Eternal Return

Everything seems to slow. You can feel the rivulet of sweat as it trickles its way down the back of your neck.

Looking at D. packing up for a sleep over, I feel a moment of relief. She has been kind of cranky lately and it takes its toll, seconds later my mind has done an imperceptible shift. I am going to miss her. I look at her. Her features are so like my own. Is this how people perceive me, happy one minute that I am there, and thankful the next that I am gone? My mind boggles at the possibility that I have learned something about myself in so sudden a moment.

The child has grown, the dream has gone…

Walking tonight with S. the twilight took on that strange stillness that one experiences like the calm that overshadows everything just before a storm. The light made the world glow with and eerie incandescence. I feel as though I could reach out and shatter the moment with the touch of my fingertips.

Rain has clotted the sidewalks with runoff. Mud is everywhere. It sticks to the tires of S.’s big wheel and the soles of my shoes. I try to wipe it off in the grass, only to get a thick coat of grass stuck onto the remaining layer of mud. I try to wash it off in a puddle only to feel the dampness invade my socks. The mud remains. I look behind as we walk on. Black footprints and tire marks follow. I smile. I imagine a tracker in a forest coming upon these marks and thinking, “there were two of them, one by foot and another by cart.” What would anyone want with this information?

A message pops into the inbox. “To see the comment thread, follow the link below:”

I try not to think about work. Well, not the work itself, but the endgames the personal agendas, and the closed door gossip. They are lies. Like treasures that beckon to lead me off of the path. If I but touch one, I will turn to stone. I fix my gaze on the present. I like what I do and I continue to keep my focus on that fact alone.

Long, narrow lines of blue shimmer on the surface of the canvas. In between the various stripes are ochre, olive green, magenta, and umber. Color spring across the surface, ethereal and corporeal bow to one another on the dance floor “"Queen of diamonds, Jack of spades, meet your partner, now let’s promenade."

In my dream I am sitting in an auditorium listening to a motivational speaker, someone walks in, he looks like Michael Douglas, though I think he was meant to represent my father. He beckons to the stage, where there are a half dozen tables each with a pair of chairs. Reluctantly I stand up to join him in one of the opposing seats. I look at the audience and quip “too bad it isn’t Texas hold’em” the audience laughs. The speaker continues: “affirmative reinforcement ensures a positive outcome of the events. The subject, by addressing his own needs, has predetermined the eventual outcome of all possible results.” The poker game begins. I look up. My brother is sitting in the chair opposite, diligently studying his cards. In front of him is a huge pot of chips. Without ever seeing the cards I know that I have won the hand.

All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.

One night I was reading a childrens story to D. “More than anything a woman longs for children. Desperate she receives a magic seed from a witch. Once planted, a tiny girl emerges from its flower. The woman names the child Thumbelina. One night, Thumbelina is asleep in her walnut-shell cradle and is carried off by a toad who wants her as a bride for her son. Thumbelina escapes the toad and her son, and drifts on a lily pad. Winter comes and Thumbelina is given shelter by a field mouse in exchange for some house cleaning. The mouse suggests Thumbelina marry her neighbor, a mole. Thumbelina finds the prospect of being married to a mole unattractive, but the field mouse will not listen to her protests. Thumbelina escapes by fleeing to a far land with a swallow she nursed back to health during the winter. In a field of flowers, Thumbelina meets a fairy prince just her size, and eventually they wed. Thumbelina receives a pair of wings to accompany her husband on his travels from flower to flower, and a new name: Maia.”

She looks up at me and said “was that bird dead?”
“No, it was just sick.”
“Will you die someday?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
At which point, for no explainable reason, I launched into a description of the eternal return. “the universe contains a finite amount of matter, while time is viewed as being infinite. The universe has no starting or ending state, and everything in it is constantly changing. The number of possible changes is finite, and so sooner or later everything will line up just exactly as it has happened before. Someday all of this, you and me, will happen again and we will be sitting here having this exact same conversation.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”