Chapter Two: Such Awkward Creatures. Part Two
Read Chapter Two Part One Here.
“I think I’m going to go.”
He mumbled the words so heavily I could barely understand what he had said. I nodded at this, my mouth open in disgusted approval. But you, you looked desperate. His retreat could not outpace you. You gently grabbed his arm and looked at him, like lovers look, as he tried to sheepishly head toward the door.
“No its ok, he was just leaving.”
Your head cocked at me like you were ready to shoot me down. You always did know exactly what to say to end me. Your glare seeped into my sleepless eyes. I could almost hear what you were thinking, don’t ruin this for me. Somewhere inside myself I screamed behind the locked door, my thoughts, all like ceaseless wanderers, wanted out. But they were occult, hidden from me. My course words couldn’t bear them, all these useless signs only traces and absences. My words just slid off the surface of what I wanted to say, and my thoughts all lay dormant behind my gritted teeth. Oh, how my spirit groaned.
What awkward creatures we were. Do you remember? You, desperate, Faceless with his head down, looking slightly off to my right, and I, I was entirely speechless. I was glad no one could see this because the whole thing was just mortifying. Even our failure and your tryst were banal. We were pathetic. I was the worst.
Our bodies were once laced with meaning, I had thought, as we lay looking at each other on our wedding night. As if flesh wasn’t flesh and bone wasn’t bone but their depths and surfaces were beautiful words more profound than ourselves. And I was at peace, and the night was full of mystery and long conversation beneath the small breeze of the window. You put your fingers on my lips and I whispered I’d love you forever, even to death, and you asked me if I would even if it was a horrible death, and I said in the way we used to joke when we were happy that it depended how horrible. You looked at me with that glimmer of pride you always had in your eyes and poked me hard in the ribs as you laid your head gently on my chest. And you listened as you used to to my breathing. As if you were trying to listen in on my soul, so long ago. We were living books of God’s great secrets. In sacred light we were heavenly creatures fawning over one another. But now our worlds were all disenchanted, love receded like a tide and left us naked and exposed to our own absurdities and contradictions. Mystery bled from our marrow into blankness, and all the myths were effaced. God’s great creatures? No.
We were just bags of bones.
“Yeah, I’m just leaving.” I look over at him, but I wasn’t really looking, I looked through him. Its an odd thing to concentrate and look where you’re not looking, but I wanted to make him nothing. The problem with making someone nothing is its hard to stop. I saw through him. But I concentrated so hard I also saw through the wall behind, I saw through the trees outside, through the asphalt dark with rain, through the earth.
Stop. I tried to stop. I saw through stars. Through many skies.
“Far be it for me to ruin your fun.”
Stop.
I don’t know if I said that. Odds are it never happened, but I hope I did. While I’m rewriting history though, I might as well say that I strode across the room like a giant and stabbed both of you in the heart. I killed you stone dead, and heaven and earth shuddered to a halt at my scream. I should just write that that’s what happened. All that blankness that bled from us needs to be filled. Memoirs are always a million little pieces of lies anyway, woven to make a whole. And reality is ever so disappointing. Ever so naked. But I cant bring myself to write the words, to make them true, even if only in this story.
"Why should I put my life on hold? Why should I wait when were going to be divorced anyway?" you erupted at me. Damnit. How were you so good at this? My eyes blurred from the blow slightly, but their gaze still slipped on and on, pushing away from here. So far away.
I just laughed. A loud, mirthless laugh. Full of malice. At the time I felt like an idiot. Who laughs at what she just said? What idiot laughs in this situation, I thought then. And it was a long laugh, too. There was no covering this over with a well timed cough or a quick tactical change of subject. But in some strange way it was the best, most satisfying thing I could have done at that moment. I heard Faceless shuffle uncomfortably. And you looked shocked, as if I had just done something immensely rude. Which was ironic, given what you had just said. But it didn't make me feel better.
After you told him to stay several more times, each slightly lighter and softer than the last, he nodded at you, and as you carefully released his arm your touch lingered on his skin for that incalculably small last moment. Oh God, this was awful. I thanked the Lord again that no one else was watching. I was so embarrassed, so exposed. He headed back into the bedroom to wait until I had left, and you turned back around and looked at me as if your glance by itself could throw me out the door. I swore I saw a shadow move outside our window. And then it was at the far side of the room. Its magnitude like the figure of a man. It was curious. But my eyes refused to stop their sprint. I felt my soul stretch thinner and thinner the farther away my gaze ran, the more they strayed from focus.
Stop. My heart saw through the sky’s far side. Through galaxies.
I quickly grabbed my sleeping bag and pillow, and a few other odds and ends. This was so wrong, I was an intruder in my own damn house. I paused for a moment as I was walking back out the door.
“So how does all this end?” I asked you.
“I think you know.”
I nodded.
Stop.
I saw through existence itself now. Through hope. I felt cold suddenly, like I was suffocating.
“For his sake, he better never be here again. Next time it won’t go so well.”
Ah my forced bravado. What a shameful thing.
See. My lies can be earnest too.
I slammed the door behind me. But my gaze continued to slide. My heart and I shook hands. Said goodbye.
No. I should have probably used a different image. Its like in the movies, when an airlock is decompressing and one friend is holding on to another who is dangling in the air helplessly, threatening at any moment to get sucked into the void. God, if only this was that epic. But my heart just let go. It turned and followed my ever slipping gaze.
Stop. Stop. Stop. I couldn’t stop. I made Faceless nothing. But the truth was there was nothing.
And then I knew the shadow I thought I saw, I knew his name. In the same moment I knew my heart was suffocating.
Oh God. Oh God. Do you hear me? What rite must I commence, what sacrifice be given, that you should speak to me? Will you not come to your servant? Even the Devil is here.
But where are You?
I saw through the light. My gaze pierced the heavens. I saw through God.
Oh God. Oh God where are you?
And in my heart, there was nothing.
I stood alone now on the concrete porch, under the dull cast heavens, which a cool wind stretched out and wide. The gelid cold of the waist-high iron fence at my hands the only veil between me and the sleeping city which filled the horizon. I felt my ring push into my left hand as I leaned. I was slouching. Head down, looking at nothing sometimes, looking at my feet or off into the far reaches of the dark, where the still visible outlines of buildings and the even more distant hills thrust into the sky. The inside and the outside were so disconnected, it seemed. My stomach was in knots, I was defeated and confused, every breath a lament. But the world was unaffected. Indifferent. And I in my egocentricity wanted the world to stop and look at me, to cry out for justice. But of course it didn’t. It never did. That the world simply kept moving was the only truth I knew.
I asked God if I still believed in Him.
The air rose and fell with the slowly dwindling warmth of the day passed by. Verdant arcs of the aromatic air broke the calm of the night with small songs running through the potted trees. The leaves and ground were wet and glistening beneath the soft hush of rainfall. Somewhere a siren wailed over the ocean of dirty neon lights. I breathed the cool, damp air in deeply. Closed my eyes.
The cars in the distance, if I fooled myself just right, sounded like the ocean.
καταδεξωμεθα το συμβαν, δυσανασχετουντες γαρ ουτε το γενομενον
διορθουμεθα, και εαυτους προσαπολλυμεν.
(Let us accept what has happened, for in being rebellious we not only do not right the past, but ruin ourselves as well.)
--St. Basil of Caesarea, Letter VI.3.
He mumbled the words so heavily I could barely understand what he had said. I nodded at this, my mouth open in disgusted approval. But you, you looked desperate. His retreat could not outpace you. You gently grabbed his arm and looked at him, like lovers look, as he tried to sheepishly head toward the door.
“No its ok, he was just leaving.”
Your head cocked at me like you were ready to shoot me down. You always did know exactly what to say to end me. Your glare seeped into my sleepless eyes. I could almost hear what you were thinking, don’t ruin this for me. Somewhere inside myself I screamed behind the locked door, my thoughts, all like ceaseless wanderers, wanted out. But they were occult, hidden from me. My course words couldn’t bear them, all these useless signs only traces and absences. My words just slid off the surface of what I wanted to say, and my thoughts all lay dormant behind my gritted teeth. Oh, how my spirit groaned.
What awkward creatures we were. Do you remember? You, desperate, Faceless with his head down, looking slightly off to my right, and I, I was entirely speechless. I was glad no one could see this because the whole thing was just mortifying. Even our failure and your tryst were banal. We were pathetic. I was the worst.
Our bodies were once laced with meaning, I had thought, as we lay looking at each other on our wedding night. As if flesh wasn’t flesh and bone wasn’t bone but their depths and surfaces were beautiful words more profound than ourselves. And I was at peace, and the night was full of mystery and long conversation beneath the small breeze of the window. You put your fingers on my lips and I whispered I’d love you forever, even to death, and you asked me if I would even if it was a horrible death, and I said in the way we used to joke when we were happy that it depended how horrible. You looked at me with that glimmer of pride you always had in your eyes and poked me hard in the ribs as you laid your head gently on my chest. And you listened as you used to to my breathing. As if you were trying to listen in on my soul, so long ago. We were living books of God’s great secrets. In sacred light we were heavenly creatures fawning over one another. But now our worlds were all disenchanted, love receded like a tide and left us naked and exposed to our own absurdities and contradictions. Mystery bled from our marrow into blankness, and all the myths were effaced. God’s great creatures? No.
We were just bags of bones.
“Yeah, I’m just leaving.” I look over at him, but I wasn’t really looking, I looked through him. Its an odd thing to concentrate and look where you’re not looking, but I wanted to make him nothing. The problem with making someone nothing is its hard to stop. I saw through him. But I concentrated so hard I also saw through the wall behind, I saw through the trees outside, through the asphalt dark with rain, through the earth.
Stop. I tried to stop. I saw through stars. Through many skies.
“Far be it for me to ruin your fun.”
Stop.
I don’t know if I said that. Odds are it never happened, but I hope I did. While I’m rewriting history though, I might as well say that I strode across the room like a giant and stabbed both of you in the heart. I killed you stone dead, and heaven and earth shuddered to a halt at my scream. I should just write that that’s what happened. All that blankness that bled from us needs to be filled. Memoirs are always a million little pieces of lies anyway, woven to make a whole. And reality is ever so disappointing. Ever so naked. But I cant bring myself to write the words, to make them true, even if only in this story.
"Why should I put my life on hold? Why should I wait when were going to be divorced anyway?" you erupted at me. Damnit. How were you so good at this? My eyes blurred from the blow slightly, but their gaze still slipped on and on, pushing away from here. So far away.
I just laughed. A loud, mirthless laugh. Full of malice. At the time I felt like an idiot. Who laughs at what she just said? What idiot laughs in this situation, I thought then. And it was a long laugh, too. There was no covering this over with a well timed cough or a quick tactical change of subject. But in some strange way it was the best, most satisfying thing I could have done at that moment. I heard Faceless shuffle uncomfortably. And you looked shocked, as if I had just done something immensely rude. Which was ironic, given what you had just said. But it didn't make me feel better.
After you told him to stay several more times, each slightly lighter and softer than the last, he nodded at you, and as you carefully released his arm your touch lingered on his skin for that incalculably small last moment. Oh God, this was awful. I thanked the Lord again that no one else was watching. I was so embarrassed, so exposed. He headed back into the bedroom to wait until I had left, and you turned back around and looked at me as if your glance by itself could throw me out the door. I swore I saw a shadow move outside our window. And then it was at the far side of the room. Its magnitude like the figure of a man. It was curious. But my eyes refused to stop their sprint. I felt my soul stretch thinner and thinner the farther away my gaze ran, the more they strayed from focus.
Stop. My heart saw through the sky’s far side. Through galaxies.
I quickly grabbed my sleeping bag and pillow, and a few other odds and ends. This was so wrong, I was an intruder in my own damn house. I paused for a moment as I was walking back out the door.
“So how does all this end?” I asked you.
“I think you know.”
I nodded.
Stop.
I saw through existence itself now. Through hope. I felt cold suddenly, like I was suffocating.
“For his sake, he better never be here again. Next time it won’t go so well.”
Ah my forced bravado. What a shameful thing.
See. My lies can be earnest too.
I slammed the door behind me. But my gaze continued to slide. My heart and I shook hands. Said goodbye.
No. I should have probably used a different image. Its like in the movies, when an airlock is decompressing and one friend is holding on to another who is dangling in the air helplessly, threatening at any moment to get sucked into the void. God, if only this was that epic. But my heart just let go. It turned and followed my ever slipping gaze.
Stop. Stop. Stop. I couldn’t stop. I made Faceless nothing. But the truth was there was nothing.
And then I knew the shadow I thought I saw, I knew his name. In the same moment I knew my heart was suffocating.
Oh God. Oh God. Do you hear me? What rite must I commence, what sacrifice be given, that you should speak to me? Will you not come to your servant? Even the Devil is here.
But where are You?
I saw through the light. My gaze pierced the heavens. I saw through God.
Oh God. Oh God where are you?
And in my heart, there was nothing.
I stood alone now on the concrete porch, under the dull cast heavens, which a cool wind stretched out and wide. The gelid cold of the waist-high iron fence at my hands the only veil between me and the sleeping city which filled the horizon. I felt my ring push into my left hand as I leaned. I was slouching. Head down, looking at nothing sometimes, looking at my feet or off into the far reaches of the dark, where the still visible outlines of buildings and the even more distant hills thrust into the sky. The inside and the outside were so disconnected, it seemed. My stomach was in knots, I was defeated and confused, every breath a lament. But the world was unaffected. Indifferent. And I in my egocentricity wanted the world to stop and look at me, to cry out for justice. But of course it didn’t. It never did. That the world simply kept moving was the only truth I knew.
I asked God if I still believed in Him.
The air rose and fell with the slowly dwindling warmth of the day passed by. Verdant arcs of the aromatic air broke the calm of the night with small songs running through the potted trees. The leaves and ground were wet and glistening beneath the soft hush of rainfall. Somewhere a siren wailed over the ocean of dirty neon lights. I breathed the cool, damp air in deeply. Closed my eyes.
The cars in the distance, if I fooled myself just right, sounded like the ocean.
Comments
And great questions! I want to keep the meanings of some of the images open a bit, I enjoy the thought of readers creatively playing off the themes. However also what I had more or less in mind with the "looking through" image was sort of escapist, a you suggest. I suppose what I was ultimately getting at is that, as a sort of defense (or a retribution) I wanted to abstract him from the world, try to act like he didnt exist, didnt matter, wasnt real etc... in some sort of denial of my own, to try and refuse the reality I was being presented with.
The image of the continual slip of my gaze through the walls etc...I was trying to convey both the large emotional impact this small event had (i.e. it affected my whole universe) but also how difficult and how wide ranging I thought the implications of this abstraction were. I couldnt just deny his existence. Because he had become part of the house. The house was a part of the street and yard, which was part of the city, etc... and so on until I had to look through everything. I want to develop this a bit more whenever I get back to edit the chapter. But I also dont want to make the theme too heavy handed.
But I also wanted to convey that this was something that I felt slightly out of my control, hence I tried to use more passive sounding verbs like slip, fell, etc...in combination with active ones like pierce.
Hope that was a satisfactory answer. Thanks so much again for reading, and then even taking the time to analyze. It means a great deal to me