The lights of the gas station by the creek are red and yellow and white and they sparkle and shine in the soft rain. The easy churning of the creek on its roll to the river can be heard over the occasional passing car. They zip slowly through the bend; flashing, passing colors filled with unseen people and determinations, eternally lost to me as they round the corner. Like the trains that once barreled through these same mountains on iron and wood rails long fallen back into the earth, they splash their headlights on the trees and leave, illuminating bits of the road ahead, which winds its way toward the greater, stranger lights of the city, and leaving the road behind in darkness, it itself passing into a greater darkness of life that whispers and changes as we glance away.

But, the lights. The electric buzz of the gas station lights, especially the large, flickering sign reading SHELL in red, are the dominant, consistent sounds of the place and the lights and the sound of the lights of the station staying static in the silence of the wood and the world, make the shell pump’n’pantry some spiritual oasis of light under the canopy of sweeping pines, all moving, moving their spines and wings in the wind, silhouetted black against the lesser, though equally strange, blue-blackness of the big-mooned sky.

An oasis in the wild, in the silence, of a dark, dark world birthed from a deep, deep empty, with the only things breaking up the great, overbearing black being the wild waters tunneling through. Waters, rivers, currents of loneliness, fear, pain, grief, loss, confusion, joy, formed from the empty and carried in the collective consciousness of those who were born from the black and built their rickety homes atop its winded, floorless expanses.

Here, at the pump’n’pantry, these things, these currents, made of a substance as thick as blood, as breathable as air, as soft as snow, as strong as the sun, have coagulated like water in a basin, thin and clear. The world is so shallow and safe at this place you can stand in it and not be swept off; a sweet relief from the great, often hellish, empty, black wood and the turbulence of the raging rivers of sensation and primal feeling that run through it.

It is a precarious haven, as all are; you can sense that in the air. But, for a moment, it’s there. It’s exists if only for the simple fact that it bleeds its warm, red electric light into the black. It hums.

There is light here, the night is dark, people will gather in the light until they are ready to wander and stretch their hearts in the deep, deep darkness.

Words can make things seem simple that are not.

People would come here even without a need for gas, on night a like this, when the air itself seems to have changed. A stark truth is reveled in the bluntness of the trees, the stars, and the scars in the hills, and the frail bindings of the world are revealed. And we can see, though we do not say it. There is no past, or future. Only an eternal present, and it is ever moving, ever turbulent, ever frightening.

Anyone to look up from their feet on this night, caught the odd gust of wind running through the world, through this town, and it entered their lungs and their soul and stretched itself down through their feet. And as they turned to the world, they realized the way, the world they knew was a lie, and the bare truth of it all was bigger and stranger than can be contained and forced into any individual’s narrows. They felt an urge to both gather in the light and stumble into darkness; opportunities are always scattered for both, seemingly in secret, but they are welcoming for those who open their red cage of pure, marrowed bone and allow themselves to touch the world, rather than simply speak of it.

In the wood, while fishing alone, I let the strange wind start to wash over me, as the sun lowered in the west and the true night began. On the road home, strongly, it came upon me, and the darkness of the night was whole, a great deep well, and I felt the power in it, I felt it calling.

I began to remember what I had forgot: that driving, walking, meandering along the void, I ran the risk of slipping in and being lost in something unimaginably large and as old as anything that ever was. The line we skim is thin and we all run the risk of falling in.

Then I heard the buzz of the station lights, and remembered that there were other people and I remembered that I was lonely.

And there it was, a burning light the center of which was a glowing red gasoline pricetag. But it stood like a beacon in the darkness, calling the lost in and I knew the call. It said no one was wanted, no one was needed, but rest here, regardless. And I pulled in.

Here are people. They stand where I stand and see what I see and, my god, maybe for a second, if we stand together, but apart, I can quell the aching, empty longing in my heart,

Pumping gas, I whisper, “oh I love the sound of silence and soft or sudden stopping of the sound of silence under the holy black of the sky, the empty, deep, deep black of the sky” and I feel sad.

There are more similar, sad, silent pilgrims under the warm, lonely light, thataways. A man and a women smoke outside their rusted, fuzzy red jalopy on its way to disrepair. From here, their faces seem indistinct, but I’m sure they’re as complex as these endless mountains; jagged and strong, running rich with streams and fields where yellow foxtail weave into one another and the mountain laurel stand white and smell like rain.

I wonder about where they came from and where they are going. If I find out, would I know them and could I travel the chambers of their twin hearts with ease?

The rain feels cool and so does the air and hurricanes on the ocean make a cool night in the North and in between is the world, and the pines rattle like whispering, dead bones in the gale.

The wind comes and rolls and goes and sometimes turns soft and the world goes still and I squeeze the pump and can smell gasoline and fish on my fingers.

Lonely is the word on my lips and I sniff and love the smell of the rain and expanse of sky and dance of pines and wish only to feel it deeper. And oh, the sky is black, the wood is blacker than black and I long to both stay under the lights forever and to lose myself in a quiet wild I cannot describe, but only feel in my bones, in the oldest of code.

And the winds blow and the pines in song with the static and just as naturally the sound of pop music and the laughing of boys and girls in america, lonely and together under the dark, moon-lit sky, chimes in and grows, reaching its pitch as a gray car pulls up beside me, loaded down with two guys up front and three girls in the back, holding on their laps a thirty-six pack and a brown bag of assorted liquor.

I look at the new scene softly, clearly, as with the moon and the pines.

Out from the car, walks a kid, smiling and sportily dressed, who I went to school with. His name is Zach.

He’s a pretty good guy, a friend of a friend, and, to me at least, he has always been friendly and welcoming. However, despite being a genuine person, he constantly tries to project something that seems very artificial: an almost political straightness in his dress and future plans that contradicts all I know about him. I’ve thought before, “I don’t get him,” but that’s a lie.

We all understand each other and our selves well enough, but we pretend not to and then we forget that our ignorance of others actions and attitudes is an act. I know why he pretends to be something he’s not, I know why I pretend not to understand it and do the same thing in different ways, and I know why we all are usually desperate to ensure the isolation that we despise. The answer’s in our skin; in the wind you can hear the harsh, crisscrossing things.


“Hey, Steve,” he says grinning with surprise, walking across the pump and warmly shaking my hand.
“Hey Zach,” I reply, somewhat happy to see a familiar face. Though, somewhat lessened by it, as well. Being with someone who knows you, but not well, brings you’re history into play. You become named.

It should make you more specific, but instead it makes you less so, less real. You need no name to be an individual, to be alive, to be a part of something. Being with him out here in the dark makes me feel different than I did seconds earlier. It must be the same for him. When I saw him, my mind was filled with associations and feelings. But, in the end, I don’t know or understand the depths of his heart; it’s just hinted at by his actions and words, which I do.

“I didn’t think I’d see you anymore, man, since I left Dalphin. I figured you’d just fade off somewhere, but I’m real glad to see you Steve. What’ve you been up to?” he says.

“Thanks, good to see you too. I’m alright. I’ve just been hanging around, killing time. Must of sucked, though, having to leave. You get the credits you need over at Sem?”

“Yeah, all worked out in the end. Thought there was no way out of f--king failing out, for a minute there, but I ended up slipping out with some fancy footwork,” he says with a laugh and a short grimace. “Still, you never come out Steve, I used to see you once in a while, down at the Barn, over at Mick’s. What happened?”

“Ah, I went out a bit back when Dave was still in town. He’d drag me out occasionally. I’ve always been fine doing what I’m doing, you know.”

He looks at me like he doesn’t know. And with a little pity, which annoys me slightly. He’s the kind of guy that can’t accept a loner, and would be disappointed at the thought of me just hanging out when I could be partying, and consuming massive amounts of illegal substances that aren’t all that great for me, personally.

“You should come out more, I never saw you really messed up, I hear it’s a riot. Hey!” interjecting suddenly, “you know this guy, right,” pointing towards the shadowed passenger side of his car.

“Hey Steve,” says Don, lazily lifting a large hand out the window in greeting,
“Hey Don,” replying with a half-wave.

Putting his arm on my back, Zach then directs me towards the three girls, all attractive and in the uncomfortable-looking clothes expected at a high-school-heavy-drugs-and-alcohol-party. He names the first two quickly, offhand, and I reply with two more nods and half-smiles.

Then, leaning me forward a bit, he says “Hey, Maddy, do you know Steve?”
“Yep, hi Steve,” says Maddy, chirpily.
“Hmmm. Yeah, hey.”

I don’t know any of them, the three girls are all upcoming seniors, I think, and I barely knew the names of half the people in my own graduating class. Throughout high school, I’d hang out with the most strung-out people because I liked both them and their relaxed notions of responsibility.
Generally, I was aloof, anti-social, and I wandered the halls trying to conceal any emotion with a steady gaze that spoke of unrelenting fatigue and disappointment. For some fortunate, unknown reason, though, most people saw my semi-fatalistic indifference as “being laid-back,” and my bitterness as “being sardonic.” So, despite having an odd reputation, I did not have a particularly off-putting one.


I had heard of Maddy, though. Not good things, but probably unfair things considering the sources. Nothing malicious, though, and regardless, there isn’t much I look down upon. She seemed nice enough.

Going back to his side and beginning to pump gas, Zach continues: “We’re all going up to Harry’s place in the city, there’s an endless blowout up there every week. It’s just a little apartment, but I swear, he gets a hundred people packed in there. A lot of people from school come.”

“Yeah, I like Harry. I’ve heard it gets pretty interesting out there.”
“Interesting, yeah. Crazy’s is a better word, just not big enough. I think plain dangerous works. You should definitely come.”

“I don’t know, I’m kind of beat, I was working with my dad all morning, and I just got back from the creek.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, come along. Meet us out there. You know Papa Bella’s Mystic Pies? Harry rents a place right above it”
“Nope, never heard of it.”

“It’s a little pizza place on Wainwright avenue. It’s kind of a shitty neighborhood.”
“That’s my favorite kind.”
“Yeah, man,” he says with a short laugh “well anyway, listen up, I’ll give you directions. You get off at the exit right past the brewery, then you just turn right and go up till you get to the ihop by the cemetery, then turn left onto…what’s it called…. West? Yeah, that’s it. Then go straight, keep going straight till you hit the river, follow that b**** about a mile to what’s left of that abandoned shoe factory.
“What’s left of it?”
“You didn’t hear? Burned last week, I think some bum died.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, then pass through Shelby Hills-”
“Shelby Hills?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you might be trying to kill me, but I don’t mind.”
“Alright, well you eventually hit a fourway by another cemetery and a sonica. Go left. You’ll see some old houses, it’s that part of town that got flooded hard last year, mostly empty now. Keep going through all of that, you’ll hit the creek that did the damage, and the Coal Street Bridge on the right, keep straight after that. At the end of the road, right between a bar and a church, there’s the place, and a sweet ass party. Got that?”
“Yeah, I definitely think I got that.”
“Excellent! Watch out for potholes.”

Zach finishes with his gas pump, comes over, puts his arm on my shoulder and takes me aside, whispering in my ear, motioning with a visible nod of the head, and says “like her?”
“Hmm, Maddy?” I reply uncomfortably, “Yeah she seems fine. Seems a little smiley”
“Smelly?”
“Smiley.”
“Smiley? What’s wrong with smiley?”
“I don’t know, what’s there to smile about,” I reply, smiling despite myself.
He joins in to and says “well, good point. Anyway, you get down there, I could introduce you two better, bud. You’re a good looking guy, Steve. You shouldn’t spend a Saturday, alone, pumping gas, and smelling like fish, when you can be getting on that,” motioning obviously toward his car and slapping me good naturedly on the back.
I smile back slightly and uncomfortably, but think about it anyway.

I’m lonely. I want to drink away my inhibitions, and feel happy and talkative like I so rarely do anymore. Then, when the lull and the sadness starts to hit me hard, I want to dance slowly to a bad, fast-dancing song with a pretty girl without malice, who likes to dance on guys, and who likes to be held close by them, too. I can know little about her and I will never know more and I can assume her mind is wide and her heart is as soft as mine, and it might be, but either way it’ll be nice to be by something warm and real. And I won’t be disappointed in the morning and I won’t be as lonely in the moment.

I feel like I’ve spent my whole life never getting close to people, and I feel hard and alone and I just feel empty. I always feel empty and I can’t even say drained, because I was never truly full.

And the night is cool, but in packed apartment with skin on skin on skin, it’d be warm and I’d be sad as I half-danced with some girl named Maddy who I don’t know, my face on her shoulder, my hands on her back and her hands on my legs and through my hair, but I wouldn’t be alone, and I could be close to someone, or I could feel close for a second and all we’d both need for a minute was something to hold, something that was real and couldn’t be denied, even if it wasn’t understood.

The world would seem simple when surrounded by life.

“Yeah thanks, I think I will actually come up there. I’ve been a bit-, yeah, I could use it. Thanks, Zach.”
“No problem, I better see you there,” slapping my hand as he goes back to his car.

I turned back to my truck, he begins to pull away.
“Oh s***, Steve,” he stops and says suddenly. “Yeah, come here I have to tell you, getting there is a bit trickery than I mentioned.”
“Hey, Zach,” interjects Don, a little annoyed, “we gotta get going, we’re bringing half the booze.”
“Yeah, just hang on.”
“Zach!”

“F***, fine. Steve you’ll be fine,” he says as he pulls out more, “just be careful and…”
“Just what?”
“Just be careful and,” saying something inaudibly as he pulls farther away.
“Oh, yeah sure. See ya there.”

He pulls out and rounds the bend and disappears in the dark and I decide immediately I really don’t want to go and see people I’ve known since kindergarten grind on each other and shotgun beers as Papa Bella’s Mystic Pies slowly shakes to the ground.

Also, as he leaves, it seems he was never here at all and the silence of the night, the rolling of the creek, the buzzing of the lonely lights suddenly return in force. Could the world he spoke of and brought to mind, the parties, the people, the pizza, truly exist when this world does?

But I have an urge to be around people and see the city, in all its shambling, decaying glory, every inch of it covered with fingerprints, vibrating silently with echoes of life. I decide that I will park in Nacoph Park and go to the party for a little. Then I’ll leave and sleep in the bed of my truck, feeling woozy and weird and lonely, and maybe the sky will clear and I’ll stare into the depth of the night, at stars and their formations, and watch them flash and seem to disappear and die and be reborn in the black sky, far above the electrical wires, sickly ivory, brick buildings, and homes all filled with resting life.

No one is home to know. My brother recently shacked up with his girlfriend, who, though I don’t know her very well, seems to be doing him some good. My sister is working in another state, but she’ll be in a few weeks, at least. My parents are normally around, but their old friend is having a party and they are staying the night.

I know my mom will call and check up on me eventually, so I decide to call her now, and tell her I am heading home. I’m close to my parents, but I don’t feel bad about lying about certain things. I don’t think of much of what I do as rebellions, but more like medication. I would die from boredom and grief if I didn’t fight it in odd ways, though both still seem to generally be winning the fight.

My parents are very contrasting people in some ways, though both are goodnatured, possess in them a deep strength and sensitivity, and, in different ways, seem to exist outside the word, against it, in themselves.

Despite both enjoying the company of others, they are a bit anti-social and contrary; maybe they have found refuge from the world in each other and the ones they love. They seem to see with clear eyes; on some nights, I’m sure, they see what I see tonight. Still, they manage to weather the world well, I believe.

Me and my mother talk shortly. It’s nice hearing her voice on a dark night. It makes me feel lonelier in some ways, but I am beginning to see, I need to be away from what I know tonight.

But, memories linger; they don’t die easy and they seem as true as the now. Truer even, since they have perspective, they having meaning. This night has neither yet, or at least any that exists is lost on me. But I see the moon and it reminds me of other nights, as do the swaying pines, the soft rain, passing headlights, and the darkness of the sky, the whiteness of the few visible stars.

The past lingers forever in the air. It’s not a history of numbers and names. It’s vaguer, it’s truer, it’s felt. The whole of time and all love, loss, pain, and triumph that ever was lingers heavily in the night. The air is so deep, and it fills my lungs each second; ever step I take is on hallowed ground, yet every movement I make is swift and forever. I don’t know if the world is forever. But, it is now and contains all the came before me in the earth, in the air.

I forget about Harry’s party above the pizza place, by a cemetery in the city, though it did sound like my kind of scene for a second.

I start driving and the road moves under me; the road moves under me illuminated in the light, the old road disappears before me, and the wood moves at my sides. The sky is forever above me. It is dark and full of light and black; it’s beautiful and terrible and full. I turn my eyes to the wood at my side, the trees seem black against the sky, ridges of rolling mountains that are black but must be green appear and disappear in the dirt.

The road rises in elevation as I drive wobbly by the world, and into it deeper, I believe.

I turn my eyes to the empty road. As I roll on, my headlights illuminate the brown bark of the wood and the sweet green of the trees and what lies behind looks all the blacker for it.

Shapes shift in the dark of the wood. Leaves fall, animals move and sleep, it is still and stirring. The wind whispers and birds and cicadas call between the silence. Standing in it, the silence is so strong you can only hear your breath and the strange sound of the silence itself, but both become a bullhorn in the night.

I am standing in it and breathing and the rain has cleared and the stars stand magnificently above me. My god, the black is total between the stars and the stars are so strong in the sky. My truck is running with the lights on and the door ajar and below me is the world and above me is more mountain and endless, endless space. And the air feels strong on an overhang. There is so much above me, there is so much below me. But mostly there is the empty, and it is filled with a wind that blows with force. Oh blow upon my face as my feet cling to the edge and make your strange presence known.

I feel strong and small and empty and I turn back to the truck and keep driving. And I continue and the night grows darker as a storm moves silently in. There is movement in the air.

A storm is coming, it will be strong and the rain will be hard.

Somewhere up there is movement. Then there is a person, walking slowly under the swaying pines, under the black sky, down the middle of the road, now distantly shown in my head lights.
A feminine face turns back and she stops as her hair blows in the gale and I stop when I come upon her and we look at each other, and she opens the passenger side door and sits down and I begin to drive.

Perhaps she is darkly complexioned and haired. I can’t seem to comprehend any clear fixture on her face, as if it’s the mosaic in the church where I sat confused and was watered long before tonight; there is too much to see, it all seems to shift seamlessly, consciously. Her eyes are clear and cold and seem to contain a good deal more knowledge than me; they seem to see without seeing. I feel almost as if I’m looking at twin eyes. Mine move back to the road.

There is a strange silence to the scene, our faces are emotionless and immovable. It is as if the change in our traveling situations has had no effect on our moods or thoughts, brought us no surprise.

Among us, there is a simple profound understanding, not of each other, but of the moment. Our histories may not be the same and we know nothing of each other’s past, but regardless, histories mend together here, in the dark. We know we are both listless and alone. We walk a dark, in-between place. Our thoughts are the same. Surprise isn’t felt when you expect anything or nothing.

We drive. Things remain unspoken, just as when he met, without need for an exchange of words or an extended thumb. Nothing surrounds us for miles, no cars pass. We know we both are wandering somewhere, just not where. People gather together when they’re walking to the same place and the road they walk is empty. There is an unspoken understanding among the weary.

Eventually she turns on the radio and turns the dial. The static sounds strange, bits of music play. Sounds that usually seem trivial are filled with a meaning so significant, no conclusions can be formed, no words written.

That late-night talk show about aliens, ghosts, and conspiracy comes on.

“I love this show” she says, “they all believe in something strongly that is strange.”
“I remember listening to this as a kid, camping. I’d believe the stories as I fell asleep, and deny them as I woke up.”
“The night brings doubt and the morning brings solace, or something like that.”
“I guess the night, the dark, really brings truth. All I’ve ever truly known was doubt. Doubt that everything I believed in the light was a delusion, and everything I knew at night was true.”
“What did you know at night?”
“That nothing’s known. Nothing’s certain. But, the world is stranger and sadder than we pretend.”
“I prefer the night, too.” she passed long before she spoke again “You have to swim in the dark, deep pools of the world… Let the world wisp you through to your end, and avoid being caught in the snags that ensnare and throw you into resistance against the true current… Embrace the depth of the world and find solace in what you can.”

“I try to stick an arm out against the current, sometimes. The world is so large, it’s easy to get lost.”
“We’re all lost.”

She turns to me for the first time in the night. I notice her face seems to change whenever I glimpse it; the eyes stay the same, so similar to my own.

“I guess you’ve thought the same before,” she continues “You ever spend a few months unlocking your father’s gun cabinet every day? Each time moving a step forward. First just unlocking, then touching the wood of the handle, then loading it, then sticking it in your mouth, then taking the safety off and just, thinking, thinking, thinking, first with fear, then with coolness, then one day, almost without reason, you just put it back and unloaded it for good, walking away with a terrible feeling of loss and a grief that you knew you wouldn’t consider it again.”

Time passes and the road stays the same and changes, the woods do the same. The sky sits above me, growing in darkness.

“What are thinking?” she asked.

“You must be a mystic. Or I must be dreaming. Or maybe my story is less common than I thought. Or maybe no story is different. That was a long, long time ago and no one ever knew. I was only a child then. And I’ve changed. I’m stronger and I’m weaker. I couldn’t leave by choice. My love for many is deep and old and running. And everything that’s lost is lost forever.”
“You don’t think they’d survive?”
“No one should deal with loss unless they have to, until they have to… I only hope to outlast everyone I love. I know I can take it, and I’d rather take it than them. I’m cold and numb enough to survive, not quite enough to feel guiltless or to feel nothing. I know what I am now. I survive, I continue.”
“Barely, apparently… my god, so many “i’s…” Seems a bit morbid even for such a dark world.”
“Well, you’re asking. I don’t know why I’m answering. You or the night put a tired man who should have just got drunk into a susceptible place for sad reflection.”
“How poetic… so no life again for redemption in your personal philosophy?”
“My gut says no, when we fall, we fall into the deep dark well and we don’t rise again. Our whole life has been lived against the laws of chance and nature, and eventually we lose and fly off the mountain we cling, are dragged off the bank of the river we cling to, like all others before us, all of us drowning in a dark, deep river, all eventually swept downstream.”
“And you know?”
“I don’t know anything. All I know is my gut and my gut can’t be trusted. I see the strangeness of the world, I feel the breath of the past in the wind. I feel dread in every passing second.”
“What about god, no fisher of men to save the drowning souls, no man sweeping them from the darkness into the light?”
“My gut doesn’t know. My gut switches back and forth. But usually says no. The universe is too large and empty for any center.”
“And you like living in these thoughts?”
“No, but all I have is what I feel. What I feel is dread. There is strength in me, but I am small and in the end we’re all just warm breath in the cold air. There and white against the dark, then gone. Then gone.”
“You can’t be a believer in a great breather, exhaling the warm air, recycling it again.”
“Do you? What do you believe, then?”
“Everything and nothing. If you believe nothing is known, except we live only in the shadow of all life and belief before us, surrounded by a great empty, why don’t you truly give in to the wonder and sadness you’ve seen, put faith into the blackness, put faith into the light? Live along a balancing axis of vague, felt belief and disbelief, comfort and fear, loss and gain. Live as a human was meant, too. On an earth made full by the billions that came before. Forever continuing on into itself, taking you in at the end, in some way.”
“I try. Maybe one day, I’ll do better. I’m still pretty young for feeling so old.”
“No one is young, nothing is young, son.”
“No, nothing is, is it?” I replied tiredly, “We’re all children, though.”



“You said you were a child once and you’re a child now. You knew nothing then, you think you know something now?”
“Yes, I think so. Some.”
“Maybe a little, but not enough to excuse your arrogance.”
“I don’t think many would call me arrogant.”

“Yes, but you don’t tell them what you think. Even if you did, most wouldn’t think you so, but only because you aren’t comparatively arrogant. But, you still are arrogant. You see the world is strange and can’t be known and yet you’ve decided to believe something that isn’t vague, and greatly changes the way you drift through your sorry life: that below all the strangeness, there is something frighteningly simple, and that you know as much as anybody else, and no more can be known.
What you need to accept is no one knows anything, the truth is written in the wind and carried by us. You will never understand much, but we are all bound to try, we are all meant to carry whispers of the words we’ve seen written in the night, in the wind to others. To grow. You’ve become jammed in your current, sad beliefs because you are sad. Your beliefs are sad because you make them seem as if they are forever. You think no one carries any new truth, you think you can only find contentment by settling, by choosing to believe in what you’ve become stuck in and preaching it as absolute truth, in your case, silently in your head.”

“It’s wrong looking for some kind of contentment, when most of what you sense is despair?”

“Oh, you seem so close to a truer contentment, though. Some stay alright when they settle into their singular view of the world. It also breeds a diverse group of big, sad, loud, and arrogant assholes. But centrally, you’re killing all chance for growth, for the beautiful, terrifying change that is the axis of existence. You’d rather settle because what is true can’t be understood totally, can’t be written of fully, doesn’t need our approval or our witness. For as much as you want to touch the breathing expanse of the universe, you want to write about it later, you want to turn it into something total, and finished. It is never finished.”


The drive continues, the trees sweeping above us in the wind, the wood like a tunnel on all sides, the darkness complete under the now black sky, the headlights of the car the only light for miles. I wonder if it’s all that’s keeping us here. If the lights went off and the small portion of wood and road that we can see passing us by become unseen, and our eyes found no figure or shape in the dark, would we continue to roll along, would we cease to be, just as the trees beyond our headlights seemed to have?

“What the hell” I say, pulling the car off to the side of the road. Coming upon a great clearing in the woods. Small orange and grey hangers, a few small planes sit solidly against the gale. A long empty field, reaches toward the unseen river. It is filled with tall grasses that appear black in the night and they weave into one another, gracefully, turbulently.
“It’s the taxton air field.”
“I know, but how’d we get here? This is nowhere near where we were.”
“We are nowhere near where we were. We haven’t been for a while. You’ve been driving for a long time.”
“I guess so…” I look at air field. There seems to be a chaos too all these large machines and metal buildings standing against the hard wind. “It’s pretty, here, in its way,” I finish.

We both get out and walk toward the metal fencing that surrounds the air field.
“I always loved how this place looked as a kid” she says. “I guess the planes really aren’t that great, but they seemed to be when I was young. The wind runs heavy here and it was something to hear the roar of planes and the roar of wind in this empty place filled with great things, in the middle of the day, under a sky that I can only remember being blue and big.”

“God, it’s something” I say, turning back to her, then staring at the field, then the stars poking though the dark sky above it.

“Your eyes are as dark as the stars, steve.”
“Well, they don’t always feel that dark. How do you know my name?”
“You carved ‘steven was here’ into your dashboard.”
Oh yeah. I did do that. So, what’d they call you?”
“I don’t know, I never carved it into a dashboard.”
“Well, it made sense at the time. No one’s seen for more than a second, but it’s worth it.”
“I like that… You don’t look like a steven, by the way. Or a steve for that matter.”

“What do I look like?”

“You look like you want the world to see of you. Tired and dark and old. It’s what you are in some ways, but it’s not all of you. Just like zach at the car place, the things he projects, what he thinks he is. The complexities of a person are distinct and universal. Maddy too, even Don and those other two. All people are wells of emotion, love and light and life. Fire and rage. Grief and hope. Some recognize that. Many hide their best and use their influence keep others in the dark, themselves forced into it by some cruel twist of fate, some situation unrightfully received.
“How do you know zach and maddy and don and the other two people?”
“How do you? We met. You must have met them too. Anyway, you should remember the universality of s***. Remember that our minds wander to the same places, and we all try strangely to survive. You’ll still feel alone, but you won’t feel so bitter.”

“It’s hard making a way in a static place.”
“You know it’s not as static as you say and you contradict yourself even more than me. There’s depth in each second, sadness and grief and hope and loss, too. We see it well, we move on in a gale.
We try to make our words give truth, but in the end, meaning is not held in one of our contradictions, or long attempts at understanding. Numbers and short, cutting sentences sure as hell don’t do it justice. It cannot be held in a hand. You can do all these things and claim complete understanding if you’d like. What does the world care for ignorance, our arrogance? Only those who walk it have to deal with that bullshit.
This world can’t be spoken of. It can be hinted at.
There’s a greater truth in the whole, in the attempt. You need these things, but you never gain a truth that is concrete. Live as you are, human and breathing in the dark depth of the world. Please, tell me you understand?”

We stand in the dark, on the precipice of the great field of weaving grasses and flying metal, the roaring of the wind in our ears.

“Yes, I think so.…So are you magic or something? Am I becoming delusional?”
“nope. There’s no magic in this world, steve.”
“No, I guess it’s just weird.”
“yep.”

She walks back to the car and I follow.
We drive on in silence, lost in ourselves. I feel as if the spell of the night had been broken by the long conversation. I had spoken as honestly as a person can, but the conversation opened my mind to more normal thoughts. I wonder about her, who she is. I ask her.

“I’m a prostitute” she replies, with a sly smile and tinge of annoyance, “are you a pimp?”

I’m a little taken aback, but I smile anyway. “Sorry,” I say, and turn to the road rubbing my eyes. “Mind, if I pull over, I have to take a piss?”

“Go ahead, it’s your truck.”

“Hmm.” I pulled over, leaving the engine on.

“Hey,” she calls out, “tomorrow’s sunday, want to join a heathen in church.”
“Church?” I ask loudly through the gathering gale.
“oh, I’m always with my god, he tosses the trees in the wind and I doubt and affirm his existence silently, with every turn of the weather. The world needs no reason, steve. There’s none to be offered.”

I smile at that as I stand in the dark, in the wind. I like how it rings and the words feel part of me now.

I stumble into the woods until the sound of the truck fades into enormity of the night. As I relieve myself, I feel the wind pick up and brush coldly, fiercely against me. I look up and see the black of the covered sky, the tall trees darker still against it. They swing against the black and dance in the gale and I feel the depth of the night again and I stand on the edge of a field as the wind blows, hard. I sigh into the night, I breathe it in anew.

As I come back, the wind grows stronger, large droplets of rain begin to fall interminably. The sound of them against the leaves echoes in the silence.

I get back to my truck; it’s still running and empty. I walk over and look around. I feel a tinge of panic. I don’t even know a name to call out, but I feel an urge to call one and a fear of impending loss, regardless, as the wind grows stronger, ripping over the road. I see a flash in the stillness, a rustle in the silence, in the dark wood with the dark trees. I see a silhouette shifting through. I run towards it.

I’m in a clearing, with the weaving grasses, the pines encircling around me, all whispering, shifting in the storm. An old oak with a deep hollow sits on the edge of the field.

I run into the clearing’s center. I see no face or feature but I see warm breath in the air that’s turned cold. I look up; the sky is black and cool, soft, strong rain covers my face. Light flashes revealing the woods, deep and dark.

My eyes close, as my face stays toward the rain. I think I hear her, whispering, through the wind and the rain, into my ear. She says: There is no past, or future. Only an eternal present, and it is ever moving, ever turbulent, ever frightening. And sometimes you can stand on a high place in the wind and feel your body for a moment, and feel all the sad, sweet souls to have been born, lived, died and buried; their bones in the dirt rattle and sing, their breath weaves in the sky carried by wind.

And I stand here till my legs grow weak and when I open my eyes the sky is completely clear for the first time in the night. The stars stretch endlessly, filtering through a great blackness. The full, sharp moon stands high, dotted with craters and dust I’m sure. I walk to the hollowed oak and feel the wood and lay myself at its base, my feet in the dirt, my face to the sky, a hand grasping the trunk. The air and the earth smells sweet and full, and I’ll wake in the morning covered in dew, with the memory of warm breath in cold air that made me want to collapse and live.