This is Not a Love Story

It started with a bang, the threads pulling at the old counterpoint like a pair of oxymorons straining at the leash. It began, as all things do, with two polar opposites. It was an upheaval, the polarity coming apart at the seams. The entropy was a living thing, starching across Space, bringing Time down in a bundle of singularity covered in ephemeral Gravity. There was a point, a massive completeness that existed as all things exist, in perpetual disarray. There was an Order to its Chaos – a Yin to its Yang.

   (this was a time before Time; a space before Space)

   But then, no peace can ever last in verbatim. And so came the bang. And so came the distortion, the disruption as one completeness was suddenly ruptured into minuscule parts – into geoid shaped objects flung far apart by the force of its love.

   (love and hate, hate and love – bipolar, the thread of a silver line, two sides of a coin straining, straining, straining, until –)

   It started with an obsession to be perfect. With spilling out of secrets like ink in paper, as it blotted out the available space, stretching across time, plunging into gravitational wells, like it always belonged there. Like it always would belong there until –

   The burning heart that would keep the others revolving plunged into itself

   Only to start again. Somewhere else. In somewhere else’s time and space and gravity and order and chaos. But. This is us. All we are. All we’ll ever be. A bunch of Carbon-based substance wrapped in decadent metaphors and hopeless euphemisms: persistent inconsistencies. We live in the light between the stars, in the pull between forces beyond our ken. We live, as we always have, out of a body existing in cellular matters. Our bones are the millionth puzzle piece that got flung apart out of notice. Our heart is a beat of the old Drums of Chaos as it beats, beats, beats against all odds, all harrowing reality. We live despite all those, in spite of our insecurities.

   And we are, all that we have ever been, a part of something more. And so . . .

   . . . let me tell you a story.

The portrait of a scene wrapped in honey, crunched underneath years of solitude and hate and loss; of love lost and hope found; a picture that never spoke but listened:

   The golden sunset washes the scene in hues of red and gold. There is a beach that is very old. The sand of it worn trodden by the thousands of feet that came before and thousands yet to come. It heaves a great sigh, the sand kissing bare skin and naked, iridescent materials that cannot be nature conscious. Its breath touches years of history etched across distant shores, carried on by the thousands of inhibitors that covered its bones every day. It hates them, these intruders.

(it secretly loves them, since, dear old beach is a sappy romantic at the conjunction of its sanity)

Time is a weird concept for this beach. It can feel Time in the way the water gains an inch upon every molecular grain of sand conquest. In the way the intrepid beats of a thousand shoes make landmark every passing moment. A steady cacophony that rises and rises and rises. A crescendo that is never quite reached. It can feel Space in the sound before sound, a bated breath. It feels Space in the shallow of a pivot that marks the beginning of one human and the end of other. It can feel Gravity in the movement they generate, stolen away in shallow sounds and upturned bliss. A lover’s conjugation. But those are all momentary dalliance. A thought not a thought.

For you see this beach of a thousand footprints is a little sad. A little melancholic.

This old, sappy romantic of a beach created by entities beyond our comprehension, is suffering through something that human beings are intimately entwined with: a heartbreak.

Once upon a time, Earth fell in love with Moon. Set on the perfect balance, eschewed neither too far nor too close, Earth always felt like the middle child. The one no one paid any special attention to. Most of its existence (before Moon, that is) was spent trying to decide which way to lean. The older siblings beyond it (too cold that far away!) or the younger before it (a bit too close to home, innit?) It was such a point of consternation in Earth’s conscious that in the end the topography of it was affected in its haste to form a decision. But. Then.

   Then came Moon. It was an afterthought, a last, split-second decision. An unneeded bit of skin shed away by Creation like so many others. And so, it was left adrift, to its own device. And so, Earth in its never-haste, and Moon in its left-behind baggage, met halfway through their path of melancholy.

One was a bit fair, a bit mischievous. One had a certain gravitas to it, a certain allurement that pulled in the other from the very beginning. If you asked the fair one what it was you are not liable to get a proper answer. There are bits and pieces – the light gleamed off of Moon anytime Earth made it happy, like a star lit from inside. There are the stories that they shared, the laughter that lit up something in Moon’s core. It was afraid to look too deep. There is the fact that Earth was there for the bad days too – the days when the smiling stopped, no matter how much it tried. The days when the shining light diminished fully, unconditionally.

not needed, not wanted, spare, extra, the hammer a chisel shaping it out of place of warmth and Gravity is there and Chaos and Order and Gravity is puling, pulling, pulling and time slows, stretched as if changing its shape because it needs to because Space cannot live without Time and the pull is so strong, it can’t hold in any longer and then –

nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing

At those moments, Moon hides behind the Earth, away from Father Sun and Earth doesn’t ask anything just quietly lends its warm shadow, which the Moon wraps around it like a blanket. It is moments like those when Moon falls in love just a little bit more. A little bit deeper. And so it goes, a dance whose steps are still being learned, and the path of melancholy is suddenly not so melancholic any more.

They never had any qualms. Any . . . hesitation. For, after a few of those eclipses Moon had from its unbridled emotions, the fair one knew one simple fact – a fact as bounding as the heat off of Father Sun – it belonged to the other one. Belonged to that who encompassed a huge staggering brilliance of ever shifting yellow in its Continentality courted by a blue of unimaginable bounty. It belonged to Earth just as much as Earth was its.

And that was that.

   Once upon a time, a fair one, and one with a gravitas fell in love. But true love stories ever truly last in hues of black and white.

Their courtship began slow and gradual. Their courtship began with blessings in disguise. It was a pull, a tide. It was totally unexpected; a blessed surprise the had Moon going on a 14-day hiatus, plunging itself into darkness to wash away the feeling of wrongness at being wanted for apparently no reason. Who would have thought that such a thing exists?

(Certainly not Time, not Space; they are echoes, a thousand liberation wrapped up in a vibration of irony – molecules and crest and trough, a completeness with soft-edged Creation, a longing period of lateral identity.)

Moon took the first step. It took some time to get the pattern right. Each rotation a question and an answer. And so they went, around and around, for centuries, lifetimes. And sometimes, when Earth got a pattern wrong, it would heave a sigh of frustration, of sadness, and the essence of its topography would follow. It would break, reshape. As such, it was seldom still. Entropy was an ever-lasting pattern etched into heartbreak – on and on and on.

And when Moon got it wrong, it would be saddened, hues of white deepening with the red of anger and the violet of frustration till it glowed, almost, once again. But this time it was not happiness nor a silver penny dropped in a simmering pool of refracted starlight. No. This time, when Moon lit up, it did so with a mixture, a conglomeration of all the feelings, and it is such a human thing to do, to feel so deeply, so unbridled that Chaos could not have it. And so, they intervened. Order was a stepping stone, a mirth of grassroot, bloodied footstep in the snow of Moon’s skin, entrancing it a red so dark, so deep, it was akin to split blood –

(and so came the Blood Moon, and the Lunar Year, and the humans remembered and Creation punished the humans for their darkness, their audacity to feel)

   – till they got the pattern right. Till there was just that one rotation. That one step. And then the next. Till that one giant lumbering piece of brilliance in the middle of Earth was broken into seven distinct patterns, creating an answer

   (a rip, a bleeding edge of Chaos, a shuffling of Order and the rip widens, widens, widens till it can’t anymore, till Time stretched, and Space constricted and Gravity was choking, choking, choking in its own weight and then –)

   to a question asked at the Origin.

   the humans showed them the way

   and finally, all was fine.

   And finally, they were happy, wrapped in each other’s orbit, with the heat of Father Sun a warning, a gravity well pulling them in, but the cold of Space understood what it was like. It remembered. And so, it conjured a Sphincter in the fabric of Creation, and it was a blanket that if given the choice would be wrapped around them forever.

   It was an eternity spent wrapped up in the Rip of Creation. Then came Time.

Time is a greedy, selfish being.

   Once Time fell in love with Space and Gravity was left alone. And so, Gravity destroyed them Space is easily influenced and since then, Time has been quite scornful of the concept of love, happy to settle into a framework without. 

even eternity has a limit

It started with a footprint in the snow-covered-in-blood. It started, as it always does, with humans being the catalyst. (Ironically, it seems, most of the time, they do not want to be.) It began, with what the humans termed, Global Warming.

   After an eternity, The Dance of Two Celestials slowed

down

down

down

into a waltz, into a slow-jazz – one, two, three – when before it was a tango, a Caballo Dorado, Payaos de Rodeo; before it was heat and friction and slow gyration that created the force that pulled at Earth’s heart’s string, until . . .

the sea rose, rose, rose up to Moon like a lover climbing, reaching the crescendo where everything in honey glazed bliss and it had to hold on to Moon or it may never find it again, the pleasure akin to the exhilaration shot whilst jumping off a cliff hoping to reverse Gravity’s whim, and the hands reached, reached, reached and no matter how hard it tried, Earth fell in stupid, incandescent love with Moon and it was a moment out of Time, a moment outside moments . . . Yet they forgot one fundamental fact – the Generals of Creation are seldom merciful

. . . until Creation intervened.  

   Human beings might be many things but no Celestials would ever portray them as beings of consciousness. They are their own destruction. Hurting at a glacial pace, a pain so sweet and slow that they mistake it for love, but Creation is there, always there, watching, waiting for that perfect moment . . .

It was a slow spark, a hole in the layer of gifted Rip. But no gift is ever strings unattached and it took time. But Time was always a creature of Creation and no matter how much it tried, Space couldn’t get free, and the blanket widened, widened, widened –

   And then Father Sun was there with its light of admonishment because how dare Moon, an excess, a scrapped-out part of a few breaths of molecules vibrating, how dare it disobey its parents’ wish?! and the light was a punishment for the love that Moon dared to have.  

(As I tell you this story, I wonder: is it possible for sentient beings to feel pain? When Order betrayed Chaos did they feel anything? When Father Sun’s parents died so that their child could live, did they ever regret the decision? If they were here now, would they have chosen not to collapse? There is an oxymoron in there somewhere, I am sure. And as of now, I don’t think anyone is capable enough to answer that. Hypothesize, maybe. But we all know where that gets us.)

It was slow – the decay, the melting. Gradual. But they could be patient, all those sentient overlords. And when the ice melted, and the water level receded, before returning with a vengeance, when the hands that loved turned into hands that destroyed, those sentient beings rejoiced.

   Chaos joined with Order and there was a stillness of entropy tearing at the seams of sanity and it was like a hundred lifetimes compressed into one as Time flexed its long-ago-used tactics and Gravity was a deepness a well that was also a reservoir and it was feeding finally feeding for the first time in a long time and Space did not want to be there did not want what was happening but it was

   powerlesspowerlesspowerless

   helpless to do anything except follow its masters and maybe a little bit of space would have fixed what was broken or maybe it would have messed things up more but that was all hypothetical because it was all breaking down Earth was breaking down and Moon begged and screamed and pleaded to let its lover go and that was Earth screaming out fighting fighting fighting with all its worth with all its tens of millions of humans who were still there who still believed

   some did not some had already turned

   but it was a lost battle and Moon could do nothing except –

   how many times must you fall to your knees?

   never, never, never again.

   ‘I’ll break it off.’

(Maybe they got it right all along. Love is a fire that burns low, a languid ember. It is free, wild. Disguises itself in so many shapes and forms that more than half the times it is indistinguishable from hate. It is there in the subtle hues of the dark. There in the smoke wafting off a cigarette end as it drifts slowly, sensuously over rough winds. It is there in the Gravity that finally accepted defeat. There as Moon calls to Earth and the waves rise up. Always. Forever. Against all odds. Love is there in the brittle balance of Order and Chaos. In the thin line – a moment of hesitation between bated breaths. Fearful of the plunge. Yet, hopeful. It is there in that way humans have of fighting, against odds stacked higher than the edge of Creation. With love. Hope. Every crash and curve and pivot, every dip in the continental plane is Earth’s answer to Moon’s call. There but for a moment. It is in the way the waves chip away at the beach, one tiny rock increment at a time. It is there is the way Time holds still for that one perfect moment of clarity when Space gives in. When Gravity is a fool’s whisper on a dark, dark night. A huff of air, swallowed by a waiting pair. It is in the way Chaos joins Order and everything is bright and dark, peaceful and at war. Inside and out. We humans are, after all, Creation’s being. And as such, it is our paradigm, programmed to wear our fragile, delicate hearts out on our sleeves. It is there – beating, beating, beating – blood red against the light. There in the way Father Sun’s light bounces off the dark in stark, glittering relief. In the way Moon reflects that brilliant dark. After all this time. The heart, hidden away, a whispered breath of darkness between the stars. It is a hidden promise, the sound of a thousand footsteps. A careful point of hope concealed in the leaden dark. It is in the way Moon and Earth were ripped apart of their promised dance by the jealousy of Creation yet brought back together by the one thing that is quintessentially human – one undeniable, beautifully queer thing: hope. Human beings might be the destroyer of all that is. But they are also the fragile hope etched in footprints on a sandy shore,

the beach, a mnemonic for the greater Earth

the love for its precious Moon, reaching with hands made with the sound of a thousand shards of converging. It is in the way Moon pulls, pulls, pulls the earth towards itself. Every chip off the old, old shore, a distant promise. A vow sewn into a torn blanket.)

   One day the Earth will reclaim its lover. And the Moon is waiting.

   Because if nothing else, true love, like those in stories since time immemorial . . .

   in this story

   . . . well, dear readers, true love, is a patient minstrel. And so, it waits. And so, it watches. And so, Earth and Moon spin around each other, waiting. Holding on to love found and love lost. Waiting to be found again.