There exists no characters here, simply you and me, in the hopes that you may one day remember the days of silence we shared. I don’t want life to be about forgotten moments, and I’m not talking about mine. Somewhere, walking down a narrow path or under a vast open sky lit only by what the cosmos has to offer, there are hundreds – thousands, of breathtaking moments occurring simultaneously. I want to be one of those people who remembers those moments. One of those people who paints them so vividly, because the colors are so new that they will strike you, because I too have been stricken. I am reminded of a dream I had a while ago, of my grandfather. In my dream, I am walking alongside him in a field. He is working, hard as usual. I feel like he’s on some sort of mission. In my dream, he hardly acknowledges that I’m with him, he’s just so focused on his task. I can still hear him talking to himself, reciting Buddhist prayers in Thai. My grandmother is still alive, but in my dream, she had just passed away. As I watched my grandfather clear the field, I remember noticing a line of 5 trees, which were the only things he left standing. They were in a row, all the same types of tree, and they were all the same size. I remember the smell of rain. It felt like early spring or late summer when a quick storm can pass within ten minutes with the wind, but it’s only moments before the sun returns and it’s like the rain never fell, except for the droplets, which still remain as evidence. I can still sense the calm breeze and cool air I felt in my dream, and it haunts me slightly. I was also left with a thought I carried in the dream, that my grandfather was preparing heaven for my grandmother. The imagery I saw has yet to escape my memory. It’s like a photo whose color has yet to fade.
I am here and you are there and I am not exactly sure of the paths that led us into these diverse directions, seemingly gone by like the flicker of an image on a piece of film. It sometimes seems that the more aware we become of time, the quicker it slips through our fingers, unable to be grasped, like sand. It sometimes feels as though the harder you hold on, the quicker the granules escape your grasp. I guess there is something to be said for staying loose and not holding the moment so tightly that it disappears. And yet there seems to exist those figments, which you are able to possess in their entirety so that they become a part of who you are or will become. Instinct in and of itself never fails to distinguish between the sands of time and moments made of leather. Often, when something strikes me deeply, I repeat a Buddhist Japanese proverb "Kokoro no koma ni tadzuna wo yurusuna." It means, "Never let go the reins of the wild colt of the heart." Whenever I feel like I've reached an impossible moment and lose motivation, inside my mind I whisper "Ad astra per infinitum," to the stars for infinity, and I think about all the wonderful people I have I have had in my life and at my side, always. I realize that I am fortunate to know and love such an array of different people and they make my life comparable to a rainbow in being multifaceted, multidimensional, and special. But, things have changed, and this is no longer where I find myself.
Often, you never really know when it’s going to be the last time. The last time that you make love to someone you’ve loved with what felt like the core of your soul. To smell their breath, taste their tongue, feel the wetness of their skin upon yours. Long after that day passed I found myself lingering within that moment. Why didn’t I fight? Now I feel myself holding my breath within that moment just to hold that person close, a little longer, to have it all again.
I remember our last moment so vividly, while I was in the throws of hard silence filled only with breathing and intensity, I felt outside of myself. In my heart I already knew that our curtain was closing. The room was filled with white morning light, our bodies were swaddled in bright, freshly washed, white sheets. Our skin, colored darker by the summer sun, was a beautiful contrast to the vibrant paleness around us. I opened my eyes to watch my arms caressing his back, to see him moving. He did not notice as I looked out the window to see the haze creeping in, swallowing me. A single tear rolled down my cheek before I closed my eyes to go back into the darkness. That was two years ago. I haven’t seen him since. I will never see him again.
My life ended 6 days later. I had a strange and vivid dream that painted the events of that week as if they were memories, which had not yet happened. The morning we made love forced the memories from the dream to flood into my mind as though a damn had been lifted. When I looked out the window, I already knew what the next days held for me, for us. I said nothing. I simply lay there silently, except for that one tear, which took a meandering stroll down the contour of my face, what was in my heart, was our secret.
What would you do if you knew that your life was going to end within a matter of days? Would you try to change it? Fate is a strange and powerful beast, I found myself at its mercy, blindsided within a moment, which should have been remembered as sweet. In my mind there were no choices I could make, that wouldn’t somehow lead to the visions dancing in my head. In an odd way, I found myself fascinated with the intrinsic beauty behind the cards that had fallen before me. Unlike poker, I couldn’t ask the dealer to exchange the ones I didn’t like. All I could do was write this one simple letter…
I am not sure if you have already forgotten me. But, I was that one, on a clear crisp evening who stood out the window, silent, draped in darkness, while the breeze danced in my hair. In the chill of the empty room, I felt your curious eyes, and I simply turned to offer you the view, which you had already seen countless times before. I was standing in your window, wondering about the fall. This was the first night we both observed that something existed outside of the ordinary. In between silence we made our exchange like two species at prey, we each took turns at mild oscillations, and as predator showing little fluctuation. Once we had thoroughly devoured each other, both mind and body, through the course until dawn approached, I found that you were still sitting, and maybe, I was still nothing. In silence I was made to understand in the clearness of your eyes that in the end, invariably both "something" or "nothing" meant nothing. As I watched you walk, I simply turned back to your window to the dawn. I could feel your eyes on my legs and I could feel your hand moving within your own hair, pulling at the back, as I had done before. As I closed my eyes, I pictured myself falling. I tried to stand, to find you, but found the room was now nothing. Left in open, left in silence, I once again closed my eyes.
There were times where I felt as though I existed within the planes of openness. Surrounded by the world, I only experienced the sky above. As soothing as I would find the barrenness, I would always need to start painting again. But in these times, I gifted to myself, the gift of solitude. I would manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness...have few desires. Then, I would close my eyes only for the moment to return to me.
I can see you walking across the surface of a frozen pond searching for me, your face is pale, your lips pink. As you walk across the pond, you kick snow off the shiny, hard surface and my face is underneath, banging against the ice, reaching for you but we simply can't get to each other. And in this image, there are flashes in my mind as I watch you slowly fade away as I drift beneath the glass. I had found myself entranced and wrapped within you. I wanted to take you into my arms, enfold myself within the dulcet strokes of whispers from your mind and resonating heat from your body until things became real. I pictured myself next to you lightly tracing your smoothness, entangling my fingers within yours if only to feel your heart quiver for the briefest interlude. I wanted the touching and the words to somehow erase some of your struggles and some of your pain. I wished to be a violin in your life, something that at times provoked you to play or reflect or simply feel.
When these images of you came, I would begin to hear music in my head. In those times, I wished I knew how to play the piano instead of guessing at the notes when I would sit at the instrument. The sounds would fill my mind and take away some of the emptiness and confusion. In those moments, my life was neither bad nor good, it's always been rich and full of so many wonderful things. However, I would find myself in a space where I just wanted to be alone unless I invited someone in. Many of the people I cared for in life weren't used to such an introversive face, they're used to the loud, smiling me. I just needed to reflect on some of my choices, recharge my batteries, actually start dreaming at night again, and write more. Somehow, even in the midst of such strong imagery, the absence of flowing words felt like suffocation. It became my only way of painting the images of my mind into life and reality. Words become the only colors I knew in order to fill things again because the pale gray eventually needed to disappear from my life. No matter where I would put them, they would have a sense of permanence. Only I could make their image disappear, but I would always know their meaning. And you will have known them too.
I was never quite certain of how the silence grew. Except to know that it exists and it continues to haunt me. In your absence, I will open my eyes only to see the gray, I will only want to see the gray and feel the chill of the coming fall. I will want to feel the chill of my breath and watch it escape my body as vapors against the air around me, but it's not cold enough yet. I envision myself soon making the walk to and from my car and my eyes catching glimpses of the blades of grass, which will be stubborn in their greenness, they will make me shudder. The small piles of bright yellow leaves, which will have trickled on to the pale cement sidewalks would seem so pretty to me, but soon they will seem out of place...just like their vibrant red veiny counterparts which will persist to cling to dull brown branches which were once so full of life. I will feel as though colors don't have a place in my life. Waiting for dark, waiting for day, countless contradictions that only you or I could understand.
Now, as we sit across from each other, I can see you and you can see me. We are seated in a place where they write and speak and smoke by candlelight and the velour of old couches are greased with dirt, old cells and imprints of fabric melted by the occasional burn. We listen to music I used to listen to a long, long time ago, The Reality of my Surroundings and Nearly God and I smile because my hair has grown to a different shade and I am not that person anymore and I don't think about those things anymore. I simply listen to you speak. This time, I am silent. You look to me as though I am a mirror, as though you seek a reflection, yet I am blank, only to provide enough for you to seek refuge through touch. My fingers begin to lightly trace your naked back from beneath your shirt.
Like cool steam after a storm on a hot summer day, there are small strengths in chipped china cups bearing their weight in tea. I have learned the value of keeping my own secrets and keeping my heart concealed, though I have yet to close my mind or my wallet or my home. While sitting here with you, I will want to control the words, which are spoken, but they will tumble like dominos that simply went stumbling down before I could rearrange them.
Once we leave, I will begin to feel like the world has become draped in new colors for which there are no descriptions and I will be left sitting, trying to relearn everything all over again. Standing in a forest where all the leaves have fallen, wondering what happened, I will hear the echoes upon the images of your face upon my dreams. I want to be strong for you, and I will not simply place my weaknesses behind a wooden door in a damp room.
You have never known my desire to reach you. This puerile need to give and receive and to be satiated by you. I want to feel what goes through your mind, your thoughts to muse and reflect upon them as if they had once belonged to me. I want to ruminate within the improbabilities using the narrow bits of information I felt I had managed to steal and break away from you, to pretend that I was you and figure out how you would react to the lyric of a poem I had written, to the Maroon 5 song, to a stance on a political debate, to the sight of yourself in a recent photograph. I can only imagine these reactions of yours because they don't exist otherwise.
I have come to believe that you are more like me than my imagination allows me to envision. Meandering, thinking, swimming through the oceans far enough to hear the waves break but not so far that the depths would make you succumb to the water. Focusing your eyes into the sunset, far away, reaching for it, wanting it, listening to the sound of laughter mixed with sand behind you, thinking of your life and your choices. Everything seems to occur simultaneously. There seems to be no shades of grey, only a thin black and white world of decisions where rationality is supposed to win. But, beneath the surface of the waters there exist currents of perspective and shades of subtlety that dance and flicker like silvery schools of fish just out of your reach. It's what dictates the truth in your action and forces you to continue on to breathe.
Long ago in a distant moment when I gazed upon your eyes, I found myself entranced and wrapped within you. In your heart I fell into love, fought courageous battles as I tread lightly behind your facades, found truths, discovered mysteries, witnessed paradigms become enigmas. I found God, only to lose him again, and perhaps to regain my faith once more.
Through your touch I felt the dulcet stroke of a lover upon my skin as vividly as I felt the blade of the sword pierce my being to bring me to my knees. You have such power over me, so able to make me weep sweet rain born of fear, anger, hope, love. You are so able to make me believe when no reason had ever existed before. And yet you incite me, lead me through twists and turns, delving within my own depths to find a bit of my soul in you.
I could so easily hear your rhapsody and rhyme whispered gently in my ear. Upon my soul I felt you enter me, felt you within me, touching...moving. Slowly I drifted into dreams and within my minds sky I could see. Visions and paintings created so vividly, not existing in reality. And when the hour came and I found the hour had come, one last and final time... I could only feel a sense of calm and resolution embodied within bittersweet loveliness. And at times I craved more, an insatiable appetite manifested by heavenly imprints your mind left open, page by page, by page. In history or fables or truths I have known that at times there is or can be no return. Yet here I sit ever anxiously, ready to read and absorb you, your words.
Since the last time I felt you, I have noticed that the world is full of fire flies. The world in its infinite being casts a glow if you stop to see it, pause long enough to be mesmerized by it. Bioluminescence abounds in faint and overt ways. Life can be still, so long as you allow yourself to live within the moment and not around it. Life lives and breathes within and throughout us. A primal feeling of polarity streams through my veins of inner consciousness whenever I stop to think about it. Whenever I feel that fundamental need to feel that energy. Whenever I feel the need to know that inevitably we are all one with each other. Life is such an intricate circle of balances.
Although my soul may feel exponentially old, my mind and body continue to wage a battle against time and the seemingly finite space we occupy while we are here. If this is my dream world, then I will become lucid. But, for now, it is as though you are far, far away and my words do not hear you. You are like my soul, I like for you to be still. Let me come to be still in your silence. Within silence perhaps you may come to understand that being with you separates every cell in my body by five centimeters and the plasma between those million entities is a siren constantly wailing one continuous message and a thousand different shades of admiration that incites envy amongst leering smiles behind lips burning of vodka that dissolve my very consciousness with every expression of the moment you returned.
