He liked the early morning, the
time when lives only transpired within the sleepy houses of the cul-de-sac. He
liked the quiet of it, the wetness of it, although he sensed the quiet was only
an illusion and the wetness barely more damp. He’d wake, and emerge from his
hut to the veiled sounds of squirrels and birds, and wonder if it was him that
they were upset by, if they were upset at all, or merely letting the other
soundless creatures become aware of his existence in their sphere. He would
scour the landscape, seeking the perches of the unseen, hearing the low,
guttural squawk of the western jay, bluer and without the crown of the eastern
jay, whose screech was shriller, raspier, and possessed the invasiveness of a
fire truck siren, or an alarm clock. The call of the west was calmer, almost
friendlier, and bore few bad memories. But mostly he watched crows. He liked
the crows, clean in their blackness, less fearful than all other birds. He
liked the inquisitive tilt of the head, of the few walking the meadow,
intuiting the reason for his stare; sizing him up, gauging the extent of his
threat, or perhaps pondering potential fascination. There was no possibility in
his mind of anthropomorphizing the mind of the crow; their consciousness
blocked the empathic urge of the human; blocked by the inconsequential
unimportance of the other species. This was the essence of his confusion, the
reconciliation of the easily accepted with the contradictory. They, those
crows, would fly, some soaring and perusing, others ultra-focused, bee-lining
toward some detected detritus or offal, alighting mid-street, impervious to the
later day danger of cars and drivers. Others would circle, or hover, floating
in awareness far removed from human perception. The crows comforted him,
provided a solace derived from the singularity of their very identity, so
distinctly crow-like, and unlike any other breathing thing.
He was careful in his steps,
consciously aware of the slugs and spiders, ponderously traversing the
pavement, or suspended on a single strand newly spun; careful to protect the
focus of their moments, drinking, or coping with, the residual dampness of rain
or dew, or perhaps, merely anticipating their next morsel. Disrupting their
intention would be akin to facing his situation. Their lives, unlike those of
the crows, were not much different than his own, plodding mindlessly toward
something, or dangling at the whim of gusts, on a path tainted with the natural
obstacles of living, and impeded by the roadblock of misunderstood time.
But he would always return to the
crows, the legendary harbingers of bylines. He noted, in some mindless way, how
they seemed always to fly away from an unperceived center, or simply away from
each other, like building block matter spewed from the big bang, yet how they
always seemed to regroup into an ominous murder, caw-cawing some corvine
orchestral strain, harmonious and dissonant simultaneously.
He walked slowly, when he walked at
all, coffee in his left hand, cigarette in his right. How funny, he thought,
that the cigarette was named as such to attract the female addict, given a more
attractive gendered nickname, yet was so Marlboro man manly, and it was then
that he perceived the danger of talking to crows. It was like a dropped phone
call, in those days when telephone operators were human and analog, and you
were left with the hapless pleading for response, and you were left to find
answers within your own plea, and from the buzzing static of disconnected
emptiness.
And his thought turned to her, and
to her, as the tall pines closed in on him, sentinels of the vast, western
valley he now dwelt within, and he thought that happiness and sadness, his own
as well, too often reside in ancient clouded memory; or, in her case, more
recent clouded memory. He thought about parades, and how happiness or sadness
are dispelled in the moment, in the same way that confetti disperses the
excitement of parades, little morsels or shreds, unattached to the grander
scheme. Here or there no longer mattered. The disconnect transpires in the
tearing, the grieving renting, drifting earthward, alighting on disconnected
heads, and empty pavement. The chaotic fluttering, the random drift provided
him no answers, so he returned to watching the crows chase the jays, the jays
chase the crows, the disengaged battle of wills, more for the flavor than the
meat.
His direction was undecided. He was
unaware whether he was moving away from the center, or toward it, but he
realized that his mind had gone silent, and that his feet were wet.
It was not her dalliances with other men that
bothered him, for she was truthful enough about her desire for polyamory. It
was not even that she had fallen deeply in love with one of them at his exclusion,
but rather her habit of cloaking the reality, the truth of it; not in the sense
that she denied any of it, but she did, however, consistently dress her
quasi-confessions in plausible deniability. He sensed that she was simply
trying to protect him from hurt, but it was also a leftover habit from her
previous marriage, perhaps her entire life. She always told the truth, but
always just some of it; the part that one could accept without question. It was
that form of truth that wrenched him, resisting like a stubborn bolt. He could
not, in good conscience, accept that. Perhaps, it was a central part of her
character, but for him, it also represented his own emasculation, and he gagged
at the thought of resembling, in any way, the ineffectual milquetoast of her
former husband; for that was how she had always offered him the truth. She had told him often enough that she learned
through her body, and he knew that well enough. He knew that by pushing her
sexual edges, into darker areas of restraint and submission, she could find the
simpler answers to her sadness; even as she turned their external kinks into
internal, freely offered affection. Yet it felt as if she had stopped trying to
learn with him. He refused to believe
that he couldn’t help her to find a happier place, despite all evidence that
his former success in that realm was now all but a rotting corpse. And he was
now wearing the clothes, the demeanor, of a weaker man, giving him the outward
appearance of a man he dreaded, created while shopping in the wrong stores. He
felt himself unable to stem the metamorphosis, and it tortured him.
He did, on the other hand,
understand what she needed from him. She was broken, depleted, but he was
unable to fill her, restore her, so what she required of him was to accept
without reservation; to calmly listen to her semi-disclosure, to not question
or react, and hold her, but holding her felt like a reaction, not to jealousy,
but to an impassable crevasse, without the iciness, that had appeared in the
white sheet, created by his melting doubt, and her melting curiosity. While he felt
the softness of her skin deeply, he also felt the unexplainable bruising. She
needed him to be happy about it, and he might have been able to, if he could
find a way to believe that she was happy with any of it.
It was not as though she was
unwilling to share her sadness, and, to a lesser extent, the lessons she had
learned. And she thoroughly explained her processes, while omitting the
details. She felt that the details belonged to the other men; their particular
kinks were sort of sacred and belonged only to them. But, to him, there was no
abatement in her sadness, and rarely an increase in her happiness. Perhaps the
happy part was reserved for the coast house, or the occasional hotel room; the
spaces shared with the others; the places he needed to dispossess. Yet, he also
understood that she didn’t have it to give, and almost believed that there was
a certain detachment from the others that required no expansion of the love, or
lack of love, involved. He also understood that it was perhaps he that had
created her need to look externally to their ‘relationship’. He certainly knew
that while he may not have created it, he most certainly pushed her to it, for
he had become almost surly. He would offer random blasts of venom, wrapped in a
sarcasm that seemed extreme even to him, who had always expressed
sarcastically. It was a humor he enjoyed; his own method of half-truths; a way
to avoid saying what he needed to, and most certainly passive aggressive. It
was a reflex that he could not control. It was not as if it was ever offered in
response to the subject at hand, but rather, it would occur at the most natural
times, like a pun in response to a double entendre. It was the non sequitur
aspect of his commentary that made it more hurtful, although that was never his
intent. It was more a result of pressure, like water seeking to escape a pipe,
or air from a balloon. The valve would just leak, and the outflow was
unstoppable. Perhaps his reactions were fueled by jealousy…how much or how
little is unclear…but most certainly his reactions were visceral, fueled by
something deep within his core, not necessarily limbic or primal, but very
basic nonetheless. In any guise, those outbursts were bathed in his inability
to reconcile her need with his wants and needs. He was not a man who welcomed
only need. He was far more driven by want, and in an odd way, it was the
wanting that was taken away, both to and from.
When his desire was removed, whether by his own force, or something
external, he could not be the man that he was. The missing chunk of his
personality was too large. Certainly, if you are seeking a recipe for disaster
in any man’s life, take away his wanting; he needs to want, to desire, in order
to create his place.
He returned to his internal
dialogue, his struggle, as a large crow stare him down from a nearby tree,
seeking his acknowledgement, or his departure, with repetitious cacophony. Yet
he could not depart, at least not until he answered his own secret voice, and
he resisted the crow’s entreaties with a smiling malice; territorial imperative,
to be sure, but also, a stubborn denial of the possibility that no acceptable
response existed; a denial that the crow did not possess his answer, if the
bird could reflect it. He felt the quality of his response, a resolution that
would result in his own happiness; not the happiness of acceptance, of acceding,
but rather the joy of embracing the transcendence of hurt. He was perfectly
capable of recognizing both horns of the dilemma, but could not find the
softness to reconcile it. His insistence on departure laid tossing and turning,
unable to find the peace of it, while covered with the warm, familiar blanket
of continued desire. He sensed that it could all emerge if he could simply
redefine, or redirect, the desire, yet it lay strong and unaltered in its cozy
bed. Yet the picture he envisioned appeared to him like rabid, sexual energy
without an erection. He felt as if his tactile essence could only deflate in
the lack of touch, that his olfactory cues could only dull the powerful scent,
that his mind could only unimagine the imaginative words of playful excitement.
The flow of his senses was stemmed, spigotted from needed outflow. He was, in
essence, shut off at the main, not at the faucet. There no longer existed any
ability to adjust temperature, only the potential of restoring the cold inflow
to his house.
Yet somewhere in his confusion existed
the clarity of restoration alongside the semi-transparent vision of his ability
to re-create; to pen a new story, to paint a new canvas. The descriptors and
colors remained un-actualized, but their existence was palpable, like the
anticipation of a caress. What he felt he had always felt, and he had no desire
to let it go. It was completely his possession; his desire, his concern, his
affection, his love; and to let any of it go was impossible, and as undesired
as suicidal delusion. His desired reality had no history; no prior piece of it
had yet to exist. It would be created in the void of personal memory, despite
memory. He had no basis, no existing foundation…perhaps no human had any basis…for
its creation, though he was certain that to actualize his potential, his vision
of himself as a man…as a hu-man…he needed to find its beginning, and to grow it
moment by moment, nurture it with the waters of his heart.
As the crow departed, having lost patience with his
own, ineffective squawking, and having provided no effective response, he left
him with an inability to dwell any longer in his head. He had no answer, only
the quality of the answer he desired. The distraction left him with only the
dread of an early morning Monday rise, and the hope, strengthened with sensed
correctness, of a grand day ahead.
