I sit, one hand on the throttle, ceaseless, the other hand resting on my left kneepad, at a modest 74. I lean forward slightly and let my head touch the wind. I ride this way through the light fog and sunset, through a line of trees on either side, the sound of the wind and the bike, their vibrations always with me. I sit, musing.
There's a color to my thoughts, a hum and tone to my thinking. I'll give up on that right here because words won't do it. But I will tell you what my musings were about.
Two, three hundred miles, thinking...
I guess I have one more thing to say that's worth saying, and then I'll be done.
I will tell you about a special kind of fear.
That you may have for free.
It's not a fear of anything, in particular,
It's not a fear like that. Not something we haven't already transcended or forgotten about here (if there's a difference, I don't know).
One of those fears that locks you up. Makes it hard to be you. Like a leg going numb without saying goodbye, your mind with a vague itch but not knowing, getting agitated but going nowhere and spinning itself down. Like forgetting something out the door like you always do but never able to remember what it was, and relaxing until maybe you need it, it suddenly identified--
Your hands losing their grasp on love.
Ah.
There it goes.
You know something of what I'm talking about.
The fear and the thing, for once, being the same. Yes, that's what I know. About being afraid of feeling the way someone else does or not. About being afraid of being able to give back as much love as you're given. About being afraid of life changing you, changing them, and slipping away, and then forgetting and not finding it again...
Let me tell you something. Science will make its standards. And by that I mean old men will look at each other, look at marks on a platinum bar, and watch numbers come out of a particle accelerator...
And they'll say that what you see and what I see are hopefully the same thing. What you hear, what I hear. What words you say and what words I say.
But what I feel, what you feel, well, that's the only way we'll ever be able to be in the same world as each other. Without that, everything else is the steps in a game, and from that you can always detach yourself from the rules. But the way you feel is the whole world,
And every second of it, coming once, leaving again, every time different, electrified, dull, weak, fiery. How can you hope to ever build a bridge to another with such inconsistent, broken things?
How could they ever line up with what someone else holds in their hands, in their heart?
And after years of that, you get up from looking at the pieces sometimes. You go off and do 'things' and have 'goals.' You get scared of even showing people what that mess looks like that's really inside you.
So you think you get stronger. By being alone like that. By thinking your own thoughts, by bouncing them off the invisible walls of your mind and sending their vibrations out into the world, in ways nobody really knows, but we all sort of understand.
But all you'll ever hear like that, is sound of your own voice, getting emptier and emptier.
Emptier like mine, even after all these miles and all these places. This is because all the colors of all the trees I've seen, and all these shapes and sounds are nothing to me. You said it, I'm fairly sharp. My mind eats things very, very quickly, and things get stale so very quick. I can't watch movies or read books twice, usually, because I've metabolized it so richly that I'll never be infused, stung with the light they somehow make up there, in my skull.
I can't live any other way, or I'll dull and slow. The light will go out in my eyes and then it really will just be the light of the sun reflected.
All these pieces, what are they to me? I've seen them so many years, suddenly. Suddenly I can say things like 'years' and it means something. I've looked at them so many times, memorized their shapes, what is it to me?
Didn't Rh____ ask me how I got to be so old?
Don't you know why I wanted an engine that would live on a small amount of fuel and rev incredibly high?
Isn't it obvious why I keep getting into trouble, and stepping in and out of places and conversations like I get in and out of my skin, always changing?
The only thing more painful than going out with a whimper, not a bang, is being alive after that whimper. There's a slow, easy death you can teach yourself to be content with.
That's where this fear leads to. Contentment. A place where one day you wake up and even when a song twists into a minor key it doesn't even do shit for your heart anymore, covered in slag. The best you can muster is a vaguely confused numbness.
Twist harder.
Because it's the one thing you'll never be able to explain that's worth everything to you. Because it is everything. The one inexhaustible source of splendor.
The one person who caught you off guard, who as accidentally as you bumped into you, and dropped a piece onto yours. And for no reason at all, no real need for 'things in common,' you realized that you were cut from the same stone.
Suddenly you could rummage around in their head without looking, just like you could your own.
Yeah, it leaves as quickly as it comes. Yeah, it's the only thing I can never convince myself it's safe to juggle. The only puzzle where I'll never see the next piece. The only thing that takes all my attention, but in return, electrifies all of me.
This is the only fear I'll never be able to step through, reach a hand through on my own. And is it so surprising? There's no way to ever leave yourself, no matter how much you might want to at times.
Someone has to be waiting for you on the other side.
Enough. I'm saying I'm scared as hell and I think you are too. And I'm telling you about your problem. I'm telling you why even when we talk to each other we have to wear each other down again. Because it's not 3 in the morning and we just told everything to each other, still talking to sunrise. Because we're scared as hell, and I'm always skirting the edge. The edge of safety, the edge of reason, the edge of stupidity, the edge of legality. Because we're scared as hell, and you're always in the middle of something. The middle of what you think you're doing, the middle of dating someone you do care about (do you? I don't know, I'm too -scared- to ask), the middle of slowly seeming to make your life awesome.
But neither of us know if any of that will work out. Truth is, you have just as much chance of fucking it up as I do, it just looks more obvious and psychotic over here. Truth is, we seem to be suspiciously effective at whatever it is we do.
Except being around each other. You want to know why we're not navigable?!
Because when we're in front of each other, where do our paths lead? When was the last time your path led through someone? When was the last time it wasn't around or past?
You'll have a bit of trouble getting me to believe that I'm the only one who feels like something's been deferred when you get too tired or you weigh the situation and decide to quit while you're not ahead before the new day comes.
I don't wish to nail your feet to the floor. I have done everything I can to avoid doing that. I have used the lightest touch these twitchy fingers have.
But I've got your number, and you've got mine. In spades. I want to fight you and I want to get yelled at and I want to trade every blow you've got until we're emptied of our each individual pride and possession and preconception until we're as tired as we got to be every night we spent.
Tireder.
But this time I don't want you to defer, I don't want you to quit and go to sleep. Don't be fooled, if I've pissed you off going this far. I don't seek 'resolution.' That's that fear talking again.
I just wish you'd open your heart to me.
So I can open my heart to you.
...
I look down at my bike for a moment. Remember when I was scared of you? I rest my left hand on the frame. Now we are easy to talk to, the both of us. When one of sends a message to the other, our shoulders shift and we're already reacting to it.
We both stare into corners. We're both leaning in because neither of us will make it out of the corner standing unless we're together. Both of us are bored and can't sing at just 75mph.
We're both waiting for the time when we'll be free to turn it loose and reach the point where we shine our brightest.
And until then, we get around okay.
Let me tell you something. I hope you're still listening to me. I don't mean this in a bout of butt-covering. No matter what, no matter what happens,
I will always love you, with all my heart. You're the key to it, among all the other amazing things you are, and even if you never open it again, even if I go crazy and burn out somewhere on down the road a ways, well,
I'll never get pissed and crush the fiery shape in there. I'll never make that light go out.
I will always be the one who loves you.
...
So, this is the point where I fall apart. I could see it coming, but I got too close anyway. Trying to start all the sentences you won't finish, leaving all my thoughts unfinished, unchecked--it's only my high SAT verbal score writing now. There are no songs left that I can listen to. I just hope I make it back, to wherever. I don't even know where wherever is. I don't even know if I want to see the ocean.
I just want to make you as happy as I can. Actually, I think I want to make you happier than I or anyone else is able. There it is. What makes me break down.
I reach out with my mind to describe the infinity there, trying to explain that happiness that you can't finish a sentence with.
Kinda funny, huh? Losing it over infinity, just like a computer. And not even able to make any more jokes about. Just biting back the words, and saying I'm sorry or
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