Eyes Up
I walk, and I think. No. I amble, and I ruminate. I’m outside to clear my head, but that’s the last thing that’s happening. My mind fills with the day’s events, but also the horrors of the past, skimming through the pages of my life’s book and pausing for a moment here, a moment there. The thing that happened when I was five. Turn the page. What the person said at college. Turn the page. A voice on the train this morning. A vicious memory gumbo which roils with every step I’m supposed to be taking. I move forward in space, but backwards and sideways in time. Moments collapse into each other, forming creative new combinations of anxiety. And within, there always surface the greatest hits. The instances which always come back for more, whatever else is happening in the hit parade. The hungry moments of cruelty. The moments of pain. The moments of loss.
I look up into the night sky and think of her. The right girl at the wrong time. The mother of all rumination. I think of our time together, and our time not together. I think about the what ifs and maybes. The times where I ache to have my time over again. With her. Without her. I look into the sky as the cold begins to bite under the railway overpass and wonder if she’s doing the same. If she thinks of me like I think of her. Of why she’s never gotten back in touch. Of why I’m terrified of the reopening of doing so. I stick to the comforting extremes of time. Of the highs and lows. The euphoria of her telling me she had feelings for me. Of her crying and me walking away. I think about what might have been if I hadn’t moved away. And why I chose to do what I did. Say what I did. I think of an indifferent universe. Of all the things out there unknown. And all the things in here, intimately known, distorted, twisted in impotent efforts toward a closure which never arrives.
I look up into the night sky and think of him. The only one left. The only one to whom I can actually tell the truth. The only one who knows it all. Of how our lives converged so intensely for three years, and immediately, violently diverged as I passed through the departure gates to a new life. I think about which one of us was actually left behind. I hope he’s happy. I long for the phone to ring and for it to be him. I smile to myself as I think of all the cacophonous nights out. Of the most inward of in-jokes and the reveling joy in the misfortune of those who’ve wronged us. As I pass the lake I think of drinks on the river in the late afternoon sun. Of never wanting to go back to work. Of wanting to stop time. And of how he was there when I fell apart. Not to put the pieces back together. But to be broken with me. To share in our brokenness. Over time we’d both know where the cracks in the porcelain still are. And we’d turn rumination into the medicament of nostalgia. We talk about the fading away of friendships. Those intimacies which just get fainter and fainter over time. A signal getting more and more distant somewhere out in the cosmos until it disappears completely. Intimacies reduced to online searches and ghostly networked pulses. We miss everyone. We miss each other.
I look up into the night sky and I think of them. Of what they’re doing today, and if they’ll ever come back into our lives. Of the emotional cruelty they inflict upon each other. But never those around them. A private violence masked by public laughter. Of how we refused to continue an inter-generational pattern of abuse. And in breaking it, broke with them, broke ourselves. Broke an ancestral branch. I hear the potholed rumble of the nearby highway and think about what happens when one of them dies. And I never know the answer. Of the unforgiving cruelty of estrangement for all involved. Of moments too late. Of things unsaid. Of grievance never healed. Of protecting those around me. Of protecting myself. Of teenage violence, and how it was my fault. Of silence as punishment. Of silence as emancipation. How in making them silent, we turn distance into time. We formulate the equation, and it never proves. I ruminate on the space between there and here. Now and then. How and why. I know what happened. I kid myself I am at peace with it. I front indifference. I continue the pattern in efforts to teach them the lesson of their lives. I back away. I’m silent. I’m culpable. I’m just as bad.
I look up into the night sky and I think of when. The when of happy. The when of sick. The when of choice. I stir the seasoned whens in a pot as I round the corner by the abandoned library. Some nights sickly sweet. Some nights insidious poison. The euphoric when of getting the job. The catastrophized when of being let go. The when of wanting to stay friends. The when of not knowing when to walk away. The when of me not you. The whens of right and wrong. When’s characters come and go. Sometimes the dates are wrong. Often the words are misremembered. If heaven allows you to relive your life as an observer, I’m going to the tape to relive it all. No fast forward. No ads. How when is never now, it’s always then. When never arrives, never past, never future. How rumination on the past never placates anxiety about what’s to come. When I rule the world things will be so different. When I am king you’ll be first against the wall. The insipid when of revenge. The suppressed angered when of saying one thing and wanting to say another. The when of wanting it to be over.
I look up into the night sky and think of why. Why she said what she did. Why he didn’t care. Why they didn’t do more. Why this. Why that. Why rumination haunts me every time I’m out here alone. Why I keep doing it to myself. Why the medication isn’t working. Why I never say anything. Why it was never my fault. Why it was always my fault. Why some idiot has sprayed Hammer Time on the side of the stop sign. Why it had to come to this. Why you only call me when you’re high. Why don’t we do it in the road. Why don’t I understand. Why don’t others understand. Why doesn’t anyone understand each other any more. The illuminated why that comes in reading. The dulled why that never comes with scrolling. The why which comes from a cosmic guidance in a universe somehow looking after you. And the why of knowing it will all work out in the end. The ghostly why of decisions made elsewhere that show up in your life like meteorites. The unexplained whys of confusion. The indifferent whys of others. The whys far from wise.
Most of all I look up into the night sky and think of what. Of what’s next. Of what I’m going to do about it. And of what the hell. Of what time is it. What happens next. And what might still be out there. The what of exclamation. The what of confusion. The what that’s both question and answer. I’ve never been friends with what. The awkwardness of what to wear. What to say. What to eat. What never works out for the best. What is never a good idea. What accuses. Enrages. It throws stones in the playground and rocks in the boardroom. What stops. What tires as I think about heading home. What a wonderful world. What a time to be alive. What it is to be loved by you. What was that. What must I be thinking.
I walk, and I think.
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