1.1 Reticence of Evil: The Places Where Light Dares Not Tread (1)

                                      "Do you think even the worst person can change? 

                                    That everyone can be a good person if they just try?"

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I do not think I am an intelligent man. I doubt that I am a man at all. I am a boy, all but past the days of twenty-two, passing into the decades of twenty-three, and I am going to be alone for my birthday this fall.

That is because at this very instant, on this very morning, at the rising of this greatest green sun, I will have to pull the plug on the only person who wished to see me bloom into adulthood. I am an unintelligent boy, because despite all my wishes, I was not wise enough to grow faster.

There was a black room of shelves I grew up in, a room where my mother would read me books on the Utmost Artform. That is what I call the gleaming, shimmering stone in the walls of the distance. From here, the Utmost Artists can claim meaning in these limestone flowers, this little jutted rockface of jagged prisms and stone! To be an artist, I may begin to descend these climbed steps and learn more of it, bite into it piece by piece. That little stoop I’ve picked, a triangular outcrop of marble, a little unnatural creation of someone far before me. Now, it belongs to me. There is no one left to take a slice. All its meaning is mine!

I can smell the smoke of fresh cooked meat, an assortment of sorts, all carried along the breeze to ‘up-here's’ ville. I don’t have a very good nose for differentiation. Meat of sacrilege, their sacrifice of meshy marble stones, their stone cement. From here, all the world blends the same. From my little stoop I may jump down, carefully place my delicate and quite attractive shoes against the rocky stairs, and fall down onto a pretty clinking path, all made by the forefathers that made me me. On my crown of dirt and streaked hair, I may remove my sights and gaze fondly upon the blindnesses of such great breeze, visible and carrying to me her dearest delight: the river solitary, the desert sand gracious, the brazen trees with chests protruding, little naiads and nymphs down the glittering stairs, ah, God-! Look at those bold bushes! Look at those growing berries!

They all belong to the Utmost Artform.

Down the steps I cavort, down the stairs I carry tapped feet along the cracked grains, messy cobbleware rectifying marble-haired stairs' disassemblement who cower and cover stone faults with faults of their own. It is an artform of sorts, the ways in which we mesh and disavow. The dichotomy and the monogamy, the kissing lips and the pressed heels, they make an age so serene and peaceful that I, for one instant, may begin to picture myself a man.

Today, I am in the wrong glass cage, but it is one already shattered by simply pulling the plug. Coming upon the distant rock’s opening, the dearest valley of eloquence- eloquence? Could I place some sort of eloquence on my tongue? Could I mask upon this bare face some charm? Some tingle of confidence, something to gift me the same kiss as the puffing clouds pressing lips to their pointed upteriors, the same to each mossy peak upon their grand clearing- those, those are surely eloquent divinities, maybe some sort of godliness amongst the outstrips!

Look here, look down, look wide! Watch those birds soar over the grassy extensions, all the way in uptheres-ville! Pointed to me, boyest me who resteth my hands on the stone walls, boyest me who peers out into the clearing I may see beneath and find parlor and great hall through Heaven’s fog!

Below me is my city, my town, my crumbling villa unfinished! It’s glorious, the blackened glory left unnamed and unfinished, the honorous kindling torn to ruin by humor’s smoke and hay and char. The labyrinth of lonely white granite, the citadel of home who live decrepit, dogged huts who have lived their entire lives not ever having been found in opening. The empty strip of growing pathway, the green carpet along their passing unchecked borders, and the people’s people-less clusters of gray rubble amidst limestone limefruit trees and stretching flat fields on the outskirts of that grounded hill. The jumbled dyes, the gandered utopia, the battlement of grains held beneath the battlements of grey, warmth in my eyes being seen, never far and always mine, all messily empty. The sun shedding her perfect message, goodness God, I have wondered how long it would be until you found me. Nameless, your hue, a fervent hunger you obtain to be, here, upon thy shoulders where you hunger for more!

Here, here my dearest God. Have a seat upon my weary shoulders. Feel full from me! Give me the brush, and give me the strength to pull the plug.

God, my God, this strength is always going to be a fraction of what I wish it to be.

The needle in my arm shakes slightly. It hungers for freedom, just as I do.

I pass by the brown stairs, the limestone flowers and the solitary river. I press my hands on the shoulders of the leafy awning and come upon the distant rock’s opening, the nearby pond leaking up onto the embankment and pressing the breath of goldfish rays, their puffed lips pushing murky waters onto murkier sands.

There I may watch the cuffing clouds interlink, under the milky way.

There I may again gaze upon the snub-nose peaks, wishing for ever-more.

There, my heaven, is the only place where I may peer, having never seen the inside.

Death’s Gate lies beneath the mount. It is of some sort of story my mother told me when I was young. The weak and feeble are sent beneath the moss to play a game with death, a game of living and killing that serves no good end but to provide the fat and wealthy with entertainment, a hope of ever-more when nothingness is all they know it to be. She told me many stories. But, there is one I believed dearly. The crowd of dazing, shaking hips, the pigeons and supple fingers, the tenant of reality in the hands of the other; the definitions formed in the puzzle pieces of human-like eyelids, a story told to me, that city of kisses and her bright neon lights.

I wonder if that wondrous city lies beyond Death’s Gate.

I slow my pace down the battlement stairs and come upon the stone veil’s gentle roar, the statue of mixing points and boulders. A quail sits on the shoulder of the statue-man, who looks down at me with hard glares and rocken destitute. The pronged helm aimed upwards, the large halberd held high over the shoulder, raised for grateful execution. A bewitching flowing cloak of sheet, and witchly, engulfed in flaming plants and wire, she is more a hay shrine than a visage today. Though, the fire, as it does every day, abates and cinders. The burly mass of warrior visage salvaged stands strong in the black grass. A daily ineptitude. A curse of the snaky flames. Her armor reminds me of a rhinoceros.

My mother knew someone who used to care for the statue’s hands, though not even she knew the statue’s name. Now, it is crumbling, showing its age, but still strong enough to endure fire day by day. Though. . . her name is Boadicea, as emblazoned on her setting stone pedestal. It says it right here. Did no one ever look? Why didn’t I? And miss statue, look at me! Did you do everything you wanted to do? Did this statue capture every piece of you that you wanted entrapped? Did you find purpose in your life as I wish in mine? But, God, God lies in her like stone. The statue sighs, exhales. Whatever she wishes to say to me goes unsaid, and I have no heeding and gather heedless on my headless way, despondent. Oh, and unheeded. Tangle my feet with the wired grasses, pet the wooden strings that intertwine with my homeland, derelict kisses to the sky that I may call breathing.

The sky, the sky, that wondrous twinkle below us cracks and the sea of grass above shimmers with arrogant sleekness. There’s a bit of piano to be played beneath the world and the clouds and the rain, and there’s a bit of art to put to every key who ensnares every passing second, a trap. It is a God that dazes me in wonder. I want the sky to invite me in, to hold me high, and to wholly immortalize me endazzled. That would be artistic. A form of the utmost sincerity. But, not when I am a boy, and not when my mother is nearly dead.

On her pedestal, the words are barely legible, but I know them clear enough.

‘For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.’

It reminds me of a book my blessed pressed upon me once. It was about musicians. Some musicians, the virtuosos and insanities, they’re insane. Redundant, isn’t it? The gifted are typically loopy. Of course, I’ve never seen an artist before. Never read more than a handful of books, never listened to more than my mother sing. But, I know there’s gotta be something out there. They’re out there, somewhere, waiting to be known like some lesser-knowns. And some of them are real, and some of them play it up to seem more talented. I want to be a genuine artist. I want to be a lesser-known, smart and never-ignorant. I want to capture the image of a dog yawning, the jagged fangs serenaded and the kindness of their pointed incisors. I want to capture the image of the sky moving, even if the sky has been captured a billion times before. And I want to immortalize my mother in something. That way she can live happy in Heaven. I want her to be happy after a life of burdening herself with me. It has been just the two of us for too long. Far, far too long.

I don’t lie to you, God. I really want what’s best for her. . . that’s why I drag my feet like so. When my rickety shoes press against the “lawn” of the hospice, it is a soft, mushy press. It hasn’t rained, but the ground is grieving too. Mamo is the only person to interact with outsiders. She bought my clothes from outside. She bought the books I know from outside. She never told me from where, but by never telling me, she let me dream of anything.

All the medical care was administered by a single woman. I never saw her. Once Mamo got sick, I stopped visiting. I suppose that makes me a bad son. I didn’t want to see the strength of my mother be tarnished by illness. I wanted to remember her as who she was, the her before the sickness. I want to remember her as the person I loved, the one I knew as strong and wealthy and healthy and wise. I don’t think I can love her when she is sick and empty. I do not think I can love the dead and dying as much as I can love the lively living. There’s warmth to the healthy, to the walking, to the brave. There is nothing warm about stone, nor the ill, nor the dead and the entombed. But, Mamo won’t get better, and so, I am forced to put her out of her misery.

That is an inevitable trick of the light.

Creaking the door open, I herald the sun’s gleaming dawn. Alone, I step inside the musted-over entombment. . . a simple clinic room. A bedroom before, redefined. Hospices are meant to be clean. The world is meant to be clean. The world around me is anything but. Cracking, the cracks clear and the fog ever-lifting dilutes even. I am only a few pounds of nervousness over the capital directive. I make a little contest with myself. One step. Left. Right. Left. Who will make it over the gap first? Who will make it to her door? Which of my hands will carry the burden of pulling the plug? It is a contest of guilt, and in all honesty, I am not sure I will ever be ready. I hover on the precipice, wait against the door, and listen to the humming of those ambient machines. I hang there forever. I will hang for more.

My left hand takes direction. She presses her face against the knob, licks it with her perspiring saliva, and guides me forward. The tools given, the metal meshings with skin. It’s fake metal, I know, but to me, it is metal all the same. Cold, coded, directionless metal. Undivided, unalloyed, and guilty on the weight of my perceptions. There is a trap waiting in the hinges. I sway there, swinging the door with one strange strength that overtakes me and presses her own breath against my own, making summer out of autumn’s breath. In that coffined string of confinement, I wake my rising eyes to see my hapless mother asleep on the bed. Gray, fading, and hollow. She is a strong woman to be hanging here now in the dusted room. She has been waiting for me, and though I have never realized it, I must have been waiting for her too. She has been missing, a fault of my own for many long days and many more laughing hours, hanging in the distance. I have sunk high in the whispering winds and fallen low beneath the miserly skies. There was a presence missing from me that I was desperately searching for. Now, my mother sleeps. She is stuck in a dream I have yet to reach.

I ample over the gapwards, heading up the slanted porches in stupor, fervent in ignorances unmasked and kiss the forehead of the morrow in windy skin. I press my extended fingers against her nose. soft. brittle. linguistic. And there on her skin is a purpose of the highest measure. An artform entirely sincere. The artform of being my mother. Her black skin shines in the sunlight.

She has my nose. Dust settles on the tip, graying the rounded protrusion. I crave a hug from my mother. I crave to be held. Gently, I rest on the bed next to her. I curl up, placing her arm around me. I feel four. Small. Inconsequential. I breathe by her, no longer caring about the sickness infecting me. Softly, I speak into the silence.

“I saw the great peaks.”

Turning, I look up to her, and tell her the story of my rest on the mountain. For an hour, I recount every tree, every flowering bush, and every cloud that looked like peaches. It is a nice hour, and I laugh laying next to the sleeping figure of my mother. With soft slips and sigh, I seem to be trying to extend the insomnia. Hiding from death as sleep, there is a wounded melody in every sentence I speak to her. I only want to sleep and dream, to embrace art in its purest, purest emptiness so unaccompanied. There is little art in pulling the plug of the only thing that has ever loved me, and there is little art in being alone.

“They are as beautiful as I remember,” I yawn, a nonchalant stride of the neck as I rest my head upon her shoulder. It is stiff and uncomfortable. It is a reminder that she is not my mother, but a stone thing. A past I cannot trace, and a song I can hardly remember. “You took me there when I was eleven,” I wrote into the sky, painting with my hands the stars above our faces with solemn words that she must not hear.

“The last birthday we celebrated. I remember them. I remember the peaks, and the stars. Each and every one. They breathe fire and kiss Gods. They mesmerize the stars and dance and cavort. . . swimming there in a wild, wild world,” I sleep gently in the cradle of her crescent. There is sunlight in the window shining upon her, and shining upon me lesser so. Half of her heart made me, and yet, yet she has spoken of me as the only ‘good’ thing she has done in this world. She has nurtured me from a distance, gifted me sight, and provided me with. . . what? What did she give me? What life did she make me? Can I say that this is a good life, Mother? Can I truly say this life of mine is good? I am fed by invisible hands who deliver me trays, and I am delivered clothes I will not wear, books I cannot read, and the eyes of a lovely sunrise that I have noone to share the sight with. There is something missing, Mamo. Something I believe I wish to return to. But, even in your cold arms, I am alone. There is nobody else in existence but us two, Mamo. The world is so empty, and I lack the autonomy to make it full. My arms are so tired and weary, they cannot even bring into existence my fingers to make a better world. There is no more. Collections, collectives, variables, and the varied. There is no more.

I feel comfort in the empty signal. It is like she is an angel round my bed. I have not read of angels, nor heard them speak, but she is there. She is my mother. She protects me, cares for me, nurtures me, wishes to see me grow. But, she will not see my adulthood. That is because I must pull her plug. I must endow her an end fitting to the labors she strained. I must endow her something. Art, art the Goddess I speak, art in the folds of her arms, art in the death of the mother I love so dearly. Art, my Goddess. Art. Loving, kindly art. Please control me. I cannot do this on my own.

I am surrounded by affection. I am overwhelmed in it, for there is nobody else in this grey and bleak world but me and my mother, and the castle by its stead. Not even the butterfly on her thyroid flaps its wings anymore. It is us. Please don’t take her away from us. Please don’t make me lose the only thing I have ever known. Please don’t take the one creature who understands me.

I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be the one to put her out of her misery. I don’t want to be the one to pull the plug. I want her to wake up now. Please, Mother Art. I pray to you. She has worked so hard for me, given her entire life away for me, hurt herself for me. I cannot return the favor. It is all fuzz. It is all contingency and fuzz. Messy and acoustic. Messy and unaligned, messy and disastrous– Mother Art, please come down and speak to me freedom. I am sick of this world, Mother. I am sick of the world without you, much more cruel than the painting within it.

It takes me hours to rise from my position.

With soft breaths, I amble upwards, clinging to those moments of my mother’s arms. It is a shameful day that passes before I begin to walk. Tile by tile, I ascend that great gap of space, hoping to claim it. Left foot first. Right foot second. I take small breaths and gasp for consciousness on the seventh lapse, and I reek of spinelessness. Seven hours have passed. I am starving on the floor.

Somehow, I curl up again with my mother.

I just want her to squeeze me tight once more.

She doesn’t.

She won’t wipe my tears ever again.
She won’t sing me songs.

She won’t call me from inside the house to the tips of the meadow.

She won’t be here for my adulthood.

She is plucked.

And the plug sits on the floor, the socket empty, but I know, I know, I never had the strength to pull it. I didn’t. My mother is a selfless woman. She would never make me do such a thing. She would never make her cowardly son do anything that would hurt him. . . no, no she’d never.

She pulled the plug on herself.

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