"CRAYON EXPLOSION"
copyright 2006 by SARA HOLT
Nameless, Shapeless, Alleyways
I turned twenty-six last year.
*
And this December I'll turn twenty-seven.
*
Mentally, I feel one-hundred-and-five, thirty-six, and sixteen, all at once.
*
Emotionally, I feel three.
*
Physically, I feel like a young middle-ager, if that's possible.
*
My wife says that I've been reincarnated a thousand times before. She says that's why I have the soul of an old man. She says she can see it in my eyes.
*
I'm twenty-six and yet I think about my own death.
*
There is a vein in the meaty part of my palm, just below my thumb, and it's shaped like an "S." I watch it sometimes. It's a vein that runs close to the skin so that the pulses of blood are both urgently blue and truly beating. And I think about how when I am dying, if I look to that vein in time, I might be able to see it stop pounding. And I think about how that will be the last moment of my life. No matter how old I am or how young, that will be the end.
*
Unless of course I'm headed for one-thousand-and-one lives. Then I'll be back tabula rasa.
*
But I'm starting to understand me a little better. I'm starting to get to know who I am.
*
But I have to stay focused on the past. On what I've done. On how I've become me. How anybody becomes anybody.
*
I think back.
*
Reeling.
*
I've made mistakes and I've paid for them. But I've done right too. I've done loads of both.
*
I've done bad and good. Right and wrong. Little and plenty.
*
Here I am.
*
I've eaten a peach, touched stone, sailed on the ocean, regretted decisions, and turned keys.
*
I've stolen, cheated, lied, hit, judged, criticized, and harmed.
*
I've loved, caressed, touched, lingered, whispered, gazed, and embraced.
*
I've listened to the wind, hoping that it was speaking directly to me.
*
I've prayed to God and tried to meditate and read all the stories of Buddha.
*
I've eaten any food I've never tried before. And I'll eat a food again if I can't remember what it tastes like.
*
I've taken degrees from college and done some of the stupidest shit in my life.
*
I've made friends and lost them, cared for family and had them care for me.
*
I've picked raspberries from the vine and eaten them as bees pollinated and the sun shone.
*
I've smoked cigarettes while thinking about lung cancer.
*
I've talked about what I'd do if I won the lottery.
*
I've planned my own funeral and played it out in my mind.
*
I've built something from nothing.
*
I've destroyed effortlessly.
*
I've created with my bare hands, structured and run machinery, typed in codes to destruct, fixed computers and torn them down again, made pizzas and dressed as a giant mouse, grilled burgers with bloody centers, acted, sang, and waited on tables simultaneously, pushed shopping carts, answered phones, taken orders, given orders, and pretended to teach things I didn't fully understand myself.
*
I've done nothing.
*
I've done everything.
*
I've survived.
*
So far.
*
So far.
*
I know a paraplegic, a great grandmother who lived and died with Alzheimer's, and a friend who committed suicide. A former drug dealer, an adulterer, and a manic-depressive. A divorcee, a veteran, and a man from Canada who lived past ninety. I've seen a kid break his wrist, stitches in my nephew's head, blood stains on my mom's jeans, and black and blue everywhere. I've been fired, I've quit, and I've been downsized. I saw a man lose his job after twenty-five years of service. I've seen hundred dollar bills stacked in wallets. I've met a famous author, a Broadway actress, and a man without teeth. I've been harassed by a bum in Chicago for not listening, stood in four corners of four states at one time, and listened to dusty whispers in an ancient, foreign church. I've been tested for allergies, laid down for surgery, and thrown up blood. I've pulled the trigger on a shotgun and slung the weightlessness of a fly rod. I've planned out how a person could live in a bathroom for years. I've thought about how to sleep in a library. I've contemplated suicide. I've been from one ocean to the other. I've fallen off a bike. I've tripped over nothing. I've cracked a tooth, split my skin, and scratched my legs until they bled. I've written books, poems, and plays. I've recorded demo CDs and played live shows. I've asked a girl to marry me, greeted a baby not two hours old, and watched coffins lowered into wet earth on hot days. I've been in a dead person's house. I've laid in a stranger's bed. I've whispered and begged, cried and smiled, all at the same thing. I've written letters to Santa and the deceased. I watched a kid in class light his jeans on fire with a match and some lighter fluid. I watched a kid change the channels on the classroom TV using a watch he bought by mail order. I've been a groomsman, an usher, and a candle-lighter. I've sat on gravestones wondering what my friends below looked like. I once sold all of my old CDs to pay for a trip to prom. I've watched space shuttles disintegrate, buildings crumble, and missiles go green against the night sky thousands of miles from my home. I've watched children run from gunmen and adults run from sniping kids. I've thrown rocks through windows, carved names into wood, stared at the sun, and fallen in love.
*
I've done everything there is to do and yet I haven't even started.
*
I haven't begun and yet here I am, finished.
*
Here I am. Listed out as best I can.
*
Here I am in twenty-six letters and ten numeric digits.
*
Here I am in black and white.
*
With the ink are the words I've chosen to tell. What my brain has spilled onto the page. In the white, between the lines, are all the secrets I choose not to tell. In that space is everything I still keep hidden, thinking silence is safety.
*
But I've told what I can. I've opened my head and examined it's contents.
*
I've arranged a life into words and sentences and paragraphs.
*
Some people wait until they've achieved before they'll divulge.
*
People think that an autobiography is a work about someone famous. Someone who has changed the world. Someone who has contributed irrevocably.
*
But I've done those things.
*
In reality, we all have.
*
Everyone has a story to tell.
*
And every story has a thousand tangents.
*
Here are mine.
*
Already worn and tired.
*
But still vibrant and true.
*
Here I am.
"Nameless, Shapeless, Alleyways" is exerpted from the novella Nobody.
Copyright 2006 by J.A. Tyler
