[video]
[video]
There are a few things he can’t admit to himself. He’s toyed with these ideas, looked at them from various angles, but he still finds himself unable to accept them.
The idea that the lake he’s standing in front of isn’t a cesspool, it isn’t a trap. It’s a lake. A muddy, unclear lake, but that’s all. Nothing lingers beneath the surface.
The idea that maybe every lake he’s ever stood in front of was like this one: just a lake.
The idea that, if those other lakes were dangerous, it was his fault. The idea that he had dumped a barrel of cyanide into every lake he had ever come across, or worse: The idea that he is a barrel of cyanide, destined to poison every lake he ever swims in whether he likes it or not.
He believes that maybe these ideas are true and he believes that these ideas are patently untrue and this conflict defines him.
Here is how he came to be standing at this lake on this day:
[video]
[video]
“You were right, you know.”
“Hrm?”
“That the sky always looks nicest above the condos.”
Jack laughs. “Only here.”
“Only here.” She smiles. He looks away.
The two sit in silence for a while, and then they get up, and then they leave. They go to their bedroom and they go to sleep and the next morning they eat breakfast together. They watch TV together. They go shopping together. But something is not right.
He goes to the condos again, this time without her, and he gets out of his car and he sits on the grass and he looks up into the cosmos. He thinks about her and he thinks about them and he thinks about himself. The sky, which was the color of their relationship when he arrived, becomes a sort of cotton candy pink.
He goes home and breaks the news.
“We’ll be together again someday, I’m sure,” she gloats. “You think this is the end, but it isn’t.”
For the second time in as many days, though, he proves her wrong.
1.
The limbs are on fire with the heat of a hundred million imploding suns. The muscles feel as though they are gripped tightly by vices, or perhaps by the hands of a giant, fingers meaty and thick, his primitive brain not comprehending how tremendously powerful he really is. The head is being ripped open with a hacksaw, blood and brain matter oozing out all over the cannibal committing the act. We are all pain, manifest.
2.
The hellspawn are chasing me. I lead the pack, the alpha male, a massive wooden target strapped to my back, slowing me down. Ostensibly, someone is in control here. Ostensibly, there is order and peace. Ostensibly. There is nothing in this world or any other that could control us now.
The hellspawn are right behind me, and they decide that they won’t wait any longer. Their ashen tendrils lift off the ground and eviscerate the target. Their claws dig into my back. I shake them off and start to run. What else is there in this world if not competition?
3.
My mother once told me:
“There is one safe place in every hostile land. Bury yourself in the swamps of Cambodia and breathe softly through a reed. Hide in a kind man’s basement as the Germans murder your people. Death itself is just an oasis in the ocean of life. If you must, cut the skin of another man and wear it as your own. Become him as flesh becomes earth.”
4.
This place is run like a slaughterhouse. We are nothing more than cuts of meat to them; a few dollars here, a few dollars there. The butcher will be here soon. He wears a crimson apron, but once it was white. The alcoholics are the prime rib. Women are tenderloin. The teenagers are nothing more than cube steak.
A doe could walk on water, and even then, these people would not care.
1 – In Winter -
- you’ll walk,
first one way
and then the other
and then you’ll do it again
and then you’ll go home,
comforted with the knowledge
that you really did come out
you said you would
and you did
for once.
2 – Springtime.
Greener than
any of
the corporations
who produce
clean air
and less
pollution. Greener
than all
of the
thumbs of
all of
the gardeners.
A green
so vivid
you’ll fall
to your
knees and
cry, or
at least
you’ll
wish you could.
3 – Our Creations Falter In The Sun.
Urban decay.
A place of
failed ambition and false starts,
a place where, long ago,
the Vines
gripped Man by the hand
and twisted up and around
what he had built
and said,
“No. No more.”
4 – The Fall.
The leaves, now brown and red, will fall soon.
Many already have.
The pavement crackles as you walk.
1
A walk through
the neighborhood
last night. We
climbed the trees
and danced in the streets.
What a wonderful, confusing,
conflicting time.
2
Vomit.
Vomit everywhere.
What a miserable
tramp. A new
era for our relationship:
over.
3
these two
bickering
drunks
are the
last thing
I
need
tonight
of all
nights
they have
to do this
jesus
what is
wrong
with them
don’t they
realize
I
have to
be up
in the
morning.
QRPX-6000, my flower,
so devoted to your work,
swinging back
and forth
all day
every day
forever.
Be mine.
Forgive me, QRPX-6000, I
can’t help but stare. Your muscled,
awe-inspiring limb tightly caresses a car door,
much as it caressed my heart once,
long ago, when I first came to this factory.
This factory, birthplace of my love
for you, and of countless Honda Four Door
All Terrain Sports Utility Vehicles.
This factory, a bundle of fibers,
a nerve linking the cars to the consumers,
a blood vessel carrying the cash to
the businessmen.
Be mine, QRPX-6000, darling,
please dear, please oh God answer me,
will you be mine, baby, honey, sweetie,
be mine, let’s get out of here forever, be mine,
why are you so quiet.
This factory is nothing but an atom
in a cell in an organ belonging to God,
and we are nothing but the electrons
that make up that atom,
miniscule but vital,
swirling around each other for eternity
but never colliding.
Your thoughts are like
poetry;
fast and lyrical, yes, but
also methodical and uncontrollable.
Robotic. Mechanical, almost.
The walls drip with garish
purple
and distracting lime
green. This signifies nothing, logically,
but emotionally it’s telling.
A small room of broken
people,
that’s all there was, and all I should
have expected. Three empty shells and
you.
Essentially, it all comes down to a
pact
that was once made, the two of us
knowing the whole time how futile it was,
but we did it anyway.
[video]
A Story Told With Photographs
A sign in the distance beckons me.
Before I left for college, I went to go see my grandparents one last time. My grandfather wanted to talk to me, and I had a feeling it was important. Dad brought me over, and we all chatted for a few minutes, but then he and my grandmother retreated to the other room so my grandfather and I could talk.
He said, “Jim, my sister never got a chance to meet you, but I think you really would’ve liked her. When I was around your age, she moved to San Francisco. One day before she left, she took me aside, where our parents couldn’t hear, and she said, ‘Bob, I’m so proud of the person you’ve become, and I just wanted you to know that. You’re gonna do great things someday, and I really believe that, but Bob, you gotta leave. You gotta get out of this town and never come back.’
“My sister and I were really close, so that meant a lot to me. I knew that after high school I would move out west and start over, because that’s what she wanted for me, and that’s what I dreamed about. When I graduated, I decided to stay for a few years, build up a savings, acquire some skills that I could use in San Francisco. At some point I got married. Then I had a kid, and then another kid, and then three more, and then my kids had kids, and now, here we are, and it’s far too late for me to go out west.
“Jim, Boston isn’t that far away, I know, but I think you’ll be happy there. If you’re ever tempted to come back home, I want you to remember: This place is quicksand. Never come back.”
I looked at my grandfather and said “There’s nothing for me here,” and he looked at me and said “Good.”