Disjointed Moments
Things keep happening, but none of the pieces fit together very well
Sometimes I feel like everything is happening as it always has, as it always will forever. The sun rises and sets. The moon follows suit. The skies open and slake the earth’s thirst. My life matters to some people and not to others, and that’s fine. One day, we’ll all be decomposing together.
I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of a painful life. I worry that everything will hurt before it disappears.
*
There is a small spinybacked orbweaver on the porch hanging from a couple of strands of silk. She’s not quite old enough to build a larger web yet. The lone spiderling sways in the breeze, but she doesn’t seem bothered. She stays entirely still, enjoying the smooth rocking of the wind. I imagine it feels like sleeping in a hammock, suspended in body and mind.
Elsewhere in my backyard, a single yellow flower falls from a palm tree, but it doesn’t reach the earth. The dwarf umbrella tree below stymies its descent. I think it’s caught on a spiderweb because it sways just below the tip of a leaf, looking so much like the orbweaver on the porch. The wind blows and the branches sway, the leaves sway, the flower sways, all slightly offset like a song sung in the round.
The porch fan whirls above me, and the pages of my book sway, too. I remain still except to lift my fingers to turn the ruffling pages. I take a break from the words to rest my eyes and see the remnant of another web. It connects the chair to the table. It blows wildly beneath the fan, but the connection doesn’t break. There’s so much silk in the air. It holds everything together like hands grasping for each other in the dark.
*
My bed has begun croaking like the frogs outside. It’s a deep ribbit of old wooden slats calling to my tossing and turning. I roll over and join the night’s chorus before drifting off to sleep.
A raging thunderclap startles me awake, and when my eyes spring open, the lightning hasn’t even finished rending open the sky. The white heat and sky shout come together at almost the same instant. The storm is right on top of me. When another flash begins, my body tenses in anticipation of the night’s shattering. In the storm’s fury, the outside frogs only call louder. More voices join like a prayer, more voices than I’ve ever heard at once. They sing into the night while the rain falls and falls and falls. I drift away again to this Florida lullaby.
*
I sit in my car outside my neurologist’s office and let my cries tear at my throat. I hate this disease. I hate this stupid fucking disease. I feel like a sack of flesh and blood and bone with no agency of my own. You don’t realize what a chasm a few millimeters can be until they become scars in your brain that break down the person you were—millimeters of lesions in hundreds of square inches of possibility. All I can do is expel my rage in tears and screams and snot.
This is not supposed to be my life. I don’t know what I expected, but it isn’t this.
*
Massive cumulonimbus clouds explode into the jewel-bright sky. White towers of wonder climb higher while the blue-green of the bay below reflects them back to Earth. I watch their slow movements while the fans in the shaded outdoor café provide some relief from the heat. I’m waiting for friends to arrive, but their delay offers me a quiet moment. The whir of the fans and the screeching of iridescent grackles feel distant. I’m in the clouds. I’m in the soft white of the far away.
WEEKEND POTPOURRI:
Currently on repeat:
THE SOUND OF THE SUN
By George Bradley
It makes one all right, though you hadn’t thought of it, A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon, Whistling and crackling, the explosions of sunlight booming As the huge mass of gas rages into the emptiness around it. It isn’t a sound you are often aware of, though the light speeds To us in seconds, each dawn leaping easily across a chasm Of space that swallows the sound of that sphere, but If you listen closely some morning, when the sun swells Over the horizon and the world is still and still asleep, You might hear it, a faint noise so far inside your mind That it must come from somewhere, from light rushing to darkness, Energy burning towards entropy, towards a peaceful solution, Burning brilliantly, spontaneously, in the middle of nowhere, And you, too, must make a sound that is somewhat like it, Though that, of course, you have no way of hearing at all.