the Seabury Towndance

小山
 Contents

I. Detachment
II. Biology
III. Infirsolatium
IV. Metametaphor

V. Interlude
❖ Until a Waning Sun
❖ Honeymoon Days
❖ Deux
❖ Seabury Towndance
❖ Yarn
❖ Green Fable
❖ The Terrain

VI. Maisie’s Congruence

VII. Haunting
VIII. Duplicity
IX. Boredom
X. Intimacy v. Isolation
XI. States of Mind & Their Time
XII. Of Law, In Hope
XIII. The Redundancy of Multiplication Tables
XIV. Genetic Commandments
XV. Always, Never
XVI. Aphrodite’s Riverbend (Int. II)
XVII. Do Not Frighten Thee (Int. II)
XVIII. A Tethered Company (Int. II)
XIX. And He, A Captain (Int. II)
XX. The Brother (Int. II)
XXI. The Gale (Int. II)
XXII. The Seabury Towndance
XXIII. Afterword

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Chapter I.

Something incredible exists between mild nihilism and overzealous faith, and it is…

A happenstantial epiphany:

What am I doing here? Here, with my life; here, with my friend catching up on how they’re
doing; here, making such an impulsive decision that I am convinced will change the course of
the country’s economic progress (maybe they’re the President. Not that I have the authority to
know.)

Certain variations of a person will answer frighteningly differently: some will consider this
within a figurative light and others, well, might detail the contents of their lunch. (maybe they’re
in culinary school.)

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to ask in the form,

(on several scales) what are you doing with your life?

On the scale of your peers, where are they? One is pursuing a doctorate at University, and the
other is struggling to make ends meet, working 9:5 at a job he hates and a night shift where he
feels the constant threat of an irreversible plunge into bankruptcy (likely student debt). What are
they holding onto, if anything, and are those things different? The graduate might in fact feel
constrained to a certain image he has attached himself to--- ironically becoming less content with
his situation than the night shifter, who will learn the comforts of an ambiguous destination.

On the scale of the galactic neighborhood, we may compare ourselves more as equals.
Everyone’s just as significant as the other, if the nihilist doesn’t correct me and call everyone
insignificant. Jupiter’s got quite the larger title to God than a broken heart or cancer patient.

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And we find pain in permanence, so what is there to hold onto that does not simultaneously
promise imminent despair?

Should we, then, let go of all that we consider holds personal sentiment, or should we simply
accept that there is no morale behind the balance of misfortune and prosperity? That, despite a
person’s pining for unfairness, they ultimately cannot determine fortune from misfortune because
there is no morale in the first place?

The latter is most commonly demonstrated by those who love too eagerly--- the price of intimacy
is the great risk that the object of their love will depart in brusque equivalence. Those who weigh
passion heavier than the safety of inexperience tend to suffer a great deal more; on the other
hand, those apathetic to the indulgence of connective depth, between people, pets, hobbies, art,
and all that brings enjoyment; they will be spared at the price of naivety. Indeed the argument
brings forth the worst in us--- we become divided, labeled; the passionate become impulsive and
too easily attached; the indifferent become cold-hearted and robotic.

Take for instance:

Maisie was--- is--- conventionally beautiful. The convention itself might have developed over
years and years of seeking rarity in a sea of commonness, or symmetry in a forest of chaos. And
alongside the attainment of soon-to-be diamonds in the rough, quivers an embarrassed and
uncanny byproduct--- attachment. Not just any attachment, however; the image of Maisie’s rarity
compels one to believe that not one other thing can compare to the value of this beauty, making
her inevitable fleet to the heavens so much more of a cataclysm than another. Realistically this
affects only the one who has given sentimental value to the attached, but had these conventions
not existed, would beauty be such an issue, and have such a vain chokehold on the masses?

Once conventions (hypothetically) have changed, and Maisie is no longer considered a gem, but
rather, unpolished, standard, common, plebeian; once Maisie is unconventional, what happens to
her coveted image? And thus, the attachment that brings tragedy in its departure? She might
happen to find herself freed, almost boundless to the possibilities: because unconventional
beauty might not be sought after as vigorously, she’ll need not to appeal to the escalating
standards that conventional beauty sets; she’ll not need to maintain the appearance as a proper
lady just because she looks the part; she’ll need not to pretend to appreciate the unspokenly
woven expectations into a conventionally beautiful person’s identity, to also display the qualities
that must seem to match them, which just so happen to adapt to the ridiculously volatile opinions
of those who determine such conventions…

So we might have freedom, in a lack of permanent attachment, and solace, in the embracing of
ephemerality.

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Where else, in attachment, could we detach from convention?

It is conventional to mourn a lover.

Maisie had a lover:

She knew there was no mistaking the sallowness of his jaw, nor the invisible clock collecting
interest in the form of his rawing skin tone, nor the stirring presence of unearthly requisition; the
rival of heaven itself, the Reaper… but the odds would argue, that it was no use in expressing
lamentation for the inevitable.
What were once mirthful songs of life now rang lugubrious through the cathedral of his
becoming corpse; filth-ladened fingernails were once finely maintained, as the spectacle of a
world-renowned prodigy; a vacant stare, withdrawn from reality, once retained the intensive
gleam belonging to only the finest of cavaliers.
He once smelled of rosemary, wooded thickets and a coal furnace at the end of its line. A homely
presence, and for many, a father to the lost traveler. Seldom would you catch the man without his
long, dramatic petticoat, even if it was several too many degrees above autumn. That would be
like catching bigfoot in broad daylight! and a sight for sleepy eyes, might she have said, with a
woeful gleam in her eyes.
In a life not so vile and cruel, she insisted, as one that rushes the detested illusion of her lover’s
canopy bed, lying several feet into the earth’s surface; to where a child is forced to sleep when he
is not drowsy in any manner.

There’s a certain beauty to indecisiveness; a tragic beauty, no doubt. The essence of what is,
what could be, what could have been, doomed to determination by a hand that does not know---
or perhaps care to know--- its own will. Should we be decisive in mourning, we will know the
pits of regret without wavering. And vice versa. Indecisiveness, perhaps seeming cold, saves a
person from their troubles…
Perhaps, though, the label of being indecisive is cold itself, versus the concept; indecisiveness in
this context is likened to the accepting of a volatile and never permanent world, wrapping back
around to the idea that conventions, like decisive permanence, brings forth without fail, sorrow
with its short-lived indulgences.
Humans live a short half-life that they can choose to attach value to, or appreciate in a
speculative manner, the beauty of an eruptive, impulsive, and cruel line of fate.

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Chapter II.

It appears that lovestruck scientists and I are much more like minded than I initially understood.
What a sick, distracted scientist, and who was he to claim such a fact;

How ever would biology be romantic?

Likened to the looming uncertainties of love, our very nature, our passion for discovery, to fail
and to adapt, to grow and to surmount the allegedly insurmountable, the face of experimentation,
and the foolish envy of an inevitable, glorious joy of achievement that follows, must prevail over
the odds; the fears of holistic blindness, the massive scale to which molecules bond within that
are not really molecules but us--- we are, in whole part, a gestalt love story between unknown
sciences and undiscovered laws that the entirety of the universe rests upon; the universe tends to
contemplate, indeed ironically, its own existence as often as the mindless ants that reside in the
anthill called Earth; the irony of atoms, free of conscious choice, making the conscious decisions
to encourage the brute inclemency of a hurricane; the beauty of the celestial orchestra writing
across a winter night its dying symphonies of what could be and what could have been…

Biology, in its own absence, would take along its escapade the very foundations of language: the
languages of music, of art, of creation, of religion, the language of hypotheticality and unrequited
emotion; the language of depth and intrapersonal dimension, leaving mankind only the robbery
of its own evidence to existence; these are the celebratory byproducts of mankind--- the romantic
mankind--- these are connective gifts that wield both weaponry and yield great protection…

In essence, biology mothers the sons and the daughters of countless subdivisive fields; its
articulate parenting, fostering of mistakes and resulting competence, as siblings in the family of
discovery… Biology is romantic, brimming with harmony simultaneously at several varying
levels of complexity--- from the harmony of a crestfallen adolescence, where another waits to
console just beyond the release of the painfully alluring past, to the harmony of the Milky Way,

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soothing those that worry far too much through the bestowment of unexpectedly assuring
pessimism, to the harmony of both the abstract and the absolute, all without clear
announcement…
Biology is romantic, at every level marrying polar opposites to balance conjugate matters…
A necessary, timeless romance.

And here, in the silent sound of dormance, does romance ever appear so brightly:

A distraught telephone booth and the year does not matter, but we acknowledge as the early
nineties,

A frustrated gust of monsoon wind, and the season does not matter, but we marry both December
and 1992,

An archaic cigarette, bankrupt of smoky escape or any sultry euphoria it used to give you, but its
ugly construction--- a euphemistic makeup palette with nitrogenous reds, hydrogenous rose,
carbonic neutrals--- addicting no man that can resist, which fairly amounts to each man, to the
smoky eyes drawn by mother biology on her romantic daughter, under and only under the
settings that it is December in 1992, and the tender soul-search for a release from an unloved
reality overtakes the molecular, human, and universal level…

But dormant is each of their pursuit, and silent are any romantic proclamations.

What is louder, is the blood diluted with toxins, apparent in the rosy cheeks of a drunken
observer, an admirer; the chemical scent of distant passerby whose cologne details December for
the rest of another’s life but never a concrete connection; the anticipatory static waves at the end
of what used to be a lifeline; the appetite of the skies growling for the sun to return from its
nocturnal hibernation…

But those waiting eagerly for the solstice, the climactic emblem of a daring spirit; the pinnacle of
every terrifying dream but no nightmare; those impossibly patient, bound merely by the ribbon
of happenstance, collect their revered gold doubloons…

Despite these distinctions we conjointly face the very same, very ultimate end, so why would we
distinguish ourselves as dormant from daring in the first place?

If we were of permanent essence, only then perhaps, would it make sense to distinguish
ourselves: in any other case the notion is laughably absurd…

As tiny as we exist, still we flaunt such excellence; brandishing every artfully subjective
denominator of status, with shiny wrists and glimmering necks, alas,

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On the mind of the ask,

To what purpose, as unsoundly as it may, do our worldly concerns carve into the extraterrestrial
stone of indifference?
Or to what purpose, as impossible as it may, does a nihilistic being, free of strings and
connective tissue, tempestuously fall into the arms of another, who gleams with a thousand rays
of the sun; whose celestial armor glitters with such exigence and romance; who lives amidst such
an infatuation with life itself?

To what purpose does tragedy serve if its victims only try?

To try and to know that any attempt would not suffice;

the many calls to never an answer; we merely try and lovingly accept a fixed position in the
hierarchy of irony…

To what purpose do words serve if the reader is deaf and illiterate?

To bank on the idea, the dangerous thesis, that the intentions of an author are parallel and not
perpendicular to their physical demonstrations…

From what source has such a trust in the universe sprung?

I guess that I agree with the scientist, that there has never been more romance in existence.

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Chapter III.

Most people have an aversion to being under the weather. But for some reason, and I can’t
describe it that well, it feels really good.

Something about the way that it’s November in the middle of May, and my eyes are sort of
saturated with pollen; not to the extent that they are unbearably itchy, but to the point that I can’t
blink away a subtle and continual puffiness, and they’re glossed over like the finish on a snow
globe.

It’s like trying to hold in this perpetual sneeze, but you don’t actually sneeze--- although it does
feel good to sneeze--- you just keep sitting at its very edge. Your nose is also ambushed by
dandelion seeds: you do not own your face, nature does. The sixty-something degrees and rigid
breathing and runny nose and sore (but not too sore) throat and extensive drowsiness synthesize
into one big feeling of enjoyable exhaustion…

There isn’t a word for it--- not yet. But I’d prefer to be able to coin the term, as I haven’t heard
anyone else describe it in the same way; I was thinking along the lines of some prefixes that
mean “ill” or “cold” and perhaps suffixes that indicate comfort.

Infirsolatium:

Coming from the latin words Infirmum and Solatium--- more or less, the solace of sickness.

(I find myself compromising the current domain of language less and less sparingly. Actually,
I’ve used two other made up words so far.)

That being said, it is only natural that I would want to touch on another word in the process of
development: Metametaphors.

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Chapter IV.

Metametaphor: the metaphor of all metaphors.

We can parallel indefinitely items, objects, or people that we find to have some common
denominator: friendship and matchsticks, toothbrushes and the aurora borealis, sneakers and
vehicles, celestial bodies and good and evil; as long as we view things with unbiased eyes, there
lie no boundaries in pairs of unassuming items. In recognizing this, all things, with the right eyes,
appear to be connected by the string of figurative intention--- thus, all things that can exist can
also be another thing that exists. This is the figurative paradox: the metametaphor.

A library bears the fruits of Eden; every novel that is not the poisoned apple may be read and
bring forth great love, all but only the book promising a veil of evilly omnipotent knowledge,
promising to despair one’s relations with God himself; an all-seeing bookkeeper, banishing from
his garden all who dare to know as He does.

But were the library an Alexandrian library, a library of the ever-deepening epiphanies of great
lives lived, with chapters upon chapters bursting with irony, apocalyptic foreshadowing, and
character arcs, the novels of each individual human life would just as easily be burned to the
ground from the shelves down; by a hellish rain of fire, the anticipated Armageddon, all evidence
of the great human existence and knowledge of Alexandria would forever be erased, in a fashion
unparalleled even to that of our ancestors and their untimely demise--- the dinosaurs.

Would that create two different libraries to instead be synonyms? If they should be one entity,
the debate would surround the lack of foundational definition, but why must we restrain
figurative potentialities to the walls of diction? To the walls of social construct?

A personality may be plagiarized, but it is not a written document; it requires not to be of writing
to imply the absence of credit in its nature. Likewise the polar covalent behavior of a one sided,

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disproportionately romantic relationship requires not that its participants are atoms (though they
might be made of them).
These analogies are not faulty; simply, the aspects of each individually compared clause---
people and books, government to forests, love to a shipwreck--- all entail varying degrees of
functionality in supporting a figurative meaning. This isn’t to say they are incorrect--- we only
cherry pick those devices from a set of bounds, a subject domain; in this way, we may best serve
our intentions.

However, the metaphor of metaphors remains to be detailed, even in the most picky and
meticulous sense: what is the device that represents that nature of figurativity?

Could it be the figment of summative tissue, gestaltly relating all things to one another, or could
it be the walls themselves, separating a strictness of language from the malleability of an open
mind?

One might decide to compromise--- bargain, if you will, with the dictator of what things are and
aren’t.
Like young trees shedding their youth,
impatient to rid themselves of unconventional and inconvenient dresses.
But perhaps they would find themselves detached, and content in this way.

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Interlude V.

12
Until a Waning Sun

To deny, or to denote these

lengthened evening premonitions?
As rest escapes exhausted ways
and wake becomes tradition…

Until then, a waning sun had

held some place and much position;
what seemed eighty-seven lightyears
on a planetary cleft.

Good riddance to forget

crestfallen retrospect,
knee deep in mind
a celestial heart had kept
old fruit from bearing expiration;

but Fortune told, the longer you wait,

fruit sweetens, softens, bruises, blackens
I’m quick to remind him, from soil it comes,
to soil it must return.

it just so happens,
with time, you’ve been less sweet
and free of blemish
I just hope it means
you’ll last a while longer without bruising.

So I wish on waning suns

until I know I will not wake
to the smell of bruised fruit
and sweet decay
a memo that you’ll always stay.

13
Burning Canopy

In a life not so vile and cruel, she insists,

as one that rushes the detested illusion of her lover’s canopy bed
lying several feet into the earth’s surface;
to where a child is forced to sleep when he is not drowsy in any manner.

What were once mirthful songs of life

now rang lugubrious through the cathedral of his becoming corpse;
filth-ladened fingernails were once finely maintained,
as they were the spectacle of a prodigy.
A vacant stare, withdrawn from this worldly plane,
once retained the intensive gleam belonging to only the finest of cavaliers,
but decaying breath defines a stain that digs my brain adjacent graves.

He is the tragic beauty of indecision:

the essence of what is,
what could be, what would have been…
doomed to determination by a hand that did not know--- or perhaps care to know--- its own will.

Instead, the face of an archaic cigarette,

bankrupt of smoky escape or any
sultry euphoria it used to give him
flaunts its ugly construction---

a euphemistic makeup palette

with nitrogenous reds, hydrogenous rose,
carbonic neutrals and death disclosed---
addicting no man that resists.

To the smoky eyes drawn by despair

Thinning what would have been there:
the days; the nights; the coldness and strife;
But death’s the only man aware.

14
Honeymoon Days

The last time I loved you, the ink dried before you could write me back,

So I find simplicity,
in clinging to tradition,
a poison for my heart
And a pill on my mind
invoking half a glass more
than a weak yearning for what once was.

Though your eyes wear

a spark of curiosity,
the last time I was curious,
the other kept your heart at bay.

Now I harp on each day through

Metaphors and the pain in store
That tasted of old ecstasy

That smelled of blissful

Honeymoon days

Perfect, endless honeymoon days

Nothing, but the flaws to raise
To anybody’s attention.

“Do you think the honeymoon phase exists for friends?”

I asked today and they all agreed.

And a wind without direction

will inflict a longing plea,
A heart leaning on spyglasses,
farther than the eye can see

A sail to swoon at
lovely seas
and seasonal immunity
to mend the crushing nature
of a heartbroken reality

15
A life lived like a shepherd
that would pardon many sheep;
a wool aware of murder,
a bed aware of sleep

We’re well aware,

Love is an equation
who entails a certain constant
despite varying degrees of change-
I'd like to stay near the axes, because they remind me of the beginning
when X can still touch the reasons why
our interception has never been farther away

Love’s skittish halogen;

rummaging courtship
though near beloved stability,
absent electricity

Love’s unfinished sketch

of a night we forgot our age:
The lines are still wet with ink
and sting like an open wound to cold air.

Love is a towel to be wrung

of November and February tears,
seldom washed since those days
in hopes to preserve their years.

16
Deux

Thinly glossed lust

sprawls through a cognitive stage;
a theatrical play
where hypnosis is sustained
A literary ballet
full of raw elongation,
marrying the dotted graze
of a horsehair bow and
flitting papered tendons
in a glorious pax de deux
of two intertwined human
helixes
synthetic in nature
and bending the spines of prime imagination.

My mother says, do be mindful,

Lovers’ passion too sugary
cannot be dissolved so simply…
Dulcet daydreams rest beneath greed
And such impossible harmony rots your teeth.

17
Seabury Towndance

One humid summer day, Ojiisan sat me down and said to me,

This here table’s made of finely polished mahogany,

half of which ceases to be.

“What ever do you mean?” I inquired, and ran a hand through my hair,
but he simply pressed his lips with his curious old stare.

Close your eyes and picture a sapling tiny as a pea,

Closely watch as roots and all grow into the earth and past the sea.

“But sir, you still haven’t answered my question, see, which of these two ceases to be?”

He ignored me further, clicking his tongue.

But which is the same as the other in any part but itself? The one whose roots had come undone?
Who’s glossed the hearts of near and far,
And brushed the stars with grassless dew and
Told all sorts of folks of lonely worlds that bade goodbye to you?

I squinted hard, and thought harder, but all two halves seemed the same.

“Ojiisan, I just can’t see what makes the other half so mundane.”

Alas, you’re quite right, dear Bellamy, by simply glancing at the surface
you’d find no line to draw where you can tell which has purpose.

“Purpose?” I asked once more, puzzled at all his cryptic wordy metaphors.

Jotted down in bark;

the humming by the maidens of the meadow,
The solemn hymns of the men in the coal mines
Joyous laughter and infant cries
And mother robin’s lullabies.
It seemed as though he were talking of a person, a mother, a daughter, and son or a priest or
teacher or anyone.
“Trees can’t hear us,” I said.

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Oh, but they can! If you look closely, you can see lines of old age smiling back in gracious
gratitude.

Tired of trying to solve his riddle, I decided to pick the side whose little lines upturned in a way
that smiled ever so quietly, then he might tell me.

So I tapped my chin, then lightly grinned and said, “Ojiisan, here, it has to be!”

Not but quite, dear Bellamy.

19
Yarn

Yarn does not weave melancholy thoughts

innovating motion and imitating commotion
during night shifts outside cerebellum traffic.

Rather, a sweater
worn wet in the dawn
where you squat on an urban curb and listen eagerly for a lover drawing cards.

Please deal a king to me,

spare internal yarn for me,
leave some room to weave my heart a pair of mittens
how I’m smitten…

...you’re out of yarn?

Wasted on a stranger, tarnished,

such hearts do not have room themselves;
for another one to love,
You, dear, are held just as tightly
as yarn could possibly hold.

20
Green Fable

Genesis of tall tales,

Greet your beloved with a kiss on her forehead,
And slip a dime to the good night worth saving.

You’ve never quite seen

Such a spectacle:
A winking button, red as wine,
peeking above a timeworn novel spine;
Curly olive spindles
tucked into a bed of frizzled locks
And frilly lace of lashes
batted at the time

The sun’s gone on its honeymoon

for more than summer’s night,
But who are we to waste what summer
wraps with such delight?

Winter’s raunchy old tease or rather,

lanterns flicking
on and off so as they please

It’s no rickety shack; there’s more than that,

but the ancient place is still home.
Still a swinging emblem
of firsts and worsts
and boths while stuck prancing on their feet,
You just couldn’t seem to stop them,
nor your lips, from shining your teeth.

21
The Terrain

Mindless surrenders scarcely define

such clumsy attempts to fit together
pieces of a puzzle I cannot
solve, until the sudden signs the

air begins to shift,

and I can’t lift
myself from long, looming displeasure
but faintly quivering nearby is my maturity…

and to my fair surprise,

I realize this newfound weariness
casts fear that swallows me even
more than love,
who could have known

that apprehension fares within us both?

Yet mine cries, falling from
infatuation,
now nothing more than
a dear ornamented smile

that no longer invigorates.

a solitude of rusted gates
that lock themselves away for time
and truth be told, were never mine.

22
Chapter VI.

Maisie read aloud to me the account of her favorite evening, one that haunted her mourning.

“I lean my chin on the spine of the seat in front of me, velvet still warm from the skin of his
back. His cologne, faint, lingers in its fibers, and wafts into the air sitting patiently beneath my
nose; a scent so riveting that I can again picture spritzing it on the nape of his neck; his
collarbones, his wrists.

This is quite a lot, he had said…

Perhaps I had gone a bit overboard… he had attempted to keep hidden his smile, shaking his
head in denial when I confronted him, urging him to look up. He’d kept his head facing
downward, though I caught him stifling a laugh, and he declared that he could ‘really use a
shoulder massage’ and that it was completely necessary that he remain in the same position. He
wasn’t an awfully great liar.

During the first hour we lounged around on fancy furniture, holding wine glasses of water in
between index and middle fingers, pretending we were obscurely rich. By the second hour the
stress began to settle in, and we waltzed and waltzed. I think dreadfully, but it helped us soothe
our nerves. And soon it was time to seat the audience.

We were waiting with a great and very painstaking anticipation for his name to be called- a sort
of infamous mental interlude, as we referred to it. In the moments leading up to this, he had been
everything short of indifferent: his fingers restlessly tapped the patterns of the sonatas, he
unconsciously jolted when the host’s booming voice echoed throughout the auditorium to
announce the next performer, he cracked his wrists to the climactic point of fracturing them…

We’re all just kids. Dressed up in the fabric of vanity and elegant drapes. I look like a curtain.
Dare I say one of elegance.

23
He’d begun to enter a sort of hyperventilation, so I promptly dropped my hands onto his
shoulders and loosened them with sarcastic aggression. Really, he could at least try to hide his
anxiety--- this sort of behavior is expected of us and only stimulates more the abuse of
generational stereotypes. We really aren’t that weak. These performers are a bunch of ruthless
child demons. Besides, the very last thing you’d want at an event like this is to be disappointed
when the seven-year-old asian prodigy surpasses you… nothing quite beats the pure
condescension of a child flaunting his shiny gold plaque even when he had insisted on playing
the ‘shy little kid’ card. Idiot.

‘With each passing moment you smell less and less like Lacoste Eau De Blanc and more like
anxious perspiration,’ I whispered, hoping he’d unwind a bit. He slowly turned to glare at me,
but with a disquieting burst of applause, his expression faltered into one of mortified awareness.

‘Ha-ha. Very funny. Just what I needed to get me going,’ he remarked, and with a final helpless
plea, he inhaled sharply and rose from his seat.

I know the feeling. When you’re sulking up to that uncomfortable leather rock of a chair, time
invariably slows and a simple glance above your head would blind you as the auditorium lights
become ominous rays of heaven. But they feel more like hell. All is quiet except for the
occasional shuffling of the audience, a chorus of dry coughing or the goddamned irritating wail
of a baby who, really, should not be present as it is incredibly distracting to those arou-

As he sulked up to his chair, I brandished two thumbs up and raised my eyebrows, mouthing,
regardless of how you do, you’ll always be a loser! But my loser. Emphasis on the word loser. It
was my way, and only mine, to sympathize with him the daunting nature of the audience and the
judges, glaring with predatory intent at the now prey-like performer. Who was I kidding? He’d
outperform everyone including me anyways.

And now I keenly watch him turn the knob of that god awful squeaky seat. He bows awkwardly,
scanning the crowd to get a feel for their mood, and there it is: the punctual gleam in his right
eye that teases, You’ve all got absolutely nothing on me. to every spiteful virtuoso looking for
musical validation and only that. Are we bullies?

Of course not.

The remaining shuffling dies down to an inaudible murmur of expectancy. He sits and waits,
collecting his thoughts with closed eyes, and glides his hands to hover above the good friends of
A minor. Liszt, I think. Hmph.

I’d heard him practice both- Liebestraum and the rhapsody- but he wouldn’t tell me which one
he was performing. Nobody could outdo his Lizst, though. And that was a feat in and of itself:
most of the prodigious contestants had attacked an overplayed Beethoven, or at best an
adventurous Bach (that was sarcastic). His interpretations were swooning drafts of wind,
rejuvenating many in a way they couldn’t explain in words. My words, however, were simple,
they just could not be said aloud, much less to him.

24
And unfortunately moments like these are fleeting. Time is unforgivably caustic. I wish I could
listen to him go on forever. A fleeting sentiment, a fleeting sentence, or two. An insurmountable
enemy. A momentary three word declaration. Too often I wonder, how is it anything but
pointless?

And I close my eyes, back to now. Yes, pointless.”

Maisie, oh, Maisie…

Truly, a third person narrator I can refer to without directly attaching myself. If only I could
detach my thought-upons from my state of mind.
Maisie had a lover, I did not;
She was conventional, I was not;
The many feelings congruent with her memories
are not my own.

25
Chapter VII.

In His own cold way, it must have brought forth some pity to simply observe the knots untie
themselves: first and most shamelessly, tactile fascination falling apart, strand and strand, from a
once finely-woven ribbonry; next, trust becoming an immiscible cacophony of earsplitting wrong
notes, spiteful of a once congruous harmony; then, and finally, will the vultures peck at little
scraps of illusory desperation, and all that lies twitching and writhing in agony; the living
phantoms of nostalgia, devoid of consolation.
So even lying comfortably in the arms of a softer mattress,
A sweeter tea,
A calmer sea,
The haunting that trails so tentatively behind isn’t imaginary,
And occupied is such a mind,
distraught;
still to be wrung
Of an old love’s fallacies.

26
Chapter VIII.

Unsalvageable--- there can be nothing done, in anyone’s power, to resurrect our old grace and
gratitude.

And much duplicity--- if such an omnipotent being could change this, then why does he always
choose to spectate?

All this time, and he could rewrite the states of infinite sorrow; yet, he still appeals cowardly to
the worst case scenario, as it were…

Many a time, in a God-mirroring fashion, we build our own duplicities, and they can mark the
very turning point of a downward spiraling reverence; once, for ourselves, and another, for
whom we attach ourselves to. Duplicities, suggesting a personal and conscious distinction
between versions of ourselves we approach depending on the situation.

After venturing too far into one version of a self, the other becomes nearly unsalvageable--- in
Maisie’s case, two versions of her beloved existed:

One, who was sweet, acknowledging, glimmered excitedly at the engagement between himself
and his whom he attached, where both worlds of one and the other complimented differences and
exhibited a passion long seen by the outsider’s dulled eyes.

Another who, though obviously aware and anything but oblivious, chose to ignore all of this. A
face warranting unawareness and oblivion, to much hypocrisy.

And while she’d rove about on her journey to detach, mending such distraught, the hindmost
face described would pull at her leg like a whining child, dragging her back to her attached heart
without flinching. Why must it have been so difficult to detach herself from old conventions?

Was it better to pretend there were not two faces, but one, and decidedly live in a world where he
always glimmered with ardence? It would certainly be easier.

27
But then, what would be the point in living, merely to ignore the difficulties and live a simple
love; God’s romantic challenges he lets unfold, embracing the indecisiveness that determines the
hand dealt…

Wouldn’t ignorance give life to the killer of curiosity itself--- boredom?

28
Chapter IX.

Bored, and ostentatious out of boredom--- an idea that depresses the moral compass of the soul
(mine at least). The depression is in the act of observing one waste their preterite possibilities on
convenient and disadvantageous outlets; too many wasting talent, hopes, and dreams to be, all
tossed aside to the wolves, starved of purpose. But perhaps it is not boredom. Perhaps it is an
attempt to detach. Perhaps it simply comes across as indifference towards a belief in purpose,
and resultantly, indifference towards a belief in consequence; thus, an incapability to actualize
consequences and the freedom to act out.
(If the consequences are all the same, an elixir to boredom is to disrupt order through the
unexpectedness of flamboyance.)

We don’t like to admit it, but boredom rarely contains itself intrinsically.

We might find ourselves spiraling into an endless hole of ambiguity on what is acceptable when
it comes to extrinsic boredom--- morally, or socially implied--- such as the question: is it normal
for one to feel a boredom for those who intend to heal curiosity in the first place?

Is it normal to become bored with… the cure itself?

If so, where does such a guilt spring from?

A guilt in feeling bored of your muse, your pioneer, helping you discover your own sense of
curiosity, the alchemist, helping you concatenate your own purpose and nature--- how could
anyone become bored of that?

How could anyone become bored of their love?

It is in the great novelty of love that exemplifies the distinctions between infatuation and
boredom; it is the great novelty of love that blurs the transitional threshold between them.

29
And yet, we feel on our shoulders the heaviness that it brings; to notice that the way someone’s
laughter doesn’t completely capture the way it once was; to realize the falter in one’s eyes when
the wrong name is mentioned and the joys of that past that are not supposed to be enjoyed start
flooding back; the lack of reconciliation, or at least an attempt to reconcile, that follows
incredibly minor discrepancies, because maybe you just don’t want to solve the problem but, let
it fester, enfuse a poison you cannot rid yet cannot be responsible for; maybe, you want to crawl
back to what you were originally bored of, because somehow, old curiosity restores itself.

No shame in admitting that. But you certainly feel it.

I wouldn’t call my acts to detach from the past ostentatious, nor Maisie’s, but it wouldn’t be fair
in any sense to call them distractions, either. Nothing about the nuances of the old love, growing
slowly in the face of boredom with the novel, does anything to the meaning of the novel; it does
not downgrade the meaning, nor the sentiment; it does not take away from novel memories, nor
prove itself superior. However, it undoubtedly rekindles an ancient fire that has proven to burn
through furiously inclement winters.

“Unsalvageable--- there can be nothing done, in anyone’s power, to resurrect our old grace and
gratitude.”

To define unsalvageable as extremely as I did, I would be severely underestimating just how

versatile curiosity can be (but in the midst of emotional stress, one tends to make extreme
declarations.) I would especially be underestimating the first pioneer; the first alchemist to
simmer under fire liquid excitement with crystal audacity, to create an elixir of revival;
rejuvenation into a life once thought not worth living.

A winter wind fanning the fire. A funny picture.

But one must consider this:

How long will this rekindling act last?

Ears have grown sore from hearing relentlessly that the grass is always greener, or, violent love
has violent ends, but which of the muses--- the original alchemist, or the novel love--- could such
phrases be referring to?

If it was the original alchemist, this question of length is a testament of loyalty; a riddle to be
solved by the intensity to which both could love each other; under distance, under fire, under
winter storms.

But should it refer to the novel love, it is a clear warning; a requisition of wariness and caution;
subtlety in moving on rather than an impulsive encore of the past, in the hopes that history does
not repeat itself.

30
Maisie was hurt once, maybe even several times. How much can a heart willing to forgive take
before it hurts instead?

Then one would become the flint and steel igniting an unbreakable cycle--- love, get hurt, love in
hopes of healing, hurt out of defensive fear. A self-destructive, venomous principle to rely on,
but it is far more common than we think. And we’re about as close to curing it as we are with the
cancer patient.

31
Chapter X.

My freshman year of high school, I took a course on psychology. Safe to say that year I thought I
had a lot more mental disorders than I actually had (my advice: take these symptom checklists
with a grain of salt).

On a unit studying psychosocial development--- even though I am still too young to categorize
myself under this stage (approximately 18 to 40 years)--- I took great interest in the ideas
inspecting intimacy and isolation, including the way Erikson juxtaposed them. I consider myself
an extreme of both, yet the stage argues a rather black-and-white dichotomy: you are one or the
other; even if that is subject to change by an emotional stimulus, these descriptors are mutually
exclusive.

Meaningful relationships are not necessarily universally sought after. While many, including
myself, regard it as an emotional priority, others will not give it a second thought. At the same
time, a lust for connective depth inadvertently polarizes the behavioral tendencies to isolate, out
of fear that one may not reach this connective depth, or possibly, a fear of its influence on the
mind (bad news for control freaks).

Under the principle of metametaphors, intimacy and isolation can be likened to the sharing of
electrons between two atoms within a polarized, covalent bond. Though this would suggest that
both people in the relationship consider themselves an extreme of both intimacy and isolation.
One person is more polarized than the other, holding the electron--- craving more intimacy---
then, they barter positions; the other person is polarized while the original person isolates in the
absence of energy, comprehending that a lack of reciprocation in the energy of their relationship
indicates that something is wrong; a faulty conclusion that quickly spoils the fruit of
infatuation…

Regardless of the electronic metaphor, the cognitive impulsion to isolate may not be so
impulsive. We entertain the idea that isolation results from fear, from miscomprehension of
energy in a relationship; but, sometimes we isolate because we want the other person to feel the

32
way we do. And this act is anything but impulsive: it is carefully thought out; watchful, for
behavioral nuances or any sign that the other person notices, meticulously studied by the body of
anxiety peeking from behind our skeletons. And if we are regarding the electronic metaphor,
where both people are like this, it becomes one big game of ego: who is willing to break the
isolating character first?

In my case? It was never me.

33
Chapter XI.

It was never me, and it took someone incredible to compensate for the both of us. Though I make
the argument that this was not a result of my ego--- rather, a result of the other person’s
emotional generosity and empathy. Almost every day I ask, without a clear answer, what I’d
done to deserve such a gift of a person, with the capacity to kill two feathered egos with a single
stone of generosity. So the least I can do is memorialize its essence in ornamented words.

This question that I ask categorizes itself as a liquid.

Day and day I pass by the scalding hot and frigid cold thoughts that threaten phase changes in
my state of mental matter; though, most of the time it’s a fluid abstraction of both the solid
absolute and the gaseous unpredictable. I consider those warm and uglier thoughts the fastest
moving particles: there is almost no way of knowing just when they’ll decide to show up on the
busy highway of my amygdala. While the liquid state of mind grounds me, it is its vaporous
form that teaches the sacrosanctity of upholding an objective (and rather reserved) perspective.
As one grows too fond of an extreme thought (on both sides of the spectrum), so will the
capacity to control such impulses disintegrate.

Ergo--- the better thoughts are the most neutral. They’re still liquid: yielding both the chaos of
hot intruding catharses and the assurance of cool and intuitive logic.
In what we dictate as the past, the present, and the future, these states of matter--- whether the
lowest of lows, a rock bottom continuation of sweltering thoughts; or, the highest of highs, a
skyline contingency of subzero assertion--- these thoughts have no particular agenda; they
always exist, have always existed; thus, should a dictation of chronology be necessary at all?

The idea is quite oxymoronic. Certain ideas, reasons, love to spontaneously beg me to revert to
behaviors I would never consider healthy (they call them intrusive thoughts now, I think). But
you couldn’t consider something spontaneous without the existence of an agenda to juxtapose it
to (although most often used for contrast, in this case, it would be used to define). And would
there even be a past, a set notation of something that used to have an agenda or else it would not
call itself history; would there even be a present, if everything is always becoming a past; would

34
there even be a future, if the past is the present and the future is the present and the present
doesn’t exist because it’s both the future and the past?

The ready-made, microwavable argument suggests that a present is necessary to define the future
and the past. And at surface value, this is not a faulty truth. If the present is becoming the past, it
doesn’t erase the fact that the present was not the past at some point. But while this logic defrosts
some comprehension, other parts are left cold: we truly have a loose grasp on what we
understand can be predicted, or recorded, or even declared as ‘taking place’. If nobody is around
to hear a person scream, or see a person die, or hold a firsthand account to confirm the
occurrence of a Halley’s Comet, how are we to suppose that it ever even happened?

Before us, before humans, chugged steam from our cognitive factories to manage a sundial, or
the Aztec calendar, the record of continuity and disruption was not of any priority. Or, more
specifically, no more a priority than the ground level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; nor
prioritized was the concept of age: from the very heart of our primal instincts, the evolving
human was hardwired to think without thinking about it. Perhaps some evolutionary points even
explain themselves upon this premise--- natural selection of survivors among primal humans
works well with the force of obliviousness. What they didn’t know… did hurt them.

I don’t think God keeps a pocket watch on him, but I don’t think he’s known the time (ever),
either. The hands of Time seemingly usurp our conjectures about what we are here on earth for,
but Time is something we’ve constructed, and recently, in the grand scheme. We’re self-
destructive while recognizing certain events as complete, or incomplete, or sitting patiently in the
waiting room of a universal agenda. We’re our own formidable weapon of emotional
dismantlement in staying attached to the lines we’ve drawn, between what’s happened, and
happening, and is bound to
happen yet bound to become the past.

35
Chapter XII.

I haven’t touched the uneven bars in almost eighteen months. For someone who thought she
would dedicate her life to mastering the event, even a few months feels like ages ago. But every
so often gymnastics comes to taunt me in my sleep--- tricking me into thinking I’m still able to
throw myself around them.

An apparatus that required strenuous discipline. Carefully tuned skill. An undeniable stamina and
solid sixth sense for physics--- it really did, looking back, all come down to how well you could
manage, and understand, aerodynamic and oscillatory motion. But most people just thought of it
as their least favorite gymnastics event (the gymnasts did, at least; they were forced for hours on
end to face both physical and emotional heights all while feeling they were getting nowhere (but
that applied to the other events as well)).

As it appeared to the watcher--- the judge, the olympic fan, the sibling of a competitor--- there
seemed to live no hint of appreciation, nor understanding for the blood and layers of skin that
bought the mere chance of pushing a girl’s performance into the aptness she so desired. To hell if
a girl hadn’t lost ten years off of her lifespan landing a double arabian with her nose an inch from
the floor.

I dreamt last night that again, I was in the shell of the old performer, always desperate to prove
herself. Though I didn’t salute in disappointment. I just didn’t salute at all. I was doing the same
skill, over and over again, without stopping or taking a breath. I knew I felt dizzy, and rather
repulsed at my form, but I didn’t stop. I just swung,
and swung,
and swung.

Over and over and over, like a pendulum that didn’t obey the laws of air resistance. At both
points of upright and upside down, I felt at a given moment my elbows would buckle, and I
would crumple into a jumble of limbs tangled around the bar. But I never did. I only had the
feeling at each vertex of my sinusoidal swinging.

36
In hopes to achieve what we thought we could, we would spend every waking minute in that
gym. Nobody really wanted to push away the idea that the Olympics were not in reach; what was
more important, was that hard work and effort was supposed to equal results.

That equation is buried deep into the young and naive athlete’s mind. And for a while, it is a law
that produces dependable results. If every action had an equal and opposite reaction, then when
we poured our fullest hearts into building a strong foundation, we would achieve our skyscraping
goals.

We all hoped, perhaps less and less as we matured, that one day we would make it; we would be
that one-in-several-million to represent our demographic in the sport. (For the Americans, our
national team was predominantly white and black--- little to no East Asian, Hispanic, or Indian
representation--- so “making it” was becoming a hero to your people. )

I always deny it, but I miss having such determination. Especially its bottomless fountain; that
humble source of motivation, it would probably convince me to go back.

So I miss gymnastics. For any athlete post-competition, they’d probably feel the same about their
field of training.

I don’t miss the fear and reluctance and judgment; though, it’s all negligible because at some
point, those obstacles become unimportant to a reasonable mind.

I do miss the thrill of the gamble--- obstacles that beg you to understand their importance, and
that you are very unreasonable in this attempt of impracticality. The human body isn’t meant to
fly this way… oh, but watch it fly. Watch it bend the physical restrictions that fear imposed onto
so many minds. Watch it disprove the stupid low odds of succeeding in this mental vessel of
competence.

In the end, I think excitement had a better poker face than fear. But fear’s ego was far too
inflated, and so was the strike of betrayal from an unreliable law.

37
Chapter XIII.

In the fundamental algebra of occurence, there exists a multiplication table that crosses the
variables of intent with circumstance, and the closer we scrutinize the alignment of its products,
the quicker we may engrave understanding of some truly intriguing integer patterns.

Visually, there’s a downward, diagonal, linear slope-like format of squares cutting straight
through the table: one

squared, two squared, three squared, and so forth. Each square produces to its left a decreasing
number respective to its factor, and above itself, the same. For instance: halfway down the
diagonal is 25, 5 squared, and to both its left and above itself, identical numbers (20, 15, 10, and
5) are laid out in a fashion that, when highlighted, creates a backwards L kind of shape. Even
better--- when we color code by the height of number values, identical gradients fall in both
directions, so that they are perpendicular to each other.

38
But let’s remove the numbers. What circumstantial variables, against intentions, indicate
gradient patterns as seen in the mathematical table?

An outcome we intend to occur, under different factors of circumstance, will appear more than
one time. Say: Maisie’s heart aches to get accepted into her dream university. Numerically,
crossing a factor of 8 in intentions with a factor of 1 in odds produces the same outcome (8) as
crossing a factor of 4 in intentions with a factor of 2 in odds (also 8). They may be different
shades on the color-coded gradient, but nonetheless, an 8 means she receives an acceptance letter
from Harvard.

The message of this analogy?

A messy composition of Flexibility in circumstance, and a merciful nature of Redundancy in

transmitting data across the internet pathways of destiny.

The English message of this analogy?

(note to self: you don’t need to use another metaphor to explain your analogy…)

It’s easy to attach yourself to a fixed path because it’s what you’re used to hearing, it’s what you
grew up with, it’s what you’ve always known... (I am about to contradict my earlier note to self.)

Often in children we see a more natural inclination towards the Two’s and Ten’s as opposed to
the Sixes simply because the patterns are easier to trace. It’s easier to memorize recurring
numbers on those traumatic sets of multiplication flash cards. But that does not mean that the
“18” of getting a dream career will only appear once--- there’s a two-times-nine, a six-times-
three, and an eighteen-times-one.

39
Chapter XIV.

The titular monarch of one’s cognitive kingdom, in good conscience, must honor and distribute
to his people a series of genetic commandments. It would be natural to think that commandments
might instill a sense of unwarranted seizure of freedom; that could only mean his God transcends
the kingdom, and his people, his actions, live obedient to his God’s code.

And it is admittedly intense to compare biological parents to God. Commandments of genetics

are filial, sailing across the seas of generations upon generations, yes; but, it is not the extremity
of power over attractiveness that I intend to compare--- it is the set of behaviors that construct
one’s personality.

It is eerie to me that, devoid of genetic rationale, the offspring of a person could (and habitually
do) exhibit behaviors not once mirrored by nature nor nurture, but undoubtedly define their
parents’ character.

Personality has no correlation to the alleles for long, black hair, or yellowed undertones, yet
somehow finds a way to become inherited by offspring. One might figure, it is only a hole, in the
professed lack of natural and nurtural influence. But enough holes in a boat of logic will sink
itself to the depths of anomalous pattern.

My dear figurative extension--- Maisie--- builds this wooden birdhouse in memoriam of her late
grandfather, who surrendered to a festering brain cancer during her elementary years. Her mother
notes the oddity in Maisie’s unlearned craftsmanship in woodwork, and even uncannier, her
prose of the eulogy she writes. There had not been a single time Maisie had known her
grandfather’s way with words nor dexterous hands; yet, such details mirror themselves.

In the moment, the loss itself had brought forth a ravenous swarm of anxieties, but most of which
were of her parents; it was the first time she had experienced the death of a loved one that was
not a mere social companion; that, through blood and bones, shared her genetic commandments.

40
Unsurprisingly, her incapability to actualize his inevitable passing, despite a dreadful awareness
of the eldest’s condition, did not serve her heart well. But it might have shed some light on his
resurrection within her personality.

Accompanying each tense was a dominant emotion:

before, in good health, an appreciation for her grandfather’s perseverance; while, a poor-
tempered, roguish panic; and after the end, a blank void of sentimental disorientation. She didn’t
know how to feel about not knowing how to feel--- wasn’t it assumed that the grief of loss would
extrapolate to a fear of losing others? Or was that idea selfish, and dismissive of the significance
that the dead held?

In writing his eulogy she tried to express these concerns as best as she could, which turned
considerably abstract. There simply wasn’t a way of meaning what she meant in just stating
them.

“You know, your granddad used to speak like that a lot, actually.”

“Like what?”

Her mother looked up from the crinkled college-ruled sheet of paper, one eyebrow raised in
curiosity.

Maisie thought for a moment, anticipating, “the bit about shoelaces?”

“Mhm. He was a total metaphor and idiom guy. Took every opportunity to compare the most
absurd things to get his point across… it’s like this language only you writers can speak, hm.”

“I didn’t think it was anything special… I just…”

“You’ve got his humility, too.”

Of course her mother had his smile; it was that, or her mother’s mother’s smile. She had her
father’s silky hair, also once as dark as hers, but her mother’s hooked nose, only slimmer at the
bridge, like her father. She was not a spitting image of either individually, but a beautiful
synthesis of the young lovers in the Philippines.
But Maisie looked nothing like him. Nothing at all. She had a wider, flatter button nose,
narrower eyes and modest lips; her hair was a deep and rustic auburn from the Irish side; her
bone structure was soft, and small.

“Actually, you’re just like him, now that I think about it.”

Maisie tilted her head disbelievingly. “Right… we’re real doppelgangers.”

“Even the sarcasm.” She smiled her mother’s smile, shaking her head and continuing. “He had a
habit of being amazingly stubborn when it came to getting what he wanted. Against all the odds,
which he never failed to calculate. Sound familiar?”

41
“I just like to know my chances, is all. Gives me some sort of assurance.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to him when I talk to you.”

Uhuh, Maisie thought, but it would only be when she grew up to see her own child decide which
songs would lull her to sleep that she would feel the same way her mother did about her. Odd,
wasn’t it, that Maisie’s late husband always sang Sinatra for her, and aging in his absence, her
child would gravitate towards the big band jazz figure.

42
Chapter XV.

Always was such a terrifying word, and so was never, and so is the way they carry out truths as
synonyms of one instead of antonyms of each other . You could always come to me, and I’ll
braid your hair while you tell me that your classmates complimented it, and I’ll knead the knots
out of your back as you lay in your own pool of tears; I’ll narrate the legends of my ancestors,
but soon I’ll be on my way.
In drifting in and out of the solidarity of consciousness, you’ll never know quite the same person;
nor, I will recognize my own kin. In your place will sit a person-shaped-space, with knobs for
eyes and a stranger’s face.

You’ll never be there again. Not in any way that you always were.

I know there’s a cracked record player in your head; your vacant eyes say so themselves, that
echoing off the walls of your skull are the dismaying caws of a raven, in a longing serenade for
lost identity. And your brain restarts the scratchy vinyl over and over, as the needle grows more
and more unaware of its monotony; droning, over and over; never missing the jagged splinter
along the otherwise sleek surface of the disc, and always skipping the same measure. You can
never break free from this recurring hell. All you can do is listen.

I don’t think it’s easy. On any of us. But it is difficult to turn away, knowing that once I was not
a person-shaped space; that, in time I will have a brief moment of realization that I must suppress
my appetite for reviving the descended, to which a hunger could not bear to fathom such
impossible satiety. At the end of this very, very rich meal, there manages to creep along the
margins of the final course an unmistakable nausea; only, a nausea thriving off of its own disgust
for as long as a lofty lamentation will draw out…

But do not dwell, Maisie, please, if only she would hear the words. Maybe if she could hear
them, she would not listen anyways, but it was not worth one’s prolonged suffering to never find
out. She would always wonder, then, and that must have been a purgatory itself.

43
She could always forgive God, but never forget his apathy.

Yet, she could always expect from him, but never return. What did God want in her mother’s
place?

What did her mother want? is probably what she should have been asking, or to inquire which
fate was more of a personal hell; obviously she should flee this purgatorial state, lest it brings her
more suffering. But would staying just a little bit longer--- longer, having less and less of a
certain definition--- only wring her towel out more than it could have already been wrung?

Were the prayers enough to hoist her body up into heavenly suspension, or were they not
intended to let her go at all; not that those who prayed for her would know, but they were asking
God to prolong her earthly presence whilst pushing even deeper the scythe of illness…

Were the prayers, the mountains and fields of words that hoped to dispel her suffering, meant to
let her find an end of relief? Then, they were really for her to die a peaceful death. But they were
not asking her to die.

The indecision of such intentions must have been the reason God would not wave his hand and
instead, seem to forget. We must have been mistaking apathy for mercy.

44
Chapter XVI. Aphrodite’s Riverbend (Int. II)

Collapsed upon the steps of Olympus,

I dreamt that I had prayed
that the fire of my lover would rekindle
and the gods had said:

“Venture to the waters,

But seek no further gods’ assistance.
A lovers’ quarreling must contend
The bitterness of distance.”

Aphrodite hid her treasure map,

and Cupid kept his arrows,
For the riverbend, with gentle laps,
would promise passage narrow.

So on my way, through grasses tall

Past dragonflies, and gliding swans,
Past pixie shrines in winding oaks
And crickets chirping, waking dawn,

I listened for an answer, but

My wisdom must have weathered…
‘Cause I could not imagine how
to string us back together.

“Such undemanding passage, yet

You linger in one place,”

For what could be the creature that I could not bear to face?

45
No graceful swan, nor sleeping frog,
But then, my ear was awful----

Oh, doubt was truly a looming God,

And I, devout apostle.

46
Chapter XVII. Do Not Frighten Thee (Int. II)

Man cannot forfeit

what he does not own.
Such cowardice would uncover
the terror of his brother,
His surname and grave and his blood and his bones
All claimed with conviction, All terribly known

Do not frighten
the king of the world
And do not fear
the poor man’s wealth
Should death do him good?
I think both turn to dust.
His cry is but a trust
in the good bitter gamble

But do not ignore his nonsensical ramble.

For Man cannot fathom
its bountiful source
Such palpable love;
for love is, of course
An antidote waiting to kill the next warrior.

Do not frighten
the assassin’s daughter
Bruised are the men who weep at strength.
For I am but a hilt at the sword of a liar

47
and She, a captain, whose ship cannot sink.

48
Chapter XVIII. A Tethered Company (Int. II)

Dear, what’s dead is illegal, what’s alive doesn’t breathe;

Does that make my presence a tethered company?

While tied to the towering posts of ecstasy

I say I love you, and you say I bleed

Tied to the law, perhaps I am an outlaw.

Or somehow I stand before you in the raw
In a truce with the soil
That we both once took refuge in
A ghostly reservation
For my own personal sin.

Why must you untie

The ropes that connect us
I promise, I am not ill in the head

I know you long for the dead; the illegal.

But they will not rise from their eternal bed.

So alive and well,

And perfectly well,
I’ll inhale and exhale as so you plea
Then maybe we’ll be more
Than a lamb to his tall fence
Whose shepherd has taken
A century’s absence.

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Chapter XIX. And He, A Captain (Int. II)

A darker sun has never shone; your portrait has been blurred
You’ll never be there again, not in any way you always were
And your sweetness has this aftertaste
That I’d begun to tolerate
Then again, no man can discern just where
bitterness hides.

For I am but a sturdy hilt

At a liar’s mighty sword
and you, one-handed captain, whose ship cannot sink towards

The seas of the Bermuda

Where the men go mad and bear the weight
Of worlds upon their weakened spines
And drown themselves in spirits

The anthem of the wandering

Blows east to west by lullaby
And wielding wilting treasure maps
He scrounges for those misty eyes

His fear’s disguised in pride, his girl’s

Unsinkable? Unthinkable!
Such claims cannot provide
To me good reason to stay.

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Dear Captain, don’t go looking
Any longer for your lady,
There’s bound to be a treasure
That could mend your heart without me

A sweet mirage will never be

Enough to resurrect the dead
Maybe in another age
He lived on

And age kissed him on his forehead

A graceful thought in dreams,
Where you did not succumb to pride
And illness of integrity.

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Chapter XX. The Brother (Int. II)

In my years of earthly exposition

I have seldom knelt before another Lord.
Oh, Master of Mankind,
Lamenting the sorry sky;
Her lofty, wet cries are to no avail.

Why, my conscious brother

Knows no touch of that breathing,
Gaping reaper,
He must at once rise in my place;
For I cannot beg You further
While I am long due slumber the same.

Heart-halter,
That invisible foe,
I rue in the presence of that ludicrous demon.
He raises his scythe
And punctures my hollow bone-blinds,

A timely performance of his,

Inevitable rest.
He marks a begotten mercy
That my Lord, his brother, is yet to parallel.

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Chapter XXI. The Gale (Int. II)

Mirth, victory did not contrive

So sorrow had swept me, and languished, I.
A silent tempered night befallen
Stirs the wake of a yellow-crested moon
Sympathetic to my reddened runes
That bled, welted, quilt of kin.
A patchwork of cadavers strewn
Pours splendid planks to tend my pyre
Until dawn breaks upon the dark horizon
And my heart casts no further desire.

Then, when he revealed himself,

A rushing, galloping stallion, daylight;
Heavy hooves heard far across the vale,
The briny seascape; Winding mountain-gate,
Born soon will be the Morn's recluse - that periodic gale, I knew.

And stranded, both lone and wallowing in the grief bestowed to me,
And aimless, lamenting my soil-bedded brethren,
And faring the world bereft of company,
I espied that breach of darkness again.
However vast this solitary land,
In morning, I'll ride the wings of wind
And both of us accompany

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Our fallen men in heaven.

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Chapter XXII. The Seabury Towndance

Both love and death at their finest moments have choreographed an intimate footwork: a town
dance. On a seasonal stage within my mind--- somewhere, in a chilly, November-like May
infused with pollen--- the Ego writes letters to her late lovers through her figurative waltzes. She
hates the pollen, but isn’t it ironic, Dear? The air has turned me infirsolatious. I fancy an
outdoor waltz.

All the while, lingering on the curb of Seabury Street, the Superego watches the walls of her
brain deconstruct themselves; or perhaps, it is not the walls tearing themselves apart but the Ego
in despair, until her brain bleeds itself of its dances, and the streets are as dusted and desolate as
the quiet desert.

And the Superego waits…

It could be a month,
A year,
Five years,
Ten…
And all sits motionless, as time does up in her mind,
With no towndance to enjoy.
Barely a static memory to stir some motion on the grounds.
And the Superego’s grieving has no grainy salt in any of her tears; no, it’s a freshwater stream of
numbness, begging just why,

Why does she still choose to spectate?

She could have stopped the walls from collapsing.

She could have preserved the sanctity of the mind; the mind could have lived on…

And the Seabury Towndance would bloom again next spring.

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If she’d known all this time,
What’s it to her to watch from the curb?
To watch Seabury street decay into a communal skeleton
At her own hands; though, maybe she does not care to know her own will.
Maybe it’s her version of a beautiful mind,
And indecision spills raw emotions across a wet canvas, so that their tender strokes are
everything but a gentle flick of the wrist.

Maybe it’s her version of mercy,

And the brain sees it as an act of apathy.

Maybe she’s figured out

That she would have been constrained to the walls of social construct;
Somehow,
The towndance had become bleak, and monotonous,
So it would be worse to dwell in such a place.
Too stagnant in regret, in doubt;
Too stuck mourning the death of the living.
Too close to a slumber resembling that of her fallen brethren,
Where a gust of wind could carry her away from this loneliness.

Maybe she considered both the length of time her fire would rekindle and the winter wind that
fueled it;
how it would run out very,
very soon.

Somehow,
She figured out that my brain’s language of love
Is armor.

Armor and wooden shields worth splinters and glittering celestial breastplates that protect the
Ego from a waning sun:

An unpredictable, dangerous star, whose surface could scorch the few remains of Seabury street.
Like rubbing alcohol onto a fresh wound.

I think it must have been too hard to trust in the universe so blindly, in all of its biological
romance---
Besides,

To what purpose do words serve if the reader is deaf and illiterate?

The Ego wasn’t listening. The Ego wouldn’t listen. Reluctantly, I had to decide how to protect
her; if that meant waking her from her spring daydreams of dancing, then so be it…
If that meant letting her loosen the grasp of her understanding on grief and heartbreak,
Letting her free, through each release of gut wrenching love letters,

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Through a book of poems and barefoot walks in an ill field of mind,
then so be it…

If that meant letting her detach in order to breathe again,

Then so be it.

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Afterword

It would be a dream to hold this manuscript, in its current state, and run my hands along its
smooth leather spine. I hope that someday it evokes the same emotions in someone else; that,
beneath all the ornaments and cryptic metaphors, someone will appreciate the literary footwork
of both my anxieties and piece of mind, in its beloved Seabury Towndance.

Though I don’t dream of fame or mass attention.

Would a man deserve recognition for his work if he were purely motivated by that recognition?

In many ways this has behaved as an artistic outlet; one that others could walk in and feel the
architecture of my thoughts. One where others could find unexpected solace, in nihilism, in
detachment, and in appreciating ephemerality. One where the strumming of heartstrings could be
heard in all directions; one where open-faced diaries are plastered across the walls. (or Maisie’s,
at least.)

I’ll keep this short. A final nod to Maisie, who deserves the world and all of its treasures. She’s
grown up quite well during the process of writing this.

And the catalysts know who they are.

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