Improvisational Inventory

There is something about twilight that sets the stage for improvisation. Inventing a place where things can retreat back into a shell of anonymity, where choices can be prioritized, remembered, forgotten, dismissed, as having no longer the hold on you they once did. Of course that is fantasy. We do not have the power or will to transform the past to suit the present, yet, it is more than transformation, because conversion is simply rearranging facts to provide a basis for becoming oblivious to reality. 

Reality is the witness that cannot be silenced by the truth, and yet we attempt to cajole its proximity to reality from the grayness it dwells in. Our attempt to rewrite history, condone the rain, while chastising the lightning for its audacious behavior. And yet we cannot escape its beauty, magic, indifference, to what we believe or think. 

I would find options far easier to appreciate, had I been given a choice. Acceptance of a reality is hardly a choice, as there is no alternative but to pretend. I have practiced that march to its inevitable end, and I remain lost. Once your vision of a future has been altered by happenstance, you find believing in randomness a concept best left to “Enquirer’s” of the world. To rearrange the truth is attempting to entice the inevitable to change its spots, and become an illusion of a dream you couldn’t remember having.

That day I found a hole in my life I realized I was not perfect, nor have I ever been. But not for lack of trying, despite evidence that perfection is only achieved in fairy tales of poisoned apples and frog princes. Yet I hope. For what else can one do when the switch is thrown and there is no light, only remembrance.

As I turned the knob on the door, and waited for the hinges screams to allow the door to break the plane of resistance, and allow the memories to return to where they belonged, I felt I had no choice but lay on the floor, and remember how to remember. 

Since they told me she was not returning, had left, gone to somewhere where help could only be applied with tears of regret, for not being able to turn the clock back, to when smiles turned the window glass to reflections of eternal bliss. But they tell me those days have left, the calendar has been replaced with one that only looks at tomorrows.

I can see the light on the ceiling, a light that does not belong, but has every right to be there, as do we all. It moves like a heartbeat, acting as if uncertain as to its destination, and yet doing so with the defiance of one made of nothing but integrity.

She had walked that same path, that same sliver of Universe daily for as long as I could remember. Step by step, identical versions of days, weeks, years, and then one day it was different. Something changed, but they won’t tell me what it is, or was. I can only guess, and if it has nothing to do with reality or integrity, then only confusion remains. 

This space, this room, once an echo chamber of laughter, tears, and dreams, now silent, no more necessary than the empty closet that waits impatiently for a return. And I know it can’t be, because reality always wins in the end, unless of course you refuse to believe in such things, which is encouraging.

The light seems to respond to my words. I find talking to it stimulates its movement, makes my words jump from me as if chasing after the inevitable, to remind it there is always a chance, no matter what is predicted.

The light grows in intensity with each question I allow to escape. This glow has begun like a spinning top to race about the ceiling, casting its shadow of light, now a thin line that appears to have burned its way into the flowered wall paper that has waited all these years to fade, and now seems to no longer care.

I pull myself from the floor as the pain seems to be too much for it. I can hear the nails shrinking from the light and the glass refusing to watch, as the pain peels the paper from the walls, and the ceiling heaves with empathy. Its punched in the gut approach to forgiveness, making me leave the room to its own source of reconciliation with the unfairness of life.

As I pull the door shut, the familiar thump of wood-on-wood, echoes down the hall, and falls down the stairs towards the door she could not be bothered to close. The footsteps of unknown origin force their way through the pain, like a memory from a time when death smiled as a way of appreciating that there is always something left.

I did take notice, but there was so little, I didn’t bother to claim any of it was mine. She told me once that life is a blotter, what we do with the ink is our problem. “If I expected God to think for me, I’d be little more than a swing without a child, or a person that does not appreciate existence.” I don’t know why, but that remembrance makes me weep.

I make my way to the porch where the paper displaying the horrific events only people are capable of witnessing, and then vow to forget, are displayed in 3-D color. Three, nine, fifteen, all just numbers unless one of them belongs to you. Your lottery ticket to happiness that has vanished like the smoke after the fireworks that pulled you from the complacency of freedom, and exposed you once again to the beauty of the night.

It is difficult to imagine going on, passing those footsteps, those reflections, that room, where the door knob shrieks to be touched. And yet the fear of finding only eternity behind its yelps, causes you to freeze, become a portrait of what you believed life should be, disregarding what you know it is because you have to, if you are going to continue to remember.