The World Spins Madly On

When I was five or six — I can't say for certain how old — I watched a film (or perhaps an episode of the Twilight Zone) about a girl who would sleep for months at a time, waking on occasion and rising from bed as though only the night had passed.

And in this manner her whole life was a dream: entire days lost to sleep, with so few life experiences to mark her existence.

For years this film would haunt me, my earliest childhood fears circulating around cancer, nuclear war and — yes — sleeping my life away.

Whether rational or otherwise, the fact remains that these fears were very real to me — reason enough to remain awake at night, in fact, terrified that by the time I awoke, the world would have continued on to a brilliant pace without me.

And today, some years later, I tell you: that story was no work of fiction. And yet: as much as I strove to avoid such a fate, it appears to have fallen firmly and irresolutely upon my chest, the weight of it some mornings making it nearly impossible to breathe.

I feel it now — typing to the blanket "you" of this fiber optic universe — marveling only at how the magnetic force of this... nothing and everything... has gathered now into the pit of my stomach (the gravitational consequence of attempting to sit up, I think), leaving all other nooks, crannies and extremities to their own, hollow devices.

I am awake now and yet: still asleep. Love and lifetime lost to a nightmare that knows no rest.

The Winter of My Discontent

Say what you will about the holidays: at this time of year, the good cheer of the season is invariably at odds with the general mood of the populace.

You hear it as the checkout lines at busy stores; you sense it when one shopping cart bumps into another, or two hands reach for a single, fashionable clearance item -- the last one in the right size.

There is this feeling, first and foremost, that *I* matter above all others. That only *I* am in a hurry, and only *I* need to get home to my family.

It would do the world of us some good, I think, to open our eyes a bit wider. To see the universe around us for what it is, to leave our egocentrism at home before we venture out onto the dangerously unsalted sidewalks and crowded streets.

The hustle and bustle of this season is most assuredly that: and there is no denying a permeating sort of... sadness... in that space between the lines. The girl walking alone, eyes down, with smiling couples on both sides. The paraplegic in a wheelchair unable to navigate any limbs between the aisles, relying instead on the cold hands of a relative.

The mother yelling at her daughter. The kids telling their father that what they really need is...

Oh, let's be honest. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what you think you need because more often than not: you don't.

Not the iPod or the GPS. Not the digital camera or the diamond earrings. Not the epileptic Elmo or Butterscotch the Pony.

These things may distract us, I suppose, from what really ails us. We're stuffing possessions in-between the gaps in our lives, filling our shopping carts with stuff enough to compensate for what we can't find elsewhere.

A meaningful solution to the curse of our existence, a sort of cosmic comeuppance that haunts us from the cradle:

Fears of death, and loneliness, in a world where everyone dies and no one entirely escapes the latter.

But the fact remains that if you allow yourself to give into these fears, you'll spend a lifetime counting the lines on your own face, tracing the ever-changing path with a limp in your voice and a stutter to your step.

So you do what you can to distract yourself. You start your family and celebrate your Holy Days and line your fence with all the colors of the rainbow, too often forgetting that all around you are people very much so stuck in the same trap, the same dilemma, the same existential quandry.

But surely it occurs to you, from time to time, that you are not alone. That the world is full of people caught in varying degrees of happiness, and suffering, and sometimes it's up to you to make their day a little better: to smile when you want to look away. To put a dollar into the cup when your instinct is to ignore that unquestionable jingle of change.

It will come back to you some day, most certainly, when you need -- or fear it -- most.

***
Along with sundry other changes in my life, this Christmas will mark the last day I see my brother for a good while, and I think -- in a way -- I'm attempting to mask whatever it is I feel (or don't) with more gifts than I (or my banking account) can stand.

Intoxicated as I am by this same spirit, I am trying, with all my might, to not give in to the topical depression of this season. I have my Charlie Brown tree up.

And my stockings are hung with care.

And I think, maybe, this December will end more quickly than the long, slow drawl with which it began.

I want somehow to stop it. For the New Year to never come.

***

At work they're having a cube decorating contest; some are designing theirs as a ginerbread house. Others Santa's workshop.

Mine, if I muster the energy, will look a little like the decor I've established at home (see photos above).

I'll give you one guess as to what I'm calling it.

Pushed (To the Periphery)

The start of every day is eerily similar to the last.

My alarm goes off with grand intentions, and I hit the snooze every 9 minutes for an hour or so until I have no choice but to crawl out of bed and let the day begin.

And yet: in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that in terms of restful sleep... there's hardly any difference between one day and the last.

What varies, though, is the "or so" referenced above. The amount of time I snooze, which thus determines how quickly I need to scramble to get ready for work... and thus the hour at which I hop into my car and begin my commute.

And this, in turn, can result in a small but significant change in the rest of my day.

You see, though my morning schedule varies as much as 40 minutes on any given day, the world around me seems to keep pace with a far more reliable clock.

If I leave on time, my neighborhood is all but silent. If I leave a few minutes late, parents are dropping off children at a nearby school, their vehicles sometimes blocking me in. After that, a group of kids have gathered outside of school, waiting for a bus to arrive and take them elsewhere.

And if I leave later than that, a guy in an overcoat sometimes nods a hello as he rounds the corner and makes his way to the train (or so I imagine his path leads).

The people out walking their dogs change. The joggers change, everyone keeping rhythm to a clock that seems somehow to defy me.

And so begins my day.

***But there's this boy.

There's this boy, and whenever I see him my day belongs to someone else — to him — and I fear that he may never see. ***The first time I saw him, he was walking down the sidewalk alone, pale white legs scrawny in spite of the overstuffed book bag that had him hunched at the shoulders.

He kept his eyes down; whether because of the world weighing on his mind — or the pounds of books in his pack — I couldn't immediately determine.

In any event, he kept walking on to school, eyes down. Shoulders hunched. And always on his face there was that indiscernible look of a child going to a place they'd rather not.

He approached the swarm of classmates that had beat him to school. They talked to each other over and around him, his arrival met with no "hello's" or "how are you's."

No one even looked at him. ***I've seen him a few times since then, and always it's the same thing: whether I see him approaching school, or he's already there amongst them, or he's just walking up...

It's the same overstuffed backpack. The same gait. And always — always! — that same, heartbreaking look upon his face. ***Today, I am sorry to report, was no different.

Except for this:

A mountain of leaves had been swept into a pile along the sidewalk, no doubt in preparation for the crews making their rounds around the city. Kids were laughing and kicking at the pile, imitating the act of jumping into them. Leaves were breaking loose from the pile, scattering despite some laborers hard work.

And there, feet upon feet away from his classmates, was the boy.

Standing in the street, between two parked cars. His back turned to the excitement, his face tilted up just enough for me to realize, for the first time, that he has a faint hint of freckles.

He's waiting for the day to be over, I thought. He's waiting for it to be over, and it hasn't even begun.

He scarcely moved as cars buzzed past. Scarcely moved and yet: it was much to my relief that he didn't. I was half-afraid he'd take one step forward — whether by intention or oversight — whenever a vehicle approached. ***He's a clean kid with simple (but otherwise good) looks. A little on the thin side, but not unhealthily so. And though his clothes aren't exactly the cutting edge of fashion, it's easy enough to discern that someone at home is taking decent care of him.

But why, then, does no one see him? Why is his backpack so full, when the others scarcely have a notebook to their name? And why, for the love of God, does no one talk to him?

I wonder if his parents talk to him. I wonder if his teachers talk to him. And I wonder what's better: endless taunting by schoolyard bullies, or finding yourself surrounded by names and faces and voices that refuse — always — to acknowledge you exist. ***Despite my hermetic and anti-social tendencies (coupled with my class clown persona), I was lucky enough to always have friends. To never really be the subject of scarring ridicule (siblings notwithstanding), even as I shrunk away from the crowd and retreated to my books.

And yet: whenever I see this boy, I cannot help but think it should come as no surprise that I most identify with him.

That of the hoards of kids that regularly gather there, his is the only face I remember.

The Next Gasp

Now for a limited time, you can see the Louvre (or a reasonable facsimile) without updating your passport.

And so people came in by the bus loads Saturday, filling the parking lot and cramming into the entryway to purchase their tickets for this special exhibit.

But it was too nice a day to spend indoors, if you ask me. Never mind that I hadn't been to this particular museum in nearly a decade — and never mind it's not often I make it back "that way" — try as I might, I just couldn't bring myself to walk through those big glass doors for anything other than the occasional restroom break (in which case: thank goodness for free public art).

You see, the Indianapolis Museum of Art has a rather impressive general collection — particularly relative to the size of the city — but it also has one sizable advantage over most other art museums: it isn't landlocked by concrete.

So not only is general admission free, but the surrounding gardens are free for the traipsing. And so: rather than find myself alone among a sea of faces inspecting ancient Roman art... I kept to the trails, where I was (quite literally) alone with my thoughts.

***For 90 minutes, there was no one but me. No one but me and, for a brief 30 second encounter, an old man who shuffled his feet to walk. We smiled at each other: he as he exited the greenhouse, and me as I stooped down to photograph random wildflowers (forgive me, I don't know the names of most things).

We walked onward to our respective destinations: that proverbial nowhere and everywhere, just... wandering... hoping (or so I imagined) our random paths might lead to whatever it was we were looking for.

And I did find something out there that day: things I'd forgotten about. The sound of my footsteps crunching over leaves and through pebbles. The smell of an autumn breeze jaunting around the bend. The chattering squirrels and the occasional shout of a child somewhere far off in the distance: ("Look, Mom! A waterfall!").

It is funny how these sounds sometimes echo, rousing us out of that proverbial lethargy as quickly as they return us to it. Waking and sleeping, waking and sleeping...

You keep walking; thinking. You shake your head so as to work loose the toxins, but find yourself stumbling upon the same thoughts and images time and again.

You bend down to pick up a red leaf, its chlorophyll restricted to the ravine along its veins. You spin it stem-first between your thumb and your index, drinking in the smell of it before you return it to the ground (but this time: a little off the path, so no one steps on it) and move onward, as before.

Just walking. And thinking. And kicking dust up with your shoes, filling the air with fog and your lungs with the painful anticipation of your next breath, which you fear — somehow — may never come.

On Missing

Off and on for several months, and then non-stop for the past two, Maude has been entertaining a guest cat.

Now you may recall she started off chasing him out of his own litter box, growling whenever he'd dare to sit in her favorite chair, or hiss when he'd sniff her, uh, "region."

But after awhile there was a sort of playfulness about their interaction. They didn't cuddle or clean each other, but they'd take off after one other down the hallway, sometimes often well into the night. At first I thought they were fighting -- thought Maude was being cruel again.

But then I realized sometimes he was chasing Maude. And sometimes he'd take off running while she was sitting and licking her own paws, causing her to pounce up and make way for him.

And sometimes when he'd be up in that aforementioned chair, tail wagging just inches from her face, she'd paw at it as though it were a toy mouse scotting along the hardwood floor.

But as of yesterday, he's gone.

And since they never cuddled, or preened, I never would've thought she'd miss him.

But she spent much of yesterday walking around my apartment, peeking into corners, and meowing this pathetic little cry.

At various intervals she'd return to me in my chair, meow, and then resume her search.

Is she sad? Lonely? Confused?

I'm starting to think it was cruel, honestly, to have made them part.

Tempus Fugit

Last night while jogging I wandered upon an older man, leaning onto a fence post for support.

He had a plastic bag in one hand but was using both to steady himself, completely motionless as I ran past.

Motionless, that is, except for his eyes.

His eyes looked up at me, their bright blue making contact with my blue-green (I looked over at him, concerned that perhaps something was wrong).

But I kept running all the same, making my way further and further from the lake until midway down the block I stopped. Turned.

And saw that he still hadn't moved.

So I made out that I was tired, and needed a break. Walked to a nearby newspaper stand and read the headlines, wondering if I should go back and ask him that age-old (no pun intended) question that could easily offend anyone with silver hair and an arched back.

"Are you all right?"

I ran over various permutations in my head, trying to determine the most inconspicuous way to determine whether or not I was, in fact, OK to continue on.

All the while hoping, of course, that he'd show some sign of life — even if only by changing that blank, terrified expression upon his face.

But, still, he didn't move.

So I walked back to him, relieved when he shuffled his feet — first his left, and then his right — and eased his right hand along the metal post.

He was walking again, ever so slowly.

And towards one of many nursing homes along the street. I go past many such "rehabilitative" centers on this route, in fact, and it's not entirely uncommon to see old women with walkers making their way to the lake front, or even men in their 40s to stare down at me — sometimes calling for my name, as they did last night — as I run past the neighborhood halfway house (the porch of which is encased in bars).

The one thing all of these people have in common — regardless of age, and regardless of gender or disability — is their solitude.

The people on the porch, for example, generally exist in groups. But they sit alone, never talking amongst themselves. Just shouting random words at passersby, or nodding quietly to the voice in their head.

And then there was this man, too, probably in his late 70s or early 80s. Either exhausted or disoriented or both, but trying nevertheless to make a go at things. I wondered if perhaps making it all the way to the corner might have been a tremendous feat, and part of me was ashamed to have even stopped — out of fear that he may have noticed my hesitation to continue on, and understood why.

I didn't want to embarrass him.

I imagined that once upon a time he may have been married. Happy, virile and strong. Successful in his career (was he a laborer? a writer? a poet? did he have a desk job?). And above all other things: proud.

As I resumed my jog, and pushed play on my iPod, and those melancholy tunes filtered in, I saw this old man become decades younger. Saw his hair turn from silver to black; saw him stand straight up and join me, jogging along busy city streets.

And then, as suddenly as the whole thing began,

He was old again. And I was, too, my knees stiff and my hair gray. I couldn't move and my lungs ached to breathe.

And cars were zooming all around me. People were laughing and shouting and crying and swirling and I couldn't hear myself think. I didn't know where I was, and all I needed — dear God, all I need — is to understand where I was going. Where I belong.

I was scared, and confused, and above all other things:

Alone.

Of Fiction & Reality

Everyone who reads does so for a reason.

Whether it's to learn, to understand, to research... or even to escape.

And I admit now that I've spent most of my adult life reading to fulfill the first three categories. And yet, though, on rare occasions I find something that truly allows me to escape.

One such book was released this past weekend. And though, yes, it's a "children's" tale, there's something to be said for the pleasure I derive from reading it. I truly look forward to it, and can scarcely pull it away from my eyes, even to work.

And so, yes, I admit: I've been reading it on lunch breaks. I've been reading it at the gym. I've been reading it before I drift off to sleep.

But before you judge me, remember this:

I become so engrossed in the text — so busy transforming words into images and allowing myself to be that proverbial fly-on-the-wall — that I can hardly turn the pages fast enough. And so when lunch is over and I walk away from the book, I sometimes have a difficult time adjusting to the stark contrast between the two.

I am leaving, for lack of a better comparison, a high drama world of witches and wizards, slowly reacquainting myself with a reality I'd prefer, quite honestly, to not acknowledge:

Loved ones suffering without the insurance to cover them. Families torn apart by custody papers. Wars with daily death tolls spread across the news. Brothers who aspire to join them.

And always, still, those broken sirens that wail over and around skyscrapers like an injured T-Rex.

For brief moments in the day — those moments when I steal away into another world — I think less of these things. I escape, quite literally, and I'm not the least bit ashamed for it (though my explanations surely have you thinking otherwise).

Now here's the thing:

Sometimes we cannot escape. Sometimes life presents us with experiences that no words, fictional or otherwise, can soothe. The spell is broken and — despite our best efforts — we read the same words (the same sentences) over and over, unable to comprehend even the simplest passage. It is during these times that our stomachs burn with a sort of anxiety (like now) that knows no language.

You try to read. To escape.

Only to realize that you cannot — for the life of you — turn the page.

On Distance

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. ~T.S. Eliot

---

The distance between two points — any two points — is interminable. In which case, Zeno was at least half correct.

Imagine, if you will, two objects located at coordinates immediately next to each other, separated only by the tiniest fraction of space.

At first glance, these points are a negligible distance apart; infinitesimal, even. But if the objects at these points — people, for example — proceed in opposite directions, running into a variety of attractions and distractions along the way, it may be an eternity before they meet again. But an eternity, by definition, is endless. And so essentially synonymous with never.

But it's possible, right? It's possible for these two objects to continue on in a straight line, never straying from their "Y" coordinates, for example, and at some point in time, to meet again head on, collapsing into one other?

It's like using Mapquest to find the shortest distance between you and your destination, and then doing the exact opposite of what you're told. For example: traveling east until you arrive, when a drive five miles west would've taken you there in minutes.

It's a wonder — a miracle, really — that we should ever really arrive anywhere.

In other words: even when we appear to be near something (someone), in nearly all respects we're actually quite far apart.

It is for this reason that — even among crowds, even among family and friends — that we can sit beside another living, breathing object and feel so entirely distant.

So alone.