Patience

"Archimedes? I'm calling you for real this time."

"Your timing is most inconvenient, I was about to go out for the night, since you commanded my attention last night."

"Please?"

He can't turn away from the despair in my pleading. 

"Okay. Qu'est-ce qui se passe?"

"Am I really that tired that I'm thinking in French?"

"Apparently, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to hold this conversation in another language."

"I agree."

Sincere for once, he snuggles into his feathers and focuses his gaze on me, "You wish you'd never had that conversation, don't you?"

"It was helpful in the beginning, but then it started to take a bad turn. She just didn't understand."

"But you did learn something, didn't you? "

"Yes, I learned that I still have trust issues? He promised me and I didn't trust."

"That was even deeper than what I was going for. Good girl."

"I learned that I don't have to change, that I can be myself."

"You just wish you could be yourself with the right sort of people."

I can only sigh, and look away. 

"Enter trust and faith. You should try keeping them in your pocket, or wearing them on your wrist. Then we might be able to get over these conversations."

"I just wish..."

"You wish what?"

"I feel like there are two halves of myself, equally important but there isn't a person for both of them. It's one or the other. I have to give up one for the other."

"And you don't want to give up either?"

"No, but there is only one I would absolutely never give up, but I can't imagine He would ask me to give up the other half for one."

"He hasn't. Remember?"

"Yes. But I worry that if I give up one, I'll repeat history and hurt someone. I refuse to hurt someone the way I've watched others be hurt."

"You would rather be alone than hurt someone else?"

"Absolutely. I won't do that. I respect him too much."

"Who?"

For a second, I don't recognize that he'd asked me a question, "You know."

"No I don't."

"You just want to hear me say it."

"I'll spare you. This is what I'm hearing from you: You don't want to give up your other half and risk hurting someone else the way others you love have been hurt. Even if you do have a perfect option, you love and respect too much to put anyone at risk. You're scared of what might happen. So instead, you're going to spend the rest of your life wandering the world trying to find alternate methods of fulfilling your divine talent of caregiving. You'll never be complete if you keep two halves and you'll never be complete if you don't."

His hearing is so good, he heard the things I didn't even say. Still, I can only look away. 

He flies to my shoulder and gently grips my skin, "I'm going to add to the usual prescription."

"Which is?"

"Trust..."

"Oh yeah. What are we adding?"

"Patience."

Trusting

"Back again so soon?"

"I still maintain that you come to me, not the other way around."

"You just keep tellin' yourself that. Maybe one of these days it will come true."

"Did you just apostrophize a word?"

"No"

"Yes you did. You need to get out of the city, or at least spend your free time in better company. Let's not contribute to the degradation of the English language."

"It's dialect. It's why you just had to change the spelling of 'degradation' from 'degredation'." He suddenly beats his wings in frustration. "Don't change the subject. I'm here on business."

I groan. Being around Archimedes seems to elicit this sort of response. "Okay, what are discussing today."

"Your latest."

"My latest what? Meal? Adventure? Mistake?"

"Mistake? Is that what it is?"

"I didn't say that."

"So, tell me about this dream you had."

"Oh, my latest dream?"

"Or something like that."

"I don't get it."

"I want to you to tell me about your dream."

"No, I get that. I don't get my dream."

"Neither do I. Maybe you should ask Him about it."

"If you don't get it, why did you bring it up?"

"Do you really have to ask that after our last conversation?"

As much as these conversations make me want to poke my eyes out with pencils, they work. I get it, "You were just reminding me."

"You're getting good at this."

"Yeah, well..."

"Go on, you can say it." He puffs out his chest, tawny feathers disturbed.

"Say what?"

"If you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you."

"Well that's mature."

"What I mean is: If you don't know, you're not as good as I thought."

"You mean you wanted me to say what a great teacher you are?"

"There you go."

"You know you're just a figment of my imagination."

"Shhh... don't say it." 

"Just because I don't say it doesn't mean it isn't true."

He starts bobbing his head, getting a better grasp on his branch. 

"Getting restless," I ask.

"Fancy a stroll?"

"No." 

"You don't mince words do you?"

"Right to the point. You still haven't told me why you're here."

"You tell me."

I give him a stare somewhere between annoyed and intensely bored. This is getting old fast, I think.

"This time it's different."

"From the last time? How so?"

"I'm more the person I am when I'm with myself."

"The person you never show anyone?"

"Yep. It's not like I thought it would be."

"How did you think it would be?"

"Like certain dark things..."

"Ohhh...You're learning all sorts of new things aren't you?"

"It's like someone poured me full of stars and new galaxies being born."

"..."

"Oh my..."

"Do you realize what you just said?"

"Yes."

"Keep going."

"It's like one long sunrise, where the whole earth is waking up continually within me to a beautiful new day. It's soft and sweet and vulnerable. Have you ever been on the beach and found a starfish and poked it to watch it curl up?"

"I generally stay away from the beach."

"It's like that."

"That's a really awkward analogy, don't you think?"

"I didn't say this would inspire any sort of brilliancy on my part. That's what happens when you're filled with champagne."

He looks at me as if to say, Really?

"Ugh, not literally, you know that. What I mean is that I feel like someone filled me with fizzy water and pop-rocks and put springs on my feet and jumping beans in my stomach."

"You're disgusting." 

"Hey!!" 

"Where's your rhapsodizing?" 

I take a deep breath, "Let's start from the beginning."

"Good idea."

"It's like someone poured me full of brightly burning, luminescent stars that shoot off their silver shine; and that whole galaxies with their fiery, vivid hues are being born inside of me. It's like a Chinese New Year celebration of fireworks dancing and twirling in some haphazardly choreographed finale. It's like being set out on the ocean with nothing to carry you but the waves and not even caring. It's like clay that's been hard and brittle for so long becoming soft again, ready to be reshaped. It's like finding yourself on the edge of a parapet, ready to jump, trusting that someone will be at the bottom to catch you."

"Trusting, eh?"

"We'll leave that for another day."

Floating Intellect: Becket--the Internal Dialogue

People buzzed around him, bees with low zees for whispers; the chronic, monotonous noise swarmed his ear, with singular words breaking free of the white noise, a radio coming in and out of tune--he jumped away from these words with a mental gesture akin to a paranoid tick. He tried with increased effort to focus on his doodle, an ink-homage to Escher: simple, dark black lines arranged complexly, so that nothing ever seemed to begin or end, a labyrinth in lines. Someone laughed, but he swatted it away without raising an eyebrow. He looked up from his sketch momentarily: desks cherry, carpet blue, chalkboard slate. His nostrils flared once, detecting vestiges of a former chalk-cloud in the air, pomegranates--someone was wearing a little too much perfume today--the perpetual smell of new paint, even though this building hadn't been repainted in years. His curiosity was a fugacious flaneur, and he bowed his head once again over the masterpiece on the 8 1/2 x 11 canvas, pale veins pulsing underneath cuts of black. 

Before his stylus touched the illumination, a wildfire rushed in through the door--a drastically fantastic natural disaster so searing it made him sweat, streaked his face with dirt, and flushed his cheeks. The bees donned heavy fire-proof reflective clothing and moved in on her as she sat down one seat in front and one row to the left of him. She turned around in her seat while the bees poured water on her chocolate-brown curls until she steamed. 

"What did you think of the sonnets," she inquired of one of the bees. 

"What d'ya mean 'What did I think'? They're Shakespeare. I liked them."

"How magniloquent of you. I mean, what did you think of the ones she assigned?"

"Oh, they're all the same, aren't they? Genius."

She cocked an eyebrow, and he could see a fire still scorching vacation homes and national forests and park-service stations in her eyes. 

The pig-tailed girl turned to him, licking a popsicle, "Don't you agree, Becket?"

He heard his name as if underwater, but fire was flicking on her tongue. 

" But Sonnet 116? As if we hadn't read and heard it into nimiety thanks to Sense and Sensibility. If he's such a genius, why don't we ever hear about the all the other sonnets?"

"That one is my favorite!" 

He suddenly felt a heat wave as she turned towards him, freezing his spine into one long icicle. This time, the capsized ships remained motionless above the tempest; but her honeycomb lips twitched amusedly, swathed in nectar. The bees started buzzing again, but no one was speaking. 

Bemusedly, "Is it really, or have you just never read anything else?"

The girl twisted her pig-tails around her finger, "What about, um, the...the 'my mistress' eyes...'?"

"Sonnet 130. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun? The one where he rhapsodizes about how unattractive his mistress is? All he's saying is 'You're ugly, but I love you anyway!'"

Suddenly, doves start flying from his mouth, "I think what he means is that she can't compare to any of those things--the sun, coral, and snow. She can't compare to angels or goddesses. He loves her when such comparisons fail, regardless that such comparisons fail because she is not beautiful. He loves her despite, even because of, her imperfections."

He feared the acerbic honey of her words, but the incisive dagger of her sarcasm stabbed his gut, "On whose side are you, Becket?"

In defense, he threw himself to the pavement and licked the dirt off her feet with an iron tongue, "If you're so familiar with Shakespeare then, which is your favorite?"

She flared with the new fan of oxygen, confidently, with shoulders to rival the Winged Nike, "Sonnet 65," she said with soft, milky words. 

He raised one eyebrow with shocking skill, a reflex he couldn't help suppressing.

"Ooo," the girl chewed on her popsicle stick, cheeks sticky-pink, "which one is that?"

Her back the arch of a waning moon, her eyes sparklers in the hands of children on the Fourth of July--small vivid sparks of joy and excitement--the fire now a glowing hearth around which he could have raised a family, soft and warm. Lips of cream, breath of cinnamon and nutmeg, chocolate words--she recited: 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sand mortality o'er-sways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out

Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

In her taffeta-and-silk gown, pearls in her hair, signet ring in hand, the velvety curtain descended on her bowed head. The crowd applauded, shouting for an encore, but she took no bows; she made no curtain-call. She turned around in her seat, dress and all. 

Yet the crowd wanted more, they wanted closure. "What does it mean," they inquired.

She doesn't give interviews, the night is late, and she wants to go home; but they love her, they cry. They want to know more. Make-up gone, hair devoid of pearls, now soft curls, she comes out in her robe, "It's about the ravages of time on love and life and how the author attempts to overcome mortality with his immortal writings. For this poet, disturbed by the deeds of Time, the written word was the only thing that could resist and even defeat time. " Then she closed her prayer book, rose from her knees, and left the cathedral with reverence. 

 

Praise

I gasp, jumping back a little and then shaking my head, "Do you ever knock?"

"Uh, no hands?"

"Well, you're going to have to start announcing yourself somehow. I'm starting to get a little paranoid."

"I think you know when I'm coming."

"Perhaps, but I never know why," I say with a stiff jaw. 

"Careful, you don't want to hurt yourself." 

If he wasn't right, I would clench my teeth; but he is, so I slowly relax the muscles next to my ears and take a deep breath. 

"Why are you here? If you're looking to gloat, it won't be necessary." 

"What? You don't want me to say, 'I told you so'?" 

"If I concede that you were right, will you leave me alone?"

He starts laughing, beak open wide, wings flapping.

"That's not why you're here," I start to ask timidly, but it becomes indicative before I can add the inflection.

"No," he says in between chuckles.

I look quizzically at him, confused. 

"Not exactly."

"He loves you, you know. He just wants you to trust Him."

"I know He does."

"Remember the time when you had no plan? And you just kept walking, putting one foot into the dark before He could put another lamp at your feet? Remember how scary it was to trust someone that completely?"

"It wasn't scary, because I did trust Him. It felt good to know that someone who knew better was in control."

"..."

"Oh, so that's why you're here?"

Ever the stoic cynic, he tries to suppress a smile, "You've got it."

Humbled, I reply, "Thanks for reminding me between Sundays."

"He's taken pretty good care of you, don't you think?"

"Yes. I wish I knew why."

"Is that the only word you know? 'Why'?" 

"How did I know your new attitude wasn't going to last?"

"No, no. It's not 'how,' it's 'why'?"

I purse my lips, roll my eyes, and walk away. 

Floating Intellect: Becket

Becket was the first of my four "Floating Intellect" characters, but also the most difficult to write. When I originally put this piece to paper several months ago, I was unhappy with it: I didn't--and still don't--think it captured his internal dialogue. It is, in fact, more of a character sketch. However, I recently came back to this and couldn't help smile at how true a sketch it is. I took nothing away from the original, any editing included additions.  

No matter how many times he saw her, it was like seeing her for the first time. The eyes always got him first: deep, clear, sea-green fringed by long, straight, dark lashes against even-toned olive skin. Aside from their apparent aesthetic beauty, her eyes contained a certain liveliness like the first days of spring after a harsh winter; an expressiveness reflective of the passionate undertones she gave every pursuit, action, or thought. He saw the world obscurely, stepping outside of and removing himself from everything in his observations. The world always seemed a little distorted, like he was looking at it through a glass bottle, or a fog had rolled in and made it hazy, or forever gray as the result of eternally-overcast skies; and then she walked into the frame with her eyes, clear and bright. 

She looked sharp against the fuzzy world, a sketch in pen right in the center of a watercolor. If his world looked overcast, it wasn't due to clouds, but because she carried the sun within her--a lamp in his unclear landscape; a Jacques-Louis David or a Leutze, rich colors, clean lines, and clear scenes to his Dali or Escher, surreal and distorted into a labyrinth for the mind. Where everything felt to him like a hazy dream, she stood out in crisp reality, a vision within a vision. Her eyes always stood out the most, beacons of life and clarity, he felt himself powerless against the gravity of them, caught in the orbit of their atmosphere. When she entered a room, even if he did not face her, he could feel the direction of her gaze like one feels the world suddenly get lighter when the sun breaks through for the first time on  a cloudy day. 

So many times he wished her gaze might be directed at him. So many times he imagined her eyes alive with feeling at the sight of him. So many times he had imagined looking with passion and adoration and longing into her eyes and having those same emotions returned with equal fire. He imagined the conversations--long, intellectualized, philosophical--they would share; deigning--no, daring--to daydream about his thoughts embodying themselves and stepping down the steps of his fantasies outside the walls of his mind to walk back into his life in her form and figure. 

That was it, the apex of his existence: the idea of having her--the only thing, person, place in this world who actually existed to him--to exist with him, to make life real for him, to finally be realized with all his senses and not just fabricated in his mind. For now, however, she existed only in his writings and sketchings. He lived flesh, bone, and blood in his internal sphere surrounded by a miasmic atmosphere of no substance, no clarity, no shape--punctuated only by her presence as equally flesh, blood, and bone as his own. If only he could conflate their two spheres, like two bubbles or clouds, morphing into one another to create their own world...

But he was only a Pygmalion without at Aphrodite, his apotheosis in front of him with no way to melt away the stone.

Running. Away.

"Hello again."

I roll my eyes, "What are you doing here?"

"This isn't my fault you know. You called me here."

"I did not."

If he had eyebrows, he would have raised them right then as he blinked at me. Instead he puffed his feathers at the neck, "You have to be joking."

"I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't know this was going to happen."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"Same thing I always do."

He cracks his neck as if he's about to beat me into a pulp, but he doesn't. "It's a fine day for running. "

"...Yes... lovely."

"You have your mother's feet."

I suddenly see where this is going, "And her weak knees, that aren't much good for running."

"You've never been one to avoid the impact."

"No, I just avoid other things."

"You have your great-grandmother's nose, and you're as tall as she was, aren't you?"

"One inch taller."

"Do you ever feel like, maybe--just maybe--you're more like them than you think?"

"I know I am."

"Want to go for a walk?"

I look suspiciously at him.

"You walk, I mean. I'll just come along and commentate."

Suddenly, I'm crossing a different street: its four lanes are reminiscent of a time when they made it wide enough to turn around a wagon and full team of horses in one easy u-turn. I know it only too well. Very few people know that this street is named after my family--we've lived on this road for seven generations.

I cross the broad street to smaller one. "Remember when you came home from a walk and your mother was standing out in the yard, your pink Easter dress all finished?"

"Yes, I remember, and the four o'clocks climbing up the white clap-board siding to poke their heads in through the windows."

"Do you remember your room with the plush pink carpet tucked away in the basement?"

I nod fondly, "The window faced east."

"Your window still faces east."

"Always."

Now the road is a shepherd's hook on which someone stepped, it's much more narrow--two lanes instead of four--we walk up the drive to the front porch to sit in the rocking chairs.

"Remember watching thunder and lightning storms from this porch?"

"I like watching the trees battle the wind, electrified by the lightning, drooping from the heavy rain."

"Remember the time you and Little slept outside in a tent in the summer?"

"Mmmhmm."

"And racing across the yard to get the mail?"

"He was faster, with his spindly legs, he always got there first; but I'm stronger, so I just pushed him out of the way."

Now we are walking across a parking lot, rows and rows of yellow lines interrupted by superfluous speed dips. I purse my lips.

"Now this might sting a little."

"Yeah, yeah, let's get it over with."

We go to the little parking lot first, next to a small, sacred building.

"Remember..."

"Yes, yes, yes. How could I ever forget?"

"Remember sitting here in the spring, totally lazy, studying bio and history?"

"Yep."

"Remember that rainy day when you made fun of the other team's cheerleaders in their rain ponchos?"

"We lost that game."

The roads are much more narrow now, barely two lanes, and certainly not a safe two lanes.

"You could leave here now and it would only be a dream, like you'd never been here. You'd go back to other roads. Except you can't keep from running."

"..."

"Where will you go this time?"

"Somewhere where it's always overcast. Where the sky isn't blue, but gray. Somewhere where I can wear long sleeves all the time and hide behind them."

"You don't think your reasoning is a little flawed? That maybe 2400 miles is enough?"

"Or too much."

"Now we're getting somewhere."

"Remember that house on the river? Or the one on the coast?"

"Now you're just going backwards."

"By going forwards?"

"Why do I feel like we've had this conversation before?"

"Because we have."

"Isn't this where you say 'You worry about the future too much'?"

"Not this time. This time, you don't trust enough."

Stay: Where or Starlight

I've heard this tune before, in another time and place

and yet tonight I hear a different song. No one has 

sung it before.  It comes to me unexpectedly, but I know 

it instantly when the bass-line starts, like the repetition of

a dream long hidden by the veil of morning. 

It is not the dream that comes to me in my waking 

hours, the dream so clear I could write it again and again, the dream 

so certain it is scary.

Yet here is a question mark of a revelation, crawling 

from the black hole of stays and and wheres and reasons to leave.

This precocious point of punctuation settles itself on my shoulder,

a firm hand of approval looking forward into an unknown future.