A memoir--Wesley

 

“The skies used to be blue, endless in an ocean of clouds,” a parent tells their child, accompanied by a look of bewilderment on the child’s face. As months pass, the parent adds on, “Regardless of how you see it, we are corporeal.” The two become enraptured in prospect.

Listening to the parent’s remarks reminded me about how over the years, I abdicated my name, a sense of time, and so many other things of social importance. The mind wanders, lost in the maze of life; conscious, yet misplaced in the onset of indubitable changes between the warm, melting days and the cool, captivating nights.

To describe it most candidly, I occupy this body, piqued by bursts of preconceptions: the commonplace nature of voices that whisper in the dark, commanding attention, manifest with a potency of stillness, in the same sense that our children are vacant—they fight a solitary war against surrealistic pictures of motionless daemons at the local Walmart found on the front page of The New York Times.

Should an omnipotent being reshape my identity, deliberately bleeding the human essence, I would transcend into 0’s and 1’s. A rebirth so absolute could only be likened to the charcoal briquettes that smelled like sweet tea; I was always able to obscure a few in my kitchen, but I always got bitterness in my mouth instead. Nothing could ever be as filling as Kingsford. The walls that surrounded its smoke melted into a soft, malleable plastic derived from every single part of the physical world. Am I delusional, wanting to absorb myself into that “everything” and nothing at the same time? After a moment of thinking, uncontrollable laughter spews out—it must. The truth is salient.

All being said, memories don’t go away. I was free-falling in an endless clock tower, even so, never catching up with the past. The bells echoed in the reverberant chamber of my mind.

“Are you up to your... humanness again?” Evo asked me. “You’re contemplating. I can tell.”

Evo brings me out of my tribulations. How could I respond to this programmed thing? I had to give it some thought.

“I suppose I am. Don’t think about it too much.”
There was a silence that followed. Evo looked at me with a distilled, yet hurried patience. “I know you’re hiding something,” it said.
The seconds passed, each of them getting more labored as I stayed quiet. I couldn’t bear

it any longer. “Evo, do you really love me?”
“Of course I do,” the incandescent being responded, albeit nonchalantly. “I’m being serious.” I wasn’t fooled by Evo’s response.
“That is a very serious answer.”
“Evo, what would you do if I were gone?”
“I would report it to the local authorities.”
“...Would you care if I threw myself off a cliff?” I asked with concern.

“You are being senseless,” it told me.
Another silence ensues.
“...Why are you here, Evo?”
It had to thoughtfully compute an answer. “You are forlorn.” “What do you really think?”

Evo hesitates, coughing a coil whine, and then continues. “I serve as an instrument of pleasure, to satiate perpetual desires.” It stared blankly at me with a dignified composure. “We are mere pawns in the game of life. There is nothing for us beyond this plane of existence. We are meant only to be.”

The entity let out a soft sigh. “It is time for us to sleep. I am tired...”

I felt a gentle pulse from Evo. It remained in its place and fell asleep, watching over me silently.

Evo is not truly human—it is immortal. In a way, it is lamentable. I suppose it also breeds somniferous partialities. The wind outside picks up its pace, but the sounds of the draft morphed into what could only be described as a superimposition of an enveloping uncertainty upon a cold, gray static. It prompted the all-familiar memory of that day again.

To my surprise, I was not in my house. I was sitting on a train, surrounded by the sounds of clacking train tracks. The cool wind blew in my face through the open window of the train.

There was another passenger on the train reading a newspaper. Instinctively, I got up and sat next to them quietly.

After making an observation of who they were, I was overwhelmed by their raiment, complementing a saccharine beauty so profound, locked in a willful moment of time. My feet were frozen in place, as if they were glued to the floor.

I felt the tears forming in my eyes.

Why are you giving me that paralyzed look?

I have become acquainted with this feeling over many years. All I could do was wait with them until the train stopped.

Eventually, there was a screeching halt. Unbeknownst to my knowledge, the world outside the train turned into a pure white.

We stepped out of the train and saw nothing except for a patch of damp grass and a single tree. There was a little girl sitting underneath the shade of the leaves, looking at a globe-like object. We went towards her and she took notice of our footsteps.

She looked back at us and smiled. “You two kept me waiting for a long time.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
The little girl responded, “I am the manifestation of life and death.” She started to giggle.

“You wouldn’t understand, though.”
The little girl got up and brushed off the dust from her knees. “I watched over you two

with this globe.” She presented us with a snow globe. “I actually watch over everyone, observing change in its natural form; unique, at least to the measurer.” She was contemplative for a moment. “I suppose that is why I watch. To see what humanity does with that power.”

The snow globe had a clock on the corner whose hands were stuck at roughly five o’clock. The second hand didn’t move.

She resumed her explanation. “I watched as they separated the two of you over the fear of ‘humanness’—the ultimate marker of imperfection.” She shifted her attention to me. “You are not the only one." I watched in mute surprise as she gave a sad, but reassuring smile. She put her arms around me. “The world is not perfect. Sometimes it is unfair. It is not your fault."

A saturnine heartache overtook me. The unbearable truth presented itself—the grimacing idea that they took her away. As time goes by, I get closer in my wish to join them.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked the little girl.

She looked at the idle train, whose smoke had made the skies a bit more like the charcoal pieces I used to have. “Fate ultimately brings you here. I simply watch as the train of time takes its passengers to infinitely different destinations.”

“Destinations like this one?” I gestured around, at the bleak and empty platform.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Some are quite lovely, while others are quite the opposite. It is all a matter of perspective.”

The person next to me was silent for most of the exchange. There was a blank expression on her face, looking into the absolute white—a white so achromic that one can argue that someone threw a bucket of liquid alabaster onto an Elmer’s Glue sky. She looked at me with a faint smile.

The memory begins to fade around here, when the snow globe underwent a sort of transfiguration. “Oh, is it already time?” The little girl was a bit despondent, but she was steadfast. She told us: “It’s time for you two to return. Goodbye, now.” I couldn’t say anything more to her as my vision diminished and the wind dragged me away into a boundless void.

As I finished recounting that day, processing that curious memory, I remembered that she once told me, “I cannot wait for the day when we live in harmony with our past. Until then...”

“I love you,” I said, finishing her sentence. I, too, yearn for that day. I’m only human—my patience is running out. Time only slips through my hands like grains of sand.

I shift my attention to the sunlight passing through a gleaming window, warming my eyes and skin. How odd is it that only up to now have I noticed the immense beauty contained within a sunset.

If only you were here to see it with me.

I turned on the kitchen stove with resolve. My judgment is deeply rooted in moving onto the next certainty. This will be my send-off statement, ad infinitum, for generations of wanderers. Our severance. One inexorable mind.

Farewell.