Slow Currents

I wonder if anybody’s written the horror story about the man who had too many books to read, and they just kept compiling, book after book after book, until eventually he was crushed (physically or mentally, I’m not sure which) by the weight of them, and all the things he’d never know swarmed about, tiny teeth bared, and they ate him.

Creative types talk about reading reviews of their work, and how they can’t.

They can’t read the good reviews, because if they believed the good reviews, they’d have to believe the bad ones too.

An article, I think it was from Hotel Concierge, has a line that describes years of my life. I still repeat it, a mantra to fight certain anxieties, certain beliefs.

People live their life following rules they don’t really believe in, then wonder why they don’t feel powerful.

There’s a series of old children’s stories, puppets who wander about their world giving stickers to each other, golden stars to those they like, black dots to those they don’t.

One puppet doesn’t have any stickers. Whether star or dot, they flutter off her to the ground.

This is because she knows the kindly old carpenter who made them, and because she knows the stickers are only a game, whatever shape they are. They don’t matter.

If, by Rudyard Kipling, is a beautiful poem, chock full of good advice.

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you…

And, of course, Nietzsche talked about this, saying that the superior man is not a means to an end, but an end in and of himself.

I think all of them are saying the same thing.

By the way, today there was a crazy lady at work. She had to be escorted out, yelling about being God, the end of the world, and ancient Egypt. It was a real problem, and I was there, and I helped walk her out. It wasn’t till later I realized how shaken up everybody else was. I couldn’t care less. I’d been thinking so much about other people, people I don’t know or care about. Imaginary people having imaginary conversations, that’s what shook me up.

The mind is its own place….

I think Milton said that.

Anyway, it fits nicely here.

She died, what was it, four months ago?

Long enough that my heart doesn’t drop when I remember her, my head doesn’t get spacey, but really, not long at all.

There’s a handwritten note she left on the soap dispenser. It was dusty before she died, and now I wonder if it’ll sit there forever.

Please use gently, it’s the last we have.

And the soap smells like cinnamon.

When I see it, my heart still drops a little.

I wanted to get her something for Christmas, because she was sweet and generous, and didn’t let people appreciate her. Maybe, I thought, bereft of ideas, I could find that same cinnamon soap.

Then a friend suggested I take her out for supper, spend time with her, eat with her, ask her things, and tell her about my life.

I remember how excited I was about the idea. I looked forward to it for months.

But she died in November, so I didn’t see her at Christmas, and now when I use cinnamon soap, I remember her.

The three of us sat up and talked about old loves, and I mostly listened, because they were talking about torches they still carried, and things that had gone wrong, and how they should have been before they learnt the lessons they had.

Eventually, I told them how lucky I felt, despite all the things that had gone wrong, all the history and weight I was carrying.

Those first relationships, those first loves, we all looked back on them with regret. They walked away wishing they could have stayed, that they’d fought harder, cared more and sooner. I walked away, after three years, finally having learnt that you can’t hold onto everything, or even most things. I walked away wishing I’d learnt that lesson three years ago.

Sometimes I feel small hands clutching at the inside of my stomach, pulling and plucking and saying there’s a rift inside, a warp, in me and in the world, and it’s turned all foundations shaky, a gravity well that forces everything out of true. And I find myself wondering where the emptiness came from.

I’d been talking about whiskey, and scotch, and bourbon, and I’d been reading Hunter S Thompson, and I was planning on watching a silly comedy I’d spent years looking forward to, so when I got home, I poured old scotch, and played music, and sat down with The Rum Diary to wait for my friends. When A Suitcase Full of Sparks, came on, I stopped reading to let it wash over me.

It reminds me of the girl I love, and on its own, that would be enough for me to carve out a moment of pause, just to listen and mull. One of the first nights she stayed over, I played this song for her.

The funny thing is, I think it reminded me of her before I’d ever met her.

Honey, I’m just trying to find my way to you.

It was Aleister Crowley, or Grant Morrison, or Robert Anton Wilson, who talked about becoming a Magician, and the first thing you have to do, is start thinking like a Magician.

And it was Roald Dahl who pointed out that those who don’t believe in magic, will never find it.

That one came from a big, textured, red, brick of a book my brothers and I were given as kids, A Roald Dahl Treasury, full of stories and excerpts and poems, not all of them from his children’s books.

There was a boy who left civilization on the back of a giant sea turtle and never came back. Over the years, sailors would see him, swimming and sunning, but he never answered their calls. Just the boy, and the ocean, and the sky, and the turtle.

As a kid, I thought there was something I was missing, so the story stayed with me. Now, I understand the missing piece wasn’t in the story. The story’s made of shadows on the cave wall.

G K Chesterton talked about the magical moment we remember that the grass is green, and he talked about George Macdonald’s writing, and Macdonald’s ability to see the halo that was around everything.

I want to see the halos too, and I want to take the moments that sing, and I want to remember them, and I want to share them.

The kid only came up to my waist, but there was a confidence about him, or an intensity, something you don’t see in kids, something different from focus, but with focus in it.

And he had glasses on, so he reminded me of me, or of how I imagine I was, or maybe just of people who’ve told me kids in glasses look like how they imagine I looked.

When his mom paid, he stood very close to her, looking up at her, but she didn’t notice. His head was cocked, and he stared, quiet and still. Then, without warning, he smiled, brilliant and bright and crooked, like he’d come to a conclusion, and was pleased with it. When she looked down, ready to corral him onwards, all she saw was the smile.

The boy walked in her shadow, and within two steps, he exploded with all the pent up excitement of someone carefully waiting their turn.

Where’s the restaurant?, he asked, and she said, I’ll show you, and off they went.

And the moment made me happy and sad at the same time, with the excitement and the intensity and the quietness of the kid, with the way he trusted his adult, who bought him books and food, the way he seriously went about mapping his world. And the way his world was a good one made my heart ache, because I knew it wouldn’t always be. The world isn’t always kind to intense young boys with glasses and books and patience.

With the heartache, I wonder, what’s broken in me that I see excitement and auger tragedy?

So I send a prayer and a wish, that as this boy grows and learns and loves, that whatever he loses, he’ll one day find again.