Ephemerality

This story is dedicated to the idea that one day I’ll get on that train, and I’ll go far far away.

Beta read by my russian mother herself, she approves.

I live far away from my friends. I have the tendency to visit my friends. I miss who I was before I grew up.

The grass couldn’t be mowed that year because the old man doing it was horribly sick, he’d gotten a severe infection of his airways so he was staying at home so he wouldn't exhaust himself trying to fix up the big field. Normally they would assign someone else to mow it but because it was still the middle of the school year a lot of families were busy, too busy to have any free time at all. It was a community decided type of thing, not government. The grass was long now and a lot of people, if they went out there, had to wear long trousers in fear of ticks and mosquitoes (The families were just too lazy to actually care about the field).

I always got tired and coughed up a lung or two while I stumbled across the long grass in red wellies with the yellow sun beating on me, trying to avoid any of the critters as I troughed over the holes and dens made by foxes, the rattling of the ground beneath my feet echoing out for miles as I listen to the 5pm train leave the station, breathing in the dust and warm air.

I stepped on a butterfly there one time and as I watched the wings crumble apart like paper in water, I never forgave myself.

This is childhood ichor with memories intertwined in its purest form.

The weird thing about the field, when the grass was long, was that there was this weird short part in a circular shape on the ground. It was a small clearing, not necessarily large or anything but it could fit comfortably (if you calculated the area, which I did) 17.6 people in it. But you can’t really have .6 of a person unless they were an amputee so I just rounded it to 18. Alex laughed at my serious nature concerning the calculation. I'm not wrong, am I though?

Figure out the radius from that, nerds!

...Turns out I was wrong, because a small school club went there on a Thursday one time and they managed to fit 23 people in there. There was trash everywhere after that and the small spot that me and my friends only knew of, sort of became a bit popular. It wasn’t a rumor or anything but the people at school began to wonder if that small little grass part was made by aliens or something. I think it’s because there was a chemical spill in that spot last time the carnival had been put on there. Alex would tell you that it’s because of the dirt not being tilled properly. I don't know, that grass part is gone now because they finally got someone to re-mow it and all the trash was picked up.

Now it’s just a regular field again. 

UFO sighting spotted at locally owned grassland!

Dangerous chemical spill at local town circus

Explore the strange phenomenon in your local area! First, this peculiar circular lack of grass in the middle of seemingly nowhere...

These are the types of things you'd find on our town's new anchor site.

I miss my childhood.

I think something changed the day my friends and I realized that the grass was actually way longer than before, when the guy who mowed it hadn't come in for a week by then.

The sky was a cascading slide of blues and purples and the clouds weren’t out that day, it must’ve been some weather thing to do with precipitation. The only time there were clouds was when it was covering the sun way across the horizon, where it was at the point where you couldn't see the setting rays and only the sky stock still, stars yet to be seen, when it transitioned to oil-black in the East. That gorgeous blue I don’t remember vividly before, I called it azure even if it was a completely wrong shade. I think it leaned towards purple more. 

I had not gone home, like I should have. I stayed with them when my friends insisted on watching the stars turn red and whites, blinking in and out of the sky. I stayed because I couldn't ride my bike in the early evening when the street became covered in drunkards and broken glass, so I wanted to avoid it. I stayed. They stayed. I have to go on a train to go home. I live far away.

I was always a sort of contemplator when it came to these things. Like the philosophers in Greece or Rome back in the old ancient days. I exist because I can think, but in inconsequential moments like these with the bugs from the chemically-stained grass crawling in my hair I don't think I exist. Like when you're meditating, and you lose all sense of space-time and dimension.

It was like the universe truly loved me when I kissed the fireflies away from my face, the wind batting at my hair when I leaned back and tangling my eyes in a barrage of dust and cotton. I think it still does love me. I wonder what would've happened if I left a bit earlier, if I had left and not hung out with them all night and into the morning where they told me they had to stay clear of this creepy old man with a creepy dog. 

I wonder if I would have joined them in their laughter when they mocked him with his balding hair and warts on his nose, it was never my style.

I would’ve gone for his stick-like arms that were mockeries of bones.

I miss my childhood.

I'm always thinking of possibilities, of other things that could've happened when I had my back turned. It’s why I always jump the gun when it comes to important things. I believe I need to get them done and agree and forget that it’s actually important and find a way to release my restricting inhibitions when it comes to things I think I should (or shouldn’t) do.

 I'm starting to advocate for that side of myself more often than not, but it’s also that side of myself that had me stuck in a relationship that I hated for over a year. I know it's that sorta thing that leads to people starting drugs, having children, dying, being revived, dying for-real-this-time again type of cycle but I never could imagine myself as that type of person. Maybe not in that order exactly but my point stands. I think that's changed now though.

Back to the field and the train I’m definitely missing by this point. Probably. I’m probably fine.

It was always a massive field. It’s not an acre long or anything but it was quite big in a human-to-grass ratio. 

There was a stunning river running through the middle of it that curved in a slight tilt, the council had made a sewer system run out of it somewhere in the middle while the rest was normal, natural. Hand made by Gaia herself in the palm of her wooden hand like clay.

There’s another river near the field and another canal nearby that one of my buddies jumped into by mistake, thinking the swampy grass covering the surface was solid and not billions of atoms in irregular rows going over each other. Jump, Heave, Fall. We have lost cabin pressure, we are going under.

The horn of the train in the distance can't be heard if you're underneath the tide.

A memory comes to mind, my mother walking me across the field with the dog bouncing around our feet, yapping and yapping. This was when she was a bit lonely and a bit drunk all the time. She hadn't gotten that tattoo yet, her only tattoo ever. We had come on the train.

“When you grow up, I don't want you living somewhere far. I want to see you everyday.”

Is what she murmured in a quiet, drunken, slur. Paraphrased a few words and translated into English from Russian.

“Stay with me forever, child.”

I miss my childhood with quiet lullabies sung into the back of my head.

One of my friends said to me the other day, that he has too many unrealistic expectations for himself, all of which he knows he isn't going to finish or complete. I told him I don't have those, and he asked me if my expectations for myself were so high that I didn't even bother making any. I told him that:

No, I just know that I'll be able to do them one way or another. And if I can't then that just means I physically can't right now, not that I can't do it later.

He said I was an optimist, I say:

I’m egotistical.

I think I'm wrong. Of course I am.

When your back is to your dead ancestors and you’re staring up at the stars, you begin to wonder if this is growth. If the laughter you hear from your whispering friends beside, behind and below you is truly life. If the long-distance rattling of the train tracks is what you need to do to start your life. To run away from it all at 7pm in the evening…

Wait. 

The long-distance rattling of train tracks? How far away is the train station again on foot?

“Oh no! Oh n–!” I slip on the wet mud beneath my ass and I finally get to my feet. “–Oh no!”

Alex looks jostled from my exclamation and he sits up to look at me, the dim sunset silhouetting him in darkness. His hair is a twisted black mess from the ground. His giddy grins fades.

“Marcel?” he voiced.

“Bye- See you later!” I countered.

“Where are you going?” he voiced.

The contracting force of the slippery grass beneath me, still wet from the dewy morning, and my cheap shoes slipping one after another are making the track to my bike much harder than it needs to be.

I hear the rustling of grass and Alex manages to get up and pushes on my back and I get going, previously stuck in place like those old cartoons of that cat and that mouse. One foot after One foot after One foot. I reached my vehicle for tonight. His voice is a blur in my ears by now. Plodding behind me on weighted feet, his fingers miss me by a hair again.

I grab my bike, heavy, and I practically gallop forward with handlebars in hand and get going. Saddle on. Equipment check. Towards the moon. I look back at my friends from around the corner and only one shape is standing up, wiping his palms on his thighs. I look back towards the East and make sure to keep an eye on the alley ways. Stop running from the sun.

I miss our childhoods.

**

Act two. One me, the train still minutes away.

The night arrives quickly like a tsunami, the sunset is the pull back of the shore before all goes to hell and you find yourself drowning, drowning, drowning, in the quiet of the pitch-black darkness. You haven’t even hit the brunt of the disaster yet but you feel that you're already a spirit.

Stay with me forever, Is that you?

The station in of itself is lit up, the overhead hang of the ceiling reaching towards the tracks before stopping a meter back, the yellow line reflecting the golden glow of the light posts. Don’t cross. Don’t stand here.

Makeshift cautionary danger tape.

The broken vending machines rattling with absent energy that can't be destroyed or created.

When your reality drowns and shatters, the only thing left for you to wait for is the train slowly coming along from the South. You’re Northbound and you’re leaving your friends for good tomorrow morning.

“Mama, I don’t want to go home.” I admitted.

“But, what do you mean, little goat?” Mama said.

When you sit on a bench, your bike slowly sliding off the side of the back as you tremble with wet tears staining the grit on your hands, the wrinkles in your face making you age 20, 30, 40 years, you begin to think: This is life. I am experiencing life itself. I am normal. I am happy. I am a pathological liar trying to convince no one in front of me that I'm okay. Am I looking in a mirror?

The reflection of my tears worked well enough.

I leave in the morning, my bags already packed stuffed to the brim with pants and shirts and hats, and I wonder why I didn’t tell Alex goodbye. I wonder if he’ll send me letters from across the continents. Nottingham to Vladimir, a place somewhere near Moscow in Russia.

“I’m scared.”

“But, why are you scared, little chicken?”

This train is only one part of my journey. Then I have to go on a bus ride to the airport. Then I have to go on a plane ride of 36 hours and then I have to go on an even longer car ride. Then maybe a few more car rides and then I’ll be at home. Para casa. Home Sweet Home, Doh-mm? However you say it in Russian.

I don’t have a watch so I look at the clock on the little display hanging to the left of me from the ceiling. Birds settle on it.

It says 1 minute, but I know it’s earlier because I took a bit of time to ride here.

Specters in the night from far away dance across the dusk, the light posts stationed only reaching so far by the tracks before they stop, leaving the rest of the world to ponder like Galileo: what could be there? Beon or not beon? That’s old english.

A booming honk from my right, the ghosts almost prance forward with such a degree that I think I'm swept away. Two small ghosts, tiny, yellow in color, carry dozens of carriages with the lights on inside some of them, hanging hand grips. Stained red seats and whatever else is in there.

Without the stars, without the planets, without pain, where would you find home?

“Just come, little bird. Come home. Your growing pains are too much to bear, Come home, little child.”

I ended the call with my mother, kisses sent all around. I’m alone in the station, and it’s arrived now. The doors shuddering open with an unlikeness of a dancer, more of an addict. I bat away the fireflies.

I can’t bring myself to lift one foot after another and heave up my bike, dragging it along with me into the carriage as I wait for ego death of the sweetest kind. What if I just let the doors close and I escape the grip of fate again? I cannot get on this train.

I keep imagining all the possibilities, what would happen if I turned my back? Let the glass crack together once before being sent off towards the distance? Leave my mother behind? Stay with him? I cannot get on this train.

I stand outside the slowly shuddering closed doors. Not too far off from the likeness of a galloping appaloosa, I do begin to trot towards the nearly closed opening now. Twitch. Twitch. Shut. Twitch Twitch, even closer now. Oh god. I cannot get on this train.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, little monkey.”

A small alarm blares as I squeeze my arm inside of the door to stop it, the pressure scares me momentarily before it gives and I feel all the blood inside of me return. An amputation would be a good excuse on why I can stay here forever. Sweat beads on my forehead and my hairline feels damp.

The doors shut behind me, finally. And I see the phantom image of my friends all in the reflection of the glass, standing with me. There’s no one there.

My life is a journey, and it’s not static in any way. My inner critic is silenced. I let go of fantasy.

The sky was never purple or azure, it was yellow and orange and blue. Feel the feelings. The stars glistened. They move across the sky in order.

I sit down at a booth type of seat, feeling the vibrations of the wheels on the iron tracks underneath while I hold onto my bike. Electricity charge being shared between ions beneath my feet. So many processes, so many things. I am present. I am present. I can keep repeating that all I want, this is called manifestation.

I ignore how the dirty fingerprints on my shirt, pushing me forward, look more like desperate grabs, attempts at bringing me back towards the only guy I know who would do anything for me. The failed hug and the failed pull back of the tide.

I ignore how the only friend that was really there on the chemically spilled field was Alex. I ignored his dirty palms, How we were utterly alone with the fireflies and ticks and mosquitos and long grass. I miss him.

I'm older and shorter than I was in the morning and this is moving on. He’ll move on. I'm on the right track.

We miss the flight to Vladimir, Russia anyways.