Real, they must be...

The work, all the work, has taken its toll.  The late nights, the ether, the radiation, the math, the cold coffee in hand warmed cups.  It all added up.  Empirical success was measured in personal, physical failure.  Kafka grew sick.  All parties involved understood the implications of their meddling in and with the universe.  But they moved forward anyway.  Love of science, and science for love.  Any one of them could have fallen ill and succumbed to the madness and rigors of their work.  But it was Kafka that took the full hit.  She doubled in size and took to staring at herself in the cheap plastic mirror that once gave her amusement and allowed her a break from the work that drove her.  Linaeus just watched, supported and loved.  This is how scientists and lovers, trapped in a cage, exist. 

Lineaus quietly pleads to Kafka from a lower perch, “Shut the machine down.  We know it works.  We have done the impossible.  We have bent space and time, and allowed stars from opposite sides of the universe to meet and burn into one.  We have proven that love and math and insanity can undo all the rules that were laid before us.  We have rippled in the black.  Isn’t this enough?”

And Kafka opens her wings and imagines flying.  “It’s okay my love.  We have done the impossible.  Now it is up to them.  (she looks out to the window beyond her and speaks with sadness and love)  Shut it down.  Only under great duress and need will we ever light this candle again.  And honestly, it is only a matter of time before we are caught in our little manipulation of the heavens.  How many light storms above such remote and insignificant spots can occur before some fool takes notice?  Come here my strong little lover.  Sit with me and let’s gaze into the mirror, the universe, and imagine.  What is next my love?  Shall we nudge a planet this time?  Or maybe we just perch and watch the moon, with no purpose at all, just watch it rise and fall again, out our window?”

And together, Kafka and Linaeus, two simple parakeets, sit on the top perch inside their presentable cage (not gilded, that would be too garish and unfitting).  They lean deep into one another and dream.  They dream about flying and the souls they have brought together, and wonder what will happen next.

The next morning she, Eridanus, the traveler of this earth, the willing subject of their experiments, the body evaporated by light and radiation, for love, and brought back together, for love, buys a plane ticket for Baltimore.  All parties involved marvel at the simplicity of her gesture.

A plane ticket.  They could have met the first time so easily.  But instead they chose to dance across the universe and materialize and dematerialize and float and wonder and experiment, and imagine real touch and connection.  The great break thru, the real result of their experiments, was the understanding that love requires time and work.  It seems so simple, but it required great effort to get to this moment.  Why not ripple through the black?  Why not dance upon the ether?  Why not become real in only moonlight, and leave with the morning sun?  Why not?  Time; take time.  Take all the time of the universe.  They all knew,

Kafka, the risk taker…

Linaeus, the understanding…

Eridanus, the lover and loved…

Murdoc, the loved and lover.

This love, the love shared between Eridanus and Murdoc, never began and has never ended.  Kafka and Linaeus were just another part of story; that began a long time ago, and ends a long time away. 

But hold onto this, lovers and dreamers… There is a machine somewhere that ignites when blue skies of night are filled with electricity.  It fires on cool breeze and soft gray clouds gently blending as one.  All you have to do, to know this is real, is to look to the heavens.  You’ve seen the lightning, when it really shouldn’t be there.

Haven’t you?

Eridanus alights in Baltimore,

And Murdoc is home.

They are real.

Real, they must be.

It's The Little Things.

And the Universe takes what it wants and is unforgiving and beautiful.

            Kafka has taken her spot on the higher perch.  She rises as high as she can go within the cage, and it is just enough.  There is no longer a need to fly; the view from the swinging dowel suspended by taut, hard wires is enough.  From up here, with its limited and easy view, she can rest easy and know that all her hard work and calculations are justified…glorified.

            And from one perch below, Linaeus, sits quietly and admires her strength and understanding of a universe gone mad.

            Together, they have toiled.  Together, they have unraveled the secrets of dark matter and particle acceleration.  They have bickered and squabbled, plucked feathers from each others backs.  In the quiet, just before the rise of the sun of the new day after  mathematical work and welding, they have leaned deep into one another and cooed and keened when all hope seemed lost.  Their work, as important as it may have seemed, would always take a backseat to their silly love for one another.  They could have never broken thru the barriers of time and space alone, without the other.  Kafka, the unbending idealist intellect and reasoning, emotional leader, needed Lineaus, the scientist, the empiricist, and data collector and unbreakable lover, of her and their work.

            Truth be told, Linaeus didn’t give a shit about time travel and intersecting planes; and here being now, and then being when.  It all seemed such nonsense.  But he went along with the math and build because this is what true lovers do.  It was all fun and games, “Love of science, science for love.”  It all made her happy and smile and satisfied, and isn’t that enough?  Shouldn’t that be enough? 

            The bad news came on Thursday.  After blood tests and x-rays, it was determined that she was terminal.  She took the diagnosis well, squawked a bit, and settled in to her new, discovered fate.  What other recourse did she have?  Kafka knew all along that work on such a grand scale would take its toll.  You can’t nudge stars without repercussions.  She isn’t ready to go, but her work has reassured her that this isn’t the end.

            Linaeus takes the news of Kafka’s fate quite hard.  They spend their first night apart and he sets about rearranging the trinkets and papers of their cage, not so much to suit his needs or desires, but more to throw everything into upheaval and chaos.  A simple day apart is enough to drive him to madness and self destruction.  After the petulant melee has passed, he sits and waits for her return.  Each time a door opens outside their cage, he perks up and waits for her to be gently handed back to him through the soft bars that keep them safe.  But she doesn’t return for one whole day. 

            And when she does return, everything is different and nothing will ever be the same.  Together, Kafka and Linaeus have broken through and mastered time, and now time is their enemy.  Together, they worked to cross through it, at will; and now they only want to turn it back. 

Linaeus  - “Volim te.”

Kafka  -  “I know my love, and I love you.”

Linaeus  -  “Was it the experiments?  Was it the late nights, chemicals and electricity?  Was it our reckless pursuit of higher learning?  Was it just dumb fucking luck?  Because I’ll be damned, I want fucking answers.”

            Linaeus is now sitting next to Kafka on the higher perch.  Gently, they rub their useless wings against one another and dream of flying.

Kafka  - “I will love you forever, and if that doesn’t last, than nothing will.”

Linaeus  - “How much time do we have?”

Kafka  - “All the time in the universe, my love.  We already figured it out.  Keep our beautiful machine running.  And I will find you again.  We have so much more to figure out.”

            Linaeus leans deep into Kafka, buries his tiny, heavy head, in the comfort of the silky soft feathers of her shoulder.  And Kafka, with the strength of newly formed star, holds him strong and within her gravity and universe pull.  And as she holds strong and steady, she catches a glimpse of herself, and him, in the cheap plastic and foil mirror that was placed there in their cage, for their amusement when the calculations and heavy work seemed to much and all for naught.  Kafka muses, “How easily we can be distracted?    Look my love, that’s us, refracted by light and time.  Silly us.  Love me.” 

This World Leaves Me In Stitches.

            He is standing naked in front of the full length mirror of his tiny bathroom.  All the lights are off.  He glows from within.

            He awoke from another one of his dreams, at the usual time.  He has become accustomed to these nightly interruptions.  The full moon intensifies his ether travels and leaves him stumbling into awakening.  Tonight he was down in a diamond mine, a city of false refracted light underground, governed by fear and illumination as currency.  Wars raged over prisms gift, and countless suffered.  And he knew the way to a better light.  He gathered who he could and led them out through the dark maze.  And just as the last rescued souls emerged through the rock into redemption, our hero turned back and walked quietly into the dark.  There were more to bring out.  And he can always find his way thru the dark.

            He studies his body.  In the blue-black of the early dark morn, there would be nothing to see.  But tonight, his body is aglow.  Every scar, every healed cleave, sutured puncture, is alight from within, like some derma muted glorious glowing aurora borealis. He is patchwork of radiant illumination. 

            He studies this glow and makes notes.  Each one is different, and has an accompanying variance of associated pain and release, memory and connection.

            He notices his left calf first.  It shines bright and purrfect rays of straight white light emanate from all twenty dots along the wide scribed scar line that separates them with an eighth inch wide by three inch mottled and muted glow from underneath.

            Next he notices his right shin.  Thirteen stitches on Friday the thirteenth.  This one sheds muted light, and hurts a bit less, glows like quiet embers.

            His left arm burns.  The light that sears off this scar is without defined shape; no stitch marks here to pull flesh and viscera together, give it a pleasant, familiar shape.  This wound, this light, is reflection of deep tear and pull of flesh off of metal.

            Below his lower lip, a straw of hollow swirling light shines forth;  A small vortex like the tiniest of black holes in space, surrounded by a helix of ROYGBIV light.  He passes a finger through it, through its beam reflected off the mirror.  He lifts and tilts his head and uses the beam to write words upon the ceiling, the wall, “I love you”, and “Can you hear me?”  He especially likes the motion required to make a question mark. This familiar, one dimensional character has now become a gesture, a three dimensional expression.  Question mark is now defined, like a shrug or a smile.

            There is a myriad of light from within that shines and glows from countless scars.  Some are profound.  Others are barely perceptible.  But they all glow and shine in their own specific way.  Each one its own universe of love and pain.  Each one, a reminder of where he has been.  Each one, a calling to home.

            From his left side, high upon his chest, but close to his heart, the brightest light bursts forth.  It is not so much light, as a tightly packed rod of ions and atoms.  He tries to pass his hand through this beam, but it is impenetrable.  It is steel light from within.  And it hurts and burns like all hell.  Around the white beam, an array of amber threads of light, wave about like the thick hairs of a lover on the aqua-marine surface of a subtle Adriatic Sea.  It is a star being born, captured by a telescope a million miles, a million years away.  Smart scientists and star gazers, far away from here, will not try to break this event into particles and purpose; they will simple define it as “Love”.

            He stands and studies his glowing scars, the marks of his travels; the map of him.  And as the full moon says goodnight and the new day is about to awake, the light from within and the pain, skips away, like a child called home after a good day of play. 

            He turns from the mirror, and walks back through the dark (he can always find his way), towards his bed, to sleep. 

            He lies quietly, remembers where he has been, and knows where he will be going. 

            He sets himself, rightly, to sleep, and dreams of her.  All of this, these scars and journeys have always been for her.  She is the healing hand of home.  And each day she grows closer.