Musical Seams
It was a bleak morning’s afternoon. You know how those are. I’d run into him once or twice before. He was so aggravatingly familiar that I never bothered to ask him who he was or where he’d come from. I didn’t really want to know. I was on my break, working at the music store, when I next bumped into him--literally. So what? He said sorry, I said fine; I just wanted to go back to looking at music. He wouldn’t leave me alone though; I tried to ignore his attempts to be nice and conversational by putting my headphones in. He got all kinds of dirty looks for his laughing after he held up the unplugged jack at the end of my chord.
“Look, I’m sorry I bumped into you. Go away.”
“Mmm, no. I like this store. I think I’ll come every day.”
I frowned. I knew that meant he’d keep bothering me.
“Fine, I don’t care. Just leave me alone.”
As I left, he followed me, jabbering all the way. You’d think I would be freaked out by this but for what ever reason it seemed normal. Like it had always been that way. Sometimes he wouldn’t shut up, sometimes he had almost nothing to say.
No...I don’t know...go away; I felt like a broken record with my answers but he didn’t seem to mind hearing the same thing every day. One day he didn’t show up and in a twisted way, I felt a twinge of disappointment which I quickly erased from my thoughts because it was so stupid. The next day he was back and back to his old jabbering.
I decided to go to the park to see if he’d follow me there one day. He did. He’d been provoking me the whole way. What’s your favorite this, have you ever thought about that, if I were a jelly bean what flavor would I be? His questions ranged form the ridiculous to the sublime and back again without even the bat of an eye from him. It was so painfully annoying and so longed for at the same time. I hated it. The way he did it made me want to punch him in the ribs so he’d shut his trap, but then pour my soul out. Somehow he’d made me care which made me want to prove how much I didn’t care.
“Do you prefer platypus or beavers?”
“No,” I said.
“Ah, an otter person I see.”
“Please leave.”
“What’s your favorite instrument?”
“I don’t know.” What I really wanted to say was which ever one rings the best harmony with my heart when music is the only place I have left to turn.
“Hmm; what do you know?”
“That you’re bugging me.”
“Hah, that’s funny.” He seemed delighted to be so annoying. “At least that’s something.”
“What’s your favorite time to remember?”
I almost smiled and I almost cried. They sort of looked the same on my face. ‘All the joy of meetings past, minus the pain of what might have been’ would have been a good answer.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have one?”
“I haven’t thought about it.” Lying like that had become so easy.
“Favorite grade? Favorite summer? You must have a favorite summer.”
“No.” I had answers to all his questions, but they were mine. With each one though, keeping them in hurt a little more.
“Have you ever had a favorite time of day?” he asked.
I could have told him it was at ten minutes to five, especially in September, just as the leaves scrape the light from the bottoms of clouds like so many pallet knives. Instead, all I said was, “No.”
“You’ve made a habit of not forming opinions, haven’t you. Was that on purpose or did it just happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it always like that for you, or is it a more recent development?”
My reflex was just to say that I didn’t know again and be done with it and done with him. But I was tired of being done with it; all that really meant was I’d go back to being alone, inside myself, begging to get out; staying broken until I had to come back to my problems and decide again whether to fix them or to just ‘not know’ some more. Lying about not knowing had become more painful than knowing. I knew. This time I would know out loud.
“You know,” I said, “it hasn’t always been like this for me. I’ve grown this numb, ignorant shell of ‘not knowing’ over years of unanswered wonderings about things I’ve been told aren’t important. Things like, what is it about holding a living thing that makes you smile? Or what about a harbor keeps a ship afloat? Why must the dawn be breaking to come? Why are insides and outsides on different sides? Must a mind be tormented to be beautiful? What about discomfiture is so needed for learning? How does the top get so far from the bottom? Which way do you swim when the sea all looks the same? How complex a thing can be defined by a name? These are things that I really don’t know. I must confess though, I lied about not knowing everything else. I say I don’t know because they say it doesn’t hurt to feel nothing. Whether that means it eliminates pain or just won’t be a hinderment makes no difference. Now I say they’re wrong. Dead wrong. I say it makes you dead and being dead while you’re alive is anything but painless, and anything but helpful.”
He stared at me with a one of those mouth open even though it wasn’t sort of looks so long that he almost walked into a tree.
“Where did that come from?”
“It came from me. The me that doesn’t pretend that I don’t miss Orion when I can’t see him anymore; that doesn’t pretend that munching on silence soup doesn’t make me want to vomit twelve-tone catastrophes at the piano. The me that hid my insides so deep they don’t have sides. The me that doesn’t pretend that five fifty five in the afternoon, especially in October, when the light on the treetops is as alive as the trees and the clouds sing as loud as the birds and stained glass cacophonies of unmet potential wait to scream with the light hasn’t always been my favorite time of day. The me that is me; that still remembers the joy of knowing there’s somewhere to grow.”
I jerked to a halt and looked at him a little bewilderedly; my mouth may have spread open a hair as I stood, self-dumfounded, staring. I felt a little sheepish and unsure of what his reaction could possibly be to this cold rush of blood that had set my bones on fire and ripped past the borders of all thought as it poured out of me. He did something I couldn’t have expected less. He looked me right in the eye and began to smile, and smile, and smile until I thought his face might crack. Then he roared, “I knew I’d know the you in there! Sorry, that didn’t make sense, but I knew it.”
“What?” was all I could come up with.
“You’re seams aren’t bursting, they’re too tight for that. But the stuff between your seams is just begging to get out.” He was speaking too quickly for anybody’s own good now. He might have done cartwheels he had to work so hard to hold his joy in.
“What do you mean?” I pleaded impatiently. “What did you know about me?” I honestly felt a little perturbed that he claimed he knew ‘me’ even though that was impossible. Where did he get off thinking he could see through me? He just beamed with pleasure.
“I’m sorry I said anything but ‘I don’t know’ now,” I said. His smile faded slightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. From the moment I met you I knew there was someone different, someone else that I wasn’t meeting yet. For all you’ve done to prove how dead you are, you can’t hide how alive you would be if you had the chance. Something in your eyes, something in your hands; a something that speaks with subtle voice when hearts are left alone to chase the fleeting years. Memories that barred the dark of nightmares past; prayers that fractured fear. A something that rings with hope for light’s last philharmonic spark. You can’t hide that.”
“Where’d that come from?” finally dumped out of my mouth.
“Me.” He chuckled.
When that word spilled out of his mouth; “me,” I blinked and realized it was my mouth I was watching. I looked at myself in the mirror that had been there the whole time. It’s funny how dreams turn moments into memories. Even day dreams. Time means very little when you’re heart has something to tell you to keep from bursting at its seams.
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