Ch 1: March 31st - Like a Bubble floating into the air

“You can hide me but not contain me”

I don’t remember if it was an act of telling or permitting. Perhaps it was an act of innocent love? 

But those words echo sometimes in my mind. I don’t remember why she said them; I guess we were playing in the garden then, Innocent.

I remember laughing out loud and daring her, not realizing that she was baring herself for me to see. I wince every time I recall it. If only I had known then what I know now, everything would be so different, or maybe not for the cruelty it could mean. Childhood should never be held against where we stand today; even though the closer we get to the origin the clearer it becomes how far we travel from what we see. If only we were born with clarity. But then do we need clarity when we are born? The sin was not in the birth, if at all it was, it was always in rebirth, something we hold against being born.

I am still holding clenching my fists, wetting the edges of a fragile piece of paper in my hand, reluctant to let air in as I imagined I was gasping for breath. Could it be her? Of course I knew it was her, but when did I know her totally by what she said?

It is sometimes so difficult to know a person without a signature. But this was her signature, it simply read, “Meet me at Smiths on Apr 7^th”. No name, just a date scribbled on the top right corner, March 21^st. Today was March 31^st. 7^th day from now.

This year? I desperately wished so. Yes, desperate is the word and my heart was pounding hard. There was no name, but I knew it was her, I had long known to hope for this letter to come someday.  It felt and sounded much different from how I had imagined it yesterday, but it felt.  Today is perhaps always unique.

Was she dying? Plausible, and strangely that thought didn’t evoke any emotion. Her body I knew had done enough before we parted. She was reborn every day we were together and each day was a lifetime of strain on her.  But I didn’t want any of this to end, this self-inflicted but strangely liberating sense of life. She couldn’t die even if she wanted. She had much more to do and much more to travel and it was always more never less. It was a matter of running even to stand still. But what would an onlooker know?

I know she was not expecting a response or confirmation. She would still wait even if I had not gotten her note in time without an emotion out of place even if I had responded with a denial. She had to be there then, and feel being there with me or without me, every slice of being there was important to her.

I would still write, perhaps. Something might change if I wrote, I told myself. I scribbled back a note, “Smith’s isn’t what it was”.

It was just yesterday that we met, but yesterday was long ago. What is time anyhow? But I am struggling to recall events. All I have in my mind is a set of emotions and images from once. Events were never important anyhow, there are so many of them happening all the time. What you make of them cheat on the simplicity that the events are and they are the keynotes to living.  Only keynotes remain from yesterday.

I had to regain my direction, my senses, those events, those memories, it was elsewhere this world I was invited to visit. I needed no bags, no trains, no money to get there, just respond to the recall with a recall. I was lost, you wouldn’t know it if you were with me for a lifetime, and perhaps I wouldn’t tell. Explanations are messy and tiresome; mystery is more exciting and maintains the chase. I know this too well perhaps. But It was a recall of everything lost, and now was the time to explain and she always made it effortless filling the gaps for you. Believing your story and a willing performer of any character you assign to her. She barely had questions, an occasional “how” maybe, but no “why”. Perhaps because there were no boundaries and no flag posts and she was wary that the why would fall into an infinite abyss? I am inclined to think she knew it all. Perhaps she did sooner or later.

A performer draws from his experiences to create art. What seems to separating art from life is the lack of inhibition on its shores.

But for her there were no inhibitions in life, it was hard to tell when she was performing and when living. It made you distant from her, for you were an alien in her space and you had no point of reference to know her affectations. Her unbearable love was always inside waiting to be given, but who could take it?

I tried. I did. And we parted.

I still am trying, but what it takes to do is always higher no matter how high you scale, then there is the understanding that it’s impossible to be her. And even undesirable, for it might diminish my love for her, and oddly she did not seem to love herself either, she was always looking at me.  I am no mirror, and if I pointed an odd flaw she would laugh and admonish “If I did half the things I already knew I could, I would look to learn something new”. It was true, and I was holding onto a slice of her as I only could, that is before she slipped between the fingers again.

Then again, all this was her as I saw her. She was however, perhaps, different. I hated it. I still hate it. And it is inevitable that I am drawn to love it for the same reason.

I am not helpless. Neither is she. I am not joyless. Neither is she. But in equal measures we wanted nothing we could sense and feel, but know was there, like an invisible shadow. Everything was a limitation and of no value but that changed nothing in our lives.  It was an invisible layer of separation, visible only because of the separation. You could never grasp it all. Just see cheer or leer and stand back smiling.

You could burst it, but not own it, neither was it unnatural in its creation. You couldn’t hear her scream; it was too personal to her and only she could bear the noise. But you know it is love and you can only try to guard it. I tugged to hold on to “what is” while having a vision of what I wanted and she let it all go.

Like a bubble floating into the air. My Kaia.