The worst part of blacking out is the not-remembering. It is not the lack of place. It is not the lack of knowing the instrument, which is an extremity. That piece of knowledge cannot be detached, neglected, avoided or forgotten. It’s the moment before. It’s the lack of examination, computation and the disappointment one feels when they can replay everything except for what had poisoned the state of mind, causing it to respond in the way that it had.
Does embarrassment bring more shame when you have the fossil, but not the genealogy? I stared at the wall and wondered if it would move. If I could move it. I wondered if there was a back or an ending as I stared it down like it had been taunting me. I remember the voice from the floor below. I remember the unshakable being behind that voice. A voice that knew shaking and trembling and young men that remained young, scared of growing. I could not hear the yell that accompanied the terrified fist thrown into a defenseless opponent and surface that did not swing back. Tinnitus.
The black cloud in my mind, thickening and evolving, now a growing red pulse. Flashing. Blinding. The blinding red pulse spreading in my brain, tightening around my eyes—empty sockets, temples, all the way down until it settled into my throat, like a vice grip, in my throat where there should have been air.
When time becomes black, how fast before it turns to white? I stared at the wall, which was no longer a wall but an indented, hollow surface. The space cracked in front of me. Dusty. There was foam behind it that had kept the house warm. Someone told me it could be potentially hazardous. Maybe it had asbestos. Maybe my head had been slowly filling with asbestos. Maybe my brain had been molding. Maybe I hadn’t just done what I did. Maybe I hadn’t just done what I did. I promised I would never do what I did. I promised I would never do what I did. Maybe the cracks in the wall hadn’t fallen to the floor. Maybe she wasn’t downstairs to hear everything. Maybe the dust from the wall could be vacuumed up and thrown away, revisionist history. Maybe I hadn’t gone into the room and found myself on the floor. Maybe I hadn’t gone into the room, engulfed in the spirit of the independent soul who had grown to weather storms. The one who continued sailing and the one who harnessed the wind. Maybe I hadn’t collapsed into a body, now inverted, a shame deepening further and further inside—a white shirt riddled with bullets and the sinking stain widening, hemorrhaging, internally bleeding. Maybe the trembling from the floor above was a morse code to the host below.
What scared me even then was when she came up and saw me there, kneeled down to embrace me, and attempted to quiet a weakening storm. Could she feel my shame? Could she feel the oath I had broken and solemnly swore never to become? Could she feel all of those apologies and my wayside words and was she suddenly aware of all of the signs—all of those moments brushed off as incidental, that couldn’t have possibly culminated into what was now. An echo.
I believe there are people that transcend and when she listened, having not seen the dark mark on the way up, I wondered if it was oblivion that had allowed her to sleep peacefully at night. The oblivion found in a half glass full—the cycle would not and could not repeat itself: “it would not”, “you are different”, “he was different”, right until I guided her to the stairs, like leading a blind woman to the point of finally seeing, pointed to the spot and showed her:
“This. This is what I did. This is what I have done.”
If a picture is a thousand words then what is in a breath?
I could not look at it and all she could do was sigh. She tried to still me, each exhale another Reiki movement to rid me of my exorcised demons that had charged my soul. I crawled back into the room and found myself in a pool once again. Eyes squeezed tight trying to eradicate reality from bad dreams, each second passed a haunting etched in stone.
Yet she walked down the stairs to continue doing what she had before being summoned. And I wondered, as she neared the end of the steps, did she stop to take notice of the original crack in the wall? Did it still look the same? Did she stop that night to hear its words?
She finished cleaning up so she could get ready for bed, turning off the lights one by one. Two apples on the dining room table.
[7/17/22]
For a while there I don’t think I noticed it. There’s a few cracks in the place I call home, signs of wear-and-tear, paint where it shouldn’t be and other places where it should. I think the two stairwells have made me stronger and for others maybe it’s made them weary. I used to rush down those stairs early in the day and lumber back up at the day’s close and, for a time, when the days felt longer and those individual moments of wonder and recognition felt complex and profound, I think that patched up hole-in-the-wall used to take a life of its own. I can remember when it was a more open wound and the tears of my mother’s arms had not addressed it. It was a scar with no clothes to conceal it, visible for every visitor to take their time with it like an exhibit at a family history museum. Come to think of it, on those occasions when we did have a gathering of friends or family I’m not sure anyone said anything, but it was the elephant in every room, in the entire home. Not quite the fuzzy feeling of “Brooks Was Here” or a “So Was Red” as in Shawshank. There were no words to symbolize the sign except, maybe, to signify that there used to be a more frequent inhabitant, a more volatile but no less loving walker of rooms and climber of steps. I do not know the history behind that fist, that hole-in-the-wall, that plastered crack that has re-opened over time. We do not talk about it, but we know that it is there. It, for better or worse, is impossible to ignore.
[7/11/22]