I had a nightmare at age seven about a terrible illness that manifested as holes all over my hands and threatened to spread. In the dream my hands were in my lap as I watched the holes appear. Instead of seeing through the holes to the jeans on the other side, there was a deep, swirling darkness.
Later that year I stumbled though a field near my parents house and into a cave. As I entered the cave it began to spin. I looked toward the exit and it became a swirl.
My childhood mind often returned to explore the concept of emptiness and, to be more precise, nothingness. Though my life was just beginning I could not stop thinking about what would happen when I stopped thinking. If there was no more me and therefore no more thoughts, what was there?
I learned in elementary school about black holes. It’s what happens when a star dies, they said. One moment it is alive and full of energy and then it isn’t. Sometimes, they said, it happes so gradually as to barely be detectable. Other times, bang, supernova. The star collapses. The radiant and expansive becomes small and dense. Energy contracts, sinks inward and creates the hole.
I thought about nothingness and, sometimes, I became the nothingness. I’d snap out of it and tell myself not to do it again. I wondered why I went there and if it was normal. Did other kids go there, too?
As a teenager I took LSD in a school bus that was converted into a home. It was cold and clear as I stared at the night sky, amused by shooting stars and the movement of the galaxy. The stars were brighter than anything I’d ever seen and around them was the darkest of darkness. I looked at my hands. Like the sky, they would not stop shifting and changing. The lights in the sky flickered and the lines on my palms reached beyond my hands. The next day, at school and sleep deprived, I watched small black ants crawl over the chairs in my home room. As they moved they got larger and larger until they merged in to one black mass. I went to the bathroom, threw up and returned to see normal chairs and no more ants.
I don’t remember my own birth or what it felt like to experience light for the first time. But I do remember those of my children. It was pure alchemy. The ripped open is turned inside out to transform one into two. Fear and pain mix with love and hope and nothing becomes everything.
The sun is high in the sky and the dry rocks of the creek bed flame and sparkle. We know that they are worth nothing but we recognize magic when we see it.
In the water our hands are covered with slimy green stuff. This happens a lot. There are also bugs. We try not to notice them but can’t help it. There are black bugs that look like beetles but swim and are known to bite. There are also skeeters – bugs that walk on water. There are fish trapped in small pools that are about to die. It is July and far enough into the summer that the river bed smells of hot, dried out plant and animal parts.
We are holding hands in the cool water, still sifting for gold when we hear a woop ,woop, splash, whew! Someone has jumped in, luckily clearing the rocks. After the yelling stops we go back to the water and eventually sit back on the dry rocks and turn them over and over, looking for gold on land this time. There is an orange piece of worn pottery next to our knees.The edges are round and soft like beach glass.
We live in a small town. We know everyone, even the babies and old people. We all drive down the same street, park in the same parking lot and use the same shopping baskets. We know who your mom is, and not just because you share the same mouth. We know that you have an online gambling habit and that your dad likes cheap beer. Not because you have gone too far but because you are our son and we pay your bills and your dad is one of us, his beer cans piled high around the back side of our house.
Our town borders a river. Everything revolves around it and yet we often forget that it is there. Sometimes it reminds us by creeping into our back yards and up our steps. It comes onto our porches and into our houses without so much as a knock on the door.
When this happens we forget about yesterday and act as if this is new. Sure, the river has crossed us in the past. It has exposed us and pushed our boundaries. And yet, each time, we move on and are surprised when it happens again. Each time we think, oh no, the world is finally ending and all of our fears are now our fate.
We panic and pray and the river recedes. We clean out the fine silt it leaves in our houses. We go back to work and we stare at our bedroom ceilings before bed.
This morning the river came up the stilts of our neighbors wooden deck. We walk out on it and observe the water lapping up the edges of the fir planks. Our neighbor makes their living from the river and from this deck. They catch fish and store their yield in large white refrigerators. The fish in the river are so close today that I think they will knock down the refrigerators, bust out their dead friends, and my neighbor will lose everything.
There is something new about the sound of the water. It drowns our thoughts. We notice that the rain has stopped and the pounding that we thought was coming down from the sky is coming from the river. Its persistence causes our hearts to race and we look at the water rising towards the refrigerators. We pace around on the deck, trying to be useful but mostly frozen.
We have been through many floods. Our childhood memories are full of rising and falling waters. We remember the school bus driving through two feet of water all the way down the main road, the doors swinging open into brown pools in front of our houses. We remember the time that it came up so fast that our childhood homes were swallowed whole, our dolls and toys and clothes all washed away right after we were rescued. We remember our neighbors roof floating into our back yard and their cat jumping off onto our porch.
When the sound of the water turns from pounding to a deep breath, in and ou,t we turn and run towards the house. It is too late. Our neighbor’s house has been picked up by the water and is now floating. The refrigerators on the deck are gone and I realize that we are no longer standing on planks but on the roof. Our legs give out and we sit. We see white metal bobbing a few yards away and notice that they are the open refrigerators. We see whole clay pots, upside down, floating past us.
The sky is blue and the earth is still and the wind has gone to bed. Only the water is left. This time it is us that woop and yell. There is no other choice. We jump in and swim for our lives. We pray to grow fins and gills. The smell is wet and cold. We swim and sink and we swim again. The current is strong. It takes us all the way to the ocean, where we wash up next to the seals. They look at us and turn away. The sun goes down and, exhausted, we fall into darkness.
I remember my last night in that old city. The rain was pounding and, underneath, a dull and persistent drum. My toes were newly painted as I pressed on the brake in the darkness of the parking structure. My phone lit up and I noticed the name of a friend. I answered and heard an unexpected voice.
A woman with a thick and fake southern accent yelled into my ear. She said that she had my friend’s phone and had seen his texts to me. She told me that she had done her research and knew my story.
He was an actor who enjoyed improv. He and I had bonded over a shared interest in people named David. In that city this was a common theme as inhabitants found simple tethers to help keep them upright when the thick air bent them away from memories and the words that conjured them.
I heard my friend speak in the background as if tied to a chair. He told her to please stop. His voice was constrained while hers grew. I realized, suddenly, that she was him and he was her. He was the woman in my ear and she was the friend that I’d known but not known. His southern accent was much better than I would have expected it to be. He must have been practicing a lot over the years. I hung up the phone.
He texted me the next day that I should file a restraining order. That she was crazy and dangerous.
She texted me that she was coming for me and I should gather my cane and hobble away before it was too late.
I took stock and reminded myself that these two were one. They were warning me and coming for me at the same time. They wanted to hug me and they wanted to kill me and I wondered, how could this have happened? The red sky didn’t warn me. The air was still thick, as always.
I locked my door and slept with a kitchen knife that last night. In the morning I packed my bags and left. The man and the woman followed me, closing the city gates as I met the horizon. The drum sound slowly faded and I felt the air lighten. I took a new breath.
Mary stands on the sidewalk with her hand behind her back. Smoke curls around her side and up to her mouth as she moves her cigarette.
She sees me, looks down and quickly hides her hand. We don’t know one another. I only know her place on the sidewalk as I walk past. It is on this spot where, on summer days, she stares across the grass while I imagine that this is her best and worst moment.
But who am I to write about Mary, a made up name for someone I think about sometimes.
I woke up yesterday in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, clutching a soggy sweater, waves slapping my face.
I gathered my energy and paddled with my arms and kicked with my legs until I came to a nearby cable twice as thick as my torso. I wrapped around half of it and my feet slid back into the water.
Someone in a scuba mask touched my shoulder, their lips curled around a black tube. Water streamed down their face mask, obscuring their eyes. I climbed higher and higher on a cable until I could see out over part of the bay. It may have been a mirage but I swear that I spotted a whale.
And now I lay here in an empty room. Machines buzz at my head and a chair sits empty in one corner. I would like to know what happened but, in the meantime, I quietly feel all of the parts of my body still working. I can’t remember who should be sitting in that chair but I am sure that it will come to me soon.
After a while the door opens and my mom steps in. Behind her is my young daughter. They both smile as they sit on my bed. My daughter is excited to tell me about the best lunch she has ever had just now at some place down the street. The calamari was so good and so salty, she says. This makes me smile and the giant love I have for her pounds in my chest.
Later, when I am discharged, fully clothed, dry, and rested, my daughter and I settle back into our routine. I pack her lunch for kindergarten and stop at a coffee shop on my way to work, just as I did before. I drink coffee, work, come home and make us dinner. One day her dad calls to invite us to come see him. He lives in another city, in another state. We used to live there, too, but now we just visit sometimes. My daughter is excited to see him, he who she barely knows but loves dearly. I am excited, too.
On the plane my daughter wears sunglasses and carries an adult sized purse. An older man with white hair and money hands stares at us. He introduces himself and begins to ask a lot of questions while dropping hints about his successful wine business. I smile and nod while my daughter writes in her notebook.
While my daughter visits with her dad I spend time with old friends and revisit old habits. I meet a friend at a bar and I feel at home in the darkness. My friend steps out for a few minutes to buy some weed because he doesn’t really drink and would rather get high. I feel drops of water on my shoulder and turn around to see a man in a wetsuit standing behind me. He opens his mouth and out pours salt water in a stream. Another man, who has been sitting down the bar, gets up, shuts the spewing mouth and puts the man in a fish tank out back.
My rescuer wipes the seat next to me dry with a bar towel and sits down. He has a sarcastic and dark sense of humor and a half smile that makes my breath draw in deeper than I knew possible. When my friend returns he leaves soon after as I am wrapped in the arms of new conversation.
When we return from our trip it is no longer home. Home is back to that other city, in that other state. Home is closer to him. I call him GW, short for Guitar Wizard. This is one of our inside jokes. I have a shirt made and sent to him with “GW” written on it so that he will remember me. Two weeks later I quit my job and give notice to my landlord. I am in love and we move back.
We move in with my daughter’s dad. As roomates. It is the same house that he went to in secret, back when we were together, to visit his girlfriend. It is the same place where I took my two year old daughter by stroller to throw my dried our wedding bouquet on the doorstep after discovering his secret. The pain of the past now replaced by new life and a belly laugh at the turn of events.
The house is a broken mess full of leftovers from former roommates, girlfriends, mold and a food cart truck parked out front with a painted medusa head on the side. I no longer walk but float about as my dreams come true in the arms of GW.
As with my other dreams, this one eventually ends. One day, in his apartment, my mouth opens and out comes a judgmental comment about how he only has salt and pepper in his kitchen. I declare that an adult man should have more spices. This is the beginning of the end. I move on, righteous in my conviction that he should get it together and go spice shopping and come back to me only after he has a formidable selection.
It turns out that my heart is broken and I regret letting him go. Time passes and one day we meet up. We end up having sex. He tells me, as we lay together, that he is in another relationship and cannot see me again. I am distraught and send him away in anger. A few weeks later I am pregnant. When I tell him he assures me that he will give me money for the abortion. To get the cash I meet him at a corner near his apartment. My daughter is with me as I drive by, roll down my window and quickly grab an envelope from his hand as he stands at the curb. We drive away and I never see him again.
At the clinic the technician squirts lube on my belly and asks me if I would like to see the fetus. I turn my head and say no. I shut my eyes and listen to the sound of the machine, pulsing like the radar of a submarine. I go home, take the first pill and spend the day bleeding on my bathroom floor. It is my 35th birthday. The pipes in my old bathroom moan, echoing inside my empty gut. I recognize the sound as that of a lonely, lost whale down way too deep.
I think about my almost baby as I flush the toilet. The sun is out but I can only see deep red-black waves coming over me, crushing my flesh.
When I spotted you sunning yourself in the lap of that lizard I could not help but stare. The air was soft and thick like your famous chocolate chip cookies. Back then, before we met, I already felt their sweet aftertaste in my mouth.
I remember how you yelled when your feet burned on the hot sand while running from your pet to the ocean. I wanted a lizard, too, and tried to catch one as it ran by.
A turtle noticed my attempt and told me that my technique was all wrong. I listened to her stories and she listened to mine. I was especially interested in her gossip about your lizard.
The turtle and I went on and on while your lizard lounged nearby and you swam out to the island and back again.
I smiled at the turtle as you reached the shore and ran back to your lizard. You threw something towards me and it hit my cheek. It was the smallest piece of driftwood that the ocean could carve and was all it took for us to spend a lifetime on the beach, between lizard and turtle, always finding another excuse to stay.
I am in Philadelphia for the first time. I take a walk in an area full of founding fathers. There are shadow horses and ghost men in wigs with straight backs walking in lines between long rows of big box stores. The color of the bricks has not changed in 250 years but the land around is unrecognizable. I wonder if it is the history of the place that I feel in my body or if it is jet lag. I visit the Liberty Bell and feel awe when I see that it is much smaller than I had imagined, and its crack so large. How can something forged of metal have such a gash? I read about how many people have touched it or been photographed with it over the years and about its symbolic uses.
The crowd pushes me to the side and I make my way through a metal detector that funnels me into a courtyard between old brick buildings. There is a lonely sign in the middle of the cobblestone that lets me know that there is a talk at this spot every 30 minutes. I look up at a brick tower and wonder if there is still a bell up there. Broken bells go down in history and unbroken ones remind us that it is time for lunch.
As my eyes leave the tower and travel back to the ground I see a man in a park ranger uniform standing by the sign. I associate his look with mountains and trees, two things that don’t exist in this vast expanse of pavement and brick.
The man talks to a small group of three as I linger behind. He is full of facts about the constitution and about the many dramas that unfolded inside the nearby buildings. As he speaks of the long and important history of men debating, I notice that he is very familiar. He mentions that he is from California and then I remember how I know him. He is the Pink Floyd guy. He looks exactly the same, only older and with a small pony tail and a clean uniform in place of lop sided hair and a cigarette smelling once-white t-shirt.
He has the same crowded eyes. Like there is a whole town trying to look out of just one set. And his mouth is straight, unchanging no matter what words it forms. I dissect his features while going back into my mind to dig though old memories as he stands there, reciting facts and wearing a Smokey the Bear hat. Life comes into focus, now, like the moment a kaleidoscope’s pattern opens up before it closes again.
He would regularly visit the small town general store I cashiered at to buy cigarettes and 40-oz of the cheapest beer. I was 17 and found him deeply interesting. I wanted to know what was going on inside this man with nicotine fingers and a walkman. He was older than me by a handful of years. I could tell that he drank and smoked a lot but I didn’t yet understand what this meant.
One day, close to my high school graduation date, he waited for me after work. It was well past sunset as we drove west. I learned that his favorite band was Pink Floyd. I also learned that he believed that the world was about to end. He gave me the exact date. He was certain. He told me that there was a voice in his head that sounded like the Pink Floyd lead singer and this voice talked to him about important things. We parked next to a cliff that overlooked the ocean. The waves crashed below, water spraying up against the rock face every few seconds. He turned to me and said that the end of the world was happening all because of him. His eyes watered and his bony body sat rigid.
I listened and then drove him back to town and let him out on the side of a small road. He lit a cigarette and adjusted his headphones as he walked away.
Soon after, we met up again and drove out to a bluff overlooking the ocean. We walked through some scrubby grass in the dark and fumbled around for a few quick minutes, kissing and then laying down and then realizing whatever we were trying to do was not going to happen. I drove him back to my house. I let him out a few yards before the driveway and gave him instructions on where to hide out until I could retrieve him.
My parents were so worried about me that they had called the police. I’d never before seen them so upset at anyone other than each other. Eventually they went to bed and I went out to my room. It was in what had once been a storage room detached from the main house. I pulled him out of the darkness and through the sliding glass door. He lay stiff in my bed all night, not moving an inch. In the morning, he snuck out and hitchhiked down the rural roads to get back to wherever he lived.
My fascination with him broke after that night. I realized that his identity was the end of the world and mine was not. What he heard in Pink Floyd was not what I heard. His song was a broken bell and mine had not even been forged. A few months later I went off to college. The end of the world came and went and somehow he found his way across the country and into the national park service.
I think about lingering after his talk but the focus I felt a few minutes ago is now fading. I hear a bell ringing and realize that it is getting late. I walk away, wearing the sound between my ears, listening and feeling it speak to me until I fade away to join the other cobblestone shadows.
