It’s late January and I’m cramped in the driver’s seat of my 9 year old Chevy Malibu trying to get a few hours of sleep in a deserted rest area just outside Sacramento. I’ve been in my car since 10 a.m. with only short breaks for gas and fast food. I’m exhausted, but I cannot bring myself to sleep.

That morning I had loaded up the entire belongings from my one bedroom apartment in the Seattle suburbs, turned in the apartment keys, and started driving. It was dumb and unplanned - a 2,600 mile trip in a car with a history of overheating is never a sound idea - particularly when I had no one to call if I broke down.

But here I was, at the end of day one, a good part of the way though California and things we’re looking up. The car was running well, I was getting decent gas milage, and I was driving though places I’d never been and seeing new parts of an amazing country.

Of course, none of that helped now. I could feel my lips being torn apart from the cold, my nose was alternating between dripping uncontrollably and closing up like a hair filled drain.

Sleep was not going to come easily. I should have gotten a room.

Replaced by the next
Another who will in its own turn
Be buried , inline, under the beautiful symbol
Of death and rebirth

Yet for those that lie there
There is no rebirth…
Theirs is not a cyclical path to follow.

The line continues, unknown to the new;
Pissing on a grave
That will one day be it’s own.

“How I longed for you to be here, to hold me, comfort me! I begin to understand the true meaning of the embrace. We embrace to be embraced.”

J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron

~

It had only been two years, but everything had changed.

An hour ago he had found himself pulled to the side of the road searching the reaches of his brain for any excuse to avoid something he’d been looking forward to for months. As he sat along the side of the lonely Texas highway watching a cow chew a mouthful of grass his mind drifted back to the roots of his current situation.

~

It was 8:54am. Monday. Andrew had been sitting in a mostly empty classroom in the English building reading a copy of the student newspaper. It was late august, and it was hot. Even though he was in Michigan he could feel himself lightly sweating from his walk from where he had parked across campus to the classroom.

Students had been entering the room, one after the other, but the mass entrance had not occurred yet. As each student entered he glanced up from the paper, the hope that a recognizable face would walk through the door being dashed every time. Still, he saw every one of his fellow classmates walk in and categorized them according to his standards of who he hoped would sit near him. (Being 20 years old, attractive females were always placed in the top category).

The room was filling up, yet as he’d sat towards the front of the room he had no one next to him yet. Finally he saw a body standing in front of the desk to his left, he was disappointed to see a young man standing there. He conceded that this was probably a very good person, but at 20 years old that couldn’t compete with a pretty face.

An older face came in through the door, clearly the professor. He carried several books and a brown leather portfolio. He looked self-important. He set down the books in a neat pile on a table, opened the portfolio on the lectern and glanced at his watch.

“We’ll give the others another couple of minutes, then we can get started.”

As the professor finished that sentence several students entered in a line, quickly filling the seats closest to the door.

“Ok, let’s get started…”

The class was uneventful, when it ended he did not get up - he had another class in the same room. It occurred to him that there would likely be several people in both classes. As the room emptied he craned his neck and verified this was true. A half dozen students remained, all looking like they wanted nothing more than to be free of that room.

Among the students still in their seats was an Asian girl, she hadn’t caught his eye when she entered right before the class had started. Now that he looked at her he could tell that she was beautiful. She looked in his direction, apparently feeling his gaze, and he looked away.

The next professor entered, and announced much like the first that he would wait to start the class so the others would be spared the embarrassment of entering after he’d started. After the room was full he closed the door, passed out syllabi and proceeded to lecture for the better part of an hour.

When the lecture had finished Andrew stood up and hurried out the door, only hesitating for a second to wonder if he should bring the newspaper with him. He decided against it and walked out into the crowded hallway.

He fought his way through the crowd and was relieved when he reached the stairwell and its relative calm. He climbed to the third floor, and entered another crowded hallway. As he walked he pulled a crisply folded piece of paper from his pocket. It listed his classes, times and locations. He verified the room number and put the paper away.

When he reached the room his next class was to be in he realized there was a previous class still going. He had noticed quite late and almost walked in. He stopped right by the door, took off his backpack, set it on the floor by his feet and leaned against the wall. He looked back into the classroom and listened to the professor talking to her class, telling them about what to read for the next session, wrapping up. He bent down to pick up his backpack.

He stood up and saw the girl from his first two classes standing across the doorway from him, looking disinterestedly at the student newspaper.

“Do I have you in three classes in a row?”

She didn’t answer. He fought the impulse to give up and remain silent; he repeated the question.

“Do I have you in three classes in a row?”

She looked up at him, and unexpectedly, she smiled. “I think so.”

“Cool, and just a heads up then, I may be begging you for your notes in a couple of months…”

Just as she started to respond the students in the classroom begin filing out, walking between them. After they passed he entered the room and took a seat in one of the nearest seats to the door, in the back row. He saw her walk in, and sit directly in front of him.

She turned and asked him if he’d bought the books for the previous classes yet and how much they had cost.

He answered that he had, then added “Here, if we’re going to be talking let me grab a closer seat.” He rose and walked around to the seat next to her. “By the way, I’m Andrew.”

~

So, it came to pass that they became friends in class. For three hours each day, three days a week they kept a running conversation going. Before long they had exchanged email addresses, screen-names, and finally, phone numbers. Their conversations always started on the topic of their courses, but never ended there.

Time went by, they grew closer. His heart had been broken when he learned she had a boyfriend, he got over it, and they grew closer still. When the time to sign up for classes for the next semester came around he hoped they would take something together, she was more proactive and brought the listings to class and told him what she thought he should take.

By the time they were ready to graduate and move on to the real world they now had a set date to go out to lunch with each other once a week. When something came up and they didn’t meet up he was crushed, he hoped she was too. They made promises to stay close after they moved away, but he knew that was no guarantee they would remain as they were.

~

Life happened.

He graduated. He moved home, and started applying for jobs. She did much the same. He moved across the country, so did she, but not in the same direction. They both worked a lot, were busy, and calls went missed and unreturned. The excitement of a birthday greeting was reduced to nothing more than a short text message. Time passed, conversations grew more infrequent and more awkward - talking to someone they both clearly felt like they should know better than they did. More calls went unanswered.

Every couple of months one of them would try to revive the friendship and would call the other. The result was sadly predictable the call would either get no answer or be received by an abbreviated conversation. After a while he gave up on the calls from his end.

Eventually, he almost forgot about her altogether.

~

Almost two years had passed, since he had seen her. He had been living and working in Texas and had created a life for himself. Getting up every day, going to work, spending time with his new friends. Living life. He wasn’t extremely happy with how things had worked out for him, but he also wasn’t sad. He was living, and for him, at that time, that was enough. Then one morning as he slipped into his cubicle and powered on his computer his phone chimed loudly. He glanced at it, saw the following message.

“good morning lol, i miss you :(”

He was glad the message was not delivered orally because his response came without emotion. Re responded: “i miss you too.”

“I’m moving to Austin, you can come see me!”

He stared at the phone, not sure how to respond. In the end he just returned a smiley face and let it be.

~

So, here he was, was pulling into the parking lot of an unfamiliar apartment complex to visit a person he no longer knew.

To her credit, she made him feel like she had never forgotten about him - she smiled and laughed as she always had done, she even mentioned a few things about him that he was sure she would have forgotten.

They had lunch at a cookie-cutter family-restaurant chain. The meal was filled with placeholder conversation that amounted to “how is so-and-so doing now?” and “do you remember when we…”  They returned to her apartment and sat on the couch. He was still not sure how he should feel about being there, how he should feel about her. A corner of his brain wished he had thought of an excuse when he had been pulled over earlier.

The conversation started to run out - in the past this was when they would have had their best times, laughing and sharing experiences, now sitting on a couch seemed alienating at an immense scale.

“Hey, I just remembered, I need to get some beer for later - wanna come with me and go now?”

“Sure” he was glad to have the silence broken.

They got into her car and began driving down a main road - she pointed out several places she liked to eat, a bookstore where she’d seen a book they’d read in a class they’d taken together, and the post office.

Eventually they came to the sprawl of a Wal-Mart. As they walked towards the grocery section she found the discount DVD container: a pallet holding up a cardboard box overflowing with movies. She almost literally dove in. They dug through the movies for several minutes finding the terrible movies, laughing about the suckers who would buy them.

They continued towards the cooler section. As they entered the cold air he looked at the labels. “What are you getting?”

There was no answer. He looked at her and saw her staring at him with tears in her eyes.

As he took a step towards her, pulled her close and held her, he felt his own eyes well up. He held her tighter. In that instant the distance of the past years vanished.

He knew other shoppers were walking past them, likely wondering what stimuli was so strong as to produce this reaction.

He didn’t care.

Embrace.

This essay was originally published on FlamingBuffalo on 29 March, 2009.

“but there is no sense of time without seasons, it’s weird when you’re used to measuring time by looking out the window and all of a sudden nothing really changes”

The Question

How do people measure time without seasons?

I ask, simply, because now that I have been living in a place without a dramatic seasonal change throughout the year I do not feel as though time is passing by.  On a small scale it is the same as it has always been; a day is still a day, a week is still a week, yet when the year seems to skip winter time does not progress.  When the weather is 70 degrees and sunny from October until April the view outside the window does not change. 

The Past

Growing up in Michigan I saw the seasons on a brutal scale.  Winters brought with them snow, enough that I became much more familiar with a snow-shovel, mittens, and thick coats than I would like to have been.  Every fall was a countdown to the first snow of the year - it was a wonderful gift when it came after Halloween - but that was rare.  A full half of an inhabitant’s closet was filled with the outerwear that allowed for survival in a winter of the industrial midwest.

In the fall leaves dominated.  The trees that that covered the landscape changed color completely.  There was no ignoring it, no matter how caught up one was in the football season.  Over the course of a few weeks, when I walked out the door, trees that had been green for the previous half year were transformed into the terrain from a Bob Ross painting.  The snow removal that was to come with the winter was preceded by hours of raking and burning leaves, which if left alone, would drift like snow and block drives and walking paths.

Spring and summer, though separate, and separated by distinctions in temperature and activity of the inhabitants, were inexorably linked.  The white nothing of winter was replaced by a green that must rival that of Ireland (the fact that your humble author would love nothing more than to be seen as a modern-day Joycean intellectual has absolutely nothing to do with that observation).  Along with fall, the outdoor activity of the people during these seasons was so different than that of winter - consider softball vs. ice fishing, or even the massive difference in effort of walking down the street in January and July.

The Truth

In Michigan spring and summer mean something.  They are a relief, a break, a chance for life to start anew.  But what need for regeneration is there in a place where summer never dies?  And don’t let them fool you - when I moved I was told “no, there are distinct seasons, just not as severe as ya’ll are used to.” 

Well, they lied to me.  Things don’t change here.

I look out my window now and it looks the same as in September.  The trees, the sky, the people, everything looks the same.  People wear shorts in January and July.  It has snowed one time in two years.  One time!  How can winter mean anything in a place where it never stays cold enough to kill the life that spring and summer created?  The simple answer is that it can’t.  The same yearly cycles of summer and winter, death and rebirth, hope in spring and despair in winter, never come to pass. 

Why This Matters

This brings the narrative back to the question: How do people measure time without seasons?  Because now, in this place, time has stopped.  Life does not cycle.  Things stay the same.  Time stops.

I look out the window and don’t know what season it is automatically.  I don’t know what came before, I don’t know what comes next.  This entire place is an aberration of time.  This place is outside the rules of time I understand.  It does not follow the accepted cycles.  Yet, I grow older - while this place remains un-aging, unchanging - untimed, timeless.

The seasons do not cycle in this place, yet somehow time still goes on, unnoticed and unnoticeable.

Apparently sound travels faster than pain.

As a 9 year old he’d never really thought about how fast sound travels, but there he was - laying in the middle of a gymnasium, crying out in pain. He definitely felt the pain, but not until well after he’d heard his collarbone snap into two very separate pieces.

He rolled back and forth on the mat clutching his shoulder, oblivious to everything around him but the pain that he was feeling. He ended up in a fetal position. Soon a hand touched the small of his back - he called out again, as if this had caused him more pain.

“Are you ok?”

He didn’t answer, he just stared down at the mat below his feet. Finally, realizing his situation, and becoming ashamed to be crying in front of so many people. He sat up and wiped the tears from his face with his left hand. They were quickly replaced, he let them stay on his face and clutched his right wrist and held it tightly to his chest. He heard the conversation going on around him.

“He’s ok, he’s just never lost, doesn’t know how to handle it.”

“You’re sure? He really sounds like he’s hurt.”

“I’m sure, just give us a minute.”

“Alright, lets get this finished up then.”

The conversation was over - another hand was on him, before a word was said he knew the intention. He rotated away from the touch, with the movement, the pain poured over him again. Though the words were setup like a discussion, only one half mattered.

“You’re going to finish this.”

“Theres only 30 seconds left, finish this out and we can go.”

That was all that was to be said. He nodded his head, and - still sobbing - crawled to his position at the center of the mat. He gingerly extended his right arm and placed it in position. His opponent followed - making no attempt to apply extra force and exploit the damaged limb.

The whistle blew and what followed was 30 everlasting seconds of awkward maneuvering by a dominant opponent trying to look convincingly like he was trying to score more points while the clock ran out.

When the whistle blew the boy rested on his knees for a time, collecting himself before he rose to his feet. He reached out, shook the victors right hand with his left and Immediately returned to his pose: right arm across his chest, grasping the armpit with his left holding it in place by grasping the top of his own wrist. From a distance it might have looked like he was covering his heart for the pledge of allegiance.

He leaned against the padding at the edge of the gymnasium as this father held out a shirt for him to pull on. He looked at the shirt, wondering how to pull it on without letting go of his arm.

“That was a great job finishing out that match.”

He grabbed deep into his armpit with his right hand in an attempt to stabilize the shoulder, reached with his left and took the shirt. The sudden lack of support on the damaged shoulder caused a renewed wave of pain. He strained to get the shirt on, wounding why he was not receiving help. He saw his father, on a borrowed cellular phone and walked towards him. He made out the last sentence.

“Sure, that will work fine, I’ll have him in Tomorrow at 9:30. Thanks.”

They began to walk towards the exit. He was certain that everyone in the building was watching him. A man jogged over to them, holding out a small plastic baggie, his father took it and thanked the man. He showed the boy: it was a small, silver medal.

“Not too bad, you still took second.”

They pulled out of the parking lot and started the trip home, nearly an hour drive. He moved straight to the back seat, and tried to become part of it.

Before they had travelled very far he felt himself shifted forward in the seat as the van slowed down. The movement brought the pain back, the tears were quick to follow. From the front seat:

“Shit.”

Pain shot through the right half of his body as he sat up to see what was happening.

They were pulled over alongside an empty field, its rows covered in several inches of snow. Behind them he saw the red and blue lights of the state police cruiser which had pulled them over.

“I’m so sorry, sir.”

“I’m just heading… trying to get my son to a Doctor, sir.”

“No, he got hurt at the wrestling tournament at the high school.”

“His shoulder, I’m not sure.”

He saw the officer lean into the window and look back at him, covered in tears and clutching his shoulder.

“Oh, thank you so much, sir.”

After a moment he was pushed back in his seat as they began moving forward again.

As he eased himself back down to the seat, a wave of pain, similar to how he imagined boiling water pouring over his skin would feel, ran from his shoulder and through the entire right side of his body. It intensified with every bump. He wiped away the tears, closed his eyes, and hoped he would arrive home soon.

Hunched down, bent to fit the shape of the cube,
downtrodden, hating our lives, we sludge through the day,
Till on haunting work orders we carry on another day
and towards the distant weekend we toil.
Roger works asleep, many had lost their motivation
but carried on, numb. All went lame;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the sounds
Of disappointed rings of the phone across the aisle.

Ring! Ring! Quick boys!—- an ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy earbuds just in time;
But someone still was plugging their ears and crying
and floundering like a man in fire or lime.—
Loud, through the roar of huhuhuhu and references to the navy
as under an air raid siren, i see him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plugs his ears, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering office you too could work
Behind the cube that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging ears, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted ears,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores in my ears,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To new associates ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro reyrey mori.

Adapted from Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est

I live in an apartment, which I like - cheap rent, maintenance is taken care of, and basically I have minimal responsibility.  As an exceedingly immature man this appeals to me. But there are downsides. The most notable being the laundry room.  A small 4 unit (4 washers, 4 dryers) wash room is shared by most of the complex, meaning that just because a resident needs to do laundry they may not be able to.  Soon after moving in I experienced this on a Sunday, when I was repeatedly beaten to the punch and could not get a chance to get my filthy clothes into a dryer. So, I came up with a devious plan to ensure this was not repeated.

The next Sunday I got up early.

It was terrible.

And by early I mean early for a Sunday - 10:30 am, real crack of dawn stuff. But it worked.  I got in, did my wash and was clean for the next two weeks. Then the next week, the same. And it was good.  I kept this up for a long while - rising early, and getting priority access to the machines. 

Then one Sunday, something changed.

As I was loading a washer another tenant - another pathetic single man like myself - came in.  He began loading the remaining washers and everything was fine, just enough washers.  But, as I was walking out, bottle of Joy in hand, disaster struck. A third soul came looking to clean their clothes only to find that there was no room at the inn (so to speak).  I gave it little thought at the time, but looking back it was the beginning of the end of my Sunday routine.

Two weeks later I arose, collected my filthy clothing and wandered to the laundry room. And then I saw it.

All machines occupied. Flabbergasted. I turned tail, fled and, after hiding for several hours, checked again. And again. The laundry was in use all day - apparently by the residents I had been bumping back in the day.  They were now, unknowingly, retaliating against me.  They had risen - on their Sundays - before me to gain access to the machines we all desired.

So, I wore dirty clothes all week.  I was forced to inhale my failure for every instant of the next 6 days. It was torture.  And I was staring the same fate directly in the eyes for a second week. 

But, that Saturday night I realized what must be done.

As I set my clock to arise at 9:00am (on a Sunday, nonetheless) I knew that nothing would ever be the same.  There would never be peace, there would never be calm.

Here I was, in College Station, Texas, smack in the middle of an alarms race.

It’s dark. It’s late.

I’m speeding along an isolated Texas highway. I’m tired and on the verge of tears. I wish I could pull over and sleep. I wish I could pull over and cry.

I carry on into the darkness.

Apart from the road lit by my headlamps - a narrow swath directly ahead of me - I can see nothing. Only when I pass through one of the nameless sleepy towns that dot my path there is anything to look at beyond the stripes on the road. The streets of these towns are barely lit by their street lights and their filthy yellow emanations. I see no one in the towns.

These are towns to which 12:00 AM is a scary and foreign place - one people they dare not venture out into without a good reason.

Hours pass. Towns pass. I do not see a soul.

The completeness of the loneliness of this night is overwhelming - even more so with the knowledge that in every of these houses I pass are filled with people - who live with and love one another. Yet, here I am, flying through this ever-expanding darkness towards a secluded existence I do not know if I wish to reach.

Leaving another town I see a solitary reflection of myself, drive past, towards where I have already been - I do not care to wonder about his final destination, I am preoccupied with mine.

A traffic light turns red, I stop. At the edge of the light I see a man standing at the corner - all by himself, waiting for something or someone. He looks at me, seemingly confused about why I am out and disturbing his corner at this time of night. He nods in my direction, as a way of greeting. I nod back, look away, and proceed on my way home.

The miles are wearing on me now. I am willing to accept the refuge of home. The night is beating me. I am weary and ready for this sad drive to come to an end. Even the radio betrays me now:

“Once upon a time you dressed so fine…”

Resigned to my fate, resigned to the truth:

I drive directly into the undeniable, absolute certainty that nothing will ever be the same again.

18 May, 2010