Glimpse of a Cat

A glimpse, maybe a clue, but last night I experienced another piece of the puzzle, for sure. It's a game. At least, I've decided to start calling it a game, which should make it more fun to play than a mission in life. A fucking mission exudes the word "pain" in its ultimate reward. Believe me, I get that already; I don’t need a reminder every single time I hear it.

Snap.

Simply put, I saw her.

Now, I suppose that I could argue that I saw a vision of her, for I haven't yet answered the question about whether Promise is one singular person or many. I believe in the many over the one. However, finding the piece of hay that fits so comfortably out the side of my mouth in this stack of painful needles might aptly describe the search process, so far.

The soul medicine that I'd so desperately needed came in the form of the night, oddly enough. Which reminds me; never confuse The Black and the night. Never. Under the stars and the limp threat of storms, far from those polluted by their own urbane nature, where the man in the moon provides the only true light--a telling light, but not a truthful flood, for many things hide in its glow--I found my rest among things that sleep, and things that don't, under no cover but that which the earth or from simple construction of its assets does provide.

On most nights I only hear the beating of my own heart—that constantly beats too fast, even more so with the punishment that I've been putting upon it. Kick ‘em when they’re down. How quickly can I plug my arteries with poison to get the fucking lub-dub out of my head? On most nights, not quick enough, so I've prayed for the nectar squeezed from grapes, permitted in our most hallowed cathedrals, to lead me on hands and knees into oblivion. Together we crawl into the mysteries of the dream-hungry mind. Yes, on most nights, we do.

As I lie there last night, I could feel It coming. It walked in eternal shadow; no light from the moon revealed its face. It made no shortest-distance-between-two-souls-is-a-straight-line path toward me. It meandered, whether toying with little lives, suffocation by approximation, or simply testing my own constitution, it approached slowly... and, like I said, I felt it. I don't know if it walked, floated, or danced; I just know it was there. It was there in the real world.

I deliberately metered my breath to calm my heart. Deeper. Slower. Calmer. By not dwelling on its presence, I could force myself to transition into my dreams where I was more familiar with the tools that I had at my disposal to fight or parry. Yet, it still moved, determined and closer. The lone sheet became my shield; its warmth forced my body to sweat, but I pulled it up until it covered all but my nose. Any higher and I'd feel my own suffocation begin. The only thing I need to sleep is fresh air. No human body, no pillow, no blanket, no forceful hand can cover my means of breath and still expect me to sleep. This long hair on my head would serve as a dark helmet, perfectly camouflaging my only exposed body part.

It still came... until the sweet state of intoxication whisked me away.

--

"You don't have any idea what she's doing to you, do you?" she asked.

I didn't recognize her and I had no idea who she was speaking about. But, I was lucid and active in this dream rather than a passive observer.

"Soup?" She waved her hand front of my face before repeating her question.

I focused my eyes on her trying to place the face.

"Been somewhere?" she asked.

"Something like that," I replied.

"I know your mind travels. I know it brings back all these wonderful stories," she said while pointing to the bookshelves and piles of paper that hadn't yet made been bound. "But, I need you here. Now. I need you to listen to me in this life."

This life? Which fucking life is this? "I'm here, Cat. I'm here." CAT! With a "C" and not a "K," which must mean that it's Catherine, not Kathy, not Katie, but could be Cathy. It wasn't lost on me how strange it felt to discover something that it seemed I already knew. I study the shape of her face to give me a small chance of remembering it in what would surely be some split-second, chance meeting at some point later in life.

"Well then, if you're here, do you mind talking with me instead of over-heating that brain of yours with the possibilities?" she asked as she turned her seated body slightly toward me.

"Okay," I replied.

We sat in a dimly lit room—a bedroom—that felt like my bedroom, but not one that I was currently familiar with. The light came from over my shoulder to light up her face. Don't forget her face. After all of these experiences with Promise, none where I've ever been able to see her face, it surprised me to have hers facing me. Pudgy cheeks and soft lines gave her that naturally cute look. Her hair, which looked like it was between where it used to be and where she wanted it to go, tickled her shoulders where several pieces had escaped the knot that held its relatives captive. It was too dark to see the color of her eyes, but her hair grew a reddish-brown and I wasn't able to determine whether it was red by nature or by choice. Nor did I care.

Can she see my face? With the light behind me, can she see my face? This strange thought surprised me.

"HEY! DID I LOSE YOU AGAIN?" This time she snapped her fingers when she said it.

I mumbled, "I can't place myself."

"What?"

"Nothing." And suddenly found the place in short-term memory that replayed that question she'd asked a few moments prior. "I know what she's doing, I just don't want to believe it."

"Why do you try so hard?"

"I want to believe. I want to believe in the good-natured heart, the wise soul and the comfort of trusted commitment."

"You sometimes want to believe it so much that you create a fantasy amidst reality."

"At least I know it."

"Knowing it and doing something about it are two totally different things," she said flatly. "Well, all of that's going to change tonight."

Somehow, I just knew that things were about to me exposed in such a way that I could no longer deny their existence or believe the lies that gave me the opportunity to suspend disbelief. I knew all of this and it didn't bother me. In fact, it felt a welcome coming. I didn't know what Cat expected of me, perhaps not such a state of calm, but that's what studying her face gave to me. How long had I known her? Forever. Duh. She didn't back down from my gaze, simply held her strength in the light, making her even more beautiful.

When I brought my lips to hers, she didn't move, didn't act as if it was something that she'd always wished for, but had too much respect for what's right to pursue. She didn't wrap her arms or legs around me, and didn't turn her body into mine, not even a slight opening of the shoulders to my kiss. She did, however, purse her lips milliseconds after mine touched them, and that was all the reaction I needed to linger, lips brushing across each others' like fingers tracing the names etched into monuments--as if you could reach out and touch history; feel the sense of struggle, but ultimate accomplishment of the men and women in our past.

She pulled away from me and quickly jumped out of bed. Before she spoke, I realized what she'd already heard; quick, bare footsteps on the floor above.

"What do we do?" she whispered. I looked at her blankly and she returned a shrug of her shoulders that reiterated her question.

I shrugged my shoulders in return before saying, “You just told me that everything will change tonight, is this"--I gestured around the room drawing a circle that encompassed us--"not what you meant?" I knew it wasn't what she meant, but didn't miss the opportunity to employ my wit.

"NOOOO!" she whispered with as much authority as she could and still have it labeled a whisper, then checked her clothes as if she’d just put them back on.

I reached for her, hoping that my touch on her elbow would bring calm, but as I reached...

--

I woke to a night where even those awake at night had fallen silent. I often forget that there comes a time in the night when the night itself is completely still. I felt calm, resting with everyone and everything, which was very different for me--in the majority, a group that I'd not felt a member of in a very long time.

The pillow, as is often the case during a deep sleep, was wet with saliva in a circle that I knew from memory would be about the size of a silver dollar, though I couldn't confirm it in the darkness. I made my one hundred and eighty degree flip, from left side to right, adjusted the covers and thought hard to capture the face that I'd been so intent to study in my dream.

Cat. Catherine. Not Kathryn, or Kat. Cats and I have an unspoken deal since I'm allergic to them: if they don’t mind me not petting them, I don't mind them spending time around me or on me. With most cats, it works out. Wouldn't it make sense to find a Cat that I wasn’t allergic to? I mean, really, wouldn't that just bring my life into the balance I always claim to seek.

I fell back to sleep with something that I hadn't had in ages, a smile.

Either the Beginning, or the End...

I got some time to work on my book this weekend. Here's a snippet from it...

I stared at her incredulously. To think that I didn't understand her situation after years of doing nothing but discussing her situation--how could I not understand her situation? I mean, that's what all these meetings and emails and texts have been about, right? Understanding her situation? I might be the only person on the planet that did understand her situation.

"Have you known me to be more wrong or right when it comes to decisions about us?"

She paused, knowing the answer, but afraid of where saying it might lead. "Right."

"You, yourself, have said that you made a huge mistake in our past when you didn't take me up on my offer to figure it all out, together, as a team--figure out this connection that we have--before you got married. You've even said that you made the wrong decision by actually getting married, right?"

"Yes," the affirmation slipped from her lips with only meager conviction.

"And," I continued, my frustration bubbling to the surface, "Do you remember when I advised you to be proactive about contraception the first time you confided in me about how terribly your husband was treating you? Do you?"

She shook her head up and down this time, without speaking, and without an ability to look me in the eyes.

"And what happened?"

"I got pregnant," she said.

"You know I have nothing against your kids."

"I know."

"This isn’t about them." I gently placed my hand on her chin and pulled her face back up to mine. "This is about you."

Her face came up to mine, but she struggled to control her eyes, which had welled up with tears. "But it is about them," she pleaded with her own frustration. "It is. If I leave, I impact generations of my family."

"Do you think maybe I know you better than you know yourself right now?"

Hearing my words released her tears. Her hand shook as it wiped away and her voice cracked as she replied in the affirmative.

I knew that I had to hit her with my point before I lost her to emotion. "You don't see your pattern. You don't see the thing that you do over and over again, and you definitely don't see that it never changes anything. In that regard, it does impact your kids--it makes it harder for them to discover the truth because they have no example from which to model it after."

At the mention of the word pattern, I triggered a memory for her of a conversation that we'd recently had about my own pattern. "You're not you in your marriage. You never have been." It was something that I'd said to her many times before. "And, this role that you're being forced to play has nothing to do with decision-making and everything to do with the lack of it. Look at me."

She did.

"You don't make decisions in your relationship. You let the decisions make themselves."

Her look of confusion turned to understanding.

I put my hands around hers and continued, "And that's exactly what you're doing again. This thing that you call 'contemplation' is simply a ruse for not actually making a decision. Just when I'd helped you discover the voice of your heart--and I had so much hope for you, so much hope--that no matter what happened, at least you'd make your decision with your head and your heart involved. Right?"

Her chin had dropped to her chest once more.

"That was the plan, right?” I asked.

She moved her hand to squeeze one of mine, which confirmed her answer.

"Your heart is gone. I don't know where it went, but it's gone. You're back in your goddamn head, probably because I haven't been around to constantly coax your heart into the open. I thought that we'd made progress. When you cried for two weeks about having to endure the possibility of a few months without me, I really thought you'd finally discovered the energy and the strength that's been locked inside of your heart."

I let go of her hands, stood up, and left her sitting along in the middle of the room. "Your contemplation is how you hide from having to make a decision. If you couldn't keep your heart open after all that we shared this past winter, then you aren't ready for true love. And, honestly, you may never be ready for true love. These 'couple of years' that you think you need to figure it all out will turn into twenty years and, seriously, you've already wasted a decade by thinking. Thinking gets you nowhere at all. But, you can sit there in the middle of your lonely room and think all you want because I'm done. Goodbye."

I walked out, without looking back, and closed the door behind me. I didn't want to see what the realization of an entire life without me would do to her, as much as I didn't want to see what it was going to do to me. But, she hadn't left me any choice in the matter. My life was at stake. The darkness drew nearer each day, slowly and surely. Up to this point, I'd used anger to stave it off, but anger was rotting my hope just as quickly as cancer destroys a body. In the worst shape of my life, mentally, physically, and emotionally, I was going to battle The Black. I already knew that most never returned from that battle--artists, writers, philosophers, in their desperate desire to understand the darkness, they'd all fallen victim to a disease found in the bottom of a bottle or a needle or in depression. I'd said my goodbye. No hand-written letters would find me where I had to go. This was either the beginning, or the end.

One Last Thing To Do (and then...)

Image by Idhren via Flickr

In front of me, nature thrives. Miles of green. New leaves.
Behind me there lies Death. Vacuous nature of (the) Black.
It lies on the ground, leg precariously angled in pain. Crying.
From there to here runs a slacked cord tied to my soul,
Inches from the reach of the disfigurement.
From here to there is The Leap.
I followed my Path and it led to this ledge, again.
Many footsteps go back the way I've already come.
In fact, steps less full than mine--
Steps that were next to me not so long ago--
They go back.

So far, I've managed only to look over my shoulder.
I fear turning my body to feel the inertia of addiction.
My back is my shield.
Fifteen years of questions.
Thirty steps back into the fray.
Three feet from flight.
Seven years anew.
Threes and sevens, not fifteens.
So my mind has always said.
At 98 we all rotate.
In excess; time equal to thrice what others would have given.
I prefer words to numbers. Always have.
Maybe now I understand that she will never understand.
So lost from her Path that "good enough" led her back.
Her choice is my education, "good enough" is death.
Good enough is a numbers game.
Good enough is a product of the head, of logic.
Good enough is a heart that no longer beats.

I watched her go.
She looked back over her shoulder, as always.
No smiles, as never before.
She disappeared into the dark,
Soulcord tethered to The Black.
Unnecessary sacrifice.
For me.

Now I know, I wouldn't go back for her.
I'd only go back to give myself to The Black;
To understand the opposite of Love's Promise.
My creative curiosity sings. Input.
How can you know Good without experiencing Evil?
How can you know Evil without experiencing Good?
The teapot whistles and the train leaves.
The soup kettle boils and the earth erupts.
Both The Black.

I don't look for her any longer.
I watch The Black's chest rise and fall.
Heart not yet dead.
Dark eyes from deep sockets see right through me.
For how much longer, that is the question.
Sorrow for what was meant to be pours into me.
Except, it's not my sorrow, nor is it my dream.
My heads turns back to my fate,
And I know that a misstep on a Path thousands of years ago can be erased if I could simply...
Believe.

I don't have the energy left to Believe.

One last thing to do, yet I'm struggling to do it.
The flashlight inside runs my battery into desolation.
Even though she can't see me, she can still hear me.
The stone in my pocket warms the letter that I wrote--
The letter that I need to read aloud.
Words to mark the waypoint of one decision,
Nature records and remembers.
This place will be marred with a bad decision,
And that gives me guilt.
Children and nature rebound in kind--
Resilient life--
These are the things that I must remember.
Life hangs in the balance of black and white, live or die, a daily fight to be more than good enough.
We live among those who choose by good enough:
Good enough to fuck.
Good enough for government work.
Good enough, but not great.
All far-short; the broken legs of dreams.
Good enough fills time, a parry to boredom.
Dreams aren't filled by others for the lazy;
They are earned.

It is time to read my letter.
And then...