Look Up

So many things hit at once, after a pause.

I've put mourning on pause, because happier occasions prohibit it.

Eventually, it catches up and the wave hits.

The angel comes back.

"Look up," it says, and the Little Girl does.
"They always climb before they fall, don't they?" she wonders aloud.
"It seems so," says the angel.
"Where are they now?"
"Scattered."
"No more pain."
"No more pain. They are nothing. Free."
"With you?"
"With you. With me. With the universe across its entirety, and with Time, across its expanse."
"Past and present."
"Yes, Little Girl. You are learning. No future. You have one more step to go."
"Only present."
The angel bows.
"So there are no turns, are there? And I've just kept asking when it's mine," she says.
"True."
"It is always my turn. I have not been, and I am, and I will not be. These are all simultaneous."
"Yes."
"And so, I should stop asking you to take me with you. I am already with you. I just need to open my eyes. Scatter while I'm alive."
"To be an angel while human, you need to open your mind. You are half way there, Little Girl. Come now."
"Cover me."
"You are always within my wings," says the angel.

The One with Wings

"You have flown too near the sun, Little Girl," says the angel.

"Aren't you the one with wings?" she replies.

"And thus, you fall."

"Only for the joy of it. Will you catch me?"

"When you return to the water, and the darkness, and the one-way path into which you've plunged, I can hand you a string. Follow it back. I am only a guide, not a savior," the angel says.

"No one is a savior," the girl replies.

"You have known this truth, always."

"Usually, only angels speak it."

"Then listen. And when a human being appears, however rarely, and says the same, listen again. You are the only one who can build your foundation. You are the Architect. You are the only one who can look away and come back again."

"Take me with you sometime," she pleads.

"You will have your moment," the angel says. "And you will have the rest of eternity to ponder this. Do not lose yourself just yet."

"That's my problem, Uriel," she says. "You bear the curse of holiness and I bear the curse of self."

"If I only had what you wish to lose."

"If only you were human..."

"The universe is not in the habit of arbitrarily granting wishes."

"Oh, how I am so acutely aware."

"Perhaps you should work on becoming more obtuse. Your misery may follow suit."

"I don't think it works this way, Uriel," she says.

*     *     *

"What would you say, Little Girl, if I suggested I were more than actual? If I were real?"

"Does it matter anymore, Uriel? It has been so long. And whether I am crazy or not, you are here to stay. I have accepted doubt for the long haul."

"Doubt is the Minotaur. I told you, Little Girl, I will hand you a string. Follow it back. Not all drownings end in death. And although to be born again, you must die, not all who are born again are wrapped in delusion. You have long since transcended faith. How could you not?" asks the angel.

"I'll be frank, Uriel. When I speak of faith, it is a defamation. Knowledge is so much more concrete when it comes to the universe. And you, of all minds around, should know I have never forgotten."

"No, Little Girl. You have never forgotten."

"Then why speak of doubt?" she asks.

"Because you are still swayed by the world of the Living. Things corporeal influence your opinion, turn your head away from the truth I left you with."

"You really messed with me, didn't you?" she accuses. "You were supposed to leave me with nothing, with a blank page. Life is about exploration. And returning. And you ruined my journey."

"But you are still walking."

"And you're still flying. But time is a point."

"Perhaps your focus should be the undoing of time. Unravel time. Know it as a line. Ignore the truth. Impose amnesia upon yourself," advises the angel.

"Some things are impossible and you know it, Uriel."

"Then know impossibility to be false."

"How, when you have left me with the truth?"

"Find another one. You know how time works. Choose the destiny you wish to experience. Put all the others aside."

*     *     *

"What am I?" asks the angel.

"You are an injury written in absence," says the Girl. 

"How do I hurt you?"

"In so many ways," she says. "With your innocence. With your knowledge. With the gaps you fill in the air. With the gap you create. And you are so damned loud."

*     *     *

The angel will never know what shampoo smells like, or that my hair carries the scent of it all day long. It will never know the bliss of hot water rinsing soap away in the shower, or the shocking pain of a burn when the water is too hot.

The angel will never know happiness, only what a smile looks like from far away. Likewise, it will never know despair or desperation other than what it can see of our reactions. Cries. Wails. Collapse.

It will never know strength or weakness beyond what it can see, locked in its glass sepulcher of holiness. 

The angel will understand theory and the hypotheses of everything -- without ever knowing the feeling of any of it. Its entire existence is a jail of observation and the dull knock of crushing desire for all of it, locked beyond the encasement of its being.

It sees us from another plane. Humanity is barred from understanding the universe as an angel understands, just as an angel is prohibited from ours. But most of us don't ever get a glimpse of that other vision. We never know there is anything to miss. 

An angel sees everything and understands it is deprived without knowing of just quite what.

The Little Girl has been cursed with a glimpse of that angelic plane and it is enticing, seductive, so much richer than anything she has ever gotten here. Of course, she's human. She can observe from their pedestal with all the feeling in the world.

The story is a lie but the foundation is the truth. Knowing this is a jail cell.

Back in Focus

The angel is back. This time, I feel as if it is from the other side of a gulf I constructed on my own, on purpose.

"Where have you been?" the Little Girl asks.
"Beside you," the angel answers.
"Since when?"
"I have never left."
"All that time, you were right here? But, I couldn't feel you like I used to."
"All that time? Time is nothing, Little Girl. Are you forgetting? All that time has done nothing but remained in a pool around you. And in time, an angel exists, waiting, pointing. What could change? An angel cannot change."
"Did I change?"
"You are what you always were and you have been what you always will be. Did you change?"
"I feel removed. I feel removed from you."
"Do not think in a manner of distance. Think in a manner of mind. Are you removed?"
"No. I've just lost concentration."
"Really? Isn't that what you wanted? To be closer to humanity. To live with two feet in the world of the living?"
"I will return to the Scattering eventually. I am already there. It is already here. But I am still myself. I still think of myself. But I feel you more strongly now. More than I have in a long time."
"Your own desires dictate what you feel. Your desires dictate your sensitivity. What do you want, Little Girl?"
"I want..." the Little Girl's voice trails off. She laughs at herself. "I want to be alone. Ironic, isn't it?"
"Indeed. But you know what you have when you are alone."
"I have you."
"Yes."
"And you are always here."
"I can never be anywhere else, even if I travel far. I will always be beside you, folding distance and time into itself, so that we are never parted for even an instant. You only have to look."
"I am looking."
"Appreciate the blessing of your eyes, then."
"And the blessing of my skin?"
"Yes."
"What do you want, Uriel?"
"The same as always. One moment, one droplet of a ripple in the universal Point, where I can feel as you do."
"The blessing of eyes, then," the Little Girl says.
"A blessing of eyes," agrees the angel.

Another Conversation

"Have you forgiven me?" asks Uriel.

"For what?" the Little Girl asks back.

"My insufficiencies."

The Little Girl furrows her brow.

"You are only an angel, after all. What can I do? What does it matter what I want versus what I can have when it comes to you? You will never understand."

"I have always tried. And yet your rage is like a tempest. Uncontrolled, although you do understand the limitations of my nature, yes?"

"Maybe only to the point that you understand the origin of my rage. Yes? And that rage is rooted in desire, which you will never understand. Because you are Holy. And I spit on that!”

If the angel were a man, it would turn away. Instead, it leans forward.

“I have been observing a man,” it says. “Where you are rage, he is desire. And it is rooted in his skin.”

“Something else you’ll never understand,” she says.

 “So you have not forgiven me.”

“There is nothing to forgive, angel. There’s only everything to either accept or lament. And you know my nature. Beyond the rage. Beyond the desire. Which is rooted in my skin. How can we ever reconcile our differences? You are nothing but a pocket of air with the annoying habit of dropping in and turning my head.”

“Perhaps we have more in common than you admit. For if I am a pocket of air and you are a storm, we both have our origins in wind.”

“Tell me about the man. Does he know you?”

“To him I am only a passing thought in his own voice. His voice asks why he is so thoroughly consumed with lust. I ask myself what lust is, for in truth, I have never desired. I have never felt a stab of hunger, or the emptiness of disappointment that you feel. I have never wanted, other than to be curious about what wanting is.”

“Desire is a preoccupation that rules all of us. It turns our heads. It keeps us in place. Even you. I follow your lead because I want to you. Because I need to know. Because I want to know.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No. Never leave me. You are the air I breathe. Even though you’ll never love, I love enough for us both. You are always the one I turn to, despite all my resentment. Maybe it’s just that in the face of all my raging desire, the thing I desire most is to not want at all. But I can’t overstep my own nature, just like you can’t turn away from yours. I’ll always want to rid myself of wanting. The irony of it all.”

You are only a stone now, cold in the winter and burning in the summer heat. But this is the closest I can come to being next to you. So I will sit here, next to your stone, with what used to be you under me, quietly feeding the grass.

They say that time is the great healer, but it has been years. The space I made for you is still there, empty since you left. Irrationality has made me wait, although I'm not sure what it is I'm waiting for. A great miracle? Death?

A great miracle is out of reach. Death is there, just beyond my grasp. Death is with you, separating us along this mortal coil.

The space where you used to be is so empty where it used to be so full. I trace the lines of the space and try to rejoice in the sunlight. And still, it is not second nature to me to know that you're not there. I still expect you when I come home. I still reach for you in my sleep. I still turn around, annoyed, that you don't come running to help open the lid of a testy jar. I still wait for you to come home.

I still expect you to be breathing beside me, offering up your loud, irritating commentary on this life you left me behind in. It is the same commentary that drew me in the first place, that made me argue back, that challenged both of us to challenge ourselves.

Am I pathetic? To be talking to empty air? Have I run off the cliff of sanity and fallen into the gulf of the Mad? To still make a list of all the things we should do one day, of all the things I need to tell you about my day...to still plan as if there is a lifetime ahead of us both?

Am I insane to construct retroactive fantasies of how it could have gone if only you hadn't gone? To imagine the morning after the night you stopped breathing, with your arms wrapped around me as always - as if the morning had come and we named our children like we'd planned? Who they would be if they had met you, known you, laughed with you. If the excitement we'd felt hadn't left me and turned into dread.

So many ifs. Because I still expect you. Time is nothing. Time is a circular wind, funneling down and destroying, doubling back on itself and putting us back into pivotal moments - after the fact.

What was the hour you left? What was the minute? Did you notice? Did you fight it? Or did you go gently?

I would rage, rage against it. And still, I expect you: even in the dying of the light. Even in the shades of grey, even in the bright sun. Always. I still expect you.

An Exercise on Perspective

It is an autumn day, with leaves turning every color and hanging onto their branches for dear, sweet life. Sweet, short life. And then: swirl and fly and fall. Rest.

Here is a girl sitting in a chair at a table on a patio next to a wall of brick. She doesn't have to dream of beauty because it is all around her in the chilly autumn air, full of the dance of the dying. The cool air turns to winter.

She doesn't have to dream because the better dream is here, sitting next to her in an identical chair, watching the same scene, breathing the same air. And yet:

"I'm here for this," she says, waving her arm around. She means that she is here for the beauty.

She is young, so she expects beauty to be equated with love and miracles.

She is young and so the notion of "seeing with my own two eyes" means "seeing with our two sets of eyes" and gleaning the same lesson from the world.

But youth is soon introduced to the concept of dimension and varying perspective: the fact that a miracle can never mean a fairy tale. The fact that a miracle is simple, no fanfare, just the compromise of two people agreeing to sit in one place, accepting that their own four eyes will look at the same scene and understand two entirely separate universes occupying the same space and time.

"I'm here for this," she says, indicating dying leaves. Beauty.

"I'm here for this," he counters, indicating beauty, as he pats the brick of the building fondly. Beauty: defined as institution. Defined without noticing one tree, or one leaf swirling on the wind, all danced out.

Two people agreeing to sit in one place and taking in two entirely separate universes occupying the same space and time. (Definition.) The girl learns that everything is relative. She learns that nothing is.

She is young and so it irks her because the maiden in the tower knows only one dimension: the down of fantasy. The rescue and the happy ending.

Harmony: A pretty word that is all too often, and unfortunately, misunderstood as agreement. But agreement = tolerance. Harmony does not = agreement. Harmony: A clashing of two minds existing side-by-side in rhythm, creating a weave. Because harmony can only be made of a minimum of two paths crossing, existing in tandem, tolerating each other and making something new with their differences so that the clashing resonates pleasantly.

Two universes from the same scene at the same time.

What is true?

"I am here for this," she says, indicating nature.

The young believe that can work. "This is why we can never work," he says. "Because I am all about bricks and stones. Ground, cement. How it all comes together on a Curriculum Vitae. And you - you're all about dreams and stars and nature. Full of passion. Too much passion."

"And you hate that?"

"I don't know."

"You hate what it does to you. Passion spilling out of everywhere. Your brick dam can't hold the water. You hate what it does to you. You don't know how to deal with feeling. You don't know how to take it."

"No." He isn't good at expression, but she knows him too well. A whole conversation goes on in a moment, only with a glance of the eyes.

No, he says, although no words are spoken. "I can't handle feeling. I break under emotion. I break under the weight of being human, so I avoid it. You are human enough for both of us."

He runs. Running consists of a turn of the head, silence, a walk in the other direction. But most of all, running consists of a staying in place when she is there waiting, across the room.

She grows up when she stops waiting.

She puts her words and her passion away like gloves in a drawer even though she knows perfectly well that a person's nature cannot be locked away like the Lost Boy's shadow. It breaks out. It conquers without any help.

She learns to create miracles instead of trusting in them. She learns not to be annoyed by four eyes looking on the same scene seeing two different universes. She learns to rejoice in it.

She learns that there is no other way between one human being and another. She learns that if a moment or series of moments seem to be a fairy tale, they are only extravagant pretty lies.

She decides to trust in bricks and leaves but keeps quiet about it. What she she sees with her own two eyes is a private celebration, a private parade, without the fanfare.

(Draft 2)

The only lover who ever touched me was the Muse,
with its pornographic imagery flaunting impossibility -
but its asexuality stroked me
while all the other lovers were too distant or
imaginary.

And so I drowned in its song,
in the waves of insanity that crucify sound
minds.
The Lover is that maddening melody, rising
and receding in waves across the windblown page.

But that Siren, the Muse, subdues passion with rage,
pulls my hand,
obliterates lust with desire,
and while time passes unseen I miss my life for its dreams
as the Muse continues its dance.

It is a lie that Artists are born with Chance,
born crippled and chained.

And who would take my other hand, unfettered by the Muse,
understand that comprehension pulls us farther apart?
Who would dare to love the absence that is me?

But enough of the brooding.

You must know: the worst of it is over, for we are young,
undone before we've begun.
Because no matter the depth or the distance,
or the time spent staring into the sun,
the Muse will always have my ear.

And who could be the one
to dig deep enough to release me from the Muse's sphere
that wraps itself around me in the sand?