23

Smell is the strongest sense tied to memory

The dull scent of slowly rotting wood mixed with stale hops... as if it had seen centuries instead of decades. The floor boards creak from the worldly concerns of the Regurlars, from ages of men shuffling their feet from their bottomless glasses to the urinal and back. All the smiles are genuine but they're still misplaced- companions in the trenches recognizing a familiar face... but they are all still in Hell. You look into their enlarged pores and pupils only to see the same story... perhaps slightly altering names, dates, and a few telling details to protect all those involved. Beads of sweat roll down and salt their rims right underneath their noses while they see the world through orange tinted glasses. I never felt like I should have been there; it was foreign and it felt forbidden. You always opened the door and were surprised with how quickly it would swing open but the moment you crossed the threshold, every movement slowed so that everyone could get a good look at you before returning to their respective internal monologues. I still feel guilty, ashamed for something I still quite put my finger on. I feel as though one must always have downcast eyes, as if it were a church. A church for the godless, the abandoned, the fallen- I was meant to be paying my respects I guess. This was no time to eat, drink or be merry but I was so naive. I ran up to the altar and downed the whole jug of sacramental ambrosia with a thirst twenty one years in the making.

And perhaps I wised up pretty quick. Or perhaps I already knew. But now I've been launched onto this planet without a map and I know only one thing: that I'm lost. Gravity is low here and my feet feel as though they are further from the ground with each new step. I try to pick up the dirt, try to get used to it, to understand it but its just sand that keeps slipping through my fingers. I know that mixed in are pulverized pieces of precious stones and metals of insurmountable worth but try as I may to hold on, I'm afraid its in their nature to escape with the rest.

My eyes burn, anticipating the tears that have yet to come.

22

...And as I turned over, uncomfortable with every position I found and, consequently, unable to sleep, I stared at the ever so slightly fluttering eyelashes at my shoulder like two black humming birds; my eyes having thus become comfortable in the darkness. I thought of the numerous tears that had fallen from them and onto that still cheek now only moving with the ebb and flow of the entire body bobbing along the rhythm of a steady, sleep-laden breath. Rivers and oceans of tears, perhaps, had preceded this night: the calm after a life-long storm, I imagined. In that moment, it was as if I had crossed a threshold into the memory of another through a wormhole provided by my imagination alone. A theoretical life flashing before my eyes that was not my own and one that I was never meant to be privy to, as if I had read a novel in progress only to realize at the end that it was a private diary. Vividly dancing before me were family dinners, recording sessions, fights, break-ups, parties, nights made inseparable by their chaos and days that made inseparable by their banality. An entire life, start to finish, played before me in an accidental slide show. And with all this came a newly discovered futility. To watch someone suffer in their past is to watch a child drowning from afar. And as you run, the most you know you are capable of doing is to endure that heartbreak and hope instinct kicks in.

It was as though I was staring down into a cavernous well in which darkness nearly consumed the bottom but one that was just shallow enough to see the water disturbed by the rain. The nostalgia and the sadness of witnessing such a sight becomes overpowering. One man's sorrows would crack Atlas's vertebrae sooner than any tectonic shift. I found myself tumbling down...

...And when I blinked away a tear, I was staring at serenity being softly disturbed by dreams of another world. Again, I shifted position, my side hurting from some inexplicable weight. My view was no longer of the two humming birds but of a heaven whitewashed and devoid of constellations. Some lights flickered from the few cars braving the West Side Highway at such an ungodly hour of the night. My own eyelids slowly became heavier with nothing to focus on while my breathing became steadier and though I dreaded the onslaught of whatever my subconscious had prepared for its entertainment, I also welcomed that little death as I did any other night.

-- Auditory Inspiration: Capote Soundtrack - Mychael Danna --