597. The Hell I Live With

"He stood as did I, in a state of disbelief. I tried to move my feet but they would not move. Was I alive or dead? Was this happening or was I dreaming? I could see myself, transparent, holographic, just an image. The feeling, emotion, however, was real. Intense. Burning." Von raised his glass full, returned it empty. With unblinking eyes, ablaze in the story, he continued. "Electrifying."

Father? Is that you?

Son? Cerulean?

Father, I have so much to say. So much.

Son, can you hear me? Cerulean? Son?

Father. Father!

"He looked as if he were looking through me, as if I wasn't standing there and I watched him reach out, his hand passing through my faded image and the words rang, the kind of words that haunt the wake and torment the sleep, that know neither time nor space. I can hear them now. They live in my head. Clear as day. And they hurt no less. Father. Don't leave. Father. The words are in my ear now as they were then when he spoke, speaking as he passed through me, his lips to my ear, in my head, inside of me, he spoke and I felt the words more than heard, felt them in my soul, every nerve of fire, wanting to move my arms, to hug him, hold him. And I couldn't. And that is the hell I live with." 

Von lifted his glass. The others, silent, followed.

580. Corn and Cello

"I once worked on a farm. One day, during the harvest, we had corn. Fresh corn. I had had corn all my life, from a can. From the first taste, I knew, I knew I had never had corn, as corn was meant to be had. A year or so later, at university, I attended a cello performance. Very small venue. I was on the front row, probably not more than ten feet or so from the performer. There was no orchestra, just one musician and one cello and nothing else between the bow and string and my ear. Like the corn, I had listened to many recorded performances of solo cello. From the first pull of bow, I knew, like the corn, that I had never heard the cello before. So, in answer to your question this is what I say, Love, with a capital L, is like the corn or the cello. When you have experienced Love directly, purely, your eyes are opened to a light and your heart is drawn to a force, well, how can I say it, you see a reality and in that reality, of what is is, is a joy, a joy so concentrated, so absolute, well, you know there is no going back. So that is why I give. I'm no saint. But once you are touched by the light, the question to do otherwise fades like the night before the dawn and what you do, what you become is not a doing or a choice nor can it be labeled or classified, it is, for lack of a better way to say it, a being, a return, a dropping of all the falseness we accumulate over time."

Zoe sat as one slapped sat, one slapped unexpectedly and thankfully, for the slapping. She thought she had fallen for him, for Ceru, but in the fall of this moment, she knew the corn and she knew the cello and she knew the fall before was not the fall now.

447. As If Janus

On the day prior to Karaoke, Von and Zoe spend the entire day together. Below is the first of what I hope are many snippets of that conversation:

Von: Tell me how you met my son?

Zoe: (with a tear filled smile she searched Von's face as if to judge his capacity for what she was about to say) I was walking one rainy morning to the center. The streets were crowded, gray with mindlessness. I watched an old female hynerian slip and fall. I started to move toward her when the utter heartlessness of the crowd, like a river flowing pass a boulder, bypassed her. She looked up, rain in her face, hair white, wet, sticking to her languid cheeks. I watched her hand rise, fingers outstretched; and I watched in shock as leg after leg brushed her hand aside. I was too far to see the look on her face. I was too frozen to move, my mind racing, wondering, is this what we have come to. (Zoe paused)

Von: (sitting patiently, his eyes nova intense, his mind Tao focused) Please continue.

Zoe: She was dressed in a gray overcoat and wore a black cap. Then as if the sea swallowed her whole, she disappeared within the calloused wave of indifference. I dropped my bags and started running, bouncing off of irritated faces as if spume off implacable breakers. When I reached the spot where she had fallen, she was gone.

Von: (lifts chin, eyes rolling along the bottom of his quivering rims)

Zoe: I looked left and right. Nothing. Then I heard a voice, his voice. I couldn't make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable and I watched in awe as the sea of grey parted before his words as if he were Janus himself, and the faces of indifference stood stuck like broken clocks. And from that parting I saw him, jaw set, arms held as a lift, and cradled to his chest was that old hynerian, her arms wrapped around his neck, her eyes looking up in supplication, apparently as in shock as I was. I knew right then, in that dying world, there was hope. And, as strange as this is going to sound, I knew, there walked the father of my child.

Von: (looked down as if her words were a sacred blessings)

Zoe: So I followed him and I watched from a distance. As he succored the one in his arms, my heart beat as such to ache, as if the vision was but a dream and I felt a fear, a fear that if I blinked, all before me would disappear. And then--

Von: What?

Zoe: And then he turned, saw me standing as if my feet were nailed to the floor and called out. You know what he said?

Von: (shook head)

Zoe: He said, "Hey, I could use some help over here." And you know what, he was looking right at me. I'll never forgot that look of love in his eyes as he knelt over the one before him. And you know what else?

Von: Tell me.

Zoe: (with tears in her eyes) I see that same look right now.

433. Hand in Hand

Zoe talked. Von listened. Hours became as seconds. No detail was trivial. No utterance without value. Then she said what she said that for Von was more than his blurry eyes could contain.

Zoe: I once asked him how he managed, managed to remain so bright and positive in the real likelihood we would never find you. You know what he said?

Von: (Shook his head)

Zoe: He put his hands on my shoulders, and with eyes as big and clear as mountain lakes, said: Where there is love, there is my father. So everyday, I look for love and everyday my father and I walk hand in hand.

432. All the Time

Von sat dog loyal next to his son's coffin, his face ashen with a dusting of unshaved beard upon jowls long. His aged left hand, skin like elephant hide, veins as serpentine rivers blue as watered milk, rested upon the poppy-red ceramic enclosure and his right hand upon the rubious insignia adorning the book of letters. Lids heavy draped his eyes as sacred vestments such that from a distance it was hard to tell who was dead and who was alive.

"How much longer is he gonna just sit there?" asked Rog, standing with Kyra outside chapel.

"Long as he needs."

"Has Zoe spoken yet?"

"Yep."

"Von know?"

"Nope."

"You gonna tell him?"

"Nope."

"I'd think he'd wanna know."

"You think?"

Rog made his Rog face.

"Look. I don't think it needs to come from either you or me."

"Well, I think you're--"

Kyra looked over Rog's shoulder and nodded. Rog turned (head then eye), his reflective eyes brighter than before with the image of Zoe, her metallic golden hair looking electric, the highlights whiter than permalba white. She walked like a newborn filly, her knees looking like they would give at any moment, suspension aftereffect or girth of child or both didn't matter, for when she wobbled upon the fall, Rog did what Rog did best--act before thinking. (Yul made me say that)

Zoe tried to smile as Rog held her right arm and Kyra her left. Together they walked her into the chapel and before the grandfather of her child to be. Von opened his languid eyes, looked at Zoe, then Kyra who nodded, then back to Zoe, who's eyes looked as refulgent dams before the hynerian she knew and the hynerian she longed to embrace.

Von stood, his voice as distant rolling thunder, his tone as the cool breeze before a rain. "You knew my son?"

Zoe spoke as if before a magistrate. "Yes. I knew your son."

"And my son knew you," said Von, breaking eye contact. (for Jenni--this is said as a statement, not a question ;-)

"He lives within me," replied Zoe, her delicate hand traversing the equator of her joy.

Von's head seemed to float and his eyes became like suns breaking above the clouds. "Give me your hand." Zoe did. Von looked upon the ring as one looks upon an old picture. "Did you love him?"

"I did."

"Did he love you?"

"With all his heart."

Von's gaze move from ring to eye. "Did he ever speak of me?"

Her eyes scintillating as if illuminated from within, Zoe said with undeniable firmness. "All the time."

431. Olamic Peace

Kyra ejected her cord from the dataport on the second suspension capsule with sober prejudice. Teal data flickered before her weary eye, reflecting the world entire on the inside of her curved faceplate, and then, as if in mimic, faded from view of eye if not of mind: One enclosure held Zoe, the other Ceru; one living, one olamic. Kyra turned. She could have cried. She wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere but in this private moment. Managing a solemn ecclesiastical whisper, as if the spoken word, by tone, could heal or harm, she called, "Von."

Excerpt from an interview with Kyra on earth: I felt like I was looking at the past, as if I was in a sacred cathedral lit by votive candles, a place majestic and ancient, a place I didn't belong. I wanted to change places with Von. I wanted him to see his son first, not second. I wanted him to be close, not me. To see a father viewing his son, the father alive, the son not, to know there is nothing to say, to feel that rarefied air, a mystical place, surreal, out-of-body, a place beyond language is like standing on the edge of a sunset, your feet ablaze with a white heat, your eyes drowning in the depths of the deepest ocean, your shoulders and arms as stone of ancient statues. Such was a moment I would neither trade for all the universe nor wish to ever experience again.

Von raised his hand as if to reach for what he knew would not reach back, as if the tension in the air itself could be grasped, could be held as a rope in the lightness of moments dreamed but not imagined. Kyra, standing sideways, opened her arm, her face without smile or frown, a mask to match a time where seconds were minutes and minutes were hours. Von approached, looked at Kyra. She nodded. Placing his hands on the cold clear glass, his eyes as crystals, Von leaned over, removed his helmet, and with words not heard, kissed the glass and closed his eyes. Kyra stepped aside and commed Bravo.

425. Eutaxy

Zeke outlined his plan to Ceru. He would take the Dyad, and do the best he could to find Bravo. "Any questions?" asked Zeke.

"I can't leave without Zoe."

"Zeke smiled and opened his arms. "I wouldn't let you leave without her. Now go get organized and report back here when you are ready."

421. Contact

Bravo slipped through space as anonymously as the days. One week stood between them and rendezvous with the other Hynerian vessel, which all sensors said was still there, drifting tomb quiet on the solar wind. Kyra kept mainly to herself and the rest of the crew seemed caught in the somber world of their own past, guts queasy, as if about to see an old flame who had made another choice two years hence.

The Kulmykian command carrier was never heard from again. Arn, the leader of the brotherhood, seemed equal measure amazed and concerned as Kyra appeared more and more disinterested. Against John's advice, he had tried to approach Kyra. She had raised her arm and an aching coldness had penetrated his bones. His bloated tongue had refused to move. He didn't try a second time.

Rog and Yul spent most of their time in Yul's quarters. No one really noticed their absence. Em discussed her options with Dr X and he explained they could try to restore her natural sight (low probability of success) or they could use a mechanical accoutrement (high probability of success). Either way, there would be no second chance. She was recovering in her room, Trev by her side as faithful as sunrise. They would know in a couple days if the procedure worked.

Von spent his time in meditation, unable to shake a tremor that had started in his hands and had since traveled up his arm, roosting as a tic below his right eye. Like a moth to the flame, he was drawn to the vessel. And like the moth, he would fly into the fire, to be cleansed or consumed was not clear.

"Captain," intoned Snazzle, "we have visual contact."

"Thank you Snazzle. Are you able to interface with the logs?" asked Kyra.

"Yes Captain. Would you like me to play the last distress signal?"

"No, no. I'll be right there. And Snazzle. Do not notify anyone else we have those logs."

"Yes Captain."

-----------

Two years prior:

Zeke reached into his dusty rucksack. He pulled out an old ragged copy of his treatise on Luin, a work he completed in the early days of the Tao and used in training. The copy was worn and highlighted with copious notes in the margins. Standing in the still dim light, he flipped to the front page. In his own handwriting was his inscription: To Kyra, The Jewel of my Life. Below his inscription, in the handwriting of a child, she had written: My Papa wrote this.

Zeke put the book down and rubbed his eyes. "Ceru?"

The flap of the tent opened and the spitting image of Von stood silhouetted against the black canvas of space.

"There is nothing more you can do here," said Zeke.

399. Mother Mother

Ceru stepped outside, and surely as the hand of woman scorned, felt the angry slap of mother nature upon a cheek once abandoned by mother biology. With eyes tired, slits in the wind, and lips cracked and dry as desert floor, he looked again to the heavens and again his mind fought what his eyes told him was there. He managed to expel three words, and as if the plaintive cry were the skeleton within, felt his body collapse upon itself: "Oh My Janus."

396. Circle Unbroken

Ceru looked incredulously at Zeke as the old hynerian stood without moving, expecting, apparently, an answer. A thousand responses ran through his head, each seemingly less skillful than the one before. Zeke was wrong, that much was clear, but the Tao seemed to be wrong about what he was wrong about and how did one tell a ninth order Tao he was projecting and, in the projection, confused and ignorant of the facts?

His father took the mission not to repay the debt. The two, father and son, had sat down, discussed the matter of Hyneria and the mission as adults, and both had concluded the right thing to do was to accept the honor of protecting a bright Hynerian hope, to play a role in keeping the species alive, to have a chance to have an impact on life to come just as he (Ceru) would have a chance to have an impact on the life that was to die.

He had promised his dad he would honor the family name, honor him, by giving aid and succor, by showing compassion for those left behind. It never occurred to him his promise would start with the great hynerian himself. So instead of correcting Zeke, of telling him he was wrong about his father's motives, that he was wrong with regard to the pain he had inflicted, he took a higher path. The heart that was hurting was neither Ceru's nor Von's as much, as was clear now, Zeke's. Zeke was the one that was crushed by his separation with Kyra, of sending her alone into the inky dark coldness of the unforgiving cosmos.

"Sir, I forgive you."

Zeke searched Ceru's face as the two seemed to communicate in glances. Arms opened, as they had a long time ago on a planet far away, and the circle closed, as compassion, once given to the father, was repaid by the son.

Soundtrack for this chapter: Let It Be

394. Mountains in Oil

Ceru arrived early to the compound at Valla, a place his father had spoke of but he had never been. The main house, as large as it was, looked fragile against the backdrop of the churning sea and roiling gridelin clouds. Leaning hard into the wind, his hand tight on his hat, Ceru struggle up the slippery wet stone steps, worn smooth, it seemed, as bar soap and onto the grey wooden porch. Blu was waiting and together they made their way into the house and to the study where Zeke was standing, his white tunic-ed back to the pair, head bowed and a painting in his hands.

"Come in Ceru" said Zeke without turning, his eyes still locked on the canvas in hand. "Thanks for being on time. You know, your father, he was always on time too."

Von's son stood in the doorway, not quite knowing what to say.

"Come, come, have a seat. The planet's not going to blow away today. Tomorrow maybe, but not today," Zeke smiled, the painting still in his weathered hands. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Thank you, but I'm fine," said Ceru as he sat opposite Zeke's desk in an old leather chair and wondered how many famous arses had graced the seat he sat. He placed his hands in his lap like a nervous schoolboy and looked around the study as if in a museum. After what seemed an awkward silence, he asked, "Is that one of yours?" Then quickly added, "the painting."

"This one?" asked Zeke, holding the painting in the air with one hand. "I wish it was. Then, perhaps, I could leave it be." Zeke realized from the look on Ceru's face the young Hynerian had no idea what he was taking about. "My granddaughter painted it, Kyra. Actually, we did it together. The lesson of the mountains I called it. It was her first time with oils. Still my favorite. We did it with our fingers, her choice. Grand was none too happy." Zeke smiled with the remembrance of the heat he took for that one. Oil paint, fingers and a child don't mix she had said, over and over again. And he had listened over and over again. "But I didn't call you here to wax sentimental. I need your help. Important mission. You open-mined?"

"I suppose no would be the wrong answer?"

Zeke smiled without answering.

"Okay, I'm open-minded."

"Good. But before we discuss details I need to tell you something. About your father."

Ceru moved to the edge of his chair and if there had been birds chirping he wouldn't have heard them, for the gale whipping the shutters and windows presently stood outside the attention Zeke's statement commanded. One never knew one's father as well as one thought. The mere mention of new information, inside information, for it certainly seemed Zeke was about to share something a son would not know about a father, was as treasure more precious than gold.

The ninth order Tao spoke slowly, his voice slightly deeper than before. "He loved you. He loved you as I loved Kyra."

Ceru's eyes welled. He loved his father. Zeke had been the one to authorize the imprimatur on his book of letters, so he knew the Hynerian sitting across from him knew his heart, at least as it related to his father.

"And he left for one reason only. I asked him to." Zeke paused to take the measure of the moment. "I ripped his heart from his chest. I tore him away from what he loved most, his son, you, because he owed me a debt. And I knew, I knew your father, in spite of the pain, the personal cost, would honor the debt. I would like to tell you the asking was noble or honorable or right. I'd like to present my case as to why I had the right to demand such a sacrifice. But I had no right and I have no case. Your father was the honorable one. I was wrong.

Ceru looked down at the floor, the muck of his mind stirred by the words cast his way. Zeke walked around from his desk. "Stand up and look at me." Ceru obeyed as if the asking was an order. Zeke placed his hands on the young hynerian's shoulders as his pale blue eyes sparkled without blinking. "Before we discuss our mission, I need to ask you something and I need you to look me in the eye and answer from your heart, not your mind. I won't accept anything but the truth. You understand?"

"Yes sir," said Ceru, his head spinning, confused, throbbing with a million thoughts.

"Can you forgive me?"

358. On Bended Knee

Von flipped through page after page, skimming images in his mind as much as words on paper. The letters, one for each day of his captivity, were not so much letters as they were conversations, the sort of conversation that if overheard by a stranger, would not be given a second thought, but when imagined by the father from the son would not have been exchanged for all the world. Yet, the letters were not really conversations, they were prayers, or, as was called in the Tao, meditative prayers. There was a difference. Prayer was a plea, passive, something your grandmother did; meditative prayer a deed, active, and effective in ways beyond common comprehension. The Tao believed that meditative prayer could reach beyond space and time and shape events. His son had spent more than three years absorbed in that belief.

Von closed the tome as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath as if he had forgotten how. In an instant, his universe changed as if the pages of the Imprimatur Rubious had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and for the first time he saw not with dreams.

A thousand thoughts ran through his mind, not the least that he had survived captivity, not of his own will as he had thought, but with assistance from afar. Moments from the edge flooded the chasm of his memory as he recalled standing between this life and the next one, wanting to slip away into the peace of the night. At each of those moments he had found strength, had remembered the sensation of a cool breeze pushing him gently back to safety. He had thought little of those sensations at the time. Now, he realized a love, as deep as the regret welling in his bosom, and he cursed himself for the ignorance or pride that clouded his view at the time. And he marveled. Three years. Not a day missed. Letter after letter, all in longhand, painstakingly rendered not as word to paper but as Love to father.

Von opened his eyes and looked down without moving his head as if he could hide behind his quarter-opened lids. Glowing red, filling the room with sacred light, a small disc, no larger than the tip of his finger, silently and slowly grew brighter and dimmer as if each exchange was a breath, as if the disc were alive, as if it begged to be touched and opened. The disc was a holographic version of the letters, a version that would, when activated, appear in 3-D before him, the pages breathing in light as if alive from floor to ceiling in folio fashion, which could be turned with hand or eye.

With a wave of his hand, the holographic folio opened and the room filled with light. Opening the volume to a random page, Von walking into the light, his hands swimming in the sea of illumination as the words appeared to move as fish in shallow water. On the right-hand side, he spied what appeared to be a watermark, about the same size as his face. Gently leaning his countenance into the mark, Von felt as if he had touched an open circuit, his face felt wet and a scent of sea air filled his nostrils. His mind began to swirl, faster and faster, and as a child on a merry-go-round, the images of his mind began to blur. He quickly pulled his head back out. Touching the mark with his hand, he felt the shock again and this time he placed his whole head into the watermark, and as the tear of the father met the tear of the son, the two were united on a plane of existence Von could not explain.

When the strange joyful energy threatened to rip his heart from his chest, Von pulled his wet head out. Balling his fists to wipe his eyes, he studied the words on this page. Near the bottom he saw the four words that appeared on every page—I Love You Dad. Kneeling on bended knee, Von reached into the hologram, grasped those four words and pulled them into his hands. They pulsed as if the light beat in harmony with his heart. Bowing his head, Von took the string of words, and like a scarf, wrapped them around his chest, love touching love. The room brightened and with closed eye Von felt as if he were lying in a summer field looking into the sun, such was the light that penetrated his eyelids.

The words seemed to hug him back, and releasing his grip, Von placed his hands on the floor to steady himself, and with head still bowed and eyes still closed said, “I love you too son.”

Kyra sat stunned. Von looked exhausted.

“So there you have it,” he finally managed to say.

Soundtrack for this Chapter: Same Mistake (James Blunt, All the Lost Souls)


Commentary Part 1



Commentary Part 2



Bonus Outtake Commentary

356. Imprimatur Rubious

Von locked the door to his quarters and walked over to the floor length and ceiling high window, an accoutrement deeply appreciated in each quarter on Bravo. Standing with hands held tersely behind his back, he watched the last glimmer of Hyneria slip from sight as one might watch the sun dip below the horizon; always, it seemed, with a sense of shock at how quickly it occured. With effort, Von took a breath and reflected, his chest feeling as if caught in a slowly tightening vice, his mind muddy with a thousand compromises. The sun would rise again, but he would never again see Hyneria. His eyes looked down without looking as the unspoken thought hovered just beyond acceptance—and neither would he ever again see Ceru.

On his desk it stood, the box. Von quietly walked over, pulled out a chair and with eyes locked on the parcel as if at any moment it might disappear as a mirage on Silus, sat down. The box looked rather ordinary in its coarse brown cloth wrapping, but the dang thing was heavy. Von ran his weathered finger along the edges, leaned over with eyes closed and breathed in. For an instant, Ceru appeared in his mind as clear as if he were standing in the room. Von closed his trembling eyes tighter and running his regal nose along the package, breathed in the scent of his son again, and, for just a moment, father and son were together. Von smiled as the simple and absurd thought entered his head that if he never opened his eyes he would never have to face the separation that was searing the veins of his heart from the inside out. Even old Hynerians need their fantasies, he thought, or perhaps just fathers.




Untying the cord that bound, Von opened the box and a rubious glow filled the room, warming his smooth face: the Imprimatur of Letters, a sacred seal given rarely by the Order to works deemed extraordinary, as in not ordinary, as in, how the hellocks did he not know his son had written such a work, had had this work officially recognized by the Tao. Zeke knew. No imprimatur was recognized without his approval; yet, the sombeech had said nothing. Von felt lightheaded.

Inside the box were more than a thousand letters, neatly bound, all written in longhand, apparently one every day for just over three years. On the cover were two words and two dates separated with a dash. Von froze. The dates were his dates, his dates of captivity, of torture, of solitary confinement, of neural traces. The dates matched perfectly. Above the dates, just two words, My Father. Inside, a note, hastily scribed:

Dad,

I could say I love you with all my heart a thousand times and still I would feel the words were inadequate to the expression. You always taught me to trust the act and stand weary of the word. And so, in this work, I give you both, not as two, but as one. As you read these words, remember the letter, but know the deed.

I love you dad. Do your duty and I will do mine. And when the time comes, we will meet again with heads held high and I will greet you with arms open and heart warm and you will see a smile like you have never seen. You have been everything to me and with every breath that I have remaining, I will honor your memory with aid and succor to those in need and they will know, I am the son of Von.

Love,

Ceru

To be continued . . .

355. Four Words

We arrived at the dock as shadows grew, the wind as fierce as anything I could remember on this world or any other. The whole landscape seemed a palette of unforgiving grays from the sky dull to the dock sheen. Splattered against this achromous canvas, ships of all makes and sizes, hue faded hulls, bobbed like mobiles on the teetering edge of Hyneria’s crib as numbered flags flapped and yelped like skittish kites anxious to flee their tethered mounts. We felt as babes, and about as small, before an angry mother spewing wind and rain for reasons beyond our comprehension. Powerlessness, I suppose, carries its own phlegmatic resignation, and, oddly enough, a sense of peace, or perhaps just the peace that comes when responsibility and authority has been arrogated by a higher power.

On the platform before us, pockets of goodbyes huddled against the blustery elements, coats brown and grey and black held tight, like so many charcoal smudges, as families longed to slow the hands of time, to hope against hope that if they filibustered long enough, the clouds would cede and the sun would emerge and an announcement would blast news for everyone to return home, the crisis over. Forced smiles looked grotesque, almost as if at any moment they would crack and mothers sported raccoon eyes and crimson noses as words were selected with more care than the forgotten diamonds on their hands. Into this emotional wasteland, Ceru and I leaned into the wind, our hands firmly on our hats, our final goodbye more dreamlike than one would have thought.

We searched for a place to call our own, a place to do in public what should have been private; one had the feeling of urinating in the street, sober, and nobody cared. The whole matter was simply a distasteful nightmare, but one we would not have missed for all the world. When our feet found root, we twisted toward each other, hands finding shoulders as branches seeking support. I would rather not say what we said other than various terms of endearment and hope; promises, we left on the table, since there was no reason for either of us to play those games.

After a hug like two school girls after summer recess, I turned toward Bravo and had not taken more than three or four steps when Ceru yelled Dad. I turned, he upon me, package in hand. He said four words and thrust what appeared to be a box into my chest. Before the tears, from either of us, could flow, he turned and walked away. His gray longcoat swallowed by the interminable misty bleakness. There is a reason to turn. I wish I had. The vision of his backside disappearing, as if consumed by the sea, haunts me to this day and there are times, when the vision is so clear, that my heart threatens to burst, pound, from my chest, as if I have committed some crime. That was the last time I saw my son, the last view I had, the last image ingrained in my mind.

“What were the four words?” asked Kyra, her eyes as misty as Ceru’s must have been.

Von looked at her as if the words would come forth when they were ready, not him. After what could have only been a few seconds he said as distant as if he were back on the dock, “I love you dad.”

Four Words: A Reading



Four Words: Commentary Part 1



Four Words: Commentary Part 2

354. Cerulean

Cerulean looked at his chron, and in the soft silence of mind lost in thought and not of ear, knew he had plenty of time. A cushion of time, such an interesting and ironic metaphor, he thought, as if he needed time to cushion the blow of the hours to come.

He checked his list and checked it again. There really were two lists. One of material, one not. Of the first he was sure. Of the second, less so. His father would be waiting, alone, packed and trimmed and looking as dignified as ever, his face as stoic as stone and he wondered what his father was thinking.

Ceru, as his friends called him but not his father, looked again at the time, then he looked at the table. He felt as if he were going to a double funeral. His father was leaving. He was not. Fate of either not to be known by the other. He tried to put a positive spin on the matter as he was wont to do, but this was not as it had been before when meditative prayer, scribed in letters, could deliver harm to harbor.

He took a breath as he pulled a chair from the table and sat. Upon the table, resting quietly on wood if not quietly in heart, a rather massive tone, a collection one could say, of letters. More than a thousand, although number mattered not, for any fool can shovel dirt. He thumbed through the pages as one drives through an old neighborhood. The houses are the same but the feeling is not. The missives had worked, or so he liked to believe. They were past, done, retired. Yet, they had not magically appeared on the table. The night before, they moved from chest to list to table. And then, this morning, they moved off the list but not off of table or into chest or, painfully, out of mind.

His chron beeped and he startled as if awakened from sleep. Time was flowing. He had to go. He had to choose. Pulling pen and paper from dark to light, a note was scribed and tucked and folio decided.

Father stood, as he always did, ready. Ceru opened the door of his transport, lifted by a sound he knew would, in a short time, live only in the halls of his memory, and for just a moment, allowed himself the luxury of floating. “Cerulean, my son, you make a father proud.” Von meant what he said as his arms opened as wide as his smile. “Now help an old Hynerian secure his kit. There is much to say and so very little time to say it.”



One of the Brightest Stars from James Blunt's new album All the Lost Souls.

For better audio (and video) of the song-->>One of the Brightest Stars