In the end we all fall apart. A few
missteps too many, a miscalculation, a wrong turn on the wrong road. A grand
cosmic conspiracy against us all from birth, supernova swirls of cinnamon and
honey, ether in a deep void as we all fall apart every waking moment of every
waking life.
I knew as I walked into that liquor
store with a beretta under my arm tonight was my tonight to fall apart but I
didn’t know what else to do so I did it. I knew I might get caught, I knew the
take wouldn’t be great, but I knew I needed the money so I did it. What I
didn’t expect was the shotgun from under the counter, the clerk’s blood on the
bottles of good tequila behind him.
From there, I expected a sentence,
harsh, murder, probably murder one, and I expected I would deserve it.
What I didn’t expect was being made
an example out of. Mistakes, sure, but that doesn’t make me stupid. So when the
prosecutor argued that the violence of my case was particularly egregious,
particularly brutal and cold and uncaring I was lost. But then I knew it was
quite a time since the last death penalty conviction here, so I figured the
prosecutor was just trying to make points for some upcoming election. He said
some other things but only now do I understand them but that doesn’t matter.
When the sentencing came, I braced
for the worst, for life, for death, for anything but what I got. A new
technique, the judge said, for convicts who demonstrated particular
psychological conditions. I didn’t know what that meant but I think I do now.
The last of the free men. I once
knew a man who called me one of the last of the free men.
Free from what? I asked him.
I never worked a real job. Never
payed taxes. Never bought a house, never had a loan or a mortgage, never got
married. Not for me. Freedom, that was my game. Even if I had to buy my freedom
with a gun
But then the judge said the words,
and that was my fate, only fifteen years, it seemed easy. I didn’t understand
what he meant when he said it was an alternative sort of prison.
Appeal was rejected.
First they took measurements. I
asked and no one gave me a straight answer and many didn’t look at me.
Then one night I got taken from my
cell and driven by one whose eyes stayed on the roads, a guard with an AR-15,
me alone on the bus but for the watchers.
The building was not like other
prisons. There was a guard, but he didn’t look like a prison guard. He looked
bored, not the sociopathic eyes that I’d grown accustomed to. He led me down a
corridor all in white.
At corridor's end two more men met
us. They sat me down in a chair, and one of them stuck me with a needle and it
all went dark.
Those were the last faces and I
remember them, every acne scar and sunspot, every mole and fleck of hair, every
gesture and facial contortion. Every millimeter. Because those were the last.
Right before the needle went in one of them said almost silent
Sorry.
When I came to I wasn’t sure I came
to. All was white, flat, unshining, pure. I tried to move, and found my body
paralyzed. I felt as though I was lying down, but unsure on what. I tried to
turn my head and found it firmly affixed in place. I tried to tell how far from
my eyes the white in front of me was but I couldn’t and can’t.
And that was all I’ve seen and felt
since those last faces, at least in the traditional sense.
For the first period, I tried to
mark time, but found myself increasingly unable. I tried to talk, but couldn’t
hear the words mouth formed, and figured this was some mechanization of
whatever held my head and holds it still.
I tried to count inside my head, but
without sound I couldn’t focus, couldn’t understand even the idea of the words
within my head. I tried to make the numbers the only thing in my mind, but
every so often my thoughts would wander and if they wandered slightly they
wandered completely. I tried to hear, strained myself, realized I could hear
static, a TV mistuned.
I think it was hours but it may have
been minutes and then I see the first images and I’m not sure if a time has
passed or not since then beyond moments but I saw an image and I see an image,
not before me, not between eyes and white, but within, at first simple, horses
racing fast across a great field of green underneath vast snowcapped mountains.
I try to find a reality or unreality
to define what I see but I can’t then I hear their hooves clobbering the earth
below and I don’t feel it in me but I know the feeling and that is as good as
feeling.
The horses they reach the side of a
stream, and they stop and they all drink of the water and I feel it trickle
cool down my throat, and I feel the warmth of the sun beating down on the back
of my neck, my bare arms, I run my hand through the coat of a nearby beast and
it runs as silk in between my fingers and I’m carried back to youth, riding low
across the Montana sky, the flesh of two creatures made as one, country unkept
by the rider or the landowner or God himself and the animal responds to me as
my own muscle. The mountains that beat down upon and around us stretch upwards
to the lower reaches of the heavens and they too become as one, then we’re
heading fast in towards a little ranch home set out amongst the endless
nowhere, and I think I see a face in the window then again all I see is white
and all I hear is static.
I read once somewhere that in
conditions of total sensory deprivation, human beings will often experience
vivid waking visual and auditory hallucinations.
They will also lose time.
Experience a psychological
disconnect.
Lose the self.
The past.
A future
hope
even short term memory and
understanding
and
time
and you slip and fall and you can’t
get up and it’s raining down on the roof and
a car pulls up and you get out and
there is a gun in your hand and then there isn’t and blood
wait
stop
focus
can’t lose yourself. think. find a
line. follow it
a path
a way to think
something to think about
picture someone, something,
somewhere
It’s January and the night is cold.
You’re cold or are you warm is it
hot are you dressed are you naked are you free or are you caged are you here or
are you nowhere how long have you been here or were you never here shapes and
colors simulacran forms drift in through those supernova ether pipe dreams
pills and tabs and strange smokes and
FOCUS
It’s January and the night is cold, Christmas lights all around you,
you’re spinning in circles, you skate around a rink, faces flash by melting
together and apart all at once a hundred eyes and smiles, dimples, cheeks red,
laughter and the sounds of sweet classical music, Brahms, maybe. You see
repeated as you skate by a girl in a red hat and you ponder why then you
remember the girl with you, tall, blonde, her hand in yours and you look at her
and you smile at each other, and you stumble but she catches you and you mouth
her name to her, to yourself and then she smirks.
“What, need to remind yourself the
name of the girl you just kissed?”
wait, wait, none of this is real
what the fuck what the fuck I can’t talk to you because you aren’t real none of
this is real and the white is before you again and again with the droning on
buzz
the girl, I knew her, when I was
just a kid, I even thought I loved her I think but she’s not here anymore I
think she might even be dead or maybe I’m dead I can’t remember, but why did I
see her, her of all people, here, the end of all things, here where there is
only pain.
Remember. Stop. I have to stop my
own mind, draw it to a halt before me, a carriage. A horse and carriage.
Another night, this one warm, May,
maybe April, and I’m dressed well, a suit jacket with coat tails, top hat,
gloves, and across from me is a handsome man dressed with the same 200 year old
style as myself, and I think I’ve known a part of him, but not this part. We’re
both laughing and I feel a little bit drunk, that wonderful stage of tipsy
right before your mind stops working. He begins to speak, and I follow, though
I know not how.
“Oh, and did you see that redhead!
Her breasts, my my!”
“Redhead, oh you and your redheads,
always the redheads. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you had a weakness
for the Irish stock.”
“Hah, well, Catholic girls, you know
what they say.”
“You may, I prefer higher company.”
“Higher company? Oh please, I saw
that brunette you were with, Marie - I’m sure you know the rumors.”
“Please, I’m sure if she truly slept
with a woman they weren’t completely nude.”
“Haha, you must stay away from those
artistic types - they are all so, well, you know!”
Then our carriage comes out from the
woods the horses carry us through, and our driver glances back at us briefly,
his features old and refined. The air rushes by and I feel it pull at the hair
of my mustache, pinch at my cheeks.
All around us are stars, then we are
crossing a bridge, and I see mansions on a not so far off shoreline. I turn
back to my companion, and his face has taken on a tone of slight seriousness.
“You know where we are, right?”
“I... I’m not sure.”
“Do you know when?”
“No.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because I’m not here.”
“Where are you then?”
“Nowhere. A white room.”
“How long have you been there?”
“I have no clue.”
“Will ever you be free?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure any of me
shall be left to feel freedom.”
“How did you survive before?”
“When?”
“Forever into your past where you
can reach. Everyone always tells you all your mind allows, and yet when have
you been free, you, the last of the free men?”
Then the white is there again and
the buzz and I try to focus again.
And I can’t and I can only see what
I see, not what I know is there.
I try not to get lost, try to be as
not this room if it is truly a room and not itself a hallucination
and with this thought it all goes
lost to the the ether and the void and the meaningless meaning of it all and I
am christ upon his cross condescended down upon by the man in washington as the
poor all look up and I look down and it all comes around and back again as the
start and again timeless and deliverance forever after dying as we began and as
we loved and fucked and prayed as the we all fall in love with our internal
notion of death and we let it withhold it and I’m seeing and witnessing and
becoming in the beginning and the inevitable heat death of
the universe as it is always and
forever
forgot
zion a million men chase after but the hooker down the block tells you
it’s here baby just a few dollars
then the girl she walks out on me as
a car flips over and over and over an embankment
blood entombs us as in death
I see flashes of reason in the
un-time before and after
and I feel a million little needles
all stuck into me at once
steve mcqueen stands before a judge
and mutters about a wasted life tom hardy nude wrestles guards as covered in
grease paint and malcolm mcdowell his eyes pried open and does he see what I
see?
the gun and I feel its weight in my
hand again and this time the blood is mine
I see his family crying at the trial
then I’m in a river somewhere and
it’s nighttime and I’m walking out into the current and it covers my mouth and
then it’s within my nose and then it’s my eyes and they burn and scream out for
me to stop and then
wait
lost again
the beginning
There must be a beginning.
The white. The buzz.
And then I stare into the white and
I know not for how long I stare.
Maybe I sleep sometimes but if I
dream maybe I’m awake and if I see black maybe I’m dead.
This time, I go about it
differently, rather than finding a world, I construct one, from the white, from
the darkness behind my eyelids, from memories and movies and old songs. And my
world gradually takes shape.
First a beach, at night, islands in
the water towering up in rocky stone capped in tropical greenery then the beach
itself, lit by a thousand burning lanterns, hold onto them, the light, then
stars above, paint the Milky Way - no, Andromeda, can’t tie this world and the
past together too tight, must build a new world free. The stars, so many, vast
swirls of existential universe, an exposure painting cast against the black, a
million worlds to explore all within the confines of this world constructed
from nothing.
Then a roof and the walls to match,
harsh, modernist lines, concrete, glass, steel, within articles of basic
comfort, a bed and table. Not much, not at first.
Then I draw myself slowly unto the
world. Arms and legs and a body, but not the one I was born with but the one
always desired, not perfect, but close, beautiful and strong.
I try to hold myself to the world,
feel it, breathe it, paint on the scent of saltwater, plant life, something
cooking... somewhere, and behind the house now, a small jungle, but wait, a
road through it, and a motorcycle, old and expensive, something else better
than the world I had. I think to myself I’ll have to learn what it feels to
ride a motorcycle, learn it onto the basic properties of the world of my
construction but first I must own the world.
The sand, I feel it beneath me,
under foot, sliding, cool, what does sand feel like, how does it behave?
I walk for a while. I’m not yet sure
how long a while is. I know I’ll have to have days and nights but this will
come with time when I’ve come to understand time. As I walk, more islands form
up around me, more stars in the sky, more lanterns, eventually create a town
with a bay and boats and lights and I create people but then I see one of them
and it looks at me and I turn back and hurry back to the house because I’m
afraid of what a person who comes from me could be.
Then I sleep. I’m not sure what
sleep is in this place
I see white then I see black.
I dream but it’s all a dream and can
one really fall asleep within a dream and dream anew?
Eyes
faces
pain
love
sex
mine in hers
And then there is sunlight and I
awaken and look out the floor to ceiling windows I built and I see the sea once
more, and from the night comes the waters gentle lapping at the shores
illuminated now by a bright two suns in a sparkling rippled sapphire and I walk
out my back door and take off my clothes - I don’t remember their creation but
now I see and feel them - and I run into the water, feel it warm against my
flesh, and I dive down and I see fish and seaweed and coral, a million kinds
all there immediate for me and from me.
Eventually I swim back to shore - I
consider if I took a breath and realize I hadn’t because what is oxygen but an
excuse? and once ashore I let my body lay under the sun and just watch the
cloudless blue sky.
I’m on the motorbike I made from my
mind and, having never ridden a motorbike, I imagine the idea of it, half horse
and half car, the dreamy proclamation of some friend long ago - “It’s like
flying.” And that’s what it is, and each turn feels effortless, the dips and
bumps in the road constructed naturally imperfect feel as nothing.
Then I find myself in the town, the
buildings painted bright, key lime and powder blue and salmon pink, the
architecture soft lines, comforting to the modern harshness of my home. I look
about in hopes of finding a path forward, and I see a little coffee shop with a
sign in the window about “Free Pie Today” and I think why not, so I push open
the door.
There is a girl at the counter, my
age, give or take, long brown hair, skin tanned, green eyes.
“Hey, what can I get you?” I sit
down at the counter in front of her.
“A coffee and a slice of pie.”
“Sure... let’s see... blueberry with
a scoop of vanilla ice cream?”
“How’d you know?”
“How’d you know?”
“Heh, it’s an art.”
“Some art. You read minds beyond
pie?”
“You know, I dabble.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me about me then.”
She slides me a coffee. It’s cheap and oily and it’s exactly what I need in me,
the flavor reminds me of somewhere I once knew.
“Well, let’s see... you were born in
the west. Wyoming or Montana, probably. Maybe Colorado? But I’d side with one
of the former. You were always unsettled as a kid. Born in the right place in
the wrong century, or some such nonsense...” She looks at him. “That’s it,
isn’t it - you wanted to be a cowboy. Wild Bill Hickock or some shit.”
“Not bad at all. But how’d I end up
here?”
“Hmm, well, I’d guess you fucked up
somewhere along the line. Forgot you don’t live in the old west. Came here to
run away.”
“Damn. Dabble? You could make a
profession of it.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure.”
“So what about you, you dabble in
anything, other than trying to find an excuse to shoot someone?”
“I’d like to think I’m a kind of
artist.”
“A warrior poet? Hah. Go figure.”
“Laugh all you want... someday I bet you’ll end up with something I made on the wall of your shop here.”
“Laugh all you want... someday I bet you’ll end up with something I made on the wall of your shop here.”
“We’ll see about that. So what, you
a painter or something?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what - you
paint me something, I’ll take you for dinner.”
“That your way of asking me on a
date?”
“No way, I just need an excuse to
redecorate.”
Down the street, I find an art
supplies store. It seems a little convenient, but then again, little seaside
towns like this always seem to have their share of drifting artists. I also
pick up some dinner - fresh fish from the market, take my bike back to the
house.
That night, I learn to paint again,
like I did when I was still a kid back in Montana. It wasn’t just a line, about
being a painter. It surprises me how naturally it comes back, but then, I
suppose it should. I consider what to paint for her wall, but then I remember a
herd of wild horses galloping under an endless blue sky under mountains of
impossible dimensions, and I know.
The next morning, I manage, somehow,
to fit the canvas on the back of my bike, and, true to her word, the girl from
the coffee shop takes me out to dinner.
Time passes, days to weeks to
months, and somewhere in there the girl and I start sleeping together, then she
moves in, and through it all I’m painting more, getting better. And then the
months become years, and, somehow, against it all, I, of all people, end up
married. In the back of my mind is some life past, where I hated the very idea
of marriage and called myself the last of the free men, and killed a man to
protect such an ideal, but this is the lingering memory of a long dead man.
I’m happy now, here with my pretty
wife and my art and my house by the sea, the beautiful cliffs and the wonderful
seaside towns. And I’m happy, but I’m bored.
So one day I say to her that we
should see another world, and that night, we lie under the stars twinkling away
above, lanterns all among us, sipping good tequila right out of the bottle, my
arm around hers, her head nestled against my bare chest. Above us, stars start
to fall. And then she points upwards toward the heavens -
“There. A million other worlds.
Let’s go to the stars. Find your freedom.” And I look down at her, into her
eyes that sparkle with the falling stars and flickering lanterns, and I kiss
her perfect lips.
In the morning we begin to build,
casting the shapes of a rocket ship out of parts bought at the garage in town,
and it slowly comes together, more days and weeks and it must be perfect
because in it we shall have my freedom.
One day we know it’s ready so that
night we stand together among the lanterns, her face looking upwards to the
stars and mine eyes looking downwards to hers because I’ve found now my freedom
in her.
We climb aboard and strap into our
seats and I take her hand in mine as the thrusters engage and our bodies are
pulled heavily downwards with the g-force and we greet the heavens, stars above
and soon below and all around us.
They are our beginnings and our
endings and they are become us and we them, the whole profundity of existence
laid out towards an imagined horizon, and as I see their beauty I see more
everyday hers.
We ride the stars for a time that
feels immortal, in a place beyond day and night, sun and moon, the little
mechanizations of the heavens that we call time as we stand on firm earth.
And then I hold her in my arms and
she looks at me and she smiles and I smile back and that’s what matters and
wait
no
no
no
oh god no no no
white
no
and I see her face still and I try
to hold onto it and her and I see her face and I kiss her and draw her in close
to me and the white and I see her face
a buzz
slipping, she’s slipping, I can no
longer feel her warmth against me but still I see her and the buzz is subsiding
and the white is taking over and suddenly I feel something strange, impossible,
weight hung down below my head and I try to move my fingers and no longer do
they caress the beautiful girl, but they twitch barely at the end of atrophied
muscles in a white room and
no no no
she’s slipping and I see her face
and then I hear her once more
“Go now and be free.”
And then all I see is white but I
feel my body restored to me and then the grips on my head are slackened and
then a tall man wearing white is standing over me and he’s checking my eyes, my
arms, my reactions.
It’s a blur, it’s all a blur, the
getting out, my possessions returned, a meeting with a shrink to make sure I’m
what they made me and I am.
And then I’m outside and the sky is
not so blue as ever it was on my beach, the stars shine not with the infinite
sheen of the heavens so created, the women not so pretty, and she’s gone.
The usual processes of prisoner
release, a halfway house, a job placement and I exist but so does God and Death
and you don’t see them bagging groceries and exist is all I do because I can’t
live here anymore, but then one day on my way home from the grocery store I
pass an art supply store and I buy paints and canvas.
On the yawning blank before me I see
her face so I paint it and I find my hands captured by a deeper force as my
mind in that white room and I paint a beautiful girl on a beach at night lit by
a thousand lanterns looking to the stars and it comes natural and comes
beautiful and then I paint more, each day and pretty soon I’m out of the
halfway house and I sell a painting or two and I find a pretty town by the sea
and I find a place and in the night I watch the stars and I paint what I see
beyond the black and sometimes I see white and hear a buzz as I’m drifting to
sleep but I know it’s not real, they told me when I came out it would happen
sometimes but I’m not always so sure.
And then one day I meet a beautiful
woman and some day, as lines are starting to appear on my face deep and my
hairs are starting to grey, I walk down an aisle and tell the woman I do, and
after the wedding, I see a man I haven’t seen since I saw some aspect of him in
a carriage in a world that’s not this one nor the one I made, and he looks at
me with disappointment.
