The Bellringer, 8-21-00

The scent of smoke said it was winter, the cool breeze said autumn, and the leaves rustling on the trees said summer. Nothing said it was spring.

I walked along the sidewalk, stepping over the cracks. I did not look at the moon.

People started and stared as I walked past. It wasn't in my clothes or my posture, but they could see it somewhere in the back of my eyes. One woman's face crumpled, like she wanted to reach out and take me in, so I closed out the world for a moment and saw nothing. Do not look at me. Do not look at the monster inside. Go on with your lives.

The world reappeared on the other side of the curb. White lines running parallel- a crosswalk. Surely white lines did not mean safety. Must I not step on these as well?

I laughed to think I once feared I had no feelings, no water. My joy at wading into the burbling creek dissolved as I stepped off the edge and the river closed over my head. How I wish I was shallow. The dream was like Blue Hole, but not so clear, and it did not dance with the laughter of children. A moulded thing given to whatever shape reality took, that place had no more will than I. And yet we differed.

A black feather drifted down to my surface. The wind ruffled gently across it. The feather reflected perfectly for a moment, utterly faithful to its form, before sliding down into the swallowing depths.

My laugh was not that of a moutain stream or chimes. It was the bemused croak of a crow that knows too much and has flown over the battlefields of the sun. One that flies in flocks merely for the amusement of strength against larger birds.

But I flew not in flocks.

My feet took me around a corner in the dusk; my body felt strange. I did not know if I was heavy or weak, but sometimes I couldn't carry myself. So I collapsed. Like I was playing the fiddle to keep the ghosts at bay, but my hands got too tired to hold down the frets, and thus I lost the pot of gold and my soul. One more ghost to wander the empty shell of the world.

But the bricks underneath me were real. They will never go away. Thank all the gods that they will never go away.

I wonder if I'm as gray and insubstantial as my inner life. I wonder if that's what people saw in my eyes. Not the pain of knowing it was once different, if only for a moment, but the reflection of their own fears of disappearing. To fade into nothingness so easy, to hold on to reality so impossible, not knowing what is real and what is an illusion.

Remember: illusions don't have cracks. If it has cracks, or tears, or stains, it must be real. So you have to step on the cracks to know. I live in the cracks, this can't be too hard. But I can't make myself do it.

I live in a different world now. I can still see it from the outside if I squint- I can see the puppet-masters and the futility of the 40-hour dance. I see humanity as mouths, gigantic worms to process dirt into dirt, to consume and produce waste that we can't handle, yet still to throw away whatever has been used even once, lest we be touched by it and declared unclean. Arrogantly, we leave the scraps for the new breed of untouchables.

The wild thing in me loves the smell of trash.

But I am not that distant observer any more. I am torn between the wilderness and a nice apartment in suburbia where my roommate watches old black and white social commentary comedies. How I want the monster to win!

It is that the monster is familiar. This new person is a stranger in my mind, a mirror that tells only half the truth at any given moment. Or perhaps it tells truths I don't want to see. The truth that I've been poured out, wasted, like the gift of Cassandra or a druggee with AIDS. Nobody wants me. Or maybe they do. But I don't want myself.

I never dream somebody says "I love you." It never occurs to me. I dream they let me stick around, don't mind if I drop by, even enjoy my company a bit. Little dreams, for the little person I have become. Little things take all my concentration: a phone call, the way the person I love removes her hand from mine, what I'm going to wear in the morning. Like most of humanity, for food and sex and something to keep me entertained, I'll sign over my freedom and take no responsibility, never taking my place among the members of the human race.

But it's not as if there is no hope. Just when I couldn't touch the cracks, I fell on the bricks. Like a blessing, full of cracks, and always there, baked with the sun's warmth even late into dusk. There will always be moments, like the deaf Beethovan conducting Ode to Joy, and the wind and the snapping of sails and the sparkle of the sun-bright water on the bay. The notes will play, even if I don't know the meaning. There will be no words for these things, and that will free me. The wild thing understands what is not said in words, as does this new person. And if the objectivist screams "I don't get it!", then she's a fool. And the two of us have secrets we can giggle over in the dark.

So nothing means what I thought it did. All the colors that I had labeled are really just themselves. The planets turn without me, and they don't know who I am or care if I Ascended a Pisces or a Taurus. The crows flock together and fight over scraps, and they don't care. Even the bricks don't care. God bless them all for not caring. All three of me can live with a world that doesn't care, a world that is predictable on that account. Objectively, it can be measured. The wild thing can fight without conscience. The new person can play like an Eloi out of time. And if sometimes late at night when I thought I was asleep, I hear a voice crying "That's not fair!", I'll croak my Raven laughter and tell her "You don't exist. Go back to sleep."

- Megan Morris, ©2000

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