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By JiggyJ Submitted by JiggyJ Date: 2002 Sep 20 Comment on this Work [[2002.09.20.11.10.32041]] |
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Waves at Monterey Bay Nearly ten years had passed since he'd stood on that cold, skeletal pier, overlooking the depths of Monterey Bay. It was night, as it had been then. The wind rose now and again, never unbearable. The water rose and fell with a slow tempo, patient as it strayed above its secrets. It was not nearly as cold as that night, but the memory wrapped his arms about his torso, drew his hands into his sleeves. He had asked that they stop here, lied about how beautiful it was, though he'd meant it at the time. But standing at the furthest edge of that desolate stretch, he knew he'd returned as one returns to see a grave. No one knew what had died there that day. Certainly not those closest to him, those he withdrew from when he needed them most. Just then they stood some distance behind him, speaking quietly, some of their words reaching him--but meaningless, as other words fell into silence before the slightest rise of wind, the merest heave of waves. He turned his head to see his mother nestling against his father's arm, braced against the cold as they slowly walked towards him. Strangely, he did not mind their presence, or that they were coming to ward off his solitude, dispel the pain that was slowly freezing him, the wound he was salting with the memory of a greater wound. He smiled at the moment's masochism, spoke two lines of Rilke under his breath: I love the dark hours of my being In which my senses drop into the deep. In the darkness, the footsteps sounding their approach were strangely, yet familiarly, reassuring. He liked the sound, and just then he recalled lying in darkness as a child, blanket drawn completely over him, save for a small hole to breathe through, the terror of a newly discovered sense of self subsiding at the sound of his parent's footsteps just beyond the door. Did it all begin then? He wondered. When did it happen, the day when the fortress he'd built to secure himself became a prison that separated him even further? The sound of their footsteps grew louder. For so long he'd run from that sound, but in that moment he knew that he'd been running from its silence. For fourteen years, at least, for half his life. At their approach, he stiffened. The thought of having to talk cut off his air, and as he held fast against the railing, he looked down into the water. Somewhere between the two figures behind him, and the darkness before him, at some small point there, the line of his life was drawn. As surely as they were moving towards him, his own march would carry him into those waters as well. It was unavoidable. He knew it then; for the first time in his life, he knew that it would all really end one day. Sooner or later, everyone he knew, everyone he loved, and he as well. The rhythm would carry him there, the rhythm of time, wind, water, the rhythm of generations moving forward beyond that edge, spawning further generations before relinquishing their unique tempos to the mono-rhythmic waves. And in the end, would he finally discover that he was no more than rhythm, the rise and fall of life and death, a movement along that great, undulating wave? She had died to him that night, as surely as she'd died, in the old sense of the word, into the love, or lust, of another man. When his father had asked him to drive up to Monterey for the weekend, he'd said yes with immediate resignation. He was dying in the city where his ex went about her life, even as his own came to a stop. He was unable to bear the thoughts that had crept so easily between the cracks of his fortress, showing it to be the house of cards it had always been. Knocked from his throne, he felt strength in resignation, in affirming, even subconsciously, his own defeat. He would go with them, he would drive them the long beautiful way up the coast. Put on the music they liked. Let his father lecture him, let his mother smother him. Never refuse the harsh, judgmental words that cloaked his love. His love is immense and frail, clothed in words like bullets. And never refuse the fruit she slices in the back seat. God, how many years had she been so perfectly peeling the skin from apples and oranges? How does one pay back that debt? How does one accept that there is no debt, but only gifts upon gifts? His mother had cried at least five times during that drive, sitting next to that empty leather seat where a beautiful girl once sat, next to that small cubic space where a life had burn wickedly, noisily, but always lovely. And how those qualities, good and bad, had been forged into that fierce young woman, that vision of beauty. For once, the two men let her cry. One had lost a child, one a sister, and a decade later they'd come to know their repressive masculinity for the sham that it was, and no longer wished to impose its silence on her courage. Especially since they knew, deep down, that they'd left her the burden of their own grief, that she grieved three-fold. It still remained secret that the weekend he'd disappeared, after arriving home from school one afternoon, to see his father covering his tears with a large hand as he pressed himself against the corner of the couch--he immediately knew that either his mother or his sister had died, and as his mother ran at him, dropped her dead weight at him, causing the back pain that he still chronically bore and when the math was clear as a coin toss when it flips into the air and lands with the simplicity of an either/or--it was never disclosed by him that he'd sat behind the wheel, and making sure the windows were all the way up, and there wasn't too much traffic around, had screamed at the top of his lungs, broken two knuckles against the steering column, and driven up PCH for some eight hours until he'd arrived at Salinas, believing he might breathe again, if he were to breathe the air that his hero, John Steinbeck, had once breathed. He remembered George and Lennie all that weekend long. He'd wished that he might tear himself in two, have one half kneel before the other, raise a gun to his head, and with all the pain of the world, but without a tremble in the hand, pull the trigger. He remembered having that thought as he'd stood at that very spot, ten years before, having walked one night to the edge of the snow-covered pier, hating his parents, who now, more than ever, required him to be alive. They had robbed him of his most fundamental right as a human being. But now, ten years later, as he stood at that threshold once again, that point where he'd most intimately greeted death, he took a step back. Not because he was afraid of killing himself. But because he wanted to finally live, despite everything. He remembered that Thomas Mann had said: "all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite." In the face of it all, he spoke his inner Yes. He relaxed his arms from his side, let his hands slip out of their sleeves, out into the air. It was good to feel something. No, he thought: it is amazing to feel something. Is it not enough to feel the cold against the back of one's hands, to register the thought, to label the thought with language? He was observing his thoughts, in one of those moments of Zen-like, detached objectivity for which he'd meditated some three years, when he felt his mother's hand against his shoulder. He suddenly realized that he'd been holding his breath. He'd registered all his thoughts, labeled them, examined them; but even after three years, he did not understand his breath to be a thought. He breathed deep at her touch. The cold air was warmed as it entered him. * * * At five-thirty a.m. he woke abruptly. Eyes open wide, he lost no time in replaying the dream from which he'd awoken. The bridge to his deep psyche had yet to fully dissipate, and despite being awake, he could still hear her screams of lust coming from the other side of that chasm. In the dream, he'd followed the screams, rage and fear growing inside him, suddenly manifesting into form as the hilt of a curved, rusty blade, which found itself in the grip of his hand. He was in a great, cold, marble hall, sounds of ecstasy echoing like shrill laughter from its walls. Crossing the hall, he'd seen his reflection on the marble tiles beneath him. He drew the blanket against his neck as he remembered the crouching, demonic figure that had been his own mirror image, furtive and illusive as it crept towards the sound. He'd entered the room from where the sound had come, only to find that he stood in a garden: a beautiful indoor garden. He made his way through thick brush, he stumbled upon an open grove, a tree at its center. And there, underneath the tree, he beheld his ex. Lying naked, she slept against her naked lover, breathing to the rise and fall of his chest. And in that moment, the most amazing thing had occurred. He had looked at himself from two vantage points at the very same instant, from two simultaneous nodes of consciousness. It was himself that he saw lying there with her, and it was himself that he saw when he opened his eyes to see the demon standing above him, blade in hand! And as the blade descended towards him, he'd instantly awoken. He was frightened by the dream, and could not understand it. He had a sudden, manic urge to leave the hotel room, to write down the dream. Quietly he dressed, and, grabbing his journal and a pen, he left with the intention of going down to the beach, to sit at some table and write. He had seen the tables along the small beach the day before. Using the back of his sweater to wipe the dew, he made himself a small, dry place to sit and write. He opened the journal. A flood of ideas rushed at him. The dream. His ex. His sister. His parents. But mostly his ex. He searched his thoughts to see what anger he could muster up, what hatred he might express. But the pen would not cooperate. He was shocked to find that, despite everything she was up to, and despite that horrible dream, he was unable to feel anything but love for her, even though, at that very moment, she was probably sleeping next to another man, exhausted from the love-making. He felt incredulous at his choice of words as they crossed his mind: love-making! He gripped the pen in his hand, afraid to write such thoughts as he was having, especially as he wondered, indeed, hoped, that the two lovers were warm together, warm and safe where they slept! He resisted the thoughts. He tried to recall the horror of the dream, the horror of a foreign penis invading his beloved, the horror of the car that struck his baby sister. He prayed for some pain. He tightened his grip around the pen, desperate to squeeze some anger out of it, some violence. But nothing came. Only silence, only the blankness before him. He closed his eyes to damn the flow of tears before they erupted. He failed at the task, and that great failure allowed the flood of ten years grief to be finally released. For twenty minutes he wept, until the twilight had receded. Light crept into the bay, but he shunned it, burying his head in his arms. For some time he did not move, as if waiting. And in the silent darkness that prevailed, he heard a voice from within, and it spoke but one solitary word: Listen. And again: Listen. He listened. They sounded as one, the gulls on the bay, a loud and urgent chattering. Listening closely, he heard that there were many different voices, countlessly varied instruments, the chaos of individuality expressed in a symphony of One. And there was more to the symphony: the ponderous roll of waves against the shore, the endlessly creative weaving of waves, the ebb, the rise, the sudden crescendo bouncing from the rocks. He opened his eyes to the scene before him. Beautiful living rocks of a hundred colors of a hundred life-forms; and on top of one these rocks, about fifty yards from where he sat, a sea-lion was sleeping. In the earlier twilight he'd seemed to be the top of an abnormally shaped rock. He was beautiful, pointy-nosed, gray on top and gray-spotted against a white belly; and it was even more beautiful to see his rock colors move so fluidly against the solid rock that he used as a bed. He heard the flute-like whole note of a long-winded bird, and one that whistled like a piccolo. He heard the meek staccatoed tenor of sea-lions barking. All together they were the score of that scene: the quelled ocean, the rock-strewn coastline, the quiet city sleeping under the mist as it descended from distant, wooded hills. He stood up to walk towards the water, but stopped after a few steps. He found it nothing short of miraculous that he'd just done what he'd done. Not the crying, not the release. But having walked. Having had the desire to walk, and then having had that wish granted. He froze in awe at himself. He felt something he'd never felt, the sensation that he inhabited his body, that it was a vehicle, and that there was nothing more miraculous in the world than the ability to lift a foot off the ground. Very slowly he raised his fingers before his eyes. He marveled at the existence of such a thing. He marveled at its shape, and realized that the shape was defined by everything outside of the shape, all the negative space that formed the shape. He had an urge to throw himself into the sand, and bow down before the creation. But he thought it was foolish that the creation should bow before itself. And in that moment, it happened. He fell in love. He felt more love than he'd ever felt in twenty-eight years of life. And there was no one person, nor one thing, towards which his love was aimed. The feeling moved through him, and it knew no receptacle, it sought nothing, aimed at nowhere in particular, but at everywhere. Slowly he turned around and went back to his journal. He was ready. He eased the pen between his fingers, and setting it against the page, began to transcribe the music into words. |