D.P.Trottier
09-13-2010, 09:37 PM
PROLOGUE:
A half-empty (not "half-full") water bottle, receipts for hats and sunglasses in a shopping bag from the mall, crumpled-up notebook paper with Her handwriting on it. So many useless things that ordinarily belong in the garbage, but have been transformed into sorrowful trophies that I have won from just being able to know Her. So many things in my bedroom, which was, up until this morning, 'our bedroom,' were meaningless until She left.
Everything would be insignificant if our emotions didn't put significance into them, giving them the power to effect (or do I mean 'affect'?). An "x" for example is just a shape until you see it tattooed onto Charlie Manson's forehead.
There is a grey t-shirt on the floor that fits Her perfectly, but it's old and torn at the sleeve. She wore it while She dyed her hair the other night, now it's stained a dark purple color near the collar and has the same sweet-chemical scent that her dark purple hair had left on her pillow too. My tears have just about washed the smell out of the pillow, though.
There is also a condom wrapper... (I realize that I'm not the tidiest person- She would get so cute and flustered when I would do something like leave coffee mugs on the bureau)... For obvious reasons, the wrapper is the most difficult to bare: thinking of Her skin and curves, being able to slide my arms around her before we fell asleep, and then end up staying up all night talking because we both had a difficult time sleeping anyway. Intimacy...
_____
We picked up Her ticket and checked Her bags and went outside for a last cigarette together. She looked as beautiful as ever.
Always making sure to fight off the silence, we repeated the same words of comfort back and forth. Silence can be impending and it takes it's toll when it comes: neither of us wanted to break down and cry in the middle of an airport, even though it's a very popular place to do such a thing.
I reached around her to pluck the ticket from her purse, contemplating whether to grab it and run so she couldnt leave, but instead just solemnly reading to her the terminal she had to leave me for. We snuffed the smokes.
We kissed and said goodbyes and proclaimed love at least 50 times each. Glaze-eyed, salty tears welling up in both of us. It was visably obvious that the physical effort required to not cry was enormous, we were both shaking slightly.
I let go of Her hand, She put it up to clear marks any runny masquera, and gave me a sad smile. I just stared, incapable of anything by falling backwards (thankfully there was a chair).
She went through the small labyrinth of poles over to security, stuffed Her carry-ons into trays, and passed through the metal detector. That ****ing metal detector, it was like the visual aide of a gateway for Her to exit my life, or a gateway into Her life that I couldn't enter. It seperated us, and I ****ing hate it.
I passed out in my chair as I saw Her walk away, a few tears slipped through my fainted eyelids.
_____
ONE:
When I was 16 years old, I was a powerful sociopath. Nobody could break through my misanthropic barrier. Empathy and Sympathy sounded like bull**** to me, like the most whimsical triumphs of a fairy tale. Faith and Fear seemed like the only two ends a man could come to, and neither seemed much different to me.
A bit too wrecklessly, I took it upon myself to decide whether or not the human race was worth keeping around. I was going to judge whether or not my species was pulling their own cosmic weight, or just letting the galaxy's sun do all the work.
Due to my loner disposition, I decided people weren't worth anything. So I tightly closed my eyes and willed the world away; Earth evaporated and I floated amoungst Infinity alone.
_____
I think I became comatose out there with the stars. The sudden shock of the planet beneath my feet being gone really came as a surprise, even though I'm the one who made it happen. My body went stiff, it immediately realized how pointless it's movements were compared to the rotations that happened in the universe around it. My voice was either stolen from the vacuum of space, or just couldn't be heard over the deafening sound of silence (no really, the silence was so loud that it made my ears bleed for days). I was physically all locked up, like an immobile doll tossed into a very deep hole. It went on like that for many years.
_____
TWO:
One day, I felt traces of warmth drifting over me, not something typical of outer space. The type of soothing radiance I felt that day is reserved for walking through an air conditioned house and then opening the front door to feel a breeze of something nice and summery, not a gust of blistering humidity, but maybe like 70 degrees with the sun partially covered by Maxfield Parrish clouds. Pleasant. Anyway, that's when I saw Her swimming through the Infinity towards me.
She was a beautiful girl, and I was an awkward teenaged boy who had destroyed existence with his mind in 2 seconds flat.
_____
My arm instantly swung upwards and my fingers tried to mat my hair down and make me look presentable, keep in mind that it had been my body's first movement in years. It had felt involuntary.
She called out and said hello, her voice carried past me and reverberated through eternal space and time. I could hear her because it was important for me to hear her, just like it had been important for me to survive in the reaches of space without nourishment or breathing. Important things defy science.
She asked me who I was but I ignored her question and demanded to know what she was doing (my 'people skills' hadn't dwindled in space, I just hadn't ever been very polite). She didn't really know how to answer, she wasn't doing much, hanging out, she guessed that she had been waiting for something, maybe me.
_____
By the time She had found me, I had grown pretty bored without people around, no matter how futile I found them to be. So I was interested in carrying on a quick conversation with her to refuel my angry thoughts of justified isolation. But a quick conversation turned into curious discussion; I found her to be sardonic and clever, but in a pleasant, enjoyable way.
_____
She told me that she had gotten lost and disoriented in her life and had drifted far off the planet, unintentionally straying from out species, so she hadn't been around when they were all annihilated by me.
_____
She was an artist, and had her sketchbook readily available to show to me. Her work was remarkably original. Her skecthes told me that She was interested in testing her own boundaries. The images posed Humanity in a glorious balance of grace and humility, but placed Herself as unfit for the great Human puzzle. Her own position in the pieces were sometimes innocent, sometimes crude, as any and every person can be, but always naked and limbless. It was as if she realized that she shared so many qualities with the fellow species that she respected, but didn't understand how she worked in to the grand social scheme.
I reflected on all of this and then turned to her and said that her art had, right then and there, helped me understand how to be afraid without hating what scares me. She replied by saying that She was glad to be of service, and I responded by falling in love with her.
_____
My perspective of everything changed:
Although I was floating with infinity all around me, threatening to swallow me, I was also within finite space that could be measured by the distance between her and I. That space was significant because of Love.
_____
THREE:
I approached her with my proposition carefully, this is the idea that I offered:
I said that I found Her very appealing, something I had never felt before, and I would very mcuh have enjoyed to ask her out on a date. Of course, the problem, naturally, was that outer space had no suitable place to have a coffee and talk informally. The beyond-immense construct of the Universe was physics-based, intimidating and business-like.
As a thinker, I told Her, I was obviously qualified to destroy a world, but lacked the capacity to create visual beauty, which she obviously could do. So my suggestion was that, together, we rebuild Earth... If, of course, she would be interested in seeing me casually.
She agreed! We started immediately.
_____
Considering there were two of us, it should have taken us half the time God took to make the world, but when we made it we had to fast-forward it to where it was before I killed it, so it took us about 2 weeks.
We kept everything the same as it had been before, She thought it would be wrong of us to change anything (but I couldn't help but pause the creation as it passed through the year 1998 and stop to make sure Bill Murray got the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in the movie Rushmore, which She agreed to because he totally deserved it).
We finished up the job, pressed play, and landed back on Earth as if nothing had happened to it. We went to a small bar that we could smoke in and really got to know each other. We were very happy and our relationship grew.
Life went on, years went by, we became old together. The undeniable fate of our happiness was securely sealed with each other's kisses.
_____
FOUR:
We sat in the library of our home, She was feebly drawing and I was turning the pages of some book. I looked at her and observed how the skin on both of our hands had wrinkled, she was still beautiful though, even in those later years.
I decided to reminisce about our conquest of rebuilding Earth (something we hadn't spoken about since we were much younger). I spoke of it strongly and proudly, expecting to receive an equally proud grin, but I didn't find it on Her face or anywhere. She looked sympathetic as She began to explain something solemn to me:
I had never deconstructed Earth. When we had met, the only parts of us that were "lost in Infinity" had been our souls, and even that was metaphorical. The world we had created together was an imaginary one that we placed on a pedestal high above Reality. We became each other's Neverland; dreamily escaping from childhood problems by hiding in solace.
Our love had always been real, but that became the only real thing about us, and on that note, it was a love that never got a chance to be exposed to air, sunlight and Actuality. We hid it out in space, naively hoping that it wouldn't be corrupted by Earth. She told me that it was time to set our love free and let it round out and become solid and wholesome.
I was speechless, my denial had been impenetrable until that moment. I knew She was right about everything (although I'm sure I hoped it was just a tale born out of senility). I walked over to Her and held Her close.
_____
EPILOGUE:
As I woke up, I expected to be back in my chair at the airport- tearful and watching Her leave, but my eyes didn't open, or rather they did open but I still only saw blackness. I felt cold. I was floating. I was back amoungst Infinity. I choked down a few yelps and turned to glance into aeons. I saw what looked like Earth, but it was very very far away from me. My instincts affirmed that it was Earth.
I yelled Her name. I screamed it. I went limp, too tired to even notice that I was in my teenaged body again. I was exhausted from the exertion required to hope for my happiness back. As my hand fell, it brushed against a lump in my pocket. I was too upset to notice it, but my body did, and it set my hand to auto-pilot, which reached into my pants to grasp the lump. It was my cell phone. A very random thing to be abandoned in space with. What was the chance I had service? Driven purely by a basic curiosity, I dialed Her number into the phone, beginning to sulk even more for being so foolish. I pressed the "send" button and was shocked to hear that the call was going through. It rang three times, I clenched my fist, my body was so tired.
She answered! I said hello and asked if She was ok, I could hear Her crying- I think I was too. She was in outer space, but She thought that She could see our home planet. I confirmed that my own predicament mirrored Hers. We were silent. The Universe then sent out vibes that we both must've picked up on, they told us that we were on exact opposite sides of the world. Silence continued until She broke it. She told me that She was scared and asked what She should do. This is what I told Her:
Swim towards Earth, we will meet in the middle.
A half-empty (not "half-full") water bottle, receipts for hats and sunglasses in a shopping bag from the mall, crumpled-up notebook paper with Her handwriting on it. So many useless things that ordinarily belong in the garbage, but have been transformed into sorrowful trophies that I have won from just being able to know Her. So many things in my bedroom, which was, up until this morning, 'our bedroom,' were meaningless until She left.
Everything would be insignificant if our emotions didn't put significance into them, giving them the power to effect (or do I mean 'affect'?). An "x" for example is just a shape until you see it tattooed onto Charlie Manson's forehead.
There is a grey t-shirt on the floor that fits Her perfectly, but it's old and torn at the sleeve. She wore it while She dyed her hair the other night, now it's stained a dark purple color near the collar and has the same sweet-chemical scent that her dark purple hair had left on her pillow too. My tears have just about washed the smell out of the pillow, though.
There is also a condom wrapper... (I realize that I'm not the tidiest person- She would get so cute and flustered when I would do something like leave coffee mugs on the bureau)... For obvious reasons, the wrapper is the most difficult to bare: thinking of Her skin and curves, being able to slide my arms around her before we fell asleep, and then end up staying up all night talking because we both had a difficult time sleeping anyway. Intimacy...
_____
We picked up Her ticket and checked Her bags and went outside for a last cigarette together. She looked as beautiful as ever.
Always making sure to fight off the silence, we repeated the same words of comfort back and forth. Silence can be impending and it takes it's toll when it comes: neither of us wanted to break down and cry in the middle of an airport, even though it's a very popular place to do such a thing.
I reached around her to pluck the ticket from her purse, contemplating whether to grab it and run so she couldnt leave, but instead just solemnly reading to her the terminal she had to leave me for. We snuffed the smokes.
We kissed and said goodbyes and proclaimed love at least 50 times each. Glaze-eyed, salty tears welling up in both of us. It was visably obvious that the physical effort required to not cry was enormous, we were both shaking slightly.
I let go of Her hand, She put it up to clear marks any runny masquera, and gave me a sad smile. I just stared, incapable of anything by falling backwards (thankfully there was a chair).
She went through the small labyrinth of poles over to security, stuffed Her carry-ons into trays, and passed through the metal detector. That ****ing metal detector, it was like the visual aide of a gateway for Her to exit my life, or a gateway into Her life that I couldn't enter. It seperated us, and I ****ing hate it.
I passed out in my chair as I saw Her walk away, a few tears slipped through my fainted eyelids.
_____
ONE:
When I was 16 years old, I was a powerful sociopath. Nobody could break through my misanthropic barrier. Empathy and Sympathy sounded like bull**** to me, like the most whimsical triumphs of a fairy tale. Faith and Fear seemed like the only two ends a man could come to, and neither seemed much different to me.
A bit too wrecklessly, I took it upon myself to decide whether or not the human race was worth keeping around. I was going to judge whether or not my species was pulling their own cosmic weight, or just letting the galaxy's sun do all the work.
Due to my loner disposition, I decided people weren't worth anything. So I tightly closed my eyes and willed the world away; Earth evaporated and I floated amoungst Infinity alone.
_____
I think I became comatose out there with the stars. The sudden shock of the planet beneath my feet being gone really came as a surprise, even though I'm the one who made it happen. My body went stiff, it immediately realized how pointless it's movements were compared to the rotations that happened in the universe around it. My voice was either stolen from the vacuum of space, or just couldn't be heard over the deafening sound of silence (no really, the silence was so loud that it made my ears bleed for days). I was physically all locked up, like an immobile doll tossed into a very deep hole. It went on like that for many years.
_____
TWO:
One day, I felt traces of warmth drifting over me, not something typical of outer space. The type of soothing radiance I felt that day is reserved for walking through an air conditioned house and then opening the front door to feel a breeze of something nice and summery, not a gust of blistering humidity, but maybe like 70 degrees with the sun partially covered by Maxfield Parrish clouds. Pleasant. Anyway, that's when I saw Her swimming through the Infinity towards me.
She was a beautiful girl, and I was an awkward teenaged boy who had destroyed existence with his mind in 2 seconds flat.
_____
My arm instantly swung upwards and my fingers tried to mat my hair down and make me look presentable, keep in mind that it had been my body's first movement in years. It had felt involuntary.
She called out and said hello, her voice carried past me and reverberated through eternal space and time. I could hear her because it was important for me to hear her, just like it had been important for me to survive in the reaches of space without nourishment or breathing. Important things defy science.
She asked me who I was but I ignored her question and demanded to know what she was doing (my 'people skills' hadn't dwindled in space, I just hadn't ever been very polite). She didn't really know how to answer, she wasn't doing much, hanging out, she guessed that she had been waiting for something, maybe me.
_____
By the time She had found me, I had grown pretty bored without people around, no matter how futile I found them to be. So I was interested in carrying on a quick conversation with her to refuel my angry thoughts of justified isolation. But a quick conversation turned into curious discussion; I found her to be sardonic and clever, but in a pleasant, enjoyable way.
_____
She told me that she had gotten lost and disoriented in her life and had drifted far off the planet, unintentionally straying from out species, so she hadn't been around when they were all annihilated by me.
_____
She was an artist, and had her sketchbook readily available to show to me. Her work was remarkably original. Her skecthes told me that She was interested in testing her own boundaries. The images posed Humanity in a glorious balance of grace and humility, but placed Herself as unfit for the great Human puzzle. Her own position in the pieces were sometimes innocent, sometimes crude, as any and every person can be, but always naked and limbless. It was as if she realized that she shared so many qualities with the fellow species that she respected, but didn't understand how she worked in to the grand social scheme.
I reflected on all of this and then turned to her and said that her art had, right then and there, helped me understand how to be afraid without hating what scares me. She replied by saying that She was glad to be of service, and I responded by falling in love with her.
_____
My perspective of everything changed:
Although I was floating with infinity all around me, threatening to swallow me, I was also within finite space that could be measured by the distance between her and I. That space was significant because of Love.
_____
THREE:
I approached her with my proposition carefully, this is the idea that I offered:
I said that I found Her very appealing, something I had never felt before, and I would very mcuh have enjoyed to ask her out on a date. Of course, the problem, naturally, was that outer space had no suitable place to have a coffee and talk informally. The beyond-immense construct of the Universe was physics-based, intimidating and business-like.
As a thinker, I told Her, I was obviously qualified to destroy a world, but lacked the capacity to create visual beauty, which she obviously could do. So my suggestion was that, together, we rebuild Earth... If, of course, she would be interested in seeing me casually.
She agreed! We started immediately.
_____
Considering there were two of us, it should have taken us half the time God took to make the world, but when we made it we had to fast-forward it to where it was before I killed it, so it took us about 2 weeks.
We kept everything the same as it had been before, She thought it would be wrong of us to change anything (but I couldn't help but pause the creation as it passed through the year 1998 and stop to make sure Bill Murray got the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in the movie Rushmore, which She agreed to because he totally deserved it).
We finished up the job, pressed play, and landed back on Earth as if nothing had happened to it. We went to a small bar that we could smoke in and really got to know each other. We were very happy and our relationship grew.
Life went on, years went by, we became old together. The undeniable fate of our happiness was securely sealed with each other's kisses.
_____
FOUR:
We sat in the library of our home, She was feebly drawing and I was turning the pages of some book. I looked at her and observed how the skin on both of our hands had wrinkled, she was still beautiful though, even in those later years.
I decided to reminisce about our conquest of rebuilding Earth (something we hadn't spoken about since we were much younger). I spoke of it strongly and proudly, expecting to receive an equally proud grin, but I didn't find it on Her face or anywhere. She looked sympathetic as She began to explain something solemn to me:
I had never deconstructed Earth. When we had met, the only parts of us that were "lost in Infinity" had been our souls, and even that was metaphorical. The world we had created together was an imaginary one that we placed on a pedestal high above Reality. We became each other's Neverland; dreamily escaping from childhood problems by hiding in solace.
Our love had always been real, but that became the only real thing about us, and on that note, it was a love that never got a chance to be exposed to air, sunlight and Actuality. We hid it out in space, naively hoping that it wouldn't be corrupted by Earth. She told me that it was time to set our love free and let it round out and become solid and wholesome.
I was speechless, my denial had been impenetrable until that moment. I knew She was right about everything (although I'm sure I hoped it was just a tale born out of senility). I walked over to Her and held Her close.
_____
EPILOGUE:
As I woke up, I expected to be back in my chair at the airport- tearful and watching Her leave, but my eyes didn't open, or rather they did open but I still only saw blackness. I felt cold. I was floating. I was back amoungst Infinity. I choked down a few yelps and turned to glance into aeons. I saw what looked like Earth, but it was very very far away from me. My instincts affirmed that it was Earth.
I yelled Her name. I screamed it. I went limp, too tired to even notice that I was in my teenaged body again. I was exhausted from the exertion required to hope for my happiness back. As my hand fell, it brushed against a lump in my pocket. I was too upset to notice it, but my body did, and it set my hand to auto-pilot, which reached into my pants to grasp the lump. It was my cell phone. A very random thing to be abandoned in space with. What was the chance I had service? Driven purely by a basic curiosity, I dialed Her number into the phone, beginning to sulk even more for being so foolish. I pressed the "send" button and was shocked to hear that the call was going through. It rang three times, I clenched my fist, my body was so tired.
She answered! I said hello and asked if She was ok, I could hear Her crying- I think I was too. She was in outer space, but She thought that She could see our home planet. I confirmed that my own predicament mirrored Hers. We were silent. The Universe then sent out vibes that we both must've picked up on, they told us that we were on exact opposite sides of the world. Silence continued until She broke it. She told me that She was scared and asked what She should do. This is what I told Her:
Swim towards Earth, we will meet in the middle.