by Evan Karp
1
A leaf blew in through the window and landed on his sleeve. He picked it up, examined: bright orange symmetry speckled with life microscopic, a leaf from a tree. Two fingers parted outside the window, the leaf spiraled down to the ground.
Not many yet. The tree still covered in colors but nights getting colder. Side street empty of motion. Leaves leave slowly, noiselessly, borne on occasional gusts of wind; a stray car passing through the night stirs them up and around again. They fall back down.
Two eyes return to the room and the objects therein with deliberate wonder. Books on a shelf arranged to his liking. Candles to mood. He is the wind. He is bringer of life.
Books. All of the books. All of the words in the books spoken for him to make sense of. Men long dead always speaking. Dead until someone can hear them.
Chaise, his lingering indent from hours before. What happens in this room? He does. His dust gathers corners.
Outside? Leaves fall, the ground pad layers. Stars twinkle on til the morning. Inside too.
Far from the chair and the window students are laughing. Same moon. Smoke and laughter. Joke after joke ever after. Everything funny. Everything sane. Tomorrow again.
A long deep breath, head back, eyes closed. Breath shoots out like smoke. Eyes open. He pretends to blow smoke. He pretends to blow smoke and he knows it.
Not pretending anything. In the room to step away from all that. The old walk from the dorm to the car to get high, group en amoeba mass taking shape from each other. Laughing. Conscious decisions.
We choose to do this. We choose to experience nights together. Hello world! Hello strangers! We all friends. Everyone special somehow. Bring it out every night, share it, add to it.
They were still out there, doing this. Not old to them yet. It doesn’t get old for some people.
Andy’s pumpkin smile, bowl always ready and packed. Shadi controlling the music. Shotgun no joust! Riding around through the city, their city now, passing lights and big buildings without destination. Free, as everyone should be. Hear them now telling stories from home. The way Frazad gets lost in his anecdotes, everyone waits and then pounces. Defense, jolly defense with a smile.
Personalities. All bring their own personal goods to the gathering. Buttons are pushed to see what happens. Brothers one didn’t know one had! Each one another reason to praise the thing and rejoice together, another strong link to a chain not yet forged. Was it all really over? After one quick year?
New freshmen always walking the streets. Not just here - everywhere. Some 500 miles away ex-girlfriend does same. Not now. Always. Parents in school doing same differently. Clothes and manners, talk through the mind, change only in style. Too far.
High school grades. Study hard, make the cut. No problem. There was nothing else: be a good kid, of course, but that up to each. Make good grades. Athletics for fun, competition. High school to get into college. Worked hard for this.
NOW HERE: more preparation, for what: LIFE? Class is easy. Already good kid. Fits into groups anywhere, anyone. People appreciate presence. ‘Reflects beauty well.’ Anything more? Don’t know, hope to find out …
Should do that when: after preparation complete? After degree received? What: is this not life already? Moments with strangers in a car sharing secrets and personal truths together, welcome to life – were those not real? Moments more pregnant with knowledge than class. Textbook guide: life in a vacuum.
What importance now? Where guidance? Not even twenty – is this really when the roads diverge, right when the eyes are opened!? HELLO!?! Aren’t we supposed to be learning here?
Essays in high school. Essays in college. Life when? Time to live or time to start learning to live. Neither? Thanks for nothing. Didn’t anyone before go through this? Hasn’t anyone brains or heart to change it? Stuck in the circus. Promise of bread, work for more life in the circus. Seals clapping pause for a treat.
What’s important now? Not grades – that proven. Easy. Knowledge gained: useless. How to succeed in a building of closed rooms. Thanks for the tips.
Anything more for our money? debt? time?
Time to come back to earth. Cigarette time. Focus on breathing. The street is quiet outside. The street-light shines onto asphalt and pine. No music: playlist history. The two quiets collide, insistently formless.
Step back, step back. Smoke the cigarette slowly. Take deep, deep breaths of cold air. Deep breaths, fill the lungs with cold. Eyes widen as lungs expand. Breath out, frost out dissolving in space. Clouds. A cold flash through the body, smell of fresh air mixed with calm. Needles on the flesh whisper ecstasy. Thirty out and loving it! Head out, grass and the tree upside down. Zealous, righteous breaths!
Now on the window stays open.
2
Just then the wind blew and the leaves shook and the colors drifted softly to the ground. A cold invisible jab to the heart. He pulled the blanket closer and put the cigarette out in the dustbin.
Against the cushions he sank and his body trembled, feeling the pull of the earth and his own fragile footing upon it. The tremble – the cold. But it could be the truth of his knowledge. He shudders. A warm smile surges through and through. The only thing mankind must do is make peace with the barren cold.
Sweet tree, naked and blanketless – tomorrow you blossom!
The twists in it, the bends. The delicate limbs like fingers reaching upward to God. The cold then. A single night and the light will return – this always! But a long night ahead.
Should he dance with the dying? Run outside into the night’s cold middle and spin until he falls to the earth? lie there looking up at the stars?
For himself?
No one would see.
If he could stand the cold then what was time? Those numbers meant nothing. If he could go through cold then he was fire; what could heat matter? Inside like out: natural, fresh. The wind would blow through, work magic on him too. His thoughts would fall and settle like the leaves and his mind be as clear as the crisp purple sky. Royal!
But what was he thinking – this always? Now on? A single night, more like it. One night the cold, but all winter? Until the tree blossoms this window? This blanket, this cold?
He was strong enough to step away from his friends, each with such singular value. Each with his own precious gift. But his gift – what to do with that? Add it to the group, make the others stronger? Give the magic inside to something that will fly away and never last? WHY? A sin to think this! But true. And what on this earth will last?
The stars, the twinkle of the insects, all the same in and out of the seasons. So many years will pass before anything really changes. A man, a life – what? A generation – what? The long view of things.
Staring at the walls, into space, out the window. Letting everything soak in as the time rolls slowly along. Surely, and one day death. But the nights are so long – there’s plentiful time to take long looks down the lifeline.
Take the long view now the time can stop. Everything out. Distractions, all. People, even friends – especially friends, public – even strangers. Anything that takes the mind off the issue. Why is he sitting here?
Every moment reminder, every thought accounted for and turned further inward.
Fresh air into courage and understanding is the secret to growth.
Isolation would be painful. But there is no growth without pain. Friends will hurt too. Would they grow? Up to them; he couldn’t go on as before, mixing with the crowd and doing as they did. He wasn’t strong enough to stand amongst them as himself. He did not even know what that meant but he felt it.
Each full night alone would accumulate incongruous moments, but when it came time to shake them all out the sun would be waiting for dancers. Collect them then – how perfect it seemed! Winter: reflect. Spring: rebirth, put the thoughts into flesh and let go. Summer: smile. And Fall to the ground with praise. Take off the hat and put the toys in the closet. Winter, cover the earth with your frost and enchantment. When everything else is frozen man forges on …
To outdo even himself, to prove beyond doubt. He will not move until sure of his steps again. Until then the chair, the window, words of men long dead. Settle in for the night, for the season.
All those trees will be barren and freezing. They will bloom again certain and before the eyes, and in the meantime he will stop, he will not go round like the rest of things do. He will hover and watch it roll by and see what there is before he goes by too. This is the year, now is the time.
Who will leave this wintry house with treasures?
Who will stomp through ice for warmth?
3
So instead of teaching how to unravel school keeps you organized and focused. Instincts replaced by routine. How are we to guide the life inside if we never understand it?
Life, according to the world.
Spirit design. Everyone who walks the aisle accepts the human paradigm.
Are you in school? …
Oh.
Each person learns to the degree they self-apply the lessons. Once you’ve figured out what the classroom is and how groups discuss topics … what’s the point of waiting around for all to comprehend? Why not turn in? Why not learn how to open the doors and then leave to open them?
This is what some people did who exploded. We study to speculate: life could be this way.
Good. Bye everyone, I’m going to decide what life is.
Why stick around and learn what other people did? Learn more, speculate often. Chew cud like bliss- and bountiful bovine, oblivious. Meanwhile personality accumulates like tar in your lungs, a residue of need you consider desire. Go! Time constraints kill, habits form without creation.
Life is a chance to define reality!
You’re alive and aware right now. Why cling? Why not sing until you know what you want tomorrow to bring?
OH NO! Now I want to be a doctor and I missed out on school!
Why Doctor? Can’t you fulfill that dream without a D-r? Can’t you be who you are?
How you will eat? How you will sleep? You You You. I thought you were good. I thought you were great. I thought maybe you would be best in the state. I remember your dreams they had nothing to do with your stomach. When you first conceived of making the world beautiful you knew it didn’t matter what happened to you and your eyes twinkled yes you would make the world better by being a person who made people stronger but now that you know doing that is much harder you justify life you’re doing enough, you’re good enough but I remember a time (and it wasn’t just once) you resolved to be the very best. You sincerely hoped to take all humanity into your arms and leap into higher orbit. Now this is good enough? You believe it’s hopeless, don’t you?
My, old dreamer, what kind of bedtime stories for the children tonight?
Parents say these are the days, enjoy. How do I want my memories? When school’s over there’s no time for fun. I wish I’d done it when I could have. When you’re young. They say this because they never learned how to follow their dreams – if they had they would not have regrets.
One who follows his dreams goes willingly wherever they lead. You’re a product of resignation. Probably planned. But what were the options? What did they actually consider?
Maybe my kids’ll do it. I can teach them and show them with love what I never dared. Life’s over for me. I don’t feel anything, honestly, but tired.
Don’t feel like following your dreams?
Is there anyone out there who can help me grow? Hello? Can anyone else see what’s good for me?
How could anyone unlock the secret to my soul if resigned to carry their own to the grave?
The stomach rumbles, calm breached slowly by thunder. Secret wisdom: better to push than to yield. Cigarettes fine. But does he need those?
He lights one and takes a puff. Body: not what you need pal.
Bad taste.
Distraught, not because there isn’t food. He’s not entitled to it. Way after the body needs it, or thinks it needs it, after the pangs of hunger disappear he will eat. No slave to the body. No slave to anything.
The smoke billows and billows. Flows out of the thing. Usually smoke it, smoke before it’s gone. A curious thought. Head sideways. What if? A life untouched, unguided. Analyzed, digested. Experience with no action. Just like.
A season apart. He’d watch the cig burn down without him. Set it in motion, like eating half an apple and watching it rust. It happens every time without fail, much faster than watching the tree. Affirmation. Here goes …
Up goes the smoke goes up goes the smoke goes up goes the smoke. The tree is silent as ever, the house immobile across the street. People live there now, different people than before and at some point other people too will live there. One day the house will be gone.
No fair, cheating to take eyes off the smoke. What does it matter to let it burn down if you aren’t watching?
He looks at it. At least he wouldn’t smoke when he didn’t need to. Body: eat. But he’d watch it burn instead.
Let time pass, let it all pass and he would still be there.
People decide what they do before they turn into dust. The light has been lit, the fire is started. Burn as you please. The smoke, it billows and billows. What was he doing?
The traffic light changed the asphalt from red to green but all was quiet and cold. This might be the only chance to take a long, uninterrupted look out the window. What could be more important? Not just to see in front of him – routine, homework, degree – to see what the men who wrote the books saw. To see what life is before living it.
Why must he step away to see this?
On the other side of the window life was going on without pause. Down the hall Dan and Jonny slept soundly and the other students in their dorms and apartments and houses, wherever they were, slept soundly; and the businessmen with bank accounts and the farmers, wherever they were, slept soundly in their beds; the whole blinking city out there slept soundly and sure as the blinking clock across the room kept repeating its answers.
Cig.
They were all deciding not to deal with it now, or not all at once, or not all at all. Sleeping every night at the same time no matter what, as if tomorrow brings a magical clue or solution to the riddle they pretend not to ignore.
Let it come. Let the days pass by like thoughts. Smoke pack after pack without thinking, questioning, forming opinions. It doesn’t matter what happens. Float like the refuse of a shipwreck, cut across the liquid like an ice skater. Skills on the surface, fine. What about the depths? The skies? What about the people who once said we could fly? What about the ones who can but never stop to try?
Have they all decided already what the world is, what it means, what they want to do with their lives? One day at a time, over and over, people doing jobs they have no respect for, suspending their time in places they despise, putting up with so much bullshit they actually hate themselves. How painful and sad this is, colorless, far from the calling! For something people. Don’t just live!
Cig remains, but what of it? Smokes unaided, he’s done holding it isn’t a torch. Puts it down in the tray, does not put it out. Burn.
These people once played on playgrounds. They danced in the garden of Eden. What happened? Why do they run from themselves? Why do they treasure their own trite desires? Why do they take whatever they can?
As children we’re taught to follow our passions, to honor the impulse as gold. We sail through ocean dreams. In college the lesson it isn’t a dream.
Who dares say this to youth with new meaningful light in their sockets? Those who miss it.
Nate sympathized with the colorless, gave them voice.
We don’t want to prepare anymore we want to enjoy life now. We were never taught how to live. There was no time for ourselves. We were too busy trying to get good lives and even the ones who tried did not have examples to follow: this is what it’s like not to stand in line and before we knew it we had kids we maybe didn’t plan for and a wife or a husband with whom we never agree. It’s too late now. Too late to follow our hearts, they’re broken. Now we enjoy what we can. It’s the simple things that matter anyway, the little things, and we kill the pain however and whenever we can.
He picks up the light from the side table and lights the smoke, sits back a bit and exhales. A timeframe begins. Over the course of the cigarette he would hardly move. What would happen? He looks around with a touch of indifference. There are infinite moments to each smoke and not a single reason to rush for anything.
To take things as they come – that is the key to meeting moments in stride. Students rush from place to place, task to task, mindless of the world they inhabit. They cling to routine as if a missed step would abolish the ground; they cling to the little they know, and blindness shields them. From danger. From life.
He takes another puff off the cig and ash tumbles down to his shirt. It will stay there.
All advice to continue. Encouragement: positive, sincere, but nothing else. How is one to learn if he’s the only one speaking?
The stub in his hand coughed out its last breaths and the body remained in his fingers. These lessons, ideas, germs, these seedlings put into the students in the hopes that one might catch and grow there – what are they then but general knowledge, stored and useless? These texts do not affect the students or change how they live. Is he supposed to digest them or just spit them back up?
Teacher asks if everyone understands but there is no nod and there is no hand. The stillness of death settles early and firm.
Say something professor! Guide us!
‘Listen up class: this is what you need to know for the exam.’ Teaching classes, not students.
He lifts his hand for a drag but realizes halfway up and tosses the butt to the floor. That drag would have been subconscious.
The tree is always there. Without thoughts, it takes the nutrients it needs and grows as it’s able. When it’s time the leaves fall and in the Spring they grow again. The roots grow firm, the branches branch out. Life is nothing to that tree but growth: it cannot decide otherwise.
Tree. Where are my roots? And what are my nutrients? Roots in this room, food in these books, ideas? Roots in the thoughts of the men before me? My thoughts – my thoughts, tree? I do not have my own thoughts yet. I have not yet become an idea but I’m trying. How do you think I fare, beautiful tree? What is my progress this Fall? I take strength from you. Tonight I will copy one of your leaves and carry it with me forever. Part of you has blossomed inside me. It will not fall like the others. It will not disappear with the season. You have birthed and nurtured a fine thing that will last long after you fall. And who knows what it will give birth to!
He picks up the leaf and holds it in front of the tree.
Give me the grace to duplicate beauty! Let me faithfully render creation! Oh god, tree!
Teachers, formal education – forgotten.
Show us a leaf! Show us a man who can stand up and praise a leaf for an hour – then we will listen! Show us a man who does not need books, who is a book, and we will read him with care. Tree, what can you teach in a season?
One tree, one leaf, a pen and some paper. Cigs and a lighter. This will be class.
In the corner flickers: a person on the street? Late for that … 4:30. Nothing moves when the sun goes down. A specter goes by without pausing. Must have seen the light: the boy in the chair in the window, reflected from the street.
Dreaming?
4
People know what they’re doing but not what it means.
Pathetic: not that nobody knows, but that nobody cares to find out.
If I keep doing this something good will happen.
Nobody looks at life from the grave.
Always hunger. Not how to kill it. Friends now.
He puts the gnawing onto the page in front of him, determined to copy this leaf. First a few deep strokes for the contour, a scrap page to find the right feeling. No intention of getting it right the first time.
Leaf leaf leaf.
To copy an image into the soul: to possess it. This leaf will always be there, in the recess, symbolizing this time in the room that he made the first stand. Symbolizing what he chooses to make it symbolize. For this time will mean what he makes it mean. True?
There is no certainty, but the time will mean something, and probably dear, and the tree will continue to grow in this memory. However it forms.
And what about him? How render that?
Every day ends, bodies crumple and disappear, lives lose substance and cease to matter. What meaning can one lose that he doesn’t have?
He would fill himself with meaning first, then he’d have something to lose. Did that make sense?
It’s not about any one person: him, you, me, her; it’s not about what happens to us but what we impress on the world. It’s not about people but life: adorning it, beautifying, praising it. What matters be worthy of copy, like the leaf, that each man be stronger and worthier than the man before. Yes, again yes, the leaf. But what about him? What will be left of his life as a person? Bones. Nutrients for other life.
But what of the spirit? What of personality? What about everything that builds up in a person? What about what we think is beautiful?
If he could translate the beauty of a single leaf he’d in some ways be worthy its beauty. No small feat!
As he was finding out. Even a leaf isn’t easy to draw. The scrap paper gone, two more sheets gone, the contour alone causing problems. The outer, most apparent part a problem! He takes a deep breath to step back without moving.
Every path chosen is a singular way to deal with the pain and sadness of being alone. Every leaf that falls gets to choose how it wants to use its colors before they’re gone. The girl in the street a shadow of a person passing through the night like clockfeet, going in circles, every night the ritual borne of some personal need.
How hard it is to drift away with composure! What sacred acquiescence it takes to affirm this existence!
Each path comes to this question: keep your eyes open and create your own meaning, or seek illusion in the form of people, drugs, work, religion, god. How understandable it is to surround yourself with others! How hard it is to separate willingly, to make this decision and live by it.
He traces his hand on the page and looks at it.
Traces the leaf in the palm.
Happy with the image, empty and small as it is, he sets it against a large photograph of his ex-girlfriend. Significance costs him a breath. Did not want to replace her beauty!
Aware of his breaths he places the drawing in his lap. Frost onto the frame he is breathing. Was this all he needed to do? Replace this picture and be okay?
The tree seemed to watch as he slid the glass from its frame. He knew the picture, that she was not what he wanted to keep, but he would not admit this to himself, was not strong enough to throw it away. He slid the picture in behind the drawing.
From this hour he would see the fair image of her soul in every leaf. More than the one true love, more than the missed opportunity, more even than the bullet that slew him; no longer a girl or the girl but love of all Life, Beauty. Not something meant to latch onto but carried in the soul as a token, reminder of the delicate balance between himself and the rest of the world. One more silent tribute to the face of the first, hidden already, or finally, out of sight.
Behind the leaf in his palm would be the first one that fell from his hands. And the last. He could not put her back but he could not let her go either. Her face burned into his soul, mistake: to put all your love in one person. A burden then? She will be a burden only if beauty can be that. The burden beauty.
There had been a time, and not so long before, when such a thought would have brought tears to his eyes. But now, though he thought perhaps he could feel a new emptiness, and one that burned, he had no tears to confirm this. Emotions: what to do with those? He closed his eyes. Eventually shook head yes, opened his eyes, and took a clean sheet of paper from the drawer. Back to the leaf.
A knock on the door?
Carefully he places the blanket aside. Slowly he unroots from the chaise.
Jonny.
> Hey, dude. Brought you some dumplings. Don’t know if you’ve eaten, in a while …
Who is this roommate, this friend?
They had experienced nights together, sure – but in the end they had crossed paths by chance, had known each other little more than a year.
They stood in the doorway with a plate of dumplings steaming between them, two arms giving and two taking. Pause: four hands hold the plate.
It was not fair that Jonny should do this, that he should feel compelled to look after Nate like some invalid child. Nor was it right that another human should have to feel the pain, even if only remotely, of another individual just because they share the same house. Nevertheless.
Nate stepped aside so Jonny would enter – an invitation not spoken. He looked at his roommate with anguish.
When they were both seated Nate fumbled with a pen until it fell to his lap. Jonny would have to understand. It didn’t matter though, in the end. What did he know? An image from freshman year, a semester in the same house, the closed door, their friends saying Nate’s not himself, Nate’s broken? Impossible to express who you really are!
This is not who I am Jonny, I am not a quitter or a mess or a boy who is broken!
The ashtray overflows, there are butts on the floor, plates stacked high with remnants of meals he did not have the heart to ingest.
> I’m not coming back to school next semester.
Nate heard his own voice say this. It sounded like he had a thousand books on his chest. Strange, that he who once showed such promise was now deciding to walk away. The world seemed to whisper: Nate’s dropping out of school. Nate’s dropping out. It was spoken.
He looked at Jonny to see his reaction. What would he say? Even a sympathetic friend will have a hard time supporting your decision to stop doing what he plans to continue.
> You’re sure?
They were as separate as could be in the night, in opposite corners looking down.
Life can be like this.
> I don’t want to. … I always thought I’d go to an Ivy League school and succeed with the best in the world. … Who’s to say I wouldn’t have, right?
Nate smiled.
> You’re supposed to find yourself in college right? I found myself. What’s the point in staying? Right? But at the same time I feel like I’m waving goodbye to my dreams, you know? And even though I do think they’re shallow, they are the only ones I’ve had. Or held onto for this long. It’s not like I can play major league baseball now, you know? What am I going to do?
> What are you gonna do?
> I don’t know. … I want to live a life I believe in, with all of my heart. … I want to decide how to live based on who I am and what I have to offer. That’s not what I’m learning – what I have inside me. Not in school, anyway. I learned whatever I know of that in this room.
He thought for a moment. The world was calm.
> I guess you could say I’ve learned in school that what I have to give is not something I need school to understand or develop. I’ve learned in school, basically, that school’s not for me – that’s all.
He felt the decision was right then. It was not the logic but his instincts, which created the logic, that convinced him. This was his decision.
Jonny would be sorry to see him go. He said so, and with sincerity. They would stay in touch.
Nate did not believe this. He had just said goodbye.
When Jonny closed the door Nate remained in a reverie for a long time. The whole semester played out in his head, his whole scholastic life did, and he saw that his story never had ended; he’d taken this time not to leave anything important behind, made sense of it, and would soon be ready to stand up and walk away. Forward!
Musing thus, a noise broke his thought. The careless pace past the window, eyes at slow feet. Walking with an indifferent moon on the asphalt in the cold, hugging herself, all just to get through the night. We all came out of the womb for this, went through childhoods and dreams. What pain gave birth to this desolate ritual?
HOW back to the task? What task? That girl is broken.
His elbow knocked the lamp against the wall. Panicked, he looked out the window. She was looking straight at him.
Under the streetlight her face seemed to shine some ancient knowledge into his room. Not a look: a transmission of some untranslatable message. Symbols rushed in, images that did not make sense: spades, clovers, kings, lovers: all flashing hieroglyph beams, each fleeting moment new strange meanings, communication through some new form. Lost in this inundation of light-pictures Nathan stared and received but was blinded.
He realized she was gone. The flashes continued, trapped in his brain. What in the world was that all about? What was that? She did not seem human, and was off in the night like a phantom.
Did the moon just speak? Had the earth sent some stranger to warn him? He did not know, but could not get back to the leaf.
5
When dawn arrived he was sprawled out in the chaise with his shoes on and his jacket zipped up. The jeans he wore were weeks old and wrinkled, frayed, spotted with miscellany. He had not moved in hours. His eyes were still moonbeams. Injected with something he felt like. That girl. That look! The candles were still burning and the light was still on.
Shaking for hours, aware of nothing, the night had passed by in an instant. Trapped. Like a light particle bouncing off mirrors in every direction, charged to the bone. Today he was going to class.
Mrs. Abernathy’s class. Something in the moment with that stranger had wiped him clean of certainty and doubt. Who knows if he’d ever be able to speak sweet English again! Or close his mouth, open from shock. He would sit in class and observe all the people. It was time to go back into public. To reflect – off of others.
The trip there was a dream. The car ride in silence, musicless, thoughtless, an audio-free clip from an independent film. Wholly meaningless without an audience. The car parked, the walk down the street and into the building, the seat assumed, books pulled out and put on the table, pen too. Faulkner. Go ahead.
He was early. The seats were arranged in a semi-circle around the room with Abernathy’s desk in front of the board. Still. Nathan sat directly across from her and looked unabashedly at each new person who walked into class. They were all there, all the ones who’d been there before.
And all in the same exact seats! His glaringly empty this whole time – what that must have done to poor Mrs. Abernathy! A vacant seat staring her straight in the face every day. Did she spew out her lessons there? Did she see him sitting there as she spoke about Faulkner’s personal life? Did she wonder at all?
It was clear he read the book. He observed and spoke only when no one knew what to say. Provided page numbers. Abernathy pretended not to notice, or care, but the others looked askance. What’s that kid’s name again, anyway? Hasn’t been to class in how long?
Later that night a phone call from dad. Seems ol’ Abs called concerned about a drug problem. She should know better … almost three months since he’s touched marijuana. How funny! Pop told her point blank: he was home last weekend and the other son threw a party and he himself – yes he, Nathan’s father, passed Nate a joint and he turned it down. What did she have to say about that?
> Then he needs professional counseling.
Nate could hear his father coughing on the phone after a nice deep drag off a number.
> I know. I kept trying to pass it to him.
Of course she did not understand. But did she ever approach him? Not so much as a word. She avoided his eyes and his presence. He had not asked for help but, bent on it, supposedly, did she know how to give it?
It was one of those untimely days when the subsequent season makes itself felt, such a nice day that class would be held outside by the fountain.
They sat in a line with the teacher in front; she paced from one end to the other while the students spoke over the splashing. Much of the same: basic summary of text with little analysis and not a hint of application.
Discussion rambled on with the lazy intent of a sated bumblebee until a hornet flew into the scene and caused a shameful commotion. Immediately Faulkner was forgotten. The girls screamed and took cover behind whatever they found – boys, bookbags, textbooks, bushes – and the boys were finicky shields. Abernathy? Took several large steps back and swatted the air with her text. Nate could not help but smile – internally – at how fitting it was to see her swinging the book wildly into the air like she didn’t know how to use it. Funny plus depressing equals pathetic. He did not flinch, and the hornet landed on his nose.
Moment after moment passed, long enough for the children to locate the hornet. Why exactly had it landed on Nate’s nose? He stared directly ahead of him at Mrs. Abernathy the whole time, utterly unconcerned. He knew why.
Life will be a nameless fight few will respect or even be able to see. There will be times when people look at you like you’re worthless, like you’ve turned your back on everything important when in fact you’ve done exactly the opposite. What you value will be mocked to your face. You will not be understood and you will not even care to be understood.
There will be problems you can never solve. You may find there are not even problems. Nights and years will pass and you will live your life in closed rooms and you will find that you did so by choice, and you will weep for nights not spent under the stars and the very elements you once went inside to escape. Now you escape from people. You will avoid new contacts except through necessity and keep a distance between yourself and others, and all in the name of the most holy – something you will question always.
And little by little the human touch will evaporate from your veins, and though your voice will grow stronger and louder no one you care about will be around to listen because you will have left them all behind. And the whole time you will be in the room, in rooms across the country maybe, perhaps the world, but rooms all the same, crafting and sharpening your own personal sense of beauty so that what? So the few people after you who care enough will do the same. Because remarkable lives are no longer lived in public. Humanity is not something we can proudly take part in, and though it seems to have failed who knows? There might be a chance that some time in the future the seeds of belief will find the right people to grow in, and righteousness will return to the earth in the bodies of human beings as we know them.
Abernathy looked right in his eyes, and all Nate could think was the girl from the street, the glowing symbol transmissions, the hieroglyphs he knew she would never understand. He focused his feelings into his gaze. Put his soul in his eyes, flashed the burn with intent. He wanted to shoot moonbeams so deep into her body they would never get out, trapped and blazing with images she’d never take the time off to translate. She was scared, but there was nothing malevolent about him. It was truth he shot, truth that would bring her back to life. He wanted to shoot a bit of Faulkner her way, out of his soul and, if it had ever been there, back into hers.
6
That was the last time he ever went to class. It would do neither him nor the others any good. Let them take what they want out of life – he certainly would. And as for Abernathy … jesus. Who cares? School isn’t some magical place post-adolescents go to learn about life. It’s a training ground for success in the real world. No one, however, defines that reality, and few ever mention it. They look at the serious kid with amazement. As if to say Oh my god, yes! And then quickly that look becomes You don’t have a fighting chance. They mean choice, because they didn’t make it.
Everyone has a chance to define reality, and the choice to either take or ignore that chance.
But what had he chosen? He had closed a door too. Goodbye school, education. He would not get that piece of paper. What could it give him that he didn’t already have? Not dignity. One look around the classroom was enough to answer that question. It was some vague promise of permanent security, an illusion he already saw through. Why buy it now when what he’d have to do to get it would compromise the self he’d already fought for? The self, boiled down to basics and built upon, or the promise of a comfortable life no matter what self made it to graduation.
Compromise once, twice aint nothin.
He knew what the deal was and made it proudly. So what if his clothes weren’t ironed or clean? So what if he couldn’t buy things he didn’t need? He didn’t need that. Others did.
You look so good designer ghosts!
Let me smell the perfumed rubbish.
Do you sleep in that outfit?
Do you recognize yourself when you’re naked?
When he looked in the mirror now naked he saw the tree. Was he healthy? Malnourished, undoubtedly. Reserved as a parking space for the King. On the level of appearances faring quite badly, true. But underneath the currents rage wild and electric. The soil is fertile and rich. He has learned how to harvest the smallest perceptions and harbor – and tame – the largest monstrosities. Nothing can startle him now: a skeleton in the flesh.
He looked at the poor little leaf on the table: withered before he could render it justly. Now he could only copy the corpse. He could keep it but it would be like putting dirt in his pockets. Or eat it – but at best he would only take a piece of it with him.
Emotionless, wordless, and radiant he looks at the colorless leaf and feels a twinkle in the eyes. He looks around the room in increments, stopping and taking notes of this place, night. Convinced of his rightness, happiness floods satisfaction. Fall will be over soon. The semester will end and he will have made it. Stronger, more alive!
The road ahead would be full of hardship and pain; he would lose the things and people he had, slowly, one after another. But without pain there is no growth. And without growth … Without striving after growth one may as well lay down and die.
The road ahead, yes. It was then he realized he would have to make another decision. The season successful … but the rest of life? This thought flashing as if it hadn’t occurred to Nate throughout the long nights. He grabs for the pack and hastily lights one.
When he’d made that choice had he not made it for ever? What good would it be to have spent that semester inside and then live less intensely than he knew he was able? Especially now out of college! He would have to be serious or a failure or the time he just spent in his room was a waste, which to say would betray everything he knows to be true. If serious, then what?
He looked down at the cigarette and then out the window. In that moment his face replaced a grotesque fear with a mask of disgust. He thought about this for a long time.
That night he looked further than he ever had. He saw his own future and the future of everyone like him … wherever they were, there had to be others like him; he was not foolish enough to believe himself alone.
What would it mean to be serious for people like this? What would it mean if he forged his own beliefs out of the sky and lived by them for the rest of his life?
A heavy presence through the air made itself felt, his eyes open. He was clutching his knees on the chaise and the cig had burned to the stub. The girl stood across the street as before, looking into the window and waiting. He rose and opened the door going out of his room not to the bathroom now but past it, through the common room and out the old sturdy oak front door, down the cement steps and through the yard overgrown with weeds wet from dew and fresh clean life he could not see but feel he could, yes, through his bare feet the earth spoke clearly as it always had and clearly as it always would. Around the corner now, under the window, the specter across the street.
Both stood silent and still with the street in between them, waiting for nothing but motionless. Childhoods had been lived out and unknown to each other. Histories different. But each somehow a version of the same … they understood each other by looking though they knew nothing at all.
Nathan crossed the street and moved toward the girl. As he approached she continued her walk and he fell beside her without a word. They crossed the big street and took the circle around. House after house with the lights out. He and the girl looked separately at them. Papers were already wet in the grass and the bushes. Nathan did not feel compelled to speak but sensation propelled him. He turned all thoughts of the girl back onto himself. Addressing himself as a stranger.
He enjoyed this and made a point to walk slowly, savoring each deliberate step and squirrel, porch, thought, every night spent separate and faithful. Who knows what this night will bring? Who knows what the end of this road will bring? Who knows when one gets it into his head to sing if he’ll sing? Or dance down the road with a shadow?
His feet started pushing dead leaves through the street making noise. The girl did same out of time making music. They kicked leaves down the street until they came around to the house again. The light was on in the window, the chaise empty, the place as still as the others. They sat in the grass across the street and looked up at the window and the light and the tree.
They did not touch or kiss or fall in love. They did not speak or share or wonder. They sat in the grass and smoked cigarettes until the sun came up while the tree by the window stood barren and patient and the light inside stayed on even though there was nobody there to use it. They watched the room grow dim as the earth gave birth to another day which for them was just a light they could not keep burning.
END
| all of those trees will be barren and freezing. they will bloom again certain and before the eyes, and in the meantime he will stop, he will not go round like the rest of things do. he will hover and watch it roll by and see what there is before he goes by too. this is the year, now is the time. |
