Neon Tears

Neon cascaded, as it had a tendency to do so.

He flew down the paved streets on his Harley Davidson, even as the hoverboards and flying cycles and sedans passed and gathered, over his head and all sides. And the neon washed over him in waves. The light layer of water from the morning’s rain didn’t react much to the throw-off from the motorcycle. And he didn’t know why, but he felt that like today would be different.

Like something monumental would happen.

He’d opened his mind to the idea, only last night.

He felt he would meet, today, the love of his life.

But he knew it must be wrong, because he felt lonely and desperate these days and not at all himself.

You have to be yourself. And better. In a world that wants you to be someone else: where environment and cause-and-effect and any number of random things can knock a person’s psychology askew.

For whatever reason, he’d never read William Blake, but he’d decided to visit the Blake Museum today. For last night, everything had changed.

He’d been standing on the balcony above McVicar Street, looking at the digital clock that reigned in the center of the square, higher than all buildings but for the Christian cross mounted on the spire of the church that stood taller than the rest, highlighted in red.

The Neon City.

The timestamp announced the year: 3032.

He took out a cigarette and smoked it and stared and fell into another world.

He fell into new worlds often.

He didn’t understand those who saw the world only in one dimension.

And while he was in this world, he saw her:

All dazzling and dark hair and dark clothing and wrapped up in something that seemed like darkness but he knew the truth: there was much to her, something great, even. But no one else could see it. In the crowds that crowded around the vision, only he could see her. Colors washed past on all sides. As people came and went, maybe individuals, maybe nations, he didn’t know.

He didn’t know much.

But he saw the woman there, the girl.

She turned around suddenly and her hair waved in front of her face to obscure it and she saw him through a gap in her hair and shrieked and turned and ran and he ran after her.

“Wait,” he said. But she slipped into nonexistence, disappeared.

He often had visions like so, and many of them had come true, but he’d never had one of a woman. He wondered if it was because of his state of mind.

Only two weeks prior his girlfriend of two years had left him, had cheated on him, in fact. Not only that but he’d walked into the taco shop and had seen her with one of his friends: they were kissing and hugging and holding onto one another.

Devastated him.

He hadn’t done much but drink and cry and smoke the last two weeks.

He was a struggling hip hop artist. A rapper. A poet, he considered himself.

 He was overextended on his motorcycle payments. And he owed a credit company a decent amount, too.

“You have to be yourself,” said his friend, words ringing in his ears as he tore down the concrete in the Harley. “But you can’t just be yourself: you have to be better. You have to be in your masculine frame. That’s why alphas get all the women,” said the friend, chest puffed and out, almost as if he were trying to lead his way through this world with his nipples. “Power positions.”

But Bill only laughed. Lit his cigarette. Took a drag.

“What? You don’t believe me. I get all the women.”

“Why am I even friends with you?” said Bill.

“You’re the one come crying to me about your silly breakup. Move the fuck on, Bill.”

“I was with her for two years.”

“Women will eat your heart out. It’s hard being a man.”

“But I don’t believe that about women,” said Bill.

“Then you are naive. Worse, you’re deluding yourself. You don’t know reality. Women only like men who are higher status than them. They like men with money. That’s why you gotta go into sales and stop all this artist bullshit.”

“I don’t do art to get women,” said Bill.

“Of course you do,” his friend said, throwing up his hands. “Everything we do is for women. That’s why we grind.”

Bill shook his head.

“You belong to another world. Come live in mine if you want women, and if you want women to respect you,” said his friend.

“I don’t want women. I want a woman. A connection. Don’t you want a connection? Something real.”

“There is no such thing. If you want your wife to cheat on you with the milkman or the pool boy or some little shit, then go right on the way you are. Sentimentality doesn’t pay the bills. Nor does it keep the woman.”

Bill ultimately believed his friend was a whackjob and didn’t agree with much that he said, but in his lowered state of mind the words stuck.

Perhaps that was why he’d lost his girl: he hadn’t been going after the money. In their breakup talks, his girlfriend had mentioned things to that extent.

But even as Bill drove the Harley down a tight alleyway, he had a vision of the girl of his visions standing in his way and he saw himself too. This time she was wearing all white and he was holding her around the waist and as he cut through the vision, she spoke to him:

“Don’t give up on me,” she said.

I would never give up on you. Only on myself, he thought, pitying himself.

In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome.

These words were splayed in high-banner in neon bright white over the gate that led into the greater part of the city.

Bill drove faster now, leaning into the wind and the chaos of driving a motorcycle and allowed a flow state to take over him and by the time he got to the museum he was relaxed.

He bought a warm mocha latte at the little cafe just outside the museum’s steps and then he dared rise up the steps to the Blake museum.

No expense was spared in the design of the place. He entered another world.

Leave Behind The World of Single Vision and Enter Eternally True Reality, announced a signpost.

Within the building was decorated by things and with things Bill had no names for. Creatures from myth that had sprung from the mind — or had entered the mind — of the man Blake.

: the spiralings and musings.

: the loss and the love.

: the sick and the healthy.

In grand display and enlarged against one wall was his painting of Newton, sitting there in the sea of enchantments, but otherwise lost in what Blake had dubbed single vision.

Bill understood the dramatic painting intuitively.

The further he wandered through the exhibit, the more he got lost.

Until finally he came to the theater.

Seated among the small crowd, he laid back in the chair that was tilted very far back and watched the stars — in the grand screen that took over the entire domed ceiling and stretched far to the corners — throw themselves down like spears in grand display as the powerful words from Blake’s poem ‘The Tyger,’ played.

And the tears ran down Bill’s face as the words pierced his being.

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

He was haunted now. And lost in some other world. Neon cascaded, in this world, as it had a tendency to do so. The words had entered him and he was only hearing them but no longer hearing them. They were passing through him as he passed through this other world.

And a cock crowed somewhere.

And birds flew past overhead.

And other animals, indistinct sounds, called to one another.

And the moon shone bright and fell like silver across the endless field of green. And Bill stood by the lone tree, right there in the middle of the eternal field. And a tire swing hung from the tree, gently moving with the gentle wind. And he approached it and held the rope and stared at the tire.

And there was only peace here.

But what of struggle?

What of challenge born?

What of pain?

He only saw this thing, and the sublimity struck his heart so hard that he could hardly breathe and the waves of light washed through his soul and he fell to his knees in pain and grief — of the good kind — and he longed for this moment never to end but it did.

And when he came to, he was in the theater and it was dark.

Everyone had left.

Then the doors opened to let the newcomers come inside.

And he needed to smoke.

He found the smoke room in the exhibit. Everywhere had smoke rooms these days. The darker side effects of nicotine and tobacco had been conquered a long time ago. Smoking was all the rage, as it should be. The drug induced great feelings, and greater feelings followed greater feelings.

What man of greatness never smoked? Bill thought to himself with wry smile.

That said, he didn’t consider himself to be a great man, nor did he want to be one.

He just wanted to be right here, with his cigarette, with this world, in this time.

“But don’t you want more?” said William Blake, appearing to him on the long bench seat beside him, holding a pipe in his hands.

“Not really,” said Bill in gentle voice.

“But aim and challenge are certainly the twin giants of change, no?”

Bill shrugged.

Another man appeared on his other side. Bill beckoned to him. “That’s George. Macdonald. A man who could see. And fly.”

“We can all fly now,” said Bill.

“But even when you are in the skies, you are brought low by pride and longing,” said George.

“Shall I not long?” said Bill.

“Depends what you are longing for.”

“Nothing at the moment. I’m quite happy with the cigarette.”

The nicotine buzzed in his head.

George also lit a pipe. “Hard-earned learning and achievement. These things are of great value.”

“But what shall I long for? I just saw the fields of eternity.”

“Her,” said Blake. “Your heart is too great. You need her.”

“He’s right,” said George. “You must give her your heart. You must give her eternity and all that you have. Your heart is too small to contain it all. You must give.”

“But where is she?” said Bill.

And suddenly serpents of a thousand doubts snuck into his mind and he got mad at the gentlemen for popping his perfect dreams. “I am not ready.”

“Neither was I,” said Blake.

“I was a poor soul,” said George, “when I met the woman I would love forever.”

“I’m desperate,” said Bill. “I’m lonely. I’m broken. How can a woman love me?”

“But can you love a woman?” said George. “Can you sing until her soul comes alive? Can you press deep into her spirit until you find not only yourself but her also? Can you pour yourself out and set yourself aside at the same time?”

“That’s poetry. That’s silly. Not real. Will only lead to heartbreak.”

Bill waved it all off with his hand.

“Who put such weak ideas into your mind?” said Blake, rising up from his seat and voice rising. “I will put them out with the scorching flame of truth: reality is deeper than you can possibly imagine. Your silly constraints are not real. Your preconceptions are shattered with this one thing: True Love.”

“There is no such thing,” said Bill. “We marry, not for Love, but for status and for power. For protection and safety. Love is covered by a thousand more real things. The poets got this all wrong. They value love higher than it ought to be valued.”

“It is the opposite,” said George. “They do not value Love enough. No one does. It becomes weakened and diluted with every generation. But in every generation there are a few who dare to rise to grasp its wild wildness. It will destroy you and remake you if you let it.”

“You will never see the same way again. When you meet her.”

“Stop,” Bill yelled, throwing up his hands in either direction, and the men disappeared. And he finished his cigarette in peace.

Why should anyone love me? I’m a broken man.

I am not ready.

They are not real.

And I am undesirable.

No matter how desirable I become, there is no girl who will always desire me.

I must become everything.

I must become the best of all time, the greatest there ever was, and then I can settle down for love, because love is not held together by flimsy promises and wedding bands, it is held together by a thousand other contrivances and sacrifices and offerings.

And I must build, work, build, work.

I must get over my pathetic self.

I must produce a strong masculine frame with which to serve my woman from.

Hell, I cried today.

I can’t cry in front of my woman.

Bill roamed mindlessly the exhibits, lost in the headiness of the nicotine and the tears and the aftermath of his vision of the field.

What did it mean?

How could it be so?

How could it be so that love was so?

Love was an antiquated notion, and only suckers believed in it.

Only losers.

Only those who weren’t willing to see reality.

They were the ones who got hurt.

They were the ones who wasted away. And no one ever heard of them. Surely they were fools. Surely they had been bluffed into lies by life. Surely perfect love couldn’t be so.

Not in this wretched world.

As surely as the neon cascaded.

As it had a tendency to do so.

But then he saw her, standing before Blake’s painting of Nebuchadnezzar. She was wrapped in black, black dress pants and black blazer and black hair and he got the feeling that if he were to approach her he would have to approach as if he were coming towards an easily-frightened gazelle. Not a delicate thing. But something swift and focused. Something sharp. Sharper than him, perhaps.

But only his words were sharp.

He could hardly pay his bills.

And as he walked across the expansive room towards her, with each step, the weight of a thousand faults filled his mind and bled through his every corpus and weighed him down but he felt a pair of hands pushing him and he knew it was George and he knew it was Blake.

And he saw a glimpse, overlaying the concrete reality of the room, of the eternal fields of green and.

Then he reached the girl and reached out a hand to touch her shoulder but he withdrew, and the words from his most alpha friend came to him. “You must be masculine. If you encounter the girl otherwise, she will never have you. She will never, ever respect timidity.”

She would sense his timidity, he thought to himself. Her instincts would weed him out. After all, we are products of thousands of years of evolution.

But then he saw past her, saw the painting and, in the painting Nebuchadnezzar came alive, chewing on the cud and it seemed so unnatural and without even realizing it, fully, Bill touched her shoulder.

She turned and her hair glistened under the high lighting and her dark eyes met his.

And she didn’t smile or turn away, not like his dream.

She only waited for him to speak.

“Well,” she said. “If you have nothing to say,” then she turned away from him and began walking away on heels that clicked against the tile.

Don’t give up on me, he heard in his imagination.

But she was getting farther and farther.

But then he saw her in the long fields with him. She stood on the other side of the tire swing and he peered at her through the center of the tire and she smiled a wild smile and she was a wild thing. And he ran towards her, and she began to run away.

And in the real world, he did the same.

He ran after her.

“Wait,” he called.

She turned back on her heels and he almost stumbled into her and he had to catch himself by catching her shoulders and she caught his.

“Sorry,” he said.

Never say sorry to a woman, his friend’s voice said.

“I,” he said, but then he stopped, just looking into her eyes. She seemed concerned at first but they maintained eye contact and he felt something well up deep within his soul and somehow tears came to his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You look so sad.”

“I am lost,” he said. “And broken.”

Never express your emotion around a woman.

“Why are you telling me?”

He didn’t know how to tell her.

Finally, he said, “Do you pity me?”

“Yes,” she said, with a slight smile and looking deep into his eyes.

“I love you for that,” he said.

“Well,” she said and her smile ironed out and somehow she saw into his soul. “And I love you.”

She rode on the back of the Harley that day.

All the way into the neon and beyond, and it was always cascading for them.

As it had a tendency to do.