Effacement

I try to pull myself out of the silence. My words from years ago are rediscovered, they are the mutterings of a being from another planet. One bursting with ideas, opinions, arguments. Was I ever him? Is that person dead now?

The music plays with a cliche, holds it in its hands, turns it, examines it, then lets go. The intensity builds, sound pushes us forward, towards the edge of volume, limitless, pure streams of sound building over the rocks, building, building, building, and then…punch to the stomach. Gravity returns, the waves are calm again. I put my feet in the water, feel the sediment beneath my toes. Look out at the horizon and wonder how far it is to the other shore. What people are now lost out at sea, surrounded by gray waves lapping against the stern?

Last night I dreamed that I was going back to college. The bus taking me there was a roller-coaster; from the peak I could see the buildings on the horizon below. It wasn’t a city I recognized. Someone said it was Boston. Then Atlanta. Then Baltimore. I switched buses, fretted over the absences I was piling up. Life contracted, narrowed into one clear path. The architecture of highways became the architecture of hospitals. I waited for the helicopter to take me to the roof of the medical center, to bring me into surgery, where my brain would be carved open like a yellow watermelon.

My dreams are always about the past.

The pounding of a drum, the gentle plucking of strings, announce new directions. Electronic feedback occupies the lower depths, the crackling foundation of life. Being is clear again: there is only this moment. But hurry, the ink is already drying.