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.      

The Science of Being There...Here.

          He wakes at ten minutes until three in the dark again.  He always wakes at this very moment in the late night, early morn.  He has done this for centuries, waiting, watching.  The windows are open and a cold damp breeze crisps the blue-black air and shadows that fill his room.  He sits for a second on the edge of his bed, warm feet on the cool wood floor, and breathes in deep.  Wheeze and rasp, cough, clears his throat.  Hands run through his hair, knees creak as he rises naked into the black.  No lights are turned on; he can find his way through the dark just fine.  He walks through the house to the small kitchen, and stands before the windows that frame the Grand Oak out back and the nights purple reflection off the water.  It’s a quiet night.  The waves are small and lap quietly against the bulkhead that keeps their sudden fury at bay.  Far off lights from the factories across the sound, shimmer like stars on the polygonic blending ripples.  He leans into the window like a child, pushes his nose against the screen, closes his eyes and breathes in deep the soft salty purity of the breeze off the water.  Far off across the water he can see the muted flashes of a storm that is coming.  He holds his breath and hears the tiny rumble of the thunder far away.  A wry smile overcomes his dark nights rising visage.  He knows the lightning far away and its probable cause this early morn.  Electric is about to fill his night, renew his soul

            The last report he received was good news.  The machine was almost done and would be operational within days, possibly hours, there was just a few more tests before the all clear would be given.  Linaeus and Kafka had been working hard at their task on the other side of the world.  Their ruse was purrfect.  They disguised themselves as two plump, happy kept parakeets.  They pecked at cuttle bones and the shiny mirror that was placed inside their gilded laboratory. They bickered and kvetched over complex calculations and equations, directly under the loving watch of their keepers.  The pretty language of parakeets, their code, has yet to be broken.  So they toiled at their task, and no one was ever the wiser.   The message was sent across the ocean via migrating stork to migrating osprey, “All systems go.  Watch the sky and be ready.”

            Kafka held the higher perch and had a flair for the dramatic.  She and Linaeus argued about what should be sent on the first test.  Linaeus and his steady proclivities quietly urged for a coffee cup.  Kafka threw caution to the wind and pushed the idea of a freshly washed lock of her hair.  Of course Kafka won.  Why not make the first test of the machine be one of romantic implications?  Wasn’t this what their work was all about anyway?  After the first transfer and all is well, Linaeus commented from his lower perch, “You were right.  It was the purrfect gesture.  But don’t let that little bird brain of yours get too swollen, you have poop stuck to your ass.”  Kafka smiled down from above and chirped, “Sound science comes with a price my friend.  It is a small price to pay for unlocking the secrets of time and travel.”  The light comes on in the kitchen across the ocean where they are kept, where they work, and both quickly pretend to sleep.  Linaeus snores a birdy snore for effect, and Kafka ruffles feathers in reproach.

            He is still standing naked at the windows, but the light and electric has moved over and in upon him.  There is no fury to the storm that dances in over the water.  Its disguise is purrfect.  His neighbors sleep easy; just another soft summer’s storm off the water.  There is one thick crack of light that fills his prison with bright white illumination; a low guttural rumble shakes and rattles the old timbers and worn joists.  Everything seems to shift on it’s axis to left as if being pulled out across the water just a smidge.  The small hairs on his tanned forearms lift and glow amber at the ends.  His muscles flex taut and strain at their connections to his bones.  His eyes adjust back from the white flash, to the dark that surrounds him, and he can see a soft blue glow flicker from inside the doorway of his bedroom.  It flutters and dances like a muted azure candle.  He turns his back to the water and walks towards the quiet, electric call to bed.

            He enters the room and static is heavy in the air.  The blades of the spinning ceiling fan emit thin stretched out veins of blue, white, and yellow, that fall around his bed like delicate, intricate, random lace. 

            “All systems go.” 

            He turns his back to the bed and sits softly on its edge.  He knows not to ever turn his back to a door before climbing into bed.  He was taught this long ago by an old weaver woman of tales and linen.  Patiently, he sits and lets the quiet electric fill the room; muted cracks and sizzle, hiss and white noise, and then a pause in the din.

            He doesn’t turn around.  He just speaks, “Hello Beautiful.  How was your trip?”  And as he speaks these words, he slowly leans back into the electric of her that has filled his bed.  As his back touches the soft of her belly and her arms wrap around him, his body becomes blue electric, absorbing and melting into the heavens traveled essence of her. 

            She whispers, weary from travel, but excited by their touch made finally real, “Hello to you my love.”  She grasps his hand tightly and blue light dances from their entwined fingers like flames.  There is heat, but it is nothing that they can’t bare and nothing they didn’t anticipate.

            The warmth electric shared between them, cuts the chill of the cool breeze off the water out back that drifts though his prison like a ghost.  Before they fade off to sleep, they send a shared message out into the last stars of the morning, which is picked up by the earliest hunting ospreys and passed on to the storks, and carried across the ocean.

            Linaeus will receive the message and pass it onto Kafka who is taking a much needed bath by the window.  It will simply read, “Mission accomplished.”  Later in the day, Kafka will allow Linaeus to sit as partner on the higher perch, and they will both puff out their feathers and take pride in their work.  Kafka will chirp, “Love of science, science for love.  This world would be a much better place."   

            A writer of romance novels told me to stop writing in the first person.  “Why do you do this?”  She was puzzled by my narrative.  “This style isn’t very commercial,” she said through a crackling telephone line that sparked and fused with my anger at her intended helpful comments.  And I thought to myself, “Perhaps he should write romance novels?”

            But what did he know?  His last taste of romance left a fine sheen of burnt gunpowder and cordite on his lips and tongue; hands, heart and soul blackened and maimed by the blast.  Waiting in line at the grocery check-out, the old housewife behind him found him presentable, but smelling of war.  She would comment to her sister later that evening, “He was handsome Myrtle, but something wasn’t right.  You could tell he was alone, he bought just enough for one, and he smelt like burnt wires.  His smile was more of a wince.  I tell ya, for a second I thought he would just poof, turn into ashes and dust if the wind blew through the line.”  Her sister would respond back, “Sounds like a man in need of a hug.”  And Myrtle said back in a hushed and knowing tone, “That poor boy needed more than a hug, he needed love.  I found myself afraid for him.”

            He is burnt wires and spent gunpowder.  He is rubble and wreckage.  He is.  And that is at least something, isn’t it?

            He has endured a nuclear winter of love a gone bad.  He has suffered and when that wasn’t enough, he has taken, created, more suffering just so he could feel something.  He is no martyr for love, he is loves great champion.  He understands that to feel good, one must feel as bad as possible at times, most times, according to his ethos.  “It makes the good that much better,” he will tell a friend that is hurting in a similar fashion.  As he says this, he smirks and lifts an eyebrow, in a way that brings a smile and joy to even the darkest of moments in this human condition.  He is.  But he is also love.  He is the hope of love and all that it can and should be.  This is why old women at the grocery check-out want to hug him.  “I tell ya Mrytle, I just wanted to take him home and, scrub him nicely, make him a good dinner, and take him to bed.  I haven’t felt like that in years.”  Mrytle’s sister will just sigh heavily and make a point of going to the grocery store more often.

            And he will be there.  He has and always will be.  He is love.

            And he knows love.  It is just far away, a bit out of his reach.  

            And this is why he burns.  It is a new fire.

            No one knows that the seething and smoldering that he exudes is a want, a love so deep that ignites his nerves and melts diamonds.  He keeps this love private.  It is his touchstone and talisman.  It is his and his alone.  He gives of himself feely to others, but reserves a place inside himself that only one other soul can share and see.  He is in love.  This is why he burns with the heat of a blast furnace on Sparrows Point.  What is mistaken by some as loneliness is just a want for a touch from the soul he has given his heart to.  It is her soft hand that will temper his fire, control it, and put its heat to good purpose. 

            He and his love are separated by an ocean, which may as well be a simple pane of glass as far as the universe and its time are concerned.  Miles and time mean nothing in the calculations of love.  Silly mankind studies the heavens and waits patiently for two stars to collide after a century.  What takes forever down here is just a blink in the ether.

            So our hero is in love.  His star has collided with another of brighter and greater magnitude, and their collision will be witnessed and noted.

            An old man sits on the warm hood of a pick-up truck at the end of dirt road.  He drives out to where the dirt and gravel ends by a fecund pond that is alight with fireflies and the sounds of night birds in the thick green trees.  He climbs atop the warm hood and just sits, listens and waits.  He has been coming here for centuries it seems.  He is drawn to this spot by some strange pull from across the universe.  Something tells him that if he is patient, he will be rewarded. 

            And he is.  On a cool springs night our old star-gazer is witness to the power of the infinite and its exquisite beauty.  He watches as the day fades into night and the stars rise over the green that envelopes him.  And just when he has had enough of all this beauty, he sees something extraordinary…Two stars, brighter than all the rest, race across the night’s sky leaving purrfect trails of light and heat behind them.  Their paths are predetermined by a math that hasn’t yet been unlocked and deciphered.  Far away in dimly lit observatories, astronomers await the impact, but have no idea why the courses of these two stars should meet.  And an old man on the warm hood of a tired old pick-up truck doesn’t think of this or care.  He just waits, and remembers what it was like to be young again and filled with wonder.

            And these two stars find each other in the deep blue and purple of the night made new again.  Amongst an infinite array of stars, light trails behind them betray their path; but their initial impact is for them and them alone.  There is a pause.  And then a quick small flash from very far away.  Another pause.  And then a small purrfect circle of light where the impact of these stars had been.  Another pause.  And then another larger purrfect circle.  Pause again, and then a third and even larger purrfect circle marks for a moment this spot in the heavens where paths collide and life begins. 

            An old man on the warm hood of a pick-up truck, at the end of a dirt road, next to a fecund pond surrounded by the green of a cool spring and fire-flies, lifts one hand to his heart and the other to his lips.  He breathes in deep and remembers what love felt like once.  He will stay like this for a few moments, a blink in the ether; and wish for the long slow passing of time by the universe’s clock. 

            Our hero tonight, lies on the floor sleeping.  His love from afar, across the universe, watches over him from the tiny eye of human creation that glows with soft blue electric light.  As he sleeps, an uneasy sleep, he dreams of stars in the heavens that are destined to meet.  He dreams of purrfect white light circles in the ether.  He dreams of touch and contact.  He dreams of love made real.

            And when he has had enough of dreaming, he opens his eyes and there she is.  She is hope.  She is light.  She is love.  And only an ocean, a thin pane of the universes glass lies between them.  Our hero will rub his eyes like a child, to make sure she is real, and then whisper through the ether, “Hello Sunshine.”

            Make no doubt, our hero burns and seethes and smolders.  But it is a new and better fire that burns inside him.  It’s just easily misunderstood by old women in the grocery store check-out line that have forgotten the heat and smell of love.

            It doesn’t always have to hurt.        

    A reader of this body of work recently asked me, "Where have you been?"  They were wondering why my posts were becoming more and more infrequent?  They asked, "Are you losing interest?"

I have not lost interest.
I still stand by this body of work.
But something has changed.

I have changed.

    The initial purpose of the Hit and Miss Engine Papers was to take a walk down shitty memory lane.  It was my intention to expose every raw nerve, and exposed vein, that was the result of the dissolution of my twelve year relationship.  I used my own teeth to chew my skull open, and then freely and wantonly dug my hands deep into the viscera of my silly brain.  I wasn't searching for anything really.  I was just getting all the shit out.  It's akin to personal therapy; only there is no couch, no smug doctor, and no bill at the end of every session.  My little experiment may not work for everyone, but I must report that it worked quite nicely for me. 
    By getting all the shit out, committing it to this metaphorical paper, I was able to find some peace.  I would examine why I was hurting, write it all down no matter how verbose or trite it may have seemed; and I was able to go to bed and sleep.  I was able to get up in the morning and go to work.  I was able to exist.  I may not have been living most days, but I was getting through each day, and that counts for something, doesn't it?  And as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and the months finally became a year, I found that I was starting to live...again.
    And so, I have learned to live all over again.  I am still learning.  I will never be the man I was before all this, and I am glad.  I am a better man now. 
    There are people, places, and things that I will miss, but they can all be replaced.  Just as I have been replaced in her life.  Four days after my 45th birthday in October, she placed the home that I built for her, on the market.  The greatest expression of my love and talents is now for sale.  When I was told of this development, I didn't get angry or cry.  It is just a house, and I will build another.  I actually smiled when I looked up the listing.  It's a good house and I am proud of my work.  I know it will make the new owners very happy.
    And then in November I was informed that she is now engaged.  I actually laughed when this news was passed along to me.  I had a smidgen of hurt, but truthfully, the news wasn't the blow you might have expected it to be.  The only thing that bothered me was the understanding that she had been cheating on me during our last year together.  In one of our last conversations together, I asked her if there was someone else.  "There isn't anyone.  I just want to find myself.  I think I'm going to be alone for quite awhile."  And she lied to me as easy as a child when caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  And I knew she was lying.  I even wrote a story for her, describing her new lover almost perfectly.  I changed one small detail, in fairness to her.  I didn't want to tell her that I knew everything.  She read the story and cried deeply.  But she was committed to her actions and her promise of a new and better life.  And to this I say, "Good luck."  And I am not being smug or condescending or snarky when I say these words.  I wish her nothing but luck in her new life.  Everyone, no matter how shitty and messed up they may be, deserves at least this much.
    Here are the last words I ever spoke to her, just before I climbed into my truck and drove off,  "I don't understand any of this, but I do.  I hope you find whatever it is that I couldn't give you." 

She reached out to hug me,
heavy tears were starting to fall.

I stepped back.
I left her with her arms open,
awaiting a last embrace.

    And now here we are.  One year later, and so much has happened and changed.  I have happened and changed.  It's funny to think that so much can be so different in such a short time.  The Universe is a silly thing.
   
    Chapter One, of the Hit and Miss Engine Papers is now done.  I hope it has touched you, (both good and bad) and forced you to think.  I hope that these words have given you pause, and inspired some of you to take a closer look at your lives and relationships.  I hope that we can all find our smiles; even when confronted with the heavy task, of learning to live all over again.

    Chapter Two of the Hit and Miss Papers has already begun.  It is about finding love again, across an ocean, just through the sharing of words.  It is a truly romantic story, one that is developing as you are reading this, and one I think you will enjoy.  So, readers and friends, thank you for sticking by me this past year.  Thank you for reading my thoughts and musings, and not passing judgement and just riding along.  Thank you.
    And to my muse, my siren, my oracle and love across the black water, "Hello, Beautiful.  It was a good day."
                                             -Murdoc.