Creative Cloud

Sean said that when you finished The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga you spent the rest of the day nestled in your bed, blanket over your head, shirtless and face buried into that black pillow. He said there were all these sounds like muffled little cries and whimpers that he couldn’t differentiate between cries and laughter; he said it was a sort of mixture of sniffles and smothered smiles. I thought that so strange because when I read the book I didn’t feel so sad; it never struck me as a heart breaker.

But then you’ve read a lot of books and you never cried while reading Skippy Dies, which I thought was so odd because all I did was cry while I was reading that book. I tried to stifle my tears because I was reading before the start of my Anthropology class, but I had just gotten to the middle of the book and I was listening to Fionn Regan’s For a Nightengale and I couldn’t help but just burst out into tears of desperation. So, there I am, just sitting in this room, people on either side of me, salty tears running down my red-hot cheeks. I’m a mess, just an utter mess and I can’t collect myself and run out of the room because I’ve got a test this class; so I just sit there and cry, and it’s this fit of smothered tears and sobs that I imagine Sean must have heard when you finished reading The White Tiger.

I also remember how you told me, “Anyone who doesn’t cry reading Watchman, isn’t someone I want to be around.” And I had joked and acted like I could never cry while reading something like that but you knew I was lying; I had cried. I had cried wild horrid tears while reading it, and the bomb’s approaching and the two men, oh you know the one’s I mean: how they had the same name and never knew it? I burst into tears as they embrace, because it’s so beautiful isn’t it? How two people can live their whole life near each other and never know they had the same name? And it’s so beautiful how people can want, more than anything, to be embraced but they’re too afraid of what they are, they’re too afraid of being gay or being this or being that and so they’re afraid of embracing. But that’s the thing isn’t it? When the end of the world comes barreling down on us, when everything seems so awful and horrid, we’re not looking for anything but a hug. It’s amazing isn’t it? How there’s all these little gay boys that are fucking forty-year-old men when all they want is their mom or dad to sit down and give them a hug and tell them everything will be alright. How that’s all we want: the illogical hug, the assurance that things will be alright and perfect and beautiful and everything like that.

And then, Rorschach dies and that’s just it isn’t it? That’s just the end of things; you can’t do anything but sob because the last good man in the world, the sociopolitical killer, the abuse victim, the scum of the Earth man, he’s just dead, he’s gone. But he want’s it you know? He accepts it and you feel as if everything’s going to hell but then there’s that last glimmer of hope that’s left in such a violent act. There’s this feeling, and you can’t describe it, and you’re breaking out into fits of horrible sobbing at some book that people say you shouldn’t break out into fits of sobs about (like me and Breakfast of Champions), and all you really want, somewhere buried deep in the cuts and grooves of your brain is for someone to hold you; for your mothers hand to be stroking your hair like she did that time you read a book on aliens and couldn’t get to sleep at night. You remember that time right? She was wearing a large purple shirt with a smiley face on it, and you ran downstairs and were frightened because of what you had read and she just held your head in her lap and stroked your hair and somehow, despite all the logic in the world, you knew things were going to be alright. And that’s just it isn’t it? You’re searching for that person who will stroke your hair, for no other reason than to make you happy. You’re searching for that person that cares about you when they shouldn’t, the Rorschach of the world who won’t give up, who looks down certain death and doesn’t logic it out. You’re looking for the person that’ll burst into bits of flesh and guts just to make you happy, just to make sure that you’re okay; but, no matter what you do, it always seems like the last good man has died when you finish the book you’re reading.

But you don’t want him to die, do you? You want them to keep on living, because, as long as they’re living, you’re living. As long as they’re living, you’ve got a chance. So you break out into horrible sobs in an Anthropology class room, your dorm room, or in the second-floor of the library, and all you can think is “things are going to be fine, things are going to be great.” But you don’t know why, because that person isn’t there, they’re dead, or they’re gone, or they’re fourteen-thousand miles away. But still…it’s as if…it’s as if they’re still there: it’s as if their hand is still resting upon your head and your head is still in their lap and all these things make sense through the glorious spectrum of the illusive salty tears.

So I’ve got this friend of mine, she’s a wonderful little thing that stands at five foot six inches, has fire-red hair and paints here nails in long thick strokes of neon blue. She’s got a splatter of freckles on each cheek and perfect smooth pale skin that curves in all the right areas. She’s got an obsession with tattoos and plasters her body with them, she’s got one that’s on the back of her right shoulder that’s a little anchor with a chain wrapped around it and some sort of simple phrase in some language that’s important to her. She wears a polka-dotted bikini and has never even heard of that damn song so I every time I make the joke she just stands there with her mouth hanging open as if I’m some sort of loon.

Anyway, I love her. I just came to realize that after having to kick my virtually-live-in-boyfriend out of my apartment for what seems like the fifth time. He’s good in all, he’s not sculpted or a God or anything like that. He’s one of those gay guys that you know would make a great father, but he’s too obsessed with you and gets all clingy and starts acting weird and judgmental and checking everyone you’ve been texting, so I had to kick him to the curb. He’s got his own place but he never stays there, he always stays here and half of his clothes are in my closet which is pretty much like the sign that you should move in with the person already.

I figured out I loved her because I kicked him out and I’m all in hysteria over another one of my worthless relationships crumpling in my hands and I go to text her and she’s all like, “oh yeah I’m fine, I’m just hanging with Mark!” and the first thing that pops into my mind is  ”Fuck mark, that fucking prick couldn’t please a woman if he was given a step by step guide.” So I get all pissed and throw my phone across the room and it hits the wall and luckily doesn’t smash to a thousand pieces, but lands on the bed, bounces off, and then falls underneath the damn thing. So I go to get it and I see this pile of notes all stuffed into the corners of one of those old-fashioned egg-crates that I used to hold records in. The letters are all these notes that my friend and I wrote to each other while we were still in High school, which seems like fucking years ago you know? And she’s calling me sweetie and I’m calling her lovely and all that shit and we’re talking about her horrible boyfriends (believe me, she’s got horrible taste in men) and I’m talking about all the douchebag guys I like and I realize that I never liked any of them, I liked her.

Which is strange to me, because you know I’ve always considered that if you loved someone you’d want to have sex with them, that those two things go hand and hand but now I’m starting to think that’s not so true and what I really want to do is just love someone without even having to worry about sex. Then I think that’s selfish of me because what if she wanted to have sex, and as much as I talk a good game, I don’t think I’d ever be able to please a woman like her. But it’s just this feeling like why can’t I ever get her out of my head, why is she there, why’s she the one I’m saying I love. Why did I say I love her? Why’d that even pop up into my head? What’s that even mean?

Then I start to laugh because I realize how ironic it all is; all of her douchebag boyfriends that always had a problem with me, that always wanted me to be gone, and always feared that I’d steal her away from them because I secretly loved her: they were right. The only problem now is, how the hell do I do that?

Of course, when I was younger, (which seems like such a trite thing to say. Am I not younger now? Am I still not young? Younger by which standards? I feel as though I’ve grown younger, never older, as if I regress backwards, never forwards, but that’s a claim for another day) I had a crush on a pot-smoking frat boy that bordered on outlandish till it just so happened that the man-of-my-dreams walked out on to the ledge of the school building and fell two stories to what he assumed would be his death.

He managed to survive with a plethora of broken bones and bruised skin—red flesh, blood, and bones that peeked out from behind his pasty skin and watery eyes, and dotted the pavement where crowds of unsuspecting teenagers wore ghost-white faces and administrators panicked and yelled for them to “get back.” They brought in a shrink for anyone who felt they might be traumatized by the experience and they had to keep a close eye on all the students because, as it so happens, people tend to attempt suicide in clusters of three and fours.

I figured it sort of funny at the time—the copy-cats not the suicide—I’ve always ascertained that suicide was no laughing matter, but the idea of one becoming two becoming four becoming sixteen becoming two-hundred and fifty six, just got me all in stitches. That or the idea that here was this token kid standing at about five foot nine inches, shorter than me, with more friends, higher standards, and an absolutely beautiful (by anyone’s standards) life, clinging to the edge of life in a hospital bed because he stepped off the ledge of his high school building.

I wondered who in the hell would want to make that their last standing ground?

Then of course things started coming out of the woodwork, as things often do in this sort of situation, and one thing turned to another turned to another, and sure enough they find out that the guy had been metaphorically whacking it to my image for months to years now. Not that I didn’t believe it; in fact I was sure of it. I would walk into a room and his eyes would dart right towards me; like there was some unspoken bond between us, some longing, some desire that rested within those blue eyes of him that screamed “want, want, want, want.” I also had no doubt that the little bugger had probably had way more sex than I ever had, or ever would; that he had got high one time with his buddy and they had decided they might as well fool around with each other because they didn’t have anyone else to.

I figured that’s how a lot of people realized they were gay: they started fooling around with their best friend because both of them didn’t have a girlfriend and one thing led to another and they just thought, “oh wait, I actually want to do this again, except maybe next time he can buy me dinner first.” Then I figure that’s how a lot of things happen in general: one thing leads to another.

So anyway, as soon as he can speak he’s all baffled and doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t talk to a living soul. Then it takes him another year or so to go through recovery and I imagine the whole time he’s nothing but frustrated because he’d gotten used to whacking it every week or so and now—in a full body cast—he didn’t have much chance of doing that again. So he spends a whole year just letting his sexual frustration boil over and when he gets out of the cast the first thing he does is find me when I’m alone and jump into a conversation about how he was sorry that I had to find out that way and that it wasn’t what it looked like and yatta yatta yatta, and then has the nerve to basically ask me if I’d want to have sex with him—though he does it in a much more “innocent way”.

But I’m just laughing you know, because the whole thing is here’s this pot-smoking-frat-boy that I basically only liked because there was no question that, despite his muscular appearance, I’d get to be the top if we were to ever have sex. And he comes off all strong, he jumps off a building and basically rebuilds his life, loses all his friends, has his best friend in hysteria over the fact that he fooled around with a gay guy—that he was friends with a gay guy—and God knows what else was going on with his crazy religious family. So he’s all strong, and I can tell it, I can tell that despite the fact that his muscles are probably week as shit right about now, he’s somehow stronger than me, which totally just kills the mood for me.

So I let him go, and he’s not upset about it, he understands and apologizes again and then goes off to join some group of people that are all swooning around him and telling him how great he is and how amazing it is that he came out of the closet and how sorry they were that he had to go through all that horrible shit, and I’m just sitting there you know, just sitting there and wondering what the hell just happened when it finally dawns on me that I just passed up the chance to have sex with the one guy that I’d been crushing on for over two years now. 

That just builds up inside of me, and I’m just sitting there alone and the world seems like it’s booming on and off inside my head and things are getting closer together then further apart and everything’s just a jumble of nerves and mixed feelings—of half-understood thoughts and mismatched neuron firings—all while he walks away and disappears out of the double doors and into the parking lot. Then one thing leads to another and another leads to another and still another leads to yet another and I’m sitting in my car on a Sunday afternoon, driving home from Houston, and just thinking to myself how absolutely easy it would be to just shift the wheel a little to the right and that would be that.

In some words I find my self
in others I disappear
and still others make
me cringe,
shake,
and stir.

She told me the other day that she was assured I’d become successful, that my life would be full of splendor and awards, and that sooner or later the sun would part from my eyes and the dim-light of my failed dreams and promises would be replaced by sparkling light that lingers over my face and brings the corners of my mouth up into a smile.

“Cole,” she said “you’re something special, I know you’ll make it—I just know it.” 

There is something so serene about gazing upon the relics of your past and looking for something worth noting; correcting the past and future with interlocking words and phrases that seem to mean something. There’s something so serene—so true—and well-meaning, when you gaze into the supreme of nothingness that is the blank page and try to conjure up a meaning that could last the ages. All things, it seems, dissolve with time, few things stand the test of time, yet still we try to uncover them, to bring black to the white: whole to the empty. 

“I know,” she says “That you’ll be fine, better than fine: brilliant.” 
I’m starting to believe that she wants it more than I do.

creativecloud:

I am justifiably insane. 

Ashley woke me up this morning to talk to me about all the things that were going on in her life and about the night before last. She was trying to remember if she introduced me to that nice guy who she thought I would totally hit it off with. She did. He was an absolute prick. Totally handsy. Halfway through the night while we’re all sitting outside around a nice fire he whispers in my ear about how “he really wants to blow me.” and then gives a crooked smile. I told him to “fuck off.” and “to download grindr if he wanted a cheap fuck.” and he just laughed and showed me how he had it already downloaded to his iPhone. 

I felt sorry for him.

Kristina tried to set me up with someone a while back. But she’s not good with that sort of thing and truth be told he ended up being a total prick too. She thought he was all nice and sweet but by the time we had gotten out of her watchful eye he was popping pills and asking me if I wanted to try heroin. I didn’t even say goodbye—I just left.

She woke me up the other day too—Kristina that is. Like Ashley the first thing I said to her was, “hello.” and she started rattling on about some sort of advance mathematics homework she had and about her super hot, talented and gifted boyfriend and I got so pissed that I just hung the phone up and blamed it on a failed connection.

Her boyfriend, my friend, tried to set me up once too. I think he did it subconsciously; or maybe consciously I can’t really tell—he’s too advanced for me. He set me up with this guy that was two inches shorter than me but had a sort of wide chest and deep blue eyes, he gave him my number and the guy up front texts me not a second later with, “Hello” and I respond back with: “Who is this?” and he goes on for like five-fucking minutes back-and-forth texting me without telling me who he is as if this is fucking junior high and our cellphones are those shitty flip-phone razers that broke in a month.

I agree to meet him for lunch because my friend assures me he’s a nice guy and well worth my time and when we meet he’s five minutes late and I feel like a fool. Then when he sits down at the table he says, “hello” and I say, “hello” and then him trying to be cute says, “hello” again but he can see that annoys the hell out of me so he starts rattling on about how he couldn’t find his sock or something trivial like that and so he was late and he felt really sorry about that.

We talk for a little while but we don’t get anywhere; he keeps asking me questions and waiting till I respond so he can respond, that way he’s always got the right answers. Even when I ask him a question he goes, “what do you think?” or some variation of that, and then when I say, “well personally I preferred Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions to Cat’s Cradle.” he smiles and goes, “Oh man you like really like books and stuff don’t you? That’s really neat.” and from then on out I can tell that our conversations not going anywhere.

He invites me back to his house and I go anyway because I have the sort of nagging feeling in the back of my head that I really would just like to have mindless sex with someone and that maybe he’d be the one I’d actually do it with. He says hello to his cats and dogs like they’re real people you know? Like he says “hello there.” and then goes back to talking to me—it’s really disturbing. Then he pulls out like a bag or whatever you call it of weed and asks if I want some and I just tell him upfront that I’ve got to leave and he goes, “oh well we should do this again sometime.” and I’m sick of playing games so I go, “no we shouldn’t” and walk out the door.

My friend calls me and says, “hello” but I hang up on him, and then Ashley texts me with HELLLOOOOOOO? because I haven’t been answering any of her texts, and finally Kristina calls me and goes, “Hello?” wanting to make sure she’d established a connection before she started talking. I say “hey” then hang up the phone and turn it off as I walk down the street and try to clear my head of all those fucking “hellos” that seem to go nowhere fast populate around in my brain bouncing around and interacting with each other; each one wishing the other one a hello this or a hello that. 

I’m justifiably insane and still everyone else seems crazy.

I am justifiably insane. 

Ashley woke me up this morning to talk to me about all the things that were going on in her life and about the night before last. She was trying to remember if she introduced me to that nice guy who she thought I would totally hit it off with. She did. He was an absolute prick. Totally handsy. Halfway through the night while we’re all sitting outside around a nice fire he whispers in my ear about how “he really wants to blow me.” and then gives a crooked smile. I told him to “fuck off.” and “to download grindr if he wanted a cheap fuck.” and he just laughed and showed me how he had it already downloaded to his iPhone. 

I felt sorry for him.

Kristina tried to set me up with someone a while back. But she’s not good with that sort of thing and truth be told he ended up being a total prick too. She thought he was all nice and sweet but by the time we had gotten out of her watchful eye he was popping pills and asking me if I wanted to try heroin. I didn’t even say goodbye—I just left.

She woke me up the other day too—Kristina that is. Like Ashley the first thing I said to her was, “hello.” and she started rattling on about some sort of advance mathematics homework she had and about her super hot, talented and gifted boyfriend and I got so pissed that I just hung the phone up and blamed it on a failed connection.

Her boyfriend, my friend, tried to set me up once too. I think he did it subconsciously; or maybe consciously I can’t really tell—he’s too advanced for me. He set me up with this guy that was two inches shorter than me but had a sort of wide chest and deep blue eyes, he gave him my number and the guy up front texts me not a second later with, “Hello” and I respond back with: “Who is this?” and he goes on for like five-fucking minutes back-and-forth texting me without telling me who he is as if this is fucking junior high and our cellphones are those shitty flip-phone razers that broke in a month.

I agree to meet him for lunch because my friend assures me he’s a nice guy and well worth my time and when we meet he’s five minutes late and I feel like a fool. Then when he sits down at the table he says, “hello” and I say, “hello” and then him trying to be cute says, “hello” again but he can see that annoys the hell out of me so he starts rattling on about how he couldn’t find his sock or something trivial like that and so he was late and he felt really sorry about that.

We talk for a little while but we don’t get anywhere; he keeps asking me questions and waiting till I respond so he can respond, that way he’s always got the right answers. Even when I ask him a question he goes, “what do you think?” or some variation of that, and then when I say, “well personally I preferred Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions to Cat’s Cradle.” he smiles and goes, “Oh man you like really like books and stuff don’t you? That’s really neat.” and from then on out I can tell that our conversations not going anywhere.

He invites me back to his house and I go anyway because I have the sort of nagging feeling in the back of my head that I really would just like to have mindless sex with someone and that maybe he’d be the one I’d actually do it with. He says hello to his cats and dogs like they’re real people you know? Like he says “hello there.” and then goes back to talking to me—it’s really disturbing. Then he pulls out like a bag or whatever you call it of weed and asks if I want some and I just tell him upfront that I’ve got to leave and he goes, “oh well we should do this again sometime.” and I’m sick of playing games so I go, “no we shouldn’t” and walk out the door.

My friend calls me and says, “hello” but I hang up on him, and then Ashley texts me with HELLLOOOOOOO? because I haven’t been answering any of her texts, and finally Kristina calls me and goes, “Hello?” wanting to make sure she’d established a connection before she started talking. I say “hey” then hang up the phone and turn it off as I walk down the street and try to clear my head of all those fucking “hellos” that seem to go nowhere fast populate around in my brain bouncing around and interacting with each other; each one wishing the other one a hello this or a hello that. 

I’m justifiably insane and still everyone else seems crazy.

Our web of connections expands out indefinitely as more people are added in. The connections become loser and more strained, stretching across vast territories of land and space in unimaginable ways—yet they still exist. As these connections become loser the structure becomes stronger, almost ironically the more distant we become from each other the stronger our general structure becomes; the harder it is to break the structure apart.

Conversely the weakest connections we have are those between two individuals. Though intimate and necessary these connections rely on both individuals equal participation in the structure for it to keep working; if one of them opts out the whole structure falls apart and all that’s left are the two isolated points in space. 

It amazes me how the more connected we grow, the more isolated, less intimate we become when it seems it should be the opposite. The stronger our structure is the more likely we are to break. What’s more horrifying is that when we do the structure can still survive, it will still live on despite our absence. In such we crave the small structures: the person to person interactions. We crave them for if we fail, the structure fails, if we vanish so does it. 

In small structures we matter. In big structures we’re pointless. 

the words propagate inside my brain; juxtapositions of bright and blind that scream. There is no escape from the self; there is only deception that brings you closer to denial. We must rid ourselves of ourselves; we are our own enemies. 

It’s the one-after-nine-oh-nine here and I’m traveling into the great big yonder by gorging myself on sugary drinks and half-baked-ideals of spring time spent laying out among the fields of flower peaceful and serene. That promise doesn’t exist though, not in Texas to say the least. It’s too hot here all the time, permanently seventy-degrees or hotter and beads of sweat dart down my body even in my sleep. I wake up in a cold sweat contemplating such horrible things as death or murder.

Sam sent me a letter for my birthday; it was a nice gesture and his flourished script over the red envelope reminded me of some sort of cultural gesture I had learned about in class one time: something about an Asian custom to keep money in red envelopes or something like that. There’s no money inside though, only the overly flourished handwriting of some short-fused boy who wants inside my pants. At least that’s what I think. I’m too afraid to open it. To be honest with you he’s not too horrible, he’s cute in that sort of innocent way, which is saying a lot because I’m innocent myself—too innocent to be exact.

Actually it was Sam who gave me the knife. He always told me that a man should carry a knife around with him—same thing as my family. My dad used to tell me that a man should always carry a knife and my mother always agreed with him. So Sam bought me a knife, a cheap sort of thing but enough to scare a mugger away or cut a piece of twine or open a package or two; it worked for me. I’m not sure if there’s a law that prevents you from carrying a knife on a college campus, actually I’m absolutely assured there is a law that says that exact thing, but I digress.

So I’m traveling now on the one-after-nine-oh-nine, though to be more accurate it’s gone past the one-after and moved onto the twelve-after and I’m still trying to understand what exactly went wrong and why it did. I don’t think anything really ever goes wrong, I think we just end up in a series of events and make the wrong sort of choices at each turn and then it becomes just too awkward to fix them again.

Sometimes I think I’m just too innocent to understand the world fully; to lacking in interaction, never vocalized or so forth. The clock’s still flashing by and Sam’s letter is still lingering on my nightstand. I figure I’ll open it. I figure that’s the right choice. 

The hand of God is needle marks against the light peach fuzz hair growing up in waves across the spectrum of human flesh before you. 

There’s no way for me to verify it for him; that’s something that’s lost in the incandescent bloom of the near-night-sky that waits for me to solider up and take the responsibility of life and death into my own hands: to become my own man. 

Some say time is an extension of physicality: my arm extending becoming the wave-like pattern through which time can transfer, his throat becoming the method by which I gain access to the future and the past. The last breath taken, the last gasp of air escaping the lungs and fleeing out into the air; some say that’s the last bit of soul left in a body: the last pure thing left in the world now gone to find a new home.

His soulless body’s laying underneath me, a pale white figure that once was something almost great torn down by the madmen of this world—the crazies—the near-sighted-pathological-liars turned rogue and out for blood. There’s no blood though, only a soulless body laying limp while Charles Mingus’ Freedom plays in the background and I begin to panic. 

I think about you nightly; the way you left me stranded out there in the cold Galveston waters clutching my hands across my naked body, clothes sandy and weather-worn, and you, fleeting away from my line of vision into the dark of night.

I remember so clearly the two of us standing on that shore and looking out over the water. The lights were in full bloom, little specks of light off in the distance that looked to us like carnival rides or some glorious hidden city the likes of which Calvino would rattle on about in his book Invisible Cities. 

Do you remember that book? I know you must; I gave it to you on our fourth date, or what you called our fifth date; you had counted that time we got caught in the rain and had to race back home. I didn’t—that was never a date to me. I gave it to you and you sat there devouring it, running your fingers over the lines, eyes darting from page to page, tearing through the book as if it was some treasure—some great philosophy you’d never known before. You feel in love with that book and I laughed as you would twist and turn at night trying to decide if it would be rude to wake up and read “just one more page”. 

Then you gave me that journal and you became obsessed with seeing what I put in it. You wanted to, “Know the mind of a writer.” to “understand all that they thought.” but I wouldn’t let you. I kept it as close as I could at all times; tied the string around the thing and stuck it in my backpack so that you’d feel guilt for rummaging through it. Yet you never did, you always kept your distance from it and I always respected you for that.

On that night as we stood there watching the lights blip on and off I told you what I needed to do. I told you how I needed to embrace the water, the waves, the cool and tranquil darkness that was illuminated only by those tiny bits of light. You didn’t like that, you said if I did we’d be through and thought you were joking. You didn’t like the idea of me drifting off into the darkness when you yourself were a shitty swimmer, you didn’t like the worry it put you through; the wonder if I would resurface. 

So you ran, you walked away and left my clothes on the beach to get all sandy and wet. When I left the water I was shivering and naked, trying to dry off with a sandy towel I had brought, trying to warm myself up with my already chilled clothes. I searched around for that journal and I couldn’t find it. I knew you had taken it; I knew you had finally worked up the courage to look through it, to be embraced by the mind of the writer; the wonder that is my subconscious. I know once you finish you’ll be back; there’s not a single paged that isn’t filled—it’ll be awhile before you do, before you fully understand what’s written there in that book. But I know you will, and I know when you do, you’ll meet me back here, in our own Invisible City right here on the shore line. So till then, I’ll wait. 

Here time is a series of points transposed on the temporal plane. There are no connections to past or future; only isolated events that exist on the blank backdrop of time. 

Here people live in only one moment of time for all eternity; thousands of different lives fixed to one spectrum—one isolated dot in the grand scheme of things. Here these dots stack next to each and on top, here an individual may share his particular time with another; here an individual may share past with present with future—seeing himself in three different facets all in one singular moment which lasts an eternity then flickers out and dies.

Here all time stops and starts at once; all universes exist only in one singular format—do not move forward or backwards—are fixed. Here everyone awaits death but knows it will never come; people are frozen, thinking only of their thoughts at that moment but aware of their situation. Here the soul longs for action, for interaction, for happiness. Here couples are frozen at climax, near holding hands, lips almost embraced underneath the neon sign of a burger joint. Here people are frozen in sadness; a man stops in mid-jump, suspended over the river and just away from the bridge. This man will think of this moment—live this anxiety—this fear and desperation for generation after generation after generation. The water will not ripple, the sun will not set, the birds will not fly, and his heart will not beat.

Here all things are fixed—constant—never changing. Here all hope is lost. Here all things are chained to the temporal plane, unable to move or shake themselves from their miserable lives. Doomed to an eternity of understanding; contemplating; desiring that next second where they might connect a kiss or hit the water. Here everyone waits.

But something strange happens here too. Isolated moments that overlap—different fixed times that people share; lovers trapped in an intimate embrace; arms across arms; lips locked; hips aligned. These moments remain fixed, locked—yet shaky. Here people gaze into the eyes of others and see something different. Here people see the look of love in the unknown stranger and change. Here the bonds of time are broken, tore down, and ripped away and to their surprise the world starts moving. Here freedom is earned, little by little, to those choice few lucky enough to be born into it. Here these people move forward, grow old together, die and are returned to the Earth. None of them frown, each one holds in them the memory of isolated time, of contemplation and second guessing. These people live. These people are free.