Each raindrop felt like the
surprise of stepping into a cold shower. Unwelcome. The drops were fat and
I could count each, as it wet through my shirt.
It was like the time Isabelle hadn’t slept for days. She finally looked
at her watch. Believing it was broken, she thought about where to fix it,
wondered if she had caused any scheduling mix-ups. Then, with her eyes still
stuck the face of her watch, the second hand finally clicked: only one second
had passed. Her watch was not broken.
Am I as tired as Isabelle was that day? Not so tired, I thought. It isn’t
always that way. A series of delayed moments. Hopping around in time like
Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim. Except Billy didn’t care what he knew
–he didn’t use that information like you or I would have. He
never thought, “if, I only knew then…”
Everything in my life now is about logistics, about managing space and time.
Our family has grown, we move as a unit, a cluster. We are all physically
awkward. We are novices at making our way in the world. We are not just
larger extensions of bodies, like an automobile to the driver. We can not
propel ourselves at high speeds, or maneuver quickly. First left, then right.
Stop and reverse. Instead, our neurological signals are misfiring. all over
the place. All the time. Each part having its own mind and intent. The goal
is both to stay together as a unit and get somewhere. Minutes are endless,
months race by.
The commute back and forth from Chicago to Cleveland, has changed. No planes.
no flying. I am not a bird. I am a donkey. Hauling shit back and forth.
Literally. It reminds me of making sculptures. I used to just make and make
and make and make and make and makeandmakeandmakeandmake.
Production.
accumulation.
I would situate all of my
creations before me, surround myself with them, breathe them in, feel satisfied,
a little exaltation. Not too long after, all those things became burdensome.
I hated them for being there. There were only a few exceptions. The creation
of objects is a tricky game.
He looked outside and asked, “is there a storm coming?” and
Sara realized she had never told her son about the time change. It was darker
this day at 5pm, than yesterday. He was confused.
She found him again on a website, where the pages changed daily in color
and content, like an obituary's working draft. He was 50% of who he used
to be, and it was weird, because it wasn't that much of a surprise. It could
have been fun or exciting or embarassing had the meeting occured randomly,
maybe at an airport.
It all made me think of that
poem by Desnos:
I have dreamt so much of you
walked so much, talked, slept with your ghost
that there only remains to me perhaps, for
all that, to be ghost amongst the
ghosts & shadow a hundred times more
than the shadow which walks & will
walk gaily on the sundial of your life.
I want to hire a skywriter
to spell it out above me – watch the words fall away, each letter
fall away, as new ones form.
I want the emotion to exist in the material of the words, as they slip in
and out of cloudness.
I want the breeze and the sky to be part of it.
I want the plane to be the violent imposter, cutting through the sky, responsible
for it.
I want to look up one day and be struck by the noise, by the presence of
each word held suspended for just a few seconds.
I want to have the feeling that I am perceiving something true.