Ben Thomas Copyright 2013
The “Aftermath” or Requiem for a Survivor?
Prologue:
I’ve known people who read the last few pages of a new book before they would consider starting at the beginning. I never quite understood their reasoning to jump ahead like that without knowing why it ended the way it did.
They may have the answer but not know the question. Either one on their own is nearly worthless without the other.
People sometimes spend their entire lives looking for one or the other and most folks wisely not taking someone Else's word for it, which I believe makes more sense, better to arrive at your own conclusions regarding questions and answers.
I have no answers and haven’t yet figured out what it is I need to ask. So I thrash around writing when I feel inclined, sometimes it all seems clear to me, willing my fingers to keep up, other times I’m lost in the dark, catching glimpses that makes me want to skip to the last chapter, but then I’m getting ahead of myself and what would be the point?
As the writing goes, after “The Early years” comes “Somewhere in Between” parts one and two. I think around 10000 words now, yet here I am working on the “Aftermath,” perhaps because the Aftermath is now, the others were then.
A note: it’s weird to write about yourself in the third person, but what better way to distance yourself from the pain.
I think the first step to finding yourself is to recognize that indeed, you are, or have been lost.
A very rambling rough draft of some not to distant dark days.
“ Aftermath”
Waking up waylaid in some desolate, windblown and weather beaten way station wondering how long has it been since you lost your grip on the reins and began to wander.
Passing remnants of some forgotten path whispers like a distant siren that may have led you here if you could only turn back the clock, caught on a gossamer's edge of some memory that fades into twilight then disappears, lost in the shredded threads of your thoughts as time relentlessly blurs everything in the vacuum of its silent wake.
Somewhere out on a hazy horizon there still might be answers, but first you must get there, that’s the tricksy part, it keeps moving as you do on some ethereal carousel coming around again to tease into your peripheral vision like a reluctant lover who’s heart still belongs to another.
I do remember, when memories come barreling out of the ether's, buffeting against, then through me, sometimes gently, most times at gale force leaving me staggering, stunned and spent.
Other times of the before, offering up a lost scent, a glimpse of what is no more, a lingering smile...somewhere laughter fills the void, a casual reassurance that calms a restless soul.
You can almost taste it, once a familiar sweetness, but now somehow half forgotten, images blurred into knots, hobbled to some hitching post in a cobweb filled ghost town somewhere in my imagination as I glance up ahead in a sleepless dream thinking I see her.. fading into the distance chasing dreams of her own, gone before I think to ask.
It’s a wonder how paths cross at all in this maze of being, like shutters, as they clang silently on windowless frames in the still haze.
Glimmers of hope and despair lie in wait on the razors edge, a thin line that hardly separates, but still cuts deep through the hardened scars of the heart, the healing wounds open up once again to bleed out.
An Aside:
Years ago an old girl friend sent me a post card after we had broken up, it read:
Madness...
“ A man needs a little madness or he never dares cut the rope and be free”
Which is now my favorite line delivered by Anthony Quinn from the film “Zorba the Greek”
More than three years now since he started stumbling his way down this path and still no sign of what was lost.
The frayed rope still holding fast, stretched thin and chafing against a threadbare soul.
There are no markers chasing things that were, only the passing of time, even that seems lost in the vagaries that distract, following circles in the sand tethered at the end of your rope.
How hard it is to keep your love alive, letting go of all that was, while holding on for dear life. How can moving on be so tenuous?
Moments are gone in fleeting moments. A wisp of momentum is all that is left of those precious times, going alone through the motions now, going back to places that were special...laden with memories, slogging through emotional quicksands, forced to cast off the burdens that weigh him down.
How does one reconcile the fading memories, the tinge of guilt when you know that some image or remembered moment has slipped by, until you are reminded once again as it returns in this paradoxical world that has already moved on, leaving one next to the precipice’s edge facing the winds that force change as everything seems to be slipping through your fingers yet seemingly still within grasp.
What drives the child’s next searching step into the unknown future but naivete and wonder.
What will it take to cut the ropes and be free?
Finding your way was never easy, nor is it now, even separately we all seem to be in this together.
A few more asides:
Quips that came to me as I was waiting for the wind to pick up enough to sail by on board “Milagro.” I wrote them down before they were lost again in the ether's of short term memory.
Perhaps an indication that I still may have a sense of humor about it all even though there is no escape:
The internal compass, when caught up in a vortex remains pointless. Random directions all lead to the same destination.
When at sea everything compresses out over the horizon. You need to know where you’re going, but more importantly you need to know where you are, otherwise you may be lost.
To drop anchor after a voyage can be a relief, you may have momentarily arrived.
To set sail may indicate you have the courage after all.
To reduce sail has nothing to do with courage but a resolve to get there in one piece so you can drop anchor.
Anchoring is not the same as running aground, with the latter you’ve arrived, though you may not be where you thought you were.
Deep water can be safer than the shallows even though you may be in over your head.
While at the mast and you hear sirens, ignore them, you’re already pursuing a dream.
To many glances over your shoulder will assure you where you’ve been but not where you’re going.
Archives:
Coming home is never what you think it will be. You may have conjured up some romantic ideas of your origins that really only existed in your mind, becoming more than they really are the longer you’re away.
Returning home can put a stop to all of that, leaving you marooned, but for your dreams. But the pull of roots and family were strong drawing me back.
I was twenty then, It was enough just to let go, roll the dice and leave for half way round the world with a one way ticket and a few hundred dollars.
The plan was to travel and I did, it was all foreign to me, total immersion, which was what I wanted most. What better way to test yourself?
Finding a way back came when I decided to return. It was springtime, a sensible season to come in on, with natures rebirth so strong in the air.
On returning after being gone a year a physic read my mind/soul without my consent, (I would have gladly given it), narrating what had happened to a young man while traveling and what he was encountering on the return home.
At first I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, listening quizzically it dawned on me... it was me she was talking about, she had my attention.
An elderly woman in her late 80’s, she was having a garage sale, cleaning house after her husband passed away and getting ready to move on herself. I had just finished paying for a wonderful old suitcase and a small enameled top kitchen table (the table is in my kitchen, the suitcase in storage carries items of that time) when she told me my story while counting out my change.
I was young and it didn’t take long. She hit upon the important stuff, things I had never talked about to anyone, of dreams and plans, of being at a crossroads with choices to make.
I was touched, she had an aura of kindness and wisdom about her that were told through her grace and eyes that sparkled with wizened depth.
The story covered several years up to the moment I stepped into her space, she had nothing to say about the future, only what had brought me there.
That was 43 years ago, I still think of her sometimes and what she would say to me now.
Crossroads... an intersection without signposts.
to be continued:
