from dawn until dusk, learning Spanish and catching murmured tales of Noriega from the elderly. Much of Panama City was covered in glittering high rises, sophisticated women, and the wealthy elite. I took lovers and wandered in and out of the streets before dawn, watching the sun glitter off of windows that shined as the sun burned the fog off of the coast.
Eventually I walked past the architectural facades and began searching the grasslands of South America for gauchos and tiny spots I could camp on, trying to make the last few dollars I had last as long as I could. I sent a telegram to my mother in my last civilized stop-I had spent what I considered a vast sum on a room with running warm water and a bathtub to luxuriate. A tele came back with fierceness, to come home. My father was dying.
I flew back home, flagged for UA by the Navy on my passport. I knew the ramifications of my actions would have to be dealt with. Not now, I said. Just…not now.
My father laid in a hospital bed tangled in tubes and with wires telling the world his current physical status. The message: delayed. The meaning: unknown. I sat by his bedside with my mother’s long, dark hair grazing my hand as she clutched it. Tears fell, hot and heavy, on her knuckles as she wept for a love she was not ready to release yet. A man who had given her all the excitement she ever wanted, all the security she ever needed. A blue blood who’s blood ran red.
My father died on a Sunday. I took his bag of belongings back to the house, laid down on the couch, and closed my eyes.
Since 2010, Jost Franko has been photographing herders in Slovenia’s Velika Planina, a traditional community in the foothills of the Kamnik-Savinja Alps. A look at some of the photos: http://nyr.kr/1nZEM01
You can’t sleep in this humidity, it chokes you while you rest.
I get up and walk around and look at her body in the pale sunlight of the morning, covered in tangled white sheets with tiny feet sticking out of the bottom. The heat never seems to bother her.
The view from my window is empty; devoid of all movement and pleasure. No sense to look outside.
She whispers words to me at night that don’t make any sense in the morning. I like to think and misinterpret them while I write; I will bring them up later and start a fight.
I’m not sure love is real. I think it’s just a name we give to our loneliness in the morning.
