Up Notes

It had been a pretty bad winter. Schools were closed at that point for three days, snow accumulating a couple more inches each morning, each afternoon and night. Two and a half feet when all was said and done. They stay huddled in the kitchen, the warmest part of the house, letting the wood stove burn all day.

The smell of pancakes greeted the two little ones whose loud feet always made a joyous noise on the way down into the kitchen for another "family day" as they would call it. They didn't have much land, probably about an acre, two dairy cows, a chicken coop with a dozen or so hens and a small crop of soybeans aside from the vegetable garden they kept.

He had dug a path  through the snow to the barn, having moved the hens there until the temperature rose, making sure the new laying area was closest to the fire that he built. He regularly changed the hay from the cow's pens and checked for eggs. While they had no shortage of water, with the pipe for the pump frozen over, they consumed more milk than they normally would have.

Sometimes he would see his daughters following behind like little ducklings to the barn. All bundled up and sweating from the entrapment of their body heat, they would unzip their coats and stretch out their arms to the chickens. Almost by instinct, the animals would flock to the little ones, embracing the mildly damp warmth of the girls.

It was that moment that he now reflected on, having his wife's frail and withered hand in his own. He told stories, always about the girls, always about the farm. But most came back to that winter, snowed in with two girls and a soon to be third. It was like something of magic, he thought. For a few days, cold and bitter as the weather was, they were untouchable, off and alone in space and time, existing together. Neither of them even remember the girls fighting.

Each tear was a different memory. He recalled the way his daughters cried at the way it felt when their cold hands and feet began to warm up again, how he put their tiny feet and hands up against his stomach, how he offered the quiet shushing, the stroking of their hair, how they smelled so much like their mother.

He recalled the night he and his wife stayed up later than they should have, dancing to music that was a combination of a hummed melody by one, and the lyrics added by the other. He remembered the way her face glowed in the light of the candles and wood stove, the warmth of the baby inside of her up against his own stomach, the religious ecstasy when she grabbed his hand and brought to her lips and kept it there for eternity. The way the breath left her nostrils and fell on his fingers.

And now to see her there, slowly fading by nothing but her own finitude. They were grounded in reality. They knew and planned long ago. Death was always an agreed upon certainty. But that doesn't make the loss any easier. It makes it healthier, it makes one accept it and embrace its coming as something to look at as a possible gain in a certain regard. But the hole created by that loss remains all the same. It doesn't stop the wound.


inspired by Up Notes by Mark Orton

No Mail Today

The encroaching dependence upon the repetition of words to keep from breaking down in tears was a thought that she pushed down by that very practice. She sat in a living room of pale yellow with the windows open, peering out intently into nothing.

July. Sunny. Afternoon. Mid-80's maybe, from what she could tell. Making further notice of the living room. They didn't have a TV, figuring there wasn't much use in getting one if they weren't using it. The couch was used, blue clothed and ripped, something that they found from looking here and there, off and online. The whole living room was a mashup up various pieces of furniture that all blended together because of the equal commonality that they all shared, namely that they didn't share anything.

She thought that it was kind of like them, kind of like everyone. There was always the aching feeling that they never looked like they matched. It wasn't that she saw herself as unattractive, as less than the one she loved, but rather she just didn't feel that they matched.

It was those words that she regretted the most. Almost innocent, not intending them to hurt or sting. Stop. The tears began. She went back into nothing, sitting there waiting for the nothing. That is not say, "nothing in particular," but rather the further perpetuation of the void she had created around her.

Life goes on. New people come. As far she knew, no one was special in particular. Maybe it was just some internal animalistic force compelling her to want love, to want to love one person in particular. These were the thoughts she was trying to avoid. The strain of withholding so much is damaging in ways unseen. So she let go. She dropped the letter that was gripped in her hand. She knew that another one wouldn't come.

Comme Ce Jour

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The wind moved like the sigh of Earth in contentment and longing. It blew over an ocean and brought the smell of salt to the shore where autumn had begun to take its effect. On the beach there, a pair of closed eyes gasped for sight and the smell hit the nose below them. But closed they stayed. The mind behind them wanting to make up the lack of the other senses. The waves moving on the wind that carried the salt that could almost be tasted from the yawn of a mouth. A shiver ran through that body as wind blew against it. The experience of it, the cold air, the lines of trees with autumn leaves set ablaze is something that comes by annually. Ritual. The Earth is in ritual, practicing resurrection year after year. Suffering, violent, malice-heavy, dying, resurrecting, filling with wonder, regaining innocence, true purity, and repeating the cycle.

When You Were Lonely

He does not know it yet, but as he lies down in his bed, sleepy after reading, near to unconsciousness and yet in the darkness completely awake, they are about to move on. He imagines the stars and sees the crescent of the moon, aware of the lunar cycle. For what purpose do the crickets sound beautiful and the birds fall silent? Why must night be evasive? The questions were always unanswerable. In the back of his mind he thought, “Is man so proud as to only believe what he can measure?” And there are things he believed could never be measured.

Ah! But these are too existential for the sleepy, these vivid distractions to cover up something larger. Exhaustion will eventually take over; by then it won’t much matter. A deep sigh arose from his left. “A crescent moon. What am I to make of that?” she asked.

“Fondue,” he joked.

She took her hand wiped it down his face. “You’re fondue,” she retorted. She thought that the best kind of romance was cheesy, especially when it isn’t processed. She snickered. By this time her hand had been covered by his, resting on his chest. They had made mention of their equal level of immaturity, how a hand on her breast triggered a desired for sex in both of them. Though for a while they had been avoiding it. They thought of this every time her hand was on his chest, in a way making it meaningless to place it there. But they were both restless and drained physically. So they lay speaking the third language that most never learn: quiet. Breathing was so faint it was almost inaudible.

September, chilly and windows were open. The chill in the room was crisp. The covers were a heavy protection to keep them from moving. “Is it,” she started and stopped. He didn’t say anything, letting her sort it out for herself, for both of them. “I miss her so much, ya know?” She paused again. “Is that weird? I mean, I miss the memories that aren’t there, that could’ve been there. She was right there in my arms.” Her grip tightened on his hand. “Those are like the worst words ever: ‘I’m so sorry.’” After all the months, she has started talking about it. 6 months had come and gone and it hadn’t become duller. The loss was still sharp in her.

Why does she fight to hold back the tears? Why do any of us? But she just doesn’t want to cry. She doesn’t know why but just that she doesn’t. Trying to lay still, she begins to take manual control of her breathing. He know that when she breaks, he will too.

They are of one flesh. While not everything  can be fully shared, they can bear this loss. There is something about sorrow when it immediately follows a moment of sublime happiness. She pushed in that room that now seems so far back and still coming. And then everything fell silent. And they looked at her with the red on their gloves and she could see that something was wrong beneath the masks. Blurs of white moved in and out of the room frantically. Her right hand reached out for stability, finding it on her kneeling husband’s chest. His hands, the left one wrapped in a chotki let down from his arm enveloped hers. She grabbed it and both began to work it through, their quiet lips writing barely legible whispers in unison upon some invisible letter already ascending and descending, moving from left to right, to reach everywhere and fill all things. It reached her mind that she hadn’t heard a cry.

How do you keep calmness and peace? She may yet be in paradise today but not in accordance with anyone in the room trying to bring her back. And yet her parents pray for and against the inclusion of some further deification, all depending on whether or not they can get the baby breathing.What is in the laying down of a will? Maybe it is knots running through fingers and making the effort to see what you want and what might happen.

In the bed of that cold autumn night, she is curled in a ball in her husband’s stomach, weeping uncontrollably and pulling the chotki into her own. She thought: my heart and my flesh, they fail me. He curls his arms around and can feel the heat pulsating through her quaking body. He is weeping now, quietly and wondering about the carrying of 9 months and then a sudden absence in single night. Is it like this? Is this like singing to ears that cannot hear, kissing a forehead that cannot feel and gripping hands that do not react? How long have those knots been moving and those hearts breaking with it? Unanswerable.

At times, for separate reasons that are yet the same they think of how long this has gone on and how long it will continue. Only today, the only confidence that anyone has. “Is it okay if we go now?” she whimpers.

“Of course. Yes. Yes we can,” he tries reassuringly to reply. They put on warmer clothes and she grabs a book of hand-copied prayers for the deceased prepared right after the burial, first used this night. 1:30 A.M. and they are on their way to the graveyard of the church. Chanting the prayers and the Psalter does something that is like sobering and consoling but else and other. The warmth that it puts within contrasts the light breeze of frigid air. Slowly, things calm down. The world begins to spin. The ache is not numbed as much as there is no pressure on a fracture. It throbs but outside of trying to support itself. They named her Emilia, sounding like Emmanuel, God with us. The name name turns and revolves with the spinning earth, cycling in and out of mind. She kisses the marker and offers her daughter a paschal greeting. He does the same.

They sit in the cold for a long while, being still and eventually, silently agreeing, to return home. The car ride is without music or voluntary sound. The soft blow of warm air and the engine fill the quiet. By the time they arrive home, they are exhausted as whole beings, as bodies and more. They kiss the icon at the door and do not bother to put on pajamas. They take off their chilled clothing and wrap around each other in bed. The both sigh in the quiet. The look up and stare at each other with their thoughts:

This is the man I married.

This is the woman I married.

They wonder at these thoughts with eyes steadily fixed on each other. She instigates it with a kiss. He follows. All at once, those defenses have fallen over, the paralyzing fear of what a second pregnancy might bring. It floats above the the cord of two and is off on the cold breeze.

Left below are bodies warmed, eventually to be laying still in one another once more with the protection of each other under the warmth the blankets keep in. Eyes meet again; there is co-existing smile in that meeting. It speaks of some final end to the exhaustion of more than a single night, but in some minute way the labor of the past 6 months. For soon a new labor will grip them both.

Soon a naked baby boy, an Immanuel, will be smeared with oil, will have a tuft of hair cut, will be dunked thrice in water, will taste something that is of bread and wine but else and other.

He will join in the pilgrimages no longer at night but regularly. The words, “memory” and “eternal” will mean something that he will keep for the rest of his life. Emilia’s name will revolve for him too. Death will be a consideration from a young age. He will grow into something, though it is not for us to know ahead of time.

She looks into it as well. She sees he and her mother and father. Her words bear no partiality from all else she asks for. But they are of her blood and flesh and she, in her human nature, wishes to offer a grace that they may one day enjoy together. For it is not for her to know either. But she can hope. And what a good hope it is.

The Blue Hallway

There was a long and wide hallway. Upon the walls and the ceiling was every shade of blue. They seemed to bleed into one another so that one could tell that there were different shades, but not correctly identify what and where. The carpet beneath lay on top of old hardwood flooring, browned darker by age and neglect. The carpet itself was a mid-green.

Doors of the blue shades lined the walls in a way in which one side’s doors fell in between the space of the other side’s doors. Opposite the doors lay an outline of white in the shape of the doors. Upon closer examination, one finds them to actually be openings. The doors once opened reveal a wall in which a rainbow of birds seem to be stuffed in the canvas of the doorframeborders. The smell of fresh rain pervades the air, so much so that the illusion of the humidity of a summer or a soothing frigidity of autumn pour can be felt.

Many fanciful birdcalls are brought to the imagination of the occupant(s) of the hallway. The eyes are closed. This is normally followed by a sigh. For less than a second there is absolute stillness. Then the eyes open. They look down. How far away that green now seems below! The birds have left their doorframeborders and flutter the wings, pushing against green gravity. The clouds form. In the air now, in the air.

Hampshire

Chilly. Autumn Evening. The landscape was drenched in a purplish blue. Birds whispered wishes of restful sleep. The streetlights , held by steel necks gave off an orange radiance of dying stars. The ground was still wet from the heavy rain earlier that evening, leaving the radiance splitting and bleeding on the sidewalk, into the street, on the orbs of wetness hanging on the grass. I am walking she thought. Ordinary, but strange and wonderful when outside yourself for a spec of stillness, however small. At another time she imagined the sky purple and humans with tails. In her mind, it would've made us more gentle. A practice in logic was not the purpose of these thoughts. What was it  to her, to anyone really in such moments? Argument was just a waste of words. The things that need defending can speak of their own accord, in their own tongues. Listen. As she walked, she closed her eyes as the wind blew on her face. Eyes closed, her mind is racing to places far away, distant kingdoms, the future and other worlds. Her hands move to the invisible orchestra, opening and closing slender fingers, humming. This would inevitably turn into dancing. Such a thought brought a joyful sadness, all these thoughts and lives ending, like a dying star. Stars and I are alike then, I the breath and we share a grave. She paused a long while on the sidewalk and sighed. She lifted here hands and spread her fingers: "I am a phoenix."