fragments

The cottonwood seeds blowing like fat snowflakes, covering the streets with fine white down. The chattering of chimney swifts echoing from the rooftops. The broad leaves of burdock and wild grape filling up alleyways.

dream

     Sleep in jagged little fragments . . . 1:17 . . . 2:34 . . . 2:41 . . . 3:03. 

     Turn the clock face down. 

     Urinate. 

     Masturbate. 

     Ruminate. 

     Check the thermostat, put in earplugs. But the noise and heat are inside my head, driving worms of memory from their burrows. 

     If I could not sleep, could I shape shift and time travel? Holding a newborn goat on my lap . . . the pelagic solitude of albatross flight . . . sprawling onto the cool side of the bed-- all once pleasant but now filled with sickening emptiness. The kid was gasping for air, the bird tiring with no land in sight, the other side of this bed a mausoleum.

     If I dreamed at night I had no memory of it, and as my sleep deteriorated my mind began to invent newspaper articles, phone conversations, errands and other details of my day. With great effort I was able to navigate the newly unverifiable world while at work. Colleagues became concerned, and I ultimately relented to efforts at help in the form of a prescription for sleeping pills.

A terrifying feeling, the now familiar back and forth of rumination and shallow sleep was overtaken by the hypnotic downward pull of the drug

     The metallic slap of footsteps echoed through the cramped stairwell. The cool, cement must was replaced by humid summer air as I opened the door and stepped onto the rooftop of what appeared to be a warehouse on the edge of a city I did not know. It was night, and a bank of thunderheads was gathering over the lights of downtown. Cloud to cloud lightning lit the sky in staccato bursts, but without the accompaniment of thunder or wind.

      I felt a woman's hand slip into mine. Before I turned, I knew it was X. It felt natural that she would be there, a tender familiarity rather than a surprise. I squeezed her hand and swung her in front of me. To see her was good. And it was her, from the spray of sun freckles across her nose to the way she broke eye contact and stared smiling at the hand she had placed over my heart. I was whole, serene and strong again.

     "It's going to rain," she turned away from me and surveyed the flickering wall of clouds.

     "Maybe. Who cares. " I pulled her back, close to me. My left hand found the crest of her hip as her head came to rest on my shoulder.

     She whispered something I could not make out.

     Awake again. Groggy, confused, desolate. Moaning, swatting at the light on the bedside table. Choking

Masterton

Like many small towns in New Zealand, Masterton still boasts a proper high street that is pedestrian-friendly and lined with shops, cafes and pubs. At its north end lies Queen Elizabeth Park, a large "publick space" that maintains, in spite of its name, a distinctly Victorian air. Wandering its tree lined paths, one encounters formal gardens, duck ponds and a miniature railway before arriving at the park's centerpiece, a cricket oval set among centenarian pines, elms and even the occasional redwood. It was against one of these latter that I sat to enjoy the world's most prolix and least intuitive sport, but not before I had toured the park in its entirety.

Adjacent to the cricket oval, elderly couples in matching white outfits engaged in serious-looking matches of lawn bowling and croquet. Next to these facilities--and a testament to the practicality of the park's design--I noted a cemetery. From here, I crossed the Waipoua River on an ancient swinging bridge and followed the footpath between the east bank and inexplicable paddocks of red and fallow deer--maintained, a sign indicated, by the Wairarapa Deerstalkers Association. On the park's northwestern fringes, the bucolic theme unraveled further as traffic plodded by the skate ramp and mini-golf course, presumably recent inclusions. 

Prologue

     I do not know if Judah ever wrote anything. I suspect not. In his obscure, happy life there was no god, no wisdom, no magic to pass on. Like a thousand anonymous god-minds before, he simply stared back into the void until he flickered out. He shined, and for a while I mistakenly thought he shined for me.

     Like you, I am slowly falling away from a few moments of frightening clarity. Some of us are damned, worn down through insidious compromise with forms we do not think to challenge--commodity, family, nationality, self. Others are tragic, diverted by Buddhas in the road back into cul-de-sacs of attachment and desire. 

      I do not know which I am. I know very little, and what I do know is unhelpful. I know there is no giving, only letting go, that the myth of altruism conceals the truth that there is nothing to give. . .

     I sound like Judah, but I am not Judah. I have a story to tell.