810. black coffee

Papa sat the deck, steaming black coffee in a white porcelain cup. He drank and breathed in what appeared to be one motion, his chest rising and receding in step with the gentle waves reflected in his steel blue eyes. Our house faced north. The back deck oversaw the sweep of ocean south. Sometimes I would join him in these early hours, two half-moons taking watch. He would smile and I would sit church quiet with my coffee milk and dangle my slippers above wooden planks laid with his calloused sweat.

We never talked beyond a simple good morning and the mandatory nodding of heads. As if the words could only be released at the proper angle. Walking was for talking he would say. But I could never quiet my mind and what from the outside seemed peaceful was, for me, a deafening emptiness. Somewhere out there was a another man. But what he loved was not me. And no amount of sitting was going to change that.

808. into the nether regions

She waited at a table in the corner, alone. The contact was late. On the table, her slate glowed. A small red light illuminating her pale face. Her metallic hair aglitter. Rising, the red orb began to pulse, slow and steady in the way of breath in sleep. It felt this way, this slipping into the nether regions of consciousness, that place between wake and dream. As if one could walk between realms. And wasn’t it this way, of dying in pieces, of living with what could never be changed, of holding what could never be altered. Heavy as stone memory. So hard. To live this way. Shoulders always tired. Advice so unwelcome. For how does one leave behind the heart of identity? How does one deny the self? How does one disown the very narrative that is you?

Looking at her watch, all about glowed. A low hum of conversation, inebriated laughter, drooping eyes, clinking glass. The pulsing grew more violent. Wasn’t hard to imagine Bravo’s engines firing to life, of the crew preparing to disembark. Thoughts of Rog boiled in the gut. Visceral. This sense of being left. It was, she thought, her earliest emotional memory. Visions of her sister walking ahead, hand held by father. Her mother rushing to fill the void. Seeing her own solitary reflection in those quivering eyes, her dress dirty, hair disheveled, her mother’s hand reaching for what had already been lost. Still, no matter the number, no matter the direction, fortune or fame, that pull to the darkness remained. Woven in her very fabric. As much her as her hand. With a strength she couldn’t comprehend. Nothing but image and pain, hand in hand, of the two of them walking, neither looking back.

The waitress came, asked for her order. When she turned back, the red orb was gone. Her stomach settled on the thought, as if lead. Hollow, heavy, leaking poison slowly. Then he came. The transaction just a blur. Her vial again faithful. Removing the seal, she took a breath. Pain smiled. There would be no more hurt. No more leaving. No more anything.

_________

Kyra: Alert me as soon as Rog comes to.

Von: Will do.

Kyra: And Von.

Von: Yes?

Kyra: Thanks.

806. chatoyant eyes

T: When Yul stormed off did you have any idea what was going on?
K: I knew something wasn’t right, but my mind was preoccupied with Mairi and to a lesser extent John.
___________
Skeleton Chapter: This is where I simply tell you what happens as opposed to writing of it.
The relationship of Trev and Em, was to Yul, devastating. She saw that what they had, she did not. Unable to carry the weight of a moment that was of all moments, the sun to her long buried seed, she sought and found a supplier. Her vial, long empty, now full again. Only in this way could she cope, the pain released from her mind as the sweet serum entered her veins. On this night, she was a day out from resupply. To leave within the dusk was to leave her tether to life. To leave now, she thought, was death and pain. To stay she knew would be death too, but a sweet death, absent agony and anguish. What seemed a choice to everyone else was never volitional for her.
__________
Of what Rog saw:
She appeared as fire and hell, hypnotic chatoyant eyes singeing reason from my skull. Her breath, an updraft of wrath, contempt, of sun-licked anger, bellowed from parched lips. The wind of her tongue whipping my self-righteous indignation. My knees knew no brace. My arms hung impotent. Again her words came, jagged, raw, lacerating the flesh she had held so dear. I rose or so it felt for all seemed into, against, the air humid, heated, fierce as my very nostrils screamed and burned of her atmosphere. All was not as before. Facts came fast. She moved to a line once seen, now erased, snorted into the maelstrom. And I saw what I had never seen, the gutting, the spilling. She was of this, I was convinced, consumed. Just a wisp of what was.
__________
Yul, from her journal some weeks later:
It had been coming for some time. Or, perhaps it is more fair to say, what had been put in motion by birth, by fear and rejection, by a hatred I never understood, could never grasp or protect myself from, had been unleashed. Freed to wreck havoc. Fear reigning lawless. Memory violating me again and again; for who can protect you from what is inside? Who can hold what can’t be held, as invisible as the thought not thought, the word not spoken? So there is this falling, this pain so great, burning as only truth burns pure, that one seeks not salvation but surrender. I had found a supplier. Had told no one. In this way, I survived. The shipment coming tomorrow was my life, my protector, the love I knew I would never know. To leave without it was beyond my ability to imagine. It was as if asking Em to leave without Trev.
__________
T: So what did you do?
K: We left her.

804. you know what

We leave tonight, said Kyra.

Why tonight? Why not tomorrow morning? asked Yul.

It will make decompression easier.

Well, I don’t like it.

You know what Yul? I don’t give a rat’s arse what you like. We leave one hour past dusk. Say what you got to say. Do what you got to do. But we ain’t waiting on no one.

I call bullshite on that.

Chill, said Rog.

I just don’t see why.

Kyra looked at Mairi. You want to tell them why?

All eyes turned to Mairi. She began with an apology. Not everything she had told them about her and Dr X was true. And for reasons she would explain later, if they didn’t leave tonight, they might not be leaving at all.

Well frail me, said Yul, storming off.

Rog looked at the others with a shrug.

Rog! Turn and tuck or you won’t have nothing to turn and tuck.

Kyra turned to Von. Can you do something about that?

Nope.

Well, try, cause I ain’t got the time nor the patience. Oh, and Von?

Yes?

Tell John I need to see him.

801. the holding of hands

It wasn’t till we buried Grand that I noticed. I don’t even remember the day, but I was staring at his hand, his old veined paw, fingers naturally clawed. We weren’t doing anything. Only the sun sat with us on the back porch. Each of us lost in our own thoughts. Lost without the sound of plates and glasses from the kitchen. That song of union connecting the three of us. So we sat now, just Papa and I. We rocked. We watched the ocean. And I looked at his hand as if I was seeing it new, as one sees a lion in the wild or a person behind bars. From somewhere I heard a wind chime, of a breeze gently rolling sand over the nightly crab tracks, of how nothing stands still and of his hand now, alone, solitary, sedentary. His gaze was of something else, his eyes unreadable in their unblinking silence, and I wondered if he felt what I felt, had discovered what I knew now, or whether he had always known it, always known this day would come, a part of his life shared only with Grand, a world that only the two of them inhabited. A world seen by their smiles and hugs, and above all, by the holding of hands.

797. singular summers

Kyra notes a conversation she had with Von shortly before he died:


My summers are singular. How many is hard to tell, but I feel some inexplicable calling. Mainly in dreams. He’s been coming more often. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes just holding and it is clear, he is holding me as once I held him. I see peace on his face and his voice is melodious. Our conversations, however, remain just beyond. Couldn’t tell you a single thing said. But make no mistake, these are not just dreams. There is no fear. Just a womb-like warmness where sound is muffled and light diffuse.


I listened to Von into the morning. He spoke of many things remembered and many more not. The envelope had remained unopened, and although he never spoke of it, I sensed he never made peace with that decision. Instead, the child became his life. He held nothing back, pouring himself into that newborn vessel, fueled, I thought, by his own premature parting. I left behind a grandfather. But Von left a son. I would say I understood, but I never had a child, so I never patronized him. I think he appreciated the listening. As Papa would say, one can heal a soul with the ears in ways the tongue cannot. I can’t say Von was ever healed, but I’d like to think his pain was a little less. I miss him. I miss the dignity and poise, of how he carried his sorrow.

796. night at noon

Sometimes, he said, it is hard to remember the ground when you are flying. And when you are flying, everyone on the ground looks so very small. I swear the man said everything slant. I told him this. He smiled but didn’t say anything. So I told him again. I had stopped as we were walking the beach at Valla. I still remember his gray hair blowing with the sea breeze and his white tunic flapping against his broad chest when he turned. I remember too warm water rolling over my toes then back to sea, exhaling as I could not. My ears whistling like seashells held to the wind. He knew the language of my gestures, for he knelt and smiled and motioned. The slant beam is straighter than the straight one. This is what he said. Then he bounced me off his knee, held his arms out wide and said, We have all of this. No more talk.

Von nodded, his finger sawing his lower lip. His eyes looked like wells. My words a bucket, bringing forth into light what I always thought later should have been kept in the dark. I too had learned this language, the tone of a look, the typography of a cheek either rising or falling. I have regrets. Some of which I can’t explain. I just know I sat in my chair as he sat in his, neither of us moving, neither talking. I didn’t know of time then as I do now. I didn’t know of windows and how they open only briefly before forever closing. As Papa might have said, it is hard to know the night at noon.

795. dead as yesterday

ed note: this chapter takes place in the future from current events in the story--how far, I don't know

I said to Von that there comes a time when all that remains are fading memories. And in this barren landscape what roots is not the vine but rather a thicket of questions. He looked at me or maybe he was just looking in my direction, for I sensed whatever wheels were turning, they weren’t rolling my way. Then he spoke. What he said next I have forgotten. And this is the pain. You see, we buried Von yesterday. And all I can think is, he's dead. As dead as yesterday.

794. I'd like to believe . . .

I stood and watched from the bridge as Hyneria slipped away. Her dim light filling the observation deck as it filled our eyes. All were there, all leaden of foot and hunched of shoulder. There was shallow breathing and the quiet hum of Bravo. And one couldn’t help but think our coffin metal, these shiny walls of quarry and glass. To know the inside of one’s tomb, not with age and of purchase, but young, of within not as visit but swallowed whole, consumed alive by the infinite black soil of the universe. This is how I met the crew. Survivors bound by loss and weighed with grief.

My name is Kyra. I have passage because my grandfather was somebody, because he believed that I was too. These twin sacks I carry and the air I breathe is humid in memory of lesson and loss, of the dock and who was there and who was not. Of my family, I am the only survivor. I witnessed my sister die young in the arms of our benediction and ablution. The others, I can only pray imagination takes leave of me, of this sense of not knowing the last, not seeing the hand of peace close their eyes, a torment that knows no drowning. But I will say this, my parents died to me long before Hyneria consumed itself. I struggle to purge myself of the bitterness, the rejection they knowingly or not bestowed. And although it is not packed among our supplies, I can feel it as I feel the very leather upon my skin.

I suppose, as most, I am guided in this way, by what has occurred to me and of what is expected. I want to give what I did not have. I want a child. I want to know of warm blankets and of books read at night. But mostly, I want the tender kisses goodnight, of love exchanged in the first person, by choice, by presence. I want to look and be seen in the way of mother and child and I want to know of this giving of life beyond the giving of life. In a way, the child in me wants to be the parent. To know that in this interminable darkness, there is a light and to cup my hands around it, to protect it, to reflect in it. I would like to believe this is possible. I’d like to believe this is something.

793. blooded ghost

Imagined thoughts of Kyra as Bravo departs:


My life as I know it is dead. Everyone I knew, every place I visited, gone. How to write of this, or even speak of it. Words and emotions have never been close. Translation falls to hell and frustration burns beyond the fingers to soothe. Where we go from here seems pointless. I feel like the soldier who survives the massacre, standing amidst smoke and fire, surveying a landscape of death, of the hand of fate upon the entire company, save one, save myself. Some ghosts still walk with blood in their veins. I know. I am one of them.

788. not as now

In the woods lived a lady, known, it seemed, to Papa and I alone. We didn’t see her much in the summer when berries were plentiful, but in the winter, the path between her hut and Valla remained warm of our feet, the stones rubbed of snow, polished by our labors, through the wood, up the hill.

She lived alone. The food we brought, her only sustenance against the low sun and short days. She was about the same age as Papa and he had said they had known each other many years ago, for from the look in her eyes, she knew of no one any longer. Papa spoke of another time when what was tangled flowed over her shoulders like wine, and what was now yellowed in neglect, were as white as stars. She was then, he said, not as now.

When we walked that walk between the snow laden firs, and our hands strained with pot and pan, our backs with sacks of rice and grain, nut and berry, we did not speak. The sound of our labor, of breath neighing in the cold, of feet searching for traction, of backs silently aching of weight borne, this and this alone is the memory. Our prayer he said, although I suspected more in the way of penitence, for what was carried seemed more than necessary, more than vine and victual.

He said she had suffered. Her pain immeasurable. His advice sought. And given. Let go he had told her. Release judgment. Unattach from that which does not stop. Sit with the energy. Do not dam it or even try and direct it, but just sit, be.

So she did. Severed every relationship she had. Let everything she ever had go and walked into the woods. He spoke of it once and never more. But for as long as I can remember, every winter, we spoke with our feet. It was the only time I never saw him smile.

787. ecosystems

Everything you say matters. Each word a pebble in the cosmic lake. Each ripple lapping shore. The eye sees no change. But those few molecules washed from moor, taken from sun to shade, of root less rooted, of salamander quenched. They know. The universe is nothing if not a great accounting, endless pristine spreadsheets, forever calculating.

Don't believe me? Then run. Go. And when you can run no further, where are you?

You see Kyra, a thing cannot escape from itself. And there is only one thing. Only one universe.

_________

Von, you know what I could never reconcile? My parents. On the one hand, they understood this principle better than most. Their whole life was spent studying the minute changes of clime and climate and they knew the disastrous affects of even the smallest changes. And then, there was me. How could they not know of the ecosystem of me in their world? To see so clearly in one direction and be so blind in another. I think Papa spent his life trying to make amends, a father for the son, healing two in the act of one.

786. brush and canvas

On Papa's nightstand was a paintbrush, chestnut lacquered handle sprouting bristles never used. It was never not there as it was not ever used in the traditional way of oil and canvas. A reminder he had said. To know of the day as canvas and of our hand as brush; and too the night, that which started the day blank, would be of yellow or red or some combination thereof, always not blank, this creation creating, of life weaving as pen writing, as brush painting.

So each day began with sunrise, of light bringing color to life. This was the natural way of all things. Know it or not know it, what started blank would never finish blank. The halls of our life lined with the work of our hand, that brush, each day creating, touching, influencing light and dark, reacting or responding, holding or letting go.

When asked by Von of the brush upon her nightstand, ever present, she smiled and said, he lives within me still and not a day goes by I don't remember the brush of my grandfather upon my life. Then she paused before adding, and the brush of my own parents.

785. the universe is a lot older than you

Kyra: Papa, what do you want to do today?

Papa: Something new. Something different. Something I’ve never done before.

Kyra: Oooooh.

Papa: Our bodies grow old with time, but the mind is different. As long as we use it, challenge it, to our last breath, it will grow, expand, forever creating new neural pathways. It is, unlike the arm or leg, forever vibrant; but only as long as we water and sun the root and leaf.

_________

If there is a rhythm to the universe, you will know it not by effort, but the lack thereof. What is, is. Everything else, the unknown nightmare of illusion. And between the two, friction, pain. As one feels when holding desperately to a branch against the raging current. Let go, my dear one. Stop trying. The universe is a lot older than you. Trust it.

783. just walking

Papa: What would you like to do today?

Kyra: Take a walk on the beach.

Papa: I’d like that. Anything else?

Kyra: Nope. Just you and I.

________

Em: We’ve been walking for close to an hour now and you’ve not said a word. What’s up?

Trev: Nothing’s up.

Em: Really?

Trev: You know, sometimes, I don’t want words between us. I just want your hand, your smile and the quiet of the two of us, walking, slowly.

__________

Yul: Hey Rog, want to go for a walk?

Rog: What for?

Yul: What do you mean “what for?”

Rog: Well, where are we going?

Yul: For a walk.

Rog: I know that.

Yul: No, I don’t think you do.

779. attention

ed note: conversation between Kyra and Von, on the porch of the cottage

Papa used to take me into the woods at night. We didn’t camp. Just a long walk to a clearing where we would sit in total darkness and I would see his face only by the light of stars. Sometimes we would talk and his voice, as too mine, sounded so very different wrapped in that darkness, where the voice was for you and only you, where the only thing happening was union, connection, of one person to another. In that cocoon of night, wrapped in the heavy cloak of hushed fir, there was no multi-tasking. No talking while performing some other task. No clock of a to-do list ticking away the words. No eyes looking over your shoulder to the door or upon the desk to paper. In that place, there was just him and me, a grandfather and a granddaughter, talking.

The voice is different in that environment. Sacred. The way voice is in the great cathedrals. On some nights, of cloud, there were no stars and when Papa turned out the light, you could not see your hand in front of your face. So we sat without sight, as if with the switching off of the lamp, we had switched off our eyes, becoming blind as bats. The voice then becomes everything. The darkness is absolute. And the feeling is of sea, adrift on the great ocean. And that voice, his voice, was my tether, my belay--the words, his words, washing over me like warm waves and I floated on his stories, his lessons, his ability to paint with the tongue. Those nights, just the two of us, of attention so purely devoted of one to the other, were, then and now, as fingers in the soul, gently caressing, nourishing, healing.

As you know, Papa was one to show, not tell. Yet, on those nights, from the outside looking in, with sight taken by utter night, one would think all he had was tell. (Long pause)

But all the talking wasn’t telling, was it? asked Von.

No. The talking had nothing to do with talking. The stories told on those nights have faded, some forgotten. The lesson wasn’t in the words. It was in the act. Using the darkness to connect not person to person or grandparent to grandchild, but heart to heart and soul to soul. The power of that connection, of pure unadulterated attention paid and given, was as communion solemn, of grace bestowed, of love flowing as love can only flow as if when we sat, our two energies begin to flow, circular, from opposite directions. And at some point in the night, the circle connected and where there were two energies before, now, only one. I think he knew this. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. And you know what?

What?

It didn’t have a damn thing to do with what was said.

778. this idea of get

Into the night, long after the talking had stopped and Von had retired, Kyra rocked and her mind drifted from Trev and Em, to Papa, to Hyneria:

Where there is energy, there is motion, movement. Where there is life, too, nothing stands still. The sun rises, then sets. Rivers flow. Flowers bloom, give of themselves before fade and fall, from soil to soil, so they might say. So place your face to the sky and the warmth you feel is real. Likewise, your hand in the river or your nose to the petal. These things you can trust, this natural order of motion, of life rising and falling, living and dying, the eternal circle of infinite loop, innocent as the skipping child. In this we believe; in this we align. For in the action we find not fiction or imagination, device or design. And know this, Kyra, life wants to live, to flow, to express that which comes naturally, before there is thought, before there is want and need, lust and desire, greed and gluttony. These things are added upon. Do not be deceived. They are not part. Not life living but rather something added, like a barnacle to a ship.

This too, you must learn. Where there is effort, there is misalignment. The sun does not strive nor the river pant. With effort is friction for what fits, fits effortlessly and it is by this shadow of things that we know, by the ease and peace of fit that mirrors the ease and peace of dawn and dusk. Many will tell you otherwise. They will point to what can be achieved, constructed, built. Accumulated. Be wary. What does not move is not life. What does not move of natural ease is outside the eternal movement. You have the gift. Others will see it. But more important my dear one, you must see it. You must know it. And I say to you, you know it not by effort, not by accumulation. You know it by the unlabored flow. Release yourself into this stream. Swim with the current. Leave behind this idea of get.

777. feels good

Von: You see what I see?

Kyra: I do.

Von: Feels good doesn’t it.

Kyra: Feels like home. But yes, feels good.


Von and Kyra are sitting on the porch when Von brings up the subject of Trev and Em. She tells him about the night of the fireflies with Papa back on Valla, of how Love (with a capital L) is not an idea but an energy, something that exists beyond the mind while also in the mind. It is both within and without. No separation. As Papa might say, electrons don’t orbit without it. This Love has a heat signature. It becomes a force multiplier. The atmosphere takes on a charge. Cells reproduce as if in joy amplified, of life living as water flows and fish swim. When this Love is present, the air is perfumed with its drug. Even the most jaded quaff.

774. round the campfire

They sat the campfire for the longest time before Kyra spoke. Read to us Trev. Let us know not of word but of song. Standing with eyes but for Em, he opened his notebook and began to read. Those that were there said later, perhaps it was the night, perhaps the flicking fire upon his face, but as the words rolled forth, something changed and the Trevor they knew was from that moment, but memory.

from the notebook of Trev, a reading:


The house is quiet but for my thoughts. The sky, grey, and the feeling the same, the world colorless without her. I cannot explain this stark dichotomy. Sledgehammer blunt. All or nothing. Light or dark. And what pounds is a longing within my chest to hold and be held, to again luxuriate in her arms as in a warm bath, for that is how it feels, this peace, of a calmness such that comes after a storm, when the air is clean and crisp and the grass bejeweled of recent rain.

I want to walk in the light of her eyes and to know what it is to be looked upon as she looks, as salve and succor to my pains. And there too is reaching without asking, as two old trees our hands branch toward the other and fingers twine a firm warmth beyond my ability to explain. So I look, and perhaps think upon it too much, for I know it is not the holding or lacing or twining for no other hand would do what her hand does, would reach effortlessly into the heart's uncharted terrain and walk therein so freely, as if home, as if always home it was. No it is not the holding and this is why the eye seems so limited, for how to explain what is seen is not what is witnessed or experienced or known? The tongue seems lost, in retreat of a force known within and this, I say, is how it is, this audible click of a puzzle of two, fitting within as the view without.

How to say how one lives in the other, where thought is synchronized simultaneously and where two hearts beat but one is heard, where to separate is to take what is one and make it two and therein lies the pain as surely as there is pain in the breaking of souls grown together. And breathing changes, for how can it not when the life of one is the life of the other and where there is but one, nothing is as it was, nothing the same, a bleeding I would say, a bleeding out of hue, of color as if the very heart itself in protest or melancholy pumps less.

She is somewhere, this very moment. And her beauty is seen by eyes not my own, the lilt of her voice heard beyond my walls upon ears I know, know not the melody of joy I cannot live without. And I praise fate while cursing the same as every clock an enemy, every tick a reminder that the day once lived is lived never more. So I sigh or more so it seems, something within me sighs and I feel it, my soul. I feel it within me as I have never felt before. And this is where they come, these sighs. And they come like waves upon the thought, of a clock ticking, of her sight unseen, her touch unfelt, her whisper lost on the miles for even a stone's throw is too far as too the hour too short.

I am in the hands of something greater than myself. And there is life in me as if reborn to the world for that is how it is. Nothing looks the same, sounds the same, tastes the same. And all my years are but nothing against this tide of her and I feel as helpless as the shore to resist what is coming.

765. of tea and love

ed note: this chapter takes place at the cottage, late at night around a fire, everyone present save Mairi




As in all things of form and shape, there is a first and a last. Most live between the two, fearful of tasting either, content to be grey. But I tell you my dear Kyra, you are not destined for a grey life and as long as I have breath, you will not settle for a grey life, even if I have to breathe the hue of love into your very soul.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when he spoke. Grand was in bed, her days within the counting of fingers and there was Papa, making tea. But it wasn't the making of tea so much, which he did for her every day, but how. I can still see it clear, but not so much see it as to feel it. As I remember those mornings, I feel the sight as if light, his light, could penetrate my heart and soul, as if, again, he was teaching by showing, not telling. You see, he warmed the water not on the stove, but in his hands. I could see, as I did the night of the fireflies, the very heat of love. And when the tea was ready, I watched him place it on a tray and with steps not heard, carry it to her bed. She would sit up, pillow propped, and maybe it was just the imagination of a young girl, but when she took a sip, with him sitting by her side, and I don't know how to explain this, but there was a look between them, her eye to his, that I never saw outside of this daily ritual.