Where Fallen Hearts Still Flicker
"I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad. These dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had..."
It was Lenny Bruce who said that tragedy plus time equals satire. While that kind of cynicism is always appealing, this boy has to believe that he isn't always ruled by such a dark mistress. Time dodges all cliches, even those that seem to stop it in its tracks with piercing and painful insight. Satire isn't such a great marksman at the best of times, and tragedy has it beaten by sheer weight of numbers.
I laughed at the hearts. I hated them. They were trapped inside a wedding card from my parents, and I freed them only because I tore open that fat envelope with careless greed. I wanted the money more than I wanted the wishes scrawled within. Transatlantic love is romantic enough to inspire the sighs of voyeurs, but it's nothing without funding.
We were on Interstate 15, Destiny Road, cutting through the heat-haze in our rented car, gazing at the mountains and never daring to look back. In our wake, the demons danced on sun-sick tarmac, snarling regrets as their claws tapped out angry rhythms on the asphalt. She kept us between white line and yellow, glancing across at me with a smile in her eyes as I ripped the paper and parted the card and a shower of tiny golden hearts exploded upwards and outwards, catching the light like so much glitter as they fluttered down into my lap. We laughed. We spared them no real thought. They were a minor inconvenience next to the message my mother had insisted I not read until we were together, next to the money that would pay for rings and words. When our initial euphoria subsided, I rescued as many as I could and threw them into my bag. We forgot them.
Lenny would have appreciated the smirking irony of those little hearts. Later, back in California, they leapt out onto the floor of her bedroom every time I reached for clothes. They stuck to our feet and got dragged all over her apartment, mocked us by lamplight as we sat watching television and the clock. The day I left, I looked down through a spray of warm water and watched one drown in the bath, struggling in the current before being dragged mercilessly to its death in the tiny whirlpool between my feet.
They were there on the plane, winking in the darkness beneath my bathroom bag as I reached for a book. They were there when I got home, jumping out to explore the fresh terrain of my bed while I organised my presents. When it was easy, when distance and time had yet to conspire against us, they were there, reminding me of sunlit roads and moonlit hotel rooms, of friendly bars and intimate conversations held against a backdrop of yelping slot machines, of the cheers and groans of the sin city chancers. They mingled with the flotsam of my bedroom, drifted happily on the tide of blandness I'm so rarely inspired enough to swim in. As the days and weeks went by, they disappeared beneath the waves.
Tragedy plus time equals satire. I appreciate that more than I used to. Sometimes, on the last leg of my journey home from a job I never wanted to a place I could never call home, I look up at the sky with a perspective born of frustrated dreams and a heavy heart. I see the stars not as pretty and easily dismissed pinpricks of light catching the stare of an unseen sun, but as worlds far bigger than my own made insignificant by distance. Looking up at the night sky is like looking into history. By the time that silvery luminescence reaches the eyes, years have passed. I'm staring at giants that have lumbered on, wondering at lights that have long since been extinguished. The distance across an ocean and a continent is a tiny and irrelevant thing in comparison. Still, it hurts; a swift, sharp knife between the ribs mocking a sword barely raised.
I do what I have to do. I get by. I return to a bedroom stale in more ways than one. Every night, I undress and climb into bed, reaching down for my phone, thumb dancing over the keys to set my alarm for the following morning. And in those long, empty seconds where I lay on my side waiting for the tiny screen to go dark, my eyes flit over the magazines, the CD and DVD and game cases, the clothes and the towels, the crumpled sheets of paper bearing the untidy graffiti of my dreams. The shrapnel of a life litters the floor, and here and there amongst it, those fallen hearts flicker like broken promises. I remember Lenny and I try to smile, try to remember that - for this boy at least - dreams plus time equal reality.
It was Lenny Bruce who said that tragedy plus time equals satire. While that kind of cynicism is always appealing, this boy has to believe that he isn't always ruled by such a dark mistress. Time dodges all cliches, even those that seem to stop it in its tracks with piercing and painful insight. Satire isn't such a great marksman at the best of times, and tragedy has it beaten by sheer weight of numbers.
I laughed at the hearts. I hated them. They were trapped inside a wedding card from my parents, and I freed them only because I tore open that fat envelope with careless greed. I wanted the money more than I wanted the wishes scrawled within. Transatlantic love is romantic enough to inspire the sighs of voyeurs, but it's nothing without funding.
We were on Interstate 15, Destiny Road, cutting through the heat-haze in our rented car, gazing at the mountains and never daring to look back. In our wake, the demons danced on sun-sick tarmac, snarling regrets as their claws tapped out angry rhythms on the asphalt. She kept us between white line and yellow, glancing across at me with a smile in her eyes as I ripped the paper and parted the card and a shower of tiny golden hearts exploded upwards and outwards, catching the light like so much glitter as they fluttered down into my lap. We laughed. We spared them no real thought. They were a minor inconvenience next to the message my mother had insisted I not read until we were together, next to the money that would pay for rings and words. When our initial euphoria subsided, I rescued as many as I could and threw them into my bag. We forgot them.
Lenny would have appreciated the smirking irony of those little hearts. Later, back in California, they leapt out onto the floor of her bedroom every time I reached for clothes. They stuck to our feet and got dragged all over her apartment, mocked us by lamplight as we sat watching television and the clock. The day I left, I looked down through a spray of warm water and watched one drown in the bath, struggling in the current before being dragged mercilessly to its death in the tiny whirlpool between my feet.
They were there on the plane, winking in the darkness beneath my bathroom bag as I reached for a book. They were there when I got home, jumping out to explore the fresh terrain of my bed while I organised my presents. When it was easy, when distance and time had yet to conspire against us, they were there, reminding me of sunlit roads and moonlit hotel rooms, of friendly bars and intimate conversations held against a backdrop of yelping slot machines, of the cheers and groans of the sin city chancers. They mingled with the flotsam of my bedroom, drifted happily on the tide of blandness I'm so rarely inspired enough to swim in. As the days and weeks went by, they disappeared beneath the waves.
Tragedy plus time equals satire. I appreciate that more than I used to. Sometimes, on the last leg of my journey home from a job I never wanted to a place I could never call home, I look up at the sky with a perspective born of frustrated dreams and a heavy heart. I see the stars not as pretty and easily dismissed pinpricks of light catching the stare of an unseen sun, but as worlds far bigger than my own made insignificant by distance. Looking up at the night sky is like looking into history. By the time that silvery luminescence reaches the eyes, years have passed. I'm staring at giants that have lumbered on, wondering at lights that have long since been extinguished. The distance across an ocean and a continent is a tiny and irrelevant thing in comparison. Still, it hurts; a swift, sharp knife between the ribs mocking a sword barely raised.
I do what I have to do. I get by. I return to a bedroom stale in more ways than one. Every night, I undress and climb into bed, reaching down for my phone, thumb dancing over the keys to set my alarm for the following morning. And in those long, empty seconds where I lay on my side waiting for the tiny screen to go dark, my eyes flit over the magazines, the CD and DVD and game cases, the clothes and the towels, the crumpled sheets of paper bearing the untidy graffiti of my dreams. The shrapnel of a life litters the floor, and here and there amongst it, those fallen hearts flicker like broken promises. I remember Lenny and I try to smile, try to remember that - for this boy at least - dreams plus time equal reality.
posted by Michael at 2:39 PM
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