mirror blues

What if we've just been cruising in the wrong direction all along? I can't believe this hasn't even crossed my mind until now.

Not that there is a direction, but I don't remember ever turning back, either.

Turning in circles, yes, perhaps, especially after the recent shock - in fact I'm not quite sure if we aren't indeed cruising all the way back now;

(as much as multi-dimensional browsing can allow any sense of direction, conscious or not.)

But it's the first time in I don't know how long that I even challenge - not my direction, but - a true consciousness of the possibility of inverted directions, acknowledgement and redemption of a wrong choice.

Doesn't really matter - I don't know where we're going anyway. 

But yeah, it would be nice to see some familiar ground again, and say (and hear) "Hey, Marcus, haven't we been here before??", ("I believe so, Sir"), and float on in peace, at least knowing that my sense of belonging (to somewhere, anywhere) isn't lost.

So ironic that after so much seeking, I now find comfort in knowing that I might be covering past ground in the opposite direction.

light

Something extraordinary happened today. We were cruising at low speed through the dark velvet curtains in a sleepy lethargia fueled, no less, by a powerless feeling of abandonment, as a bright flash inadvertedly lighted the right half of the space ahead and the whole ship shook like hit by the falcon jab of an outter-galaxy cyclope, waking me up from my semi-conscious state of oblivion and leaving me eagerly turning the ship in circles and circles and circles trying to find the source of this disruption.

We turned and turned, Marcus, for the first time in many many months, sitting next to me, his eyes open in eager antecipation for what there might be - whatever there might be -, monitoring the again dark horizon in search for another sign, in silence, both of us, sharing finally, after forever living in two sides of a single wall, a moment of common understanding, until the enthusiasm wore down and no light was left other than the beeping red alarm of overheating engines.

Marcus returned to the bunk from where he had been woken up - he never saw the light, in fact - and I poured myself some more tea and held on tight to the controls, moving on, certain, now, that, however far we might be from salvation, we are not alone, no matter what.

I fell asleep soon after, and the Ship moved on, randomly; in the early days, I used to feel anxious to let it loose drifting aimlessly around the unknown, but have since learnt that steering it towards a black multi-dimensional horizon is as good as leaving it to itself. In fact, I could sleep all day and still reach places as good as this emptiness, but there's only so much rest your body needs, and I'm no different, so I hold on tight to the machine, on my waking hours, albeit no longer convinced that my judgement plays any role in our fate.

I hope I'm awake when the next flash hits us, like I was today, because, if not for anything else, it proves me right, and Marcus wrong, and I'm the Captain of this junk, after all, and once the Captain looses his faith, we'll both just rot in despair.

Onwards, then, towards the next light.

cruising the night

Some days, brighter thoughts cross my head. Not all is always dark in my inner reaches, even if there's no match to outter Space's gloom. Safe for a couple of stars that shine bright enough to remind us we're not yet condemned to infinite void, we've been navigating a fireless sky for as far as I can remember now.

We've been in darkness for a long long while, almost total darkness, but I'm alive and burning like an incendiary advent candle gone mad and spread over the whole crisp pine wreath. I'm am burning burning burning with the thought that new, overwhelming, almost indigestable brighter days are to come. It doesn't get blacker than black. How empty of hope can you get? Only so empty. There's always a fire lit somewhere, if not where you are.

I should know better than take things for granted, of course, and that there's a fire somewhere doesn't mean I'll ever be able to pilot this Ship there within the timeframe of my own life. We're rotting in our stagnation, Marcus and myself.

But what to do? Each hint of light in the endless spacial horizon is an exaltation to the motionlessness of our dimming hope, and am I to blame if I still believe the next light can be the last I ever see in front of me, before I step into it and I'm just surrounded by the blissful bath of rebirth, and never again have to seek for that burning candle in the dark, because there will be dark no more?

Yes, I should know better, but that doesn't mean I know better, so when a light shows up, I light up myself, and call Marcus and debit my overbearing enthusiasm, and I believe it all over again. He,  as expected, won't do more than nod and say "Indeed, a light, Sir", and return to his little room after a short bow, because he believes no more in salvation but I, I revolve, I burn and burn with the hope that this is finally it.

I push the handle even further, I force the engines, I stretch this Ship forward, until...

Well.

Some days, brighter thoughts cross my head, be it amidst total darkness or faced with the hint of a new light. Today, in darkness, I know that as far as I'm able to pilot this bloody thing, I'll do it, and I will find a goddamn way back to Earth or any liveable environment, and if I don't, then I'll die trying, until the very end convinced that I'll manage to find my path.

bright tomorrow

 

We'll build sand castles and call them our little magic town

and patch shells on the grainy walls

(of our shanty castles)

and say, to passers-by,

"oh, those are the windows"

Confused, they'll walk on

and find us silly

in our fantasies;

unfitting, in a world of concrete

we'll shrug our shoulders and build on

(there's still so much sand -

we can build an empire!)

but wall upon wall

we lose our way

within our city of castles

and soon we leave, too.

it's cold -

what good are sand walls

against the evening wind?

abandoned, our little town of magic castles

(with empty windows)

is swept by the evening tide

and fades

in the salty apocalypse

of the waning sandpatch

 

Elegia Amoris

 

I sometimes think I see her shaping up between two stars.

It's rather distressing, because I'm well aware that she'd never be floating around in Space - and even less so dressed in that white dress in which I last saw her - but I do see her at times, she's right there in front of me, just beyond the big front window through which the whole wide Universe relentlessly offers itself to my Ship.

No need explaining to myself that seeing her shaped as a constellation is nothing less than my slow decline into madness, because, in reality, when I excitedly point her out to Marcus ("Look, Marcus!! She's here again!") and he patiently warns me "Sir, it's not her. This is a constellation, Sir. I have never seen it before myself, but that is not a woman, Sir, women don't go around dancing in between stars, as much as you wish they would, particularly..."

"...particularly if I once loved them, Marcus, and was dumped like garbage; yes I know, I know, this can't be her. She'd never come back. Fuck. And how could she be there? Oh no, oh no, Marcus, she's gone again, you are right, you are right."

So, I was saying, when I do point her out to Marcus in my half-ached delirium, she's as crystal clear as she ever was in my arms, and I can't ignore the rather obvious fact that all of this actually happens in the backbones of my head - that fine membrane that separates Memory from Reality playing tricks on me time and time again. And it's only Marcus' condescending taps on my ecstatic shoulder that bring back to me the logical skepticism of Reason that I am supposed to exercise, and whatever was left of Her then finally fades away in the dark skies.

But then Marcus goes back to his bunk, and as soon as he does so, she shapes up again, and by then I know already that she can't possibly be outside the Spaceship, so I convince myself that she's inside, oh man!, inside, I convince myself that what I'm seeing is her reflection on the glass window, and that she's right there behind my back, watching me steer the Ship towards the Unknown and patiently waiting for me to turn my head around, in order to give me that wide, proud, merry, lily-white smile of hers and ask me "what's up?" before kissing me once again.

We met at a time when I was a young, adventurous air force pilot and she was one of those gorgeous middle-class big-city girls that were graced with endless energy and even more ambition for a stable marriage with a loaded guy, even if they pretended very well to desire exactly the opposite. A loaded guy!!.., I mean, even if I were to have made it big in flying fighter jets, (as oposed to ending up steering this junk in a lost mission towards a long forgotten objective), I could never - ever!, for fuck's sake - have afforded to keep her, but

I just fell for her that Summer, that long, dry Summer that felt like Spring, I totally and uncontrollably fell for her, and that's it,

so I gave her grand illusions of a life on the road in between air force bases and paradise islands, the life that I wanted for myself and that I thought would keep her away from her stupid class-climbing ambitions; but of course the illusion was on ME, she was never illusioned by any of my crap, and as soon as she found out that we'd start splitting the restaurant bills once I'd realized that she could actually afford her own half instead of spending it all on make-up, she just disappeared,

like that,

gone like the dust traces of this Spaceship, just evaporated within the big big city, lost to me like I'm lost to Life now - both her, then, and me, now, gone from sight and touch.

And I know now - much better than I was able to discern then  - that she was nowhere close to the woman that I needed, she was just a gold-digging, well-lived, ladder-climbing, materialistic little thing, but - even now! - I remember the beautiful, thrilling, self-aware, monopolizing and everything-else-wiping charm she had, and that joy for life, and the way she made me feel special - not just for being with her, but for making her feel special to be with me, too.

Oh, man, we clicked, we did, but WE'd never work, and she found that out sooner than I was able to set my alarm clock, so one day I woke up to an empty bed and a goodbye note that I never found (because she never wrote it),

and even now, years and years later, even now, when I see her between two stars, even now I'm just not able to admit that it's not her out there, that it's only my head telling me that I miss her and I lost her, and nothing more than that, other than that I'll potentially miss her forever, or at least as long as I meander around Space; because there's nothing else to do out here than reminisce, and Love is such a sweet sweet memory, even when it failed,

so in those nights when she shows up, I don't turn around anymore, I just sit there and steer on and on, and all along there she is behind my back, looking at me through her own reflection, not quite as she used to because reflections aren't as real as flesh, but real enough to keep me going for a little while longer.