Drawings

The glass is fogged over inside, rivulets of water pocking the outside. Your shaky hand reaches, finger outstretched, and places two small dots and an upwardly curved line in the fog finish. The face stares at you as jet air blows, increasingly warmer by the moment, across the matte surface from somewhere unseen.

Watching it closely, you balk as your masterpiece--your intention--begins to morph into something unrecognizable. The very touch of your finger had already caused streaks to form and smears to run with gravity's ceaseless insistence. And now... now your work is slowly fading; from the bottom up the lines begin to blur and the edges begin to soften.

Minor panic grabs hold as you take your original instrument, the quivering finger, and make a vain effort at retouching your vision. Gentle at first, so as not to disturb the prototypical incarnation; then more aggressively, with broader strokes and abandoned regard for the fine edges, as you realize your efforts aren't taking.

Your brain spins like a dreidel, the sides like flashing options and ideas, moving too quickly to focus upon. The unsteady hand, mere seconds ago hanging poised for action only a paper's breadth from your canvas, now rests in your lap still and steadied. The tangible creation, born of your very hand, continues with its show-stopper disappearing act that even the great Harry H could not hope to match.

Now... now the vision is gone. There is nothing to see but the backdrop of the world on the other side.
Acceptance of the attrition has not even set in, when the earthly scenery without begins to move; slowly at first, but ramping up to a blurring pace that you cannot fathom to make sense of.

You sit. Slumped, but tensely.
You stare. That soft vision, blurred and only tangentially recognizable.
You mull. Bemusedly.


One breath. One warm breath. One simple, warm, breath.

With precision placement a ghost of a shadow would return: a template to trace from.

More

There is inherently something magical about seeing the moon in the daytime sky; the pocked, soft-whitish orb with its oft-irregular edges, floating amidst the gentle blue backdrop. In my mind it adds a kind of depth to something that I've often taken for granted as flat, the end, the edge of what is.

But the truth is that there is more, and the moon is that in-my-face reminder, a celestial "to be continued," a hand breaching the surface of the water.

The way it waxes and wanes in visibility, with one day a full circle hovering overhead, another day just the edge of a ghostly silhouette hanging on unseen thread, and yet other days where there is nothing to be seen at all creates a foreshadowing of thought. Because it isn't seen, does that mean it isn't there; a quantum situation; Schroedinger's Moon?

No.
It's there.

Maybe it is sometimes concealed by an obtrusive mountainous horizon, or seen frequently with less than maximum opacity, or often visible as just a piece of what you know its true form is, but... It is there; somewhere.

The conclusion, though often cloudy, is a simple one:
 

               For wont of missing it, don't stop looking...

                               There is more than what you see.

Click

A single dim light shines down from overhead, casting a muted halo on the floor as it diffuses subtly to the rest of the room.

From that floor reaches a set of four legs up to the cushioned seat of a high, backless stool that has been situated slightly askew to the counter top.

The counter top is cold and veined, with speckles of geological debris reflecting bits of the sparse lighting; a small, dark puddle treading its surface, hungrily absorbing as many of those reflections as possible.

That dark puddle creates its own refractions as tiny ripples slide along the surface and ever so slightly expand the puddle's reach; each set of ripples catalyzed by the tumultuous splashdown of another droplet.

Viewed in high-zoom slow motion, the droplets' vast two-inch descent would be detailed by the traveling flare of illumination temporarily stolen from the overhead source, beginning from the first moment it stretched and swelled and reached itself away from the uncorked lip of the overturned bottle.

On its side lay the tinted glass bottle, its neck pointing toward some never possibility; unmoving and unchanging, a glint reflects, carrying yet another ray of light in yet another direction.

A single dim light shines down from overhead.

With a simple --click--
...
Lights out.

On the Edge

"Walking a tightrope" is a metaphor often employed to describe the feeling of being in such a precarious position as to believe a fall one way or the other is imminent--with a set of circumstances each, respective of which rope-side the plummet occurs. Another way people describe this, perhaps with a finer point, is to say that they are on the "razor's edge."

Close your eyes. Combine the imagery from the two cliches. You might see a humorous scene play out where a man is treading the fine point of the edge of a massive razor, while holding a long balancing pole and subtly swaying back and forth; a life-long sea captain newly relegated to the land. But this scene is savage in the way it truly lacks in humor for those aboard that edge.

The abysses to either side of the edge have each their respective matrices of consequences, actions, decisions, paths, etc. To one side may be option A, to the other option B. The chasm to the left might be a yes, while a chasmic no stretches to the right. An I should; an I shouldn't. A helplessness; a hope. Trusts; doubts. The discrepancies between these is such a fine line, it often becomes desirous to rewind the words and actions that've made this perch list about: to and fro, up and down, this way and that.

Regrets become the mechanism of jostled footing. 

Were it yourself, you would likely think, "If I can just make to the end of this edge, I'll be safe." But does anyone ever make it across that tender trail? Focus is piled upon focus to progressively tread ahead and what lies to each side encompasses all consideration; to the fault of ignoring the most dangerous outcome of all.

So--

Should you find yourself with balancing pole in hand, gingerly toeing down a razor's edge, seeping anxiety over tumbling from your perch toward one of the yawning darknesses to either side, remember the very nature of a razor:

There is another--often unspoken--way out...

You stumble and the razor cuts you through.

Hope

I had hoped you would say, “Yes.”

Had hoped you would say, “Please.”

Hoped you would say, “Don’t.”

You would say, “Stay.”

Would say, “Here.”

Say, “Goodnight.”

I had hoped you would say... something.

I hope I can survive silence.

----------------------------------------------------

"The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart."

-Dean Koontz, "Sieze the Night"

Walls

The whitewashed companions surround the room, rising from floor to ceiling, mostly unadorned save for a glossy frame here, or a dusty candelabra there. Events happen here, in this room, with these stalwart companions; conversations, musings, tears, silences, songs. They remember these things, and if you look and listen closely it might just be possible to hear words once said playback, or to see times once spent rewind.

The walls have eyes, you see?

Extrinsic eyes like portholes to the outside world; a thumbnail clip of things possibly missed as moments speed along without the room. Though like our own eyes, windows can be shuttered to block out what we don’t want to see, or others to see in us.

In an aggravatedly anthropomorphistic vein, inward eyes watch the private moments of the room, each catalogued with a respectively appropriate representation: a smile, a sagging head, a dance step, a tear falling. These eyes are unshuttered; they see and let us be seen.

The walls have ears, too.

Who among us is not guilty of conversation amidst the lack of sentient company? Perhaps a troublesome project required the oration of thoughts in order to find a way through. Maybe the day’s petulance caught up and was turned back with a private monologue. Whatever it may be, where did those words, whether spoken in love or discord, go off to? Did they just cease to exist the moment the sound waves had dissipated? Tell that to a historian.

What if those omnipresent companions heard and made invisible records of each precious word spent in their presence? They’re always there; they’re always willing to listen.

The walls have a mouth, if you bear with me.

I’ve shouted before: in public, in private, where others could hear, or where no soul could hear. But I’ve never felt so heard as when the paint and plaster respond. Try it some time, call it a bucket list thing: source a clear space, with a listener’s mind, and just talk. If you pay careful attention, the walls will reply immediately. Oh sure, it’s a fair bit like a well-trained parrot speaking, but have you considered that maybe, in some way, your voice was heard and understood and sympathized with in that faint echo?

So why do we identify rooms lacking in people as “empty?” Every single one of them has the ability to see you and to let you see. Each the prowess to hear you out. Each the compassion to acknowledge you in your moment.

I posit a simple answer, a hypothesis—with theory potential—as to the solitude of the empty rooms:

The walls do not have arms.