“I no longer feel the rush of passing time speeding by. A blur of lights catapult me down a quite midnight highway while still air dances to bouncing bass beats inside the cab of my car. I’ve always considered the moon a great friend of mine; his gentle gaze lightly illuminating small streets, forgotten pathways and broken hearts. With him watching over me I remain in blissful tranquility for the entire drive.”
A man flips his alpine deck down, which he was told by the sales guy was top quality, and switches mix cds, who a youngster he works with was kind enough to make him. The first song on the cd, Stevie Ray Vaughan – Pride and Joy. He turns the volume up and his mind matches the tempo and rhythm.
Here he no longer thinks. Not of his job, fatigue or problems in life. Even the memories of his wife who left him or the son whose face he hasn’t seen outside of a picture frame in five years escape him; or perhaps, in reality, it is he who escapes the confines of those memories. With no care of the place he has just left, or where he is going to arrive, the Music, road, and his good pal high up in the sky exist together in momentary unison. This right here, the motionless movement, is a snapshot of a man; his life, existing in the here and now.
The lights stream by becoming a blur broken only by the guitar rifts of Jimmy page, and drumming mastery of Mike Shrieve. The night’s darkness seems indefinite and overpowering. The spinning black rubber race tirelessly against endless asphalt. As endless as it seems though, like a lovers dream, the moons gentle beam cannot remain infinitely.
Eventually the darkness breaks, and light creeps over the horizon spilling into the world below. His eyes squint, and his grip of the steering wheel weakens. Already the music is off and the once vibrant atmosphere has left behind quiet, fatigue, and stale air. Already there is nothing to remember of the night that just passed. Instead it simply stands as a forgotten moment of tranquility in an old worn out mind that has worked too long and too hard; and has never found the answers to unspoken questions.
Around him scattered cars scurry down long sheets of road. The puttering engines, honking horns, blaring music and screeching tires all fall on deaf ears as if there were no commotion at all. Attention is paid only to the smooth rumbling of his own automobile. With the windows fully done up cool air seeps through the vents brushing against the soft clean fabrics of the freshly washed interior. This is all that is felt and heard.
Toward the city the congestion begins. All the outside distractions, their filthy exhausts and dirty windows squeeze together like someone walking into a night club, inching slowly from a spacious environment to a choking chicken pen of partiers. Despite the sweaty car bumpers and bright lights his own car’s vibrations cradle him like a baby urging him to sleep, beckoning him towards rest. With one elbow on the window frame, and a fist supporting a tilted head centered on the temple he steers exhaustedly. Every time he blinks, it now takes longer and longer for his eyes to reopen.
Inside the city however, the streets are found to be miraculously vacant. The man snaps his seat belt loose so he can check his phone, a blackberry paid for by his company, but before anything can be checked and with the help from a heavy hand honking on its horn a green light rushes him through the intersection. With little care he ditches the phone on the empty passenger seat. As little energy as the man has the motel is already only about two miles ahead.
His eyes can barely open though. Looking through black eye lashes the streets swerve and distort. Street lights and traffic curve and spin into a spiralling vortex. The road is a blurry mess. The man breaks and accelerates randomly at each intersection as his mind plays tricks on him to whether the light is red, yellow or green. He thinks he is going slow but finds his speedometer reads he is just over the 60km speed limit. He swears to himself he is not tired, but can’t help but indulge in the pleasant thoughts of a restful sleep.
Thinking about the cozy beds, fluffy pillows and cool comforter it begins to be uncertain whether this is still happening in thought or in dream. Heavy eye lids are forced back open, like a weightlifter pushing up his last set on the bench press; every repetition taking longer and longer to finish. Shallow breathing further coaxes him into giving up. First his left hand falls to his side, than his head bangs against the window. He struggles to regain composure but finds that the weights have become too much. Silently the heavy barbell floats to the ground where it lays dormant on the floor. Just before this happens he mumbles to the driver, like a no good drunkard on a Tuesday night, “wake me up if you get lost…”
His world fades into a warm, black dream. The darkness he floats around in has no shape and no form. Its weightlessness affects both the body and mind creating an almost tangible mirage of peacefulness. He feels warmth against his face as if he were sitting in front of the fireplace on a cold Christmas day, except he has the sensation that he is lying down looking up, and the fire is above him. The heat from the flames slow cook his skin like the afternoon sun in the middle of summer. This feels like it lasts as long as the infinite night that has just passed.
When he is snapped out of this dream he is blind to the twisting, spinning images of carnage. Metal skidding across pavement, fists jamming into horns and blown tires screeching sideways over the road. When he realizes he is no longer inside his vehicle, but on the ground facing up, he finally understands what has just happened. The blurred images gently settle and he slips back into a dreaming mind, though the sounds still carry into his subconscious like the scenes of a tv program do to a restful child.
A low moan escapes his mouth through arduous breathes. He hears the covered gasps of shocked civilians along with the drifting steam from the resting metal of wrecked cars. Maybe, in the distance, even the murmur of a crying baby. But, much like dust settling on a chaotic job site the intensity does begin to calm, and the original severity becomes lost in horrifying memory.
Before ringing cell phones can make calls to manly medics, and blazing sirens swerve onto the scene, there is a frame of almost near silence, which is broken only by the man’s own muted breathing and the instant yet interminable switching of traffic lights. It is for him, however, impossible to calculate the Longevity of this frame of time as being either long or short.
In this strange state of sleeping the man feels tied down; paralyzed by heavy weights bearing down on his body. Shrouded in darkness his mind attempts to construct the audio into visual. The image remains somewhere between the actual events and fiction. They ask him questions, but he doesn’t understand they are intended for him. Outside in the real world it’s so nice out that he wishes he could see the sun that tans his face with its orange glow; or the singing birds who dance amongst gliding clouds. Such a beautiful day, yet here he is, once again, squandering its splendour. It’s been so long since being adopted by the moon that it is unknown now if he could even get along with its bright brother anymore.
Through all the clutter a drop echoes across the clean up effort. At first inaudible, but slowly turning into waves off bass that bounce off brick and stone. Further into meditation he is pulled by the deep resonating sound. Though movement isn’t detected anywhere else, his head rings like a church bell; the noise releasing an earthquake from temple to temple. The reverberations last long creating a persistent pain which crawls from the back of his neck to his chin like a lizard trekking across a warm round rock. His eyes squint and his jaw clenches closed quickly like a car door.
Floating on his back he tries to shake the pain away by moving side to side. His arms stay limply still though his head movements are frantic. At first it is done in vain, but after much time he succeeds. With one powerful sway the pain is ejected from his head like a pilot form his cockpit. For a moment he lays there with his eyes closed. Than he opens them, looking up at the world above. He only finds darkness. Below him he finds a very similar sight. Above is the blackness of space, while below is a translucent watery infinity reaching with out end, stretching so far that distance loses meaning.
In between the two is a layer of light just as thick has his body. It begins at the water level where his body is half submersed, and it ends just a foot above the tip of his nose. The water doesn’t move at all. His clothes underneath flutter like the arms of a dancing octopus, while above they are dry and tight to his body. The water has half filled his ears and in that water he can hear distant questions echo in a low bassful voice. “whats my name?” the man thinks puzzled. “of course I can hear you.” But his responses slip into the water below and are lost in the endless expanses of the still ocean.
Moving away from him will show more and more of the only two existing things in this place. An absolute darkness, and an unlimited vast body of water as deep as it is wide. You can move so far away that his body will become tiny and lost in the small sliver of light that is his world. Below him he can only feel the water, and above him he is blinded by the consuming abyss. He lays there listening, confused. He stops hearing the questions and instead focuses on the shallow dripping of water inside his head. The sound is exaggerated greatly, but begins softly. At first like a leaking faucet dripping into a shallow body of water; this grows considerably until it sounds like a basketball being dribbled in an empty gymnasium. Every bounce shakes his brain and blurs his vision, yet leaves the water undisturbed completely.
The bouncing becomes less frequent, and as it slows down the layer of light begins to expand skyward. At first it is like a raging snow storm, everything a sheet of white, but eventually its severity simmers down and he can begin to see again. He realizes shortly that his hearing has become deaf. He tilts his head up and sees at first his hands at his side, than, from the intense brightness thin black outlines of buildings begin to emerge. An arm reaches towards him touching his neck. A muted mouth slowly speaks. A vehicle behind the man’s shoulder with spinning lights on the roof; this is all painted with the precision of a fine brush. Anarchy. Mayhem. Horrified onlookers, and frantic rescue crews. As the colors begin to fill in his strength fades and he puts his head back down, looking toward the heavens.
He wonders why everything is so quiet and why the sky is so bright, blue and beautiful. The sun stands firmly, like a national monument, while clutters of clouds admire like groups of tourists all standing at a distance. Birds fly around leisurely disinterested in either group. The man’s hearing begins to return. He hears at first dozens of incoherent conversations going on all around him. Than police and ambulance sirens, until he can even pick out squeaking wheels bumping over uneven pavement and rattling metal clinking together. A helicopter flies overheard moving in slow motion across the blue backdrop. The constant invisible swooshing of spinning blades high up in the sky are therapeutic compared to the chaotic frenzy down below.
The man is lifted suddenly, and he jerks in surprise only to find his body is both ravaged and restrained. The shock of broken bones suddenly moving distracts him from his captivity while the pinching throbbing pain impedes his reasoning. His movements are noticed by a paramedic who rushes over and the man, voiceless, attempts to tell him a message. His dry, dehydrated mouth moves but fails to pass along any meaning. Again his body is lifted and he is slid into a narrow passage. It is done slowly and with care, accentuating each squeak of the rusted turning wheels, drawing them out sharply like a fork scraping against a plate.
The doors begin to close him in. But before this happens; before light is locked out his heart drops down, crashing into the acids of his empty stomach. He feels mortified as he watches a lone man sliding a body into the back of a feasting hearse. He can’t see any details of the victim, but knows without question that he is the murderer. His skin becomes cold and tingly, and his throat constricts and chokes him. He immediately feels that he has lived a day too long. The doors close sealing him into an open grave; sealing out light, hope, and oxygen. Sealing in darkness, self contempt and torment.
“I lay my head back down and look towards a dark, metallic ceiling hoping to find the long awaited answer to life. I am trembling all over, as if I were freezing to death in the great north, though I also feel sweat pouring down my face. Bubbling alongside my heart in the dark acids of my stomach is my soul; hissing and shrinking into nothing. I want to pray, but know that the being I pray to is busy accepting yet another lost soul into his infinite kingdom. In the dull reflection I can see my distorted face, mutating and twisting into the demon that is making away with the meagre remainders of my existence. I hear the blazing sirens speed away leaving behind the scene of destructive art that I have painted. Until this point I have still not let in a single breath of air, and I will myself to deny any more entry of life. As I lie here not breathing tears slowly fill my eyes. One by one they drop down the sides of my face as I wait to accept the fate that is before me. I’ve been ready to accept my final moment for so long and finally it has come at the time I deserve its worst penalties. I have hid so many years in the shadows too afraid to live. My only hope now is that I can die here where I am most comfortable. Take him into your hands. Bring him into your heart. Do not waste your space with me, for I am content floating in the loneliness of the dark night. Let him feel the sun that is your eye, for I have had a lifetime already to feel it for myself. It is ok God, give where I have taken. Look away from the small corner I used to occupy. It is already vacant. I have already gone…”
