Dare to Compose

I’m sitting here in front of you and I am only listening to maybe half of what you are saying, perhaps even less. Your words sound dull because I’ve often heard them, slight variations that more or less resemble a core message that is common amongst the things you have the say. Sorry, it’s not that you’re boring me. You say many of the same things over and over again that I do not really need to hear the words themselves to know what is on your mind. I admit I am guilty of such tendencies as well; it’s actually a pretty common habit. I’m sorry, I may not be saying this as I sit here not really listening to the words you are saying but just watching you as you writhe in the production of words, trying to express semblance of the pride and integrity you say you deserve to hold (which I agree, you do deserve, but to which extents we may differ, as the means in which adhering to rules of respect manifests is a topic that requires much coordination between both parties, you and I) and the hurt you feel, but that does not mean I am ignoring you. I know this frustration, that you are using your words trying to change my mind, because I have been there too, thinking that because I have successfully articulated my positions in words and rationality, that they should be accepted. But that is rarely the case, that words in themselves change people’s minds. In this case, I am seeing how you are writhing and seeing how hurt is written all over your face, as much as you’d like to say that hurt isn’t the principle you are trying to address. I have never been able to explain away my pain and I don’t think you will either. I know you are trying to grab at your pain and stuff them away into words that will make me acknowledge them and I admit, I am blind in many respects, probably have neglected many of your feelings in the process. I may not be saying anything in response right now, and you have probably discovered I am not really listening, at least not the way you want me to. You think your words important; I have the same feelings. But what I’ve discovered is that the words are not the important things in themselves; they often slip through like the grains of sand between your fingers. I sit here and not really listening, being here watching you hold your words, knowing that neither of us really believe in any of the things that our words suggests. We are simply here, together, existing side by side and prickling each other by the thorns we try to maintain. 

The gun that hung on the wall did not go off in the third act, but in the first act through the bumbling of the twelve-year old son who wanted to get a closer look at the sheen of its barrel. The bullet went straight through the window, the shatter and glass shards exploding upon the floor resounding in his ears. The twelve-year old trembled as he held the gun, the weight feeling heavier all of a sudden. He wanted to put the gun down, to toss it away so its fearsome power. But he could not let it go: he shivered knowing the the gun, by design, was meant to go off again—its power could not be contained. He was bound to the gun by an overwhelming curiosity, a hunger—what would this gun do next? What else is it capable of? The gun would surely go off again because he held it, feeling its ability to rip through this still moment of time. 

You are currently being addressed. You stand in for “me” as I direct many things in conversation to “you,” imperatives, demands, philosophical musings, that have as much relevance to “me” as they do to you, whichever “you” may be, be it the hypothetical or realized, you who stumbles upon these words, chance reader, one of the world. You should pay attention. Or not, you have free will—you can choose not to pay attention. You are the second person, not so far or different from the first person. Some might say that the second person and the first are the same, just two sides of the same vessel in conversation with each other. But you, second person, are the part of the mind that the “I” cannot see, say, or bear to see or say. You are the necessary distance from “I” that can juggle hypotheticals, inner dialogue, doubt and pain. You are not “me” but you are from “me” and with “me.” You are real because you immediately exist upon recognition: you fill whatever voice of “not-me” that you can find, chance eye that wanders upon these words. You are real with the right amount of unreality, imaginary standing at the gates of potentiality. You knock against “me” and remind “me” of what can become possible. You are loved, you are special, you are amazing, you are meaningful, you must necessarily exist. Above all else, you move because “I” say you move. You may come and join “me” and become “me” if circumstances permit, the end “me” a better, grown person (perhaps). You join and touch anyone whom you come in contact with, “other” that is the chance reader. You are many selves, but distinctly you. You are splendidly flexible, vessel of the future tense, vessel of the future perfect tense—you will, you will have been, “I” will, “I” will have been. Where you stand is where everyone needs you to stand: for them, behind them, the fallback pillow that rescues “me” from becoming “nothing.” 

He sends a text; he does not call (that is simply not the protocol). He tries to be brief, but tries to make his desire as clear as possible, keeping in consideration the proper amount of desire to convey, too much being too needy, too little being too coy, “cool” this mysterious middle he wraps his head around trying to gauge. He waits. One second. Two seconds. He thinks that counting is bad, but he cannot help it. He finds a video online to watch: it’s a comedy sketch involving a slap competition. He does not laugh. He checks his phone. Two minutes have passed. He is too aware of time, and he hates how he is too aware about how he is too aware, a curse this consciousness is. He goes to the bathroom, expel feces and urine, and washes his hands, noticing the dirt trapped beneath his cuticles and taking extra time to scratch the dirt away under running water. He returns. Seven minutes. He groans. He sits on his bed and thinks about not thinking. A Catch-22, a failure. He imagines the phone of the other person he sent the text to. Is it off? Silenced? Is the person ignoring it? Ten minutes. Is the person dead? Phone company malfunctions? Did the text actually get sent? Is sending another wise? No, probably not. He thinks about screaming, but does not. He wants a moment of silence. He sleeps, but has trouble doing so. He thinks about the sound of his phone, focuses that scene as the dream he would be dreaming if he were actually asleep. He wants to sleep, but wants to be awoken in the middle. He wants to be okay with being alone right now, but the hypothetical future of being not alone soon, he knows he wishes much more. 

I sit at my desk thinking about writing and the words do not come out the way I imagine they should. I do not describe scenes, setting or characters well and I freeze thinking of this concept of a plot, several ideas and image floating around unexpressed. Frustrated and resorting to lazy tactics, I resort to writing about this writing, as it seems that the only thing my mind is currently wrapped around is this “stuckness,” how this story will not come out. In the end I imagine that this scene of me, sitting at my desk, is exceptionally boring, the camera on me yawning. Yet this story is about a story, both the scene I am sitting in and the image of my mind that will not come out. I think myself lazy for writing about this writing; clearly it is an introspective exercise. But yet I feel trapped looking into this set-up, as though I am descending into the infinite regress between two mirrors, reflections upon reflections getting smaller and smaller until they are nothing to the eye, until the image of me is nothing. 

When I walk away from my car I will try my best to remember that I have locked it. I will have pressed the “lock” button that sits inside the driver’s side door, closed the door then pulled the door handle to make sure that the door is locked. I will do this all in an instinctive instant, unthinking, knowing that common sense dictates that I should never leave my car unlocked, that there is opportunity for disaster if my car were to be found unlocked by some passerby, a passerby with possibly evil intents, a passerby that might damn it all to hell that I, a stranger to him, may be without transportation and will have suffered a grave financial loss if he decides to steal my car. My instincts are consistent, virtually unfailing, as my body usually snaps to the task without my having to think about it. However, as I walk a few steps away, I am bothered by this shadow of a thought that I may not have locked the door. Try as I might, I do not have a solid memory of locking my door, though I know my general instinct is to always lock the door. I will walk a few more steps away, trying to think to myself that my instincts can be trusted, that the car will be safe left where I have parked it. But do I risk it? I haven’t the memory, try as I might to remember the sensation of pressing the “lock” button” and pulling the locked car door handle, but the skin of my fingers do not remember something so fleeting. Three out of ten times I will walk back to my car and check that it is indeed locked. The other seven I think to trust my instinct, that this scene of locking my car has played itself out hundreds of times, and surely it had again in this respective time. Those three times out of ten I perhaps am worrying too much, but I cannot help myself for thinking that consistency can be broken, that there is a risk of it and that vague possibility of suffering those losses is simply not worth saving myself the inconvenience of walking back to checking that my instincts have not failed me. 

My mother reminds me on several occasions that I was a bad boy in the first few years of my life. From what she tells me about the time that I was too young to remember, I cried often, wanted to pick fights with bigger children, screamed whenever I was denied some toy or object I grabbed for, wandered around clumsily in dangerous places, once having hit my head on a banister and causing a bleeding gash on my forehead (I needed stitches, though I cannot remember ever having been admitted to a hospital). She has the scars and persistently sore and weak muscles to show what a handful I had been raising. She also reminds me of times I do remember, such as how my poor behavior fighting and crying over other children prompted many meetings with teachers, how doctors wanted to prescribe therapy and medicine for me that she could not afford, how I was often alone without friends, playing video games or watching television all day with a grumpy don’t-bother-me-expression that she would be afraid to disturb thinking that some of the outdoors and some friends was something I needed, that it was something she wanted to provide for me though I was greatly resistant to it. She often brings up this up at a dinner where many of my relatives near her age agree, all of them united in the memory that I had been a bad boy when I was younger. However, she always says that I was a bad boy in conjunction with how I am now a good boy, that I have become the son she is proud of, well-mannered, educated, a shining example of how persevering motherhood can breed a son of such caliber. We live in the same home right now—temporarily, I keep telling myself, because I am a man now and even though the economy is tough I will come out of this stronger. We have dinner together often and I have heard the bad boy/good boy topic brought up many times. I have found that she needs very little provocation to spark the storytelling: encountering a child (stranger or not), news reports about my generation or parenting, movies or television shows, whatever reminds her that she is now old and that her body feels weak and beaten by the struggles she’s had to endure in life. Sometimes, when she is finishing up her bad boy/good boy story and it is clear that the subject will change or the conversation will experience a silence, she will say she is glad that those times are over, relieved that I am no longer a boy. When she says this, she always looks tired. I have always been annoyed at the bad boy/good boy story because it reminds of times that I don’t wish to remember and even of times that I do not remember, times that I do not associate, in my conscious memory, of being “me.” The “me” in the past is still vividly, in its wholeness, in my mother’s memory. I am me of now, me that is moving forward, me that has a past that I remember. Yet still, there is this memory of me that my mother keeps alive, this memory that I do not associate with “me” but still, because she is my mother, because of what her her eyes have seen, what her heart, her sore muscles have given, that is also “me,” as much as I’d rather it not be.