October time...colours

October time…colours

It’s always the same at this time of the year. The brain fills up with noise when it gets cold. I hold on to the image that the rush of jumbled words released by my brain cells creates the energy to keep me warm. Unlike being dead cold.

I cannot let go. Every year around this time, same thoughts run the Marathon in my head. Stubborn and mean. Never mind how hard I try, they don’t want to leave. Never mind … they always come back. But to be precise, some variation is always there. Like now, when they hit harder than ever, with a surreal flavor.

I noticed that when it gets cold, the force of gravity feels stronger. The attraction of the natural heavy matter towards whatever is in me that is not matter gets so intense that sometimes I confuse it with a sense of despair.

The colour? Between dark blue and black.

It is that desire, stronger than ever, to be closer to the grass, tree roots, flower roots, vegetable roots, in between pebbles that cover the earth granules, closer to the mud when the rain floods gardens and fields, to the stones you used to pave your garden around your flower beds. The sense of lost hope fills my chest when I breathe:

Inhale! helplessness and the cold air put up a fierce fight for space in my lungs. A feeling of lose-lose takes up all my living energy. In the dark, I try to inhale again. So hard that the air molecules run towards my nostrils, rushing and fighting each other to get in first, too impatient to wait in line. 

Ah, how well I know it! The air eating monster. That dark cloud that descends in the fall from the Universe and trespasses my skin. Invader of my brain- blood barrier. The anxiety that causes me to not mind the feeling of suffocation until it is almost too late, when there is not enough oxygen left in my lungs. And then, scared by my aggressive gasp for air, the little balls of invisible, atmospheric vapours push each other, hurrying to enter the narrow dark airways of my nose. When I close my eyes, I can see how they circle inside each one of my nasal cavities, the way the wine circles your mouth when you allow it to touch all your taste buds before giving yourself the satisfaction of swallowing it. But the air now only allows me the satisfaction of being able to take another sad breath. No real contentment, no serenity follows.

The colour? Between dark grey and black.

At the beginning of October, when the cold starts the air carries the smells of that tragedy. And I drown in a scent of lost identity, lost connection with my own hopes and beliefs. That inner, invisible living, immaterial creature that inhabited my brain and heart now wandered so far from its feeding source that it starved to death. I search for the origin of the putrid scent of lost hopes. The shards that disintegrated from the inner creature which I named “my-self”, and which had dropped out of my brain and heart before it got lost and died, lie scattered in front of my tired, sleepless eyes. Dead, rotten fruit, now fallen from the tree, which you so dearly watered, pruned, trimmed and protected from diseases and pests, from sins and crimes, for almost all your life, or at least as long as you remember, sometimes at the cost of your own health, family and anything else you held dear.

And I then try to exhale. But somehow, a salty liquid, which I suppose not even god knows how it got there, seems to be taking the place previously held by CO2. And how did my lungs release that liquid now called tears? I can assume it followed through some connective vessels, onto my throat and into my mouth, eventually hitting the little pores in my eyes. I suppose it is hard to find the exact route it followed. Deep inside. I guess it originated in some inorganic space, a quantum vibration of intergalactic nothingness projected right into the organic heart and brain I carry around.

The colour? Between blood red and black.

Puzzled and annoyed by their undesired presence, I ask my tears, what are they doing there. They reply unceremoniously we are just there. A tax to pay for feeling helpless and very, very sad. We were born in the lungs, from the dead remains of your lost identity which fell out of your heart and brain, with its lost hopes and goals. Small at first, the size of a marble, and then inflated, like the air inflates your mouth when you cannot say anything useful or important to soothe the pain, we jumped right into the atmosphere, hoping that sympathy would come out of somewhere.

Once, under some circumstances we induced more compassion, but now, that seems a more selective reaction, depending on whose lungs, oh pardon us, soul, they originated from. About some, no one gives a damn. So those use us to recharge. If the lungs are unsuccessful in this endeavour, people can’t breathe, so they may try to kill themselves. Like you. Some are successful. It’s easy to exhale your last breath. Those witnessing it use us for relief.

Although salt, which we, your tears, carry in abundance, is not a good conductor, people have found a way to transform it into an effective battery. Salt is a good preservative though, so we make sure you don’t forget. But it is also a very effective cleaner, like a disinfectant for all kinds of ailments, such as despair. But you need patience, and people give up too quickly. Oh, but don’t let us digress. Where were we? Oh, because the air was infected with that terrible smell of death, we needed to come out. Lots of us, enough to fill out a huge basin, the size of a small sea. We came up in huge cohorts and cleaned up the air. You see, exhaled CO2 would not have done it in gas form. It had to condensate, become liquid and taste bitter. This way, the remaining living part, if there was any left, could breathe enough purified air to follow the coffins from the distance of blood.

Oh, my cursed memories. The stench of death when following the coffins in that heat was unforgiving. But worse was the mourning of the youths, all of them. Like many knives, it went right through my living body, living only to contain the blows of those blades. The struggle with the ghosts of those that Life did not contain. Courage, compassion and respect. Precious words. Now, hollow sounds.

I cannot help it but go for a drink. 12 beers. 2x6 packs. Until the lungs and the mind become indistinguishable. I manage to stand. Through the window, the tree behind it stares at me. The leaves - hundreds of eyes. Judging. I lower my gaze, ashamed. I become a leaf. Easy to hide. But still, the ordeal of breathing. The leaf I became stands out.

It’s blood red.

Why does the nurse look a little pale? She must be tired. I wonder how many times a week she works so late. Could she have seen the thoughts jump out of my skull? Running like crazy back and forth? heard them make a noise in my throat as I try helplessly to inhale? seen them settle on my face? I wonder if she could tell what next.

I imagined bringing her peaches. Yeah, Dany loved peaches. When he was little, I promised him that Mom and I would always get him barrels of peaches in the fall. We did that for 20 years.

The alcohol in my brain does not numb the pain. It actually makes it worse. We could have gone to buy him a peach orchard later in October. And then that terrible noise and that terrible silence. He would have thought it was a crazy idea to buy so many trees only because he loved peaches.

Oh my god, why do I have to breathe again?

Did I say god? My inebriated neurons scream now: are you really the god? Any god? fearless, cruel, loveless, meaningless, useless, what are you? That thought that I can never let go…that I want to get up there, or down there, wherever you may live, and kick you, many, many times, until I die, as hard as I can, for all the pain you allow! Yes, you, because you claim to be in charge, the lord, the saviour…

YOU LIAR!

The colour?

Still between blood red and black