Where is the nothingness when we feel that we need it the most? The vacation we long for is not a small piece of life away from the job or the kids or even the “other”, it’s from life itself. Or consciousness.
We see the snot-nosed toddler staring at life and death – standing on the porch of a tagger’s canvas filled with the half-dead who dream of living while creating their own purgatory. We realize that in the house myth and fiction have become fact and truth and the in the stained corners and on the stripped floors zombies do exist. And our minds flash back to the toddler with the glassy stare and marker-board mind and broken heart and withdrawal pains from milk laced with Jack, and we become that child for just a moment – a moment too long – seeing through the eyes of glass with a mind not blank into a future on chemical lane in house after house and porches and purgatory and our mind is on fire with anger and pity and disgust.
And shame.
We look at the teen fighting in the foxholes of his face, wanting to know why. We watch as he watches, watching him watch her, wondering if he is wondering what she is thinking. Is he us? Are we him? Is someone watching us watch him watch her? Is she? We see what he cannot yet see, that life has yet to really start while he wonders how life will end. We see him look for significance in his circumstance and we want to tell him that he is significant despite all circumstance. We become him for a moment and that moment flees while we grasp to keep it as ours, this moment of hope, this moment of potential, this starting-over place. Yet it slips and we are left with the thought
... perhaps, God…
We visit Nana at the home and watch the residents playing chess, checkers, and cards and with the remote and catch the eyes of the lady in the corner. Eyes that are portholes on a sunken ship torpedoed in its prime, an ancient, luxurious ship whose deck felt the feet of many revelers and the sun of many seas. We know that if those eyes could speak we would gladly watch the unfolding play – we would rejoice in the ocean of memory in escape of our pond of reflection. We know they would speak, those eyes, but they can’t. They have become nothing but bars in the prison of expression. Nothing in, nothing out, and a tear dries on our sleeve – the tear she could not shed for herself.
Or for us.
We walk into the tavern filled with friends but totally empty and we are utterly alone. We drink a potion of calmness and look in the glass for nothing. The day rejoins us as we joke and laugh and flirt and we just smile at them because they have no ears. Perhaps they, like us, are screaming and we are the blind ones. Then we wonder if their eyes have lost their voice and ours have become deaf; nevertheless, we have a wonderfully vacuous evening and slip into routine. We may not remember the toddler,the teen, or the sunken ship again.
But neither can we forget.
We cannot escape from the emptiness of overwhelming feelings brought about by the cry of the small detail that others cannot see, or the fleeting glance into eyes with the resulting flood of perception that carries us into memories not our own but just as real. We try to look without seeing and listen without hearing, but we are not allowed. We watch and listen and feel and cry. We laugh and drink and lie down to rest and count not sheep but lives we encountered today. We cannot sleep or rest or empty our minds…
So we write.
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