the artistic self

artistic expression is like water.

you notice it when it's cold, you notice it when it's hot, you notice it when it's luke-warm.
each way that water can be, you notice it and if affects your opinion of that specific water.
if it's supposed to be cold and it isn't, it's gross. if it's supposed to be hot and it's cold, it's been sitting out too long.
if it's ever luke-warm, blah.

artistic expression is the voice you speak with that tells people who you are. this is done either by literally making an attempt at doing so, followed by either succeeding / failing at your intended temperature or by doing it in a way that some people wouldn't notice is "artistic."
what i'm getting at is that artistic expression is what puts the hu(e) in human. and whether you consider yourself an "artsy" kinda person or not, this is a synonymous concept with the reality of the self.

take, for instance, mannerisms. the way you move when you're just sorta chilling as opposed to the person you are sitting next to. they're different because you are you and that person is that person. no other reason.
a psychologist would tell you that social factors essentially builds those quirks and a Jungian theorist would tell you that it's more of a universal factor than anything. and while the definition of the self is hardly one, the other, or even both, the self is still the self and a human voice acts beyond what it even means to a lot of the time.

therefore, you are artistic. because you have a mannerism that other people don't exactly. in essence, your natural form and technique of existence is the interpretive dance that you are writing with every shrug-pirouette (notice the hyphen) that you throw at the world.

i've talked to people who get offended at the fact that a reknowned painter can splash a bunch of colors on a piece of something white and it's called a masterpiece and sell it for a bajillion dollars... that that is not art. that it's just someone doing whatever with whatever on whatever and calling it good.

my take on this is that if someone literally is putting any specific intent into a piece of art, then it is a specific form of self; it is an expression of that literal interpretive dance of self and is therefore artistic expression.

it is because of this that i believe every piece of intentional art must be accepted and appreciated. because it is, essentially, us.

this is also why i believe that drawing / painting / sculpting / whatevering, in all respective terms has nothing to do with art. it has to do with mechanics. with technique and practice and learning and skilling. not talenting.
so if you say you can't draw, you're probably right but that doesn't mean you aren't artistic. developing the skills you need to translate that vision from your head or intent to the paper or otherwise canvas-esque thing is only on the other side of these mechanics.

therefore, my advice to the world is to stare deeply into every intended art. the beautiful ones are beautiful to you because the person who built it is beautiful to you on some level. but stare beyond even those. stare into pictures you don't necessarily like. ones with colors you wouldn't necessarily paint your bathroom with; because it is every hu(e)man's right and privilege to be and express these things in the way that happens with their own happenings. what they are saying and what they mean might not be the same thing because of your interpretive perception but that might just be because of the different languages we speak with our heads and hearts and just what temperature we tend to like our water.

you might be surprised.
someone had to embrace the idea of letting coffee get cold in order to invent the frappuccino and in order to do that, someone had to consider doing something that people might not have liked.

now you spend eight dollars a day on exactly that.

so if you stare deeply enough even into the pieces of art that initially turn you off, you might find yourself in a world you didn't expect.

whether you feel like hanging out there for a while is up to you. but embracing this truth is my philosophy.

Fractal

The first time Fractal divided, it got out of hand. It didn't make any sense to him, and when he came back to himself, he launched himself into space and detached the drive from the rest of the ship. He locked a microphase conductive laser on it. He watched the drive slowly heat, steadily, exponentially, and he found himself holding his breath. It wasn't until ten minutes had passed that he realized he wasn't suffocating. It was as if his "breathe!" reflex had left him. He sucked in air frantically but it was not relief that came. It was a cold apathy. Like he'd taken a drink of lukewarm water. Something was nagging the back of his mind. He sighed but again the relief that usually corresponds with ha action was not there.

He intensified the beam on his ship's drive. The hull started glowing red. Then yellow and green. Then a vibrant violet silhouette blazed against the light teal green backdrop of Evelena's largest ocean. A white spot started growing where the beam was hitting the hull of the drive module. The orbit they were moving in was going to take them right over Stellis, the Capital City of the northern hemisphere. He pulled the reigns back on his frantic mood and sighed again. Again the relief was not there and he found himself holding his breath.

He lowered the intensity of the green laser pouring energy into the hunk of metal and fuel. He wasn't going to end up detonating the fuel to send hunks of metal onto a major city. He would not be responsible for another sentient life. It's why he'd come into space to begin with. Because he'd lost control and killed a person. As far away from his personality as he could possibly get. His personality was relative now though. Physics.

Evelena has a very thin mesosphere. Very thin as in not really there. Things don't burn up very efficiently. It is why there is such an extensive automatic defense grid–

He jolted his head at the comm as his thoughts brought him to what was nagging him. He had been hailed roughly an hour before and had ignored it. The hailing had continuously washed over his ship the entire time and he went to accept it just as the message changed. Standard protocol is to hail suspicious vessels for fifty-five minutes. After that deadline, or if the ship in question commits an obviously aggressive act toward the planet or its inhabitants, it is an enemy of the Evelen Navy.

A terrified expression ripped at his face and it felt like his face was made of glass, cracking with every expression he made.

He flicked on the comm to hear the repeated message that had tried to get through for an hour.

"Attention. You are in Evelen Navy space. You are to identify yourself, to include a valid recognition code. Attention..."

He flicked it over to the message that repeated approximately three times: "Attention. You are firing on Evelen citizen: 3759.X41. Power down your weapons and surrender your vessel."

Citizen 3759.X41 was him. Everything clicked then. A ships signature is stored in the drive. It's how they track you if the authorities want you. Technically, to the computer, he was an unknown vessel firing on an Evelen citizen: him.

This had been a terrible day.

He flicked over to the current message being repeated. It was only static. Encrypted attack organization between automatic Dark Darts. Tiny war ships. Impossible to hit.

He slipped the comm active and screamed into it, his lips cracking at the corners. He felt like he'd been sunburned for years.

"Attention! This is Evelen citizen 3759.X41. Repeat, Evelen citizen 3759.X41. This is Rostin Shevel. My drive has been detached from my craft. I am not aboard what is perceived as this ship's signature. Repeat, I am in no immediate danger!" He set the message to repeat.

There was no response. An eerie silence percolated and all he could feel was the agony of living.

He came into space because he wanted no way home. He didn't want to die. He wanted to be away from anything he could hurt. This wasn't working out.

He felt the buzzing of the laser fade from within the ship and looked out the window. Because he'd lowered the intensity of the beam, the module was never cut or torn apart. It had merely melted into a sphere of various liquids and was stretching like the goo in a lava lamp with it's spin. It reminded him of making snakes out of clay.

A bright chirp brought his attention back. He brought up the sensor sphere and saw a total of twelve Dark Darts with an intersecting trajectory. Him. They weren't slowing either. They were on a collision course with him and each other. That made sense. The outer layer of a Dark Dart's hull it like an amorphous skin. It bonds with other metals easily and on impact, would essentially crush and become whatever it hit. They wanted to crush him in a neat little package to be taken home.

It wouldn't work with this ship though. It was a mining ship. If they collided with him, they'd detonate his load of explosives and the ship would flare a big white dot in the sky before raining shrapnel onto the world.

Rostin felt a rage bubble upward and audibly screamed at it to calm it. If this was the only way to prevent other people from dying, then so be it.

The rage subsided but only for a second. Like those seals that eat schools of fish and they move into a school and the fish all move away. The second the seal moves away, they return.

It was a visible sorrow. A searing sort of pain. He couldn't take it. It wasn't long before the rage seeped into every sense of who he was.

The person he became was a killer. A vicious, surviving killer. He switched over, locking every available processor on targeting and firing. He transferred every drop of available power to the four lasers on the ship, locked them all and fired. It was that simple. The hum of the lasers resonated through the ship, focusing and refocusing as the Dark Darts shot toward him.

The things are near impossible to hit. The drives on them fire them in one direction but thrusters aiming in all directions fire at completely random intervals and intensities when they're on an attack run. The result is a tiny, black ship flying at freakish speeds twirling like a corkscrew. If you did that in some video games, you would be cussed out because that's just cheap.

The chances were slim. But the person that Rostin had become would not let this be easy on them. Sparks of his real personality tried to flutter through. Rostin's rage pulled against it every time.

An electric arc sparked outward from one of the darts and a field of blue swept outward from it. Every sensor on Rostin's ship flickered and burned out. The lasers clunked out of commission and the life support puttered.

He couldn't remember ever being able to see a targeted EMP pulse with his eyes before. Then again, he'd never been targeted with it before so maybe that wasn't that weird.

Rostin shrieked and his crystalline throat resonated in weird ways. He didn't notice it though because his rage was angry with him. Angry with him for putting them both in the position they were in. Rostin himself was almost content though. He trusted the Darts to take care of him and his ship to the point so as to prevent anyone else from being hurt. He just wished he didn't have to die to do it. But he knew his rage would kill. He knew that surviving was the only thing that mattered to his rage. He breathed sharply and closed his eyes, waiting for the impact.

Suddenly though, his rage brought his hands up and pulled the lever that would switch the airlock into a manual setting. The gear whirled with the crank he pulled on.

Rostin didn't mind. This was proof that the rage was not him. That the rage was illogical and too focused on selfness to think anything through. They were in space. Specks of atmosphere bounced around with them, but the lack of pressure would inflate him and he'd be smeared against the walls of the cockpit.

Rostin's rage slammed at the crank and the inner door opened. He slipped through into the tiny airlock room and closed the door behind him. He didn't bother depressurizing it. He only closed the inner door to forego the safety locks that prevent the outer door from opening.

His rage wrapped his sparkling fingers around the lever that would open the outer door and smiled at Rostin as his heart started racing. At least that's what it felt like to him. It wasn't really. That's why his rage was smiling. Because his rage knew more about what was going on with him than he did.

He yanked on the lever as Rostin managed one last futile breathless slurp of air. The disease he'd caught had robbed him of his last breath. The irony was that it did so days before he'd realized it.

He opened the door to space and the pressure shot him out. And directly behind him, one of the Darts managed to spear his ship, slicing through it like a shapeless shadow. The portion of the ship he'd been in curled and jackknifed around in a spin that ripped Rostin to the side as he shot out.

Rostin saw Evelena below him as his body spun in two directions at once. A constant disorientation. Because once you start spinning in space, there's nothing to stop you unless there's something to stop you. Rostin closed his eyes and tried to let the vacuum pull him apart.

It did not happen.

Not breathing was just as lacking in relief as breathing had been. But it was no worse. The pressure seemed to equalize within his body. He did feel freezing but it was almost soothing to him. The constant burning sensation that had ruled him the week before was dulled to an ache.

He opened his eyes lightly to see Evelena whirl by, then space, repeat. He tried to find his ship and the explosion that was going on with it. It took him a moment, but he finally did. A flash of white told him they'd detonated his load of mining explosives. Just as he'd thought.

A section of siding slammed into him. The muffled sound that moved through his body was like rock on rock. The chunk of metal pushed against him. He flailed for it frantically, the way he felt he was supposed to be doing. There was nothing to clutch onto but something about the surface felt almost malleable. He thought maybe his body was responding to temperature so differently that this piece of shrapnel was extremely hot and he just wasn't realizing it. Whatever. He managed to throw a punch at it. The metal gave, easily and his fingers curled around the hole he'd made.

A minute went by. He wasn't dead.

He gave himself a second of hope. On one hand at least. Because the other hand was busy holding onto an enormous chunk of metal.

He'd balanced himself at least. Rostin watched the Dart Darts in the distance converging on the hunk of machinery that was his ship. They slammed themselves into the mass with their own thrusters facing outward. They then proceeded to act like one big ship to haul it to a secured location.

He pulled up his hand and analyzed it. It scintillated with the starlight and the sunlight and the light from Evelena.

He orbited almost peacefully above Evelena, watching the planet live from a distance.

Not breathing was disorienting. He couldn't get himself to feel like he didn't need to. But his body had changed.

A little over a week before, Rostin started feeling much colder than he'd ever felt in his life. He thought he'd contracted a disease that was going around and went to a doctor near his home. The doctor told him he could find nothing wrong with him, save some strange reactions to electrical stimulus and recommended that he get as much rest as he could. Not only to help him get better but it was also a polite way of telling him he might start a plague if he actually has something that the doctor couldn't even detect. And on a planet as unstable as Evelena, there wasn't much the ways of treatment for new diseases.

So Rostin went home, needing no further emphasis on necessity. He stayed home for a few days and tried to sleep. His joints started feeling achy and his skin started cracking in ways he'd never experienced before. It was just a small rash at first, on the softer skin like the armpits and the groin. When it spread across his entire body, he called the doctor again and explained the symptoms. The doctor sat in silence and hung up the phone. Minutes later, a squad of Infection Control soldiers, clad in hazmat uniforms showed up and pulled weapons our and directed him into a sterile transport bag. They took him to the hospital and isolated him. Observations continued throughout the day and into the next. Rostin started getting oddly restless. Like he needed to run. Like his body had replaced all of his blood with approximately six quarts of adrenaline. Eventually a doctor told him he wasn't that far off. His blood count had gone down extensively. They started him on red cell production therapy and kept him under observation.

Over the span of the next day, the cracked parts of his skin had started developing an almost glasslike appearance. His joints were in agony every time he moved. But the need to move was almost overpowering. He was told that they thought his body was breaking down on every level but that his condition did not seem contagious. That it seemed to just be his body doing it to himself. Almost like a cancer.

A flash of perception suddened at him and the next moment he knew, he had a doctor in a hazmat suit by the throat against a one way mirror. Ten people streamed into the room and the moment they tried to restrain him, he flashed out again and woke up again running down the street.

There was blood on his hands and from what he knew of the disease he had, he didn't have blood anymore. His body had gradually turned into something like a crystal. Like everything about him was a quartz or a diamond. And he was sure that he'd killed somebody. If not multiple people.

He slipped home and launched his personal mining spacecraft until he got to where he was now.

It hurt to move. It hurt to talk. It hurt to think. It hurt to live. But there was a new drive in him. A fire. Like his body was constantly rolling in coals. Motion made it worse. But being still was a claustrophobia like nothing he'd even heard of.

But one thing stood out beyond any of this. Something he just couldn't even think about. Something that just completely did not make sense.

He had become something capable of surviving in vacuum.

He stared down at Evelena. He was going to plummet soon. Especially if he was holding onto the massive piece of metal.

Something capable of surviving in vacuum.

Not worth killing anyone for. But still kinda neat.

He felt the piece of metal. It wasn't hot. He wasn't that disoriented. He'd punched a hole in it fast and hard enough to not only punch a hole in it, but fast and hard enough to do so without pushing himself away from it.

So he was a superhuman diamond man. He was too strong, too indestructible, too angry and too self-sufficient.

It did not take him long to come to one simple conclusion:

Rostin Shevel should not exist.

lovestory

Flight

but i being impossible, and
time believes,
i am the motion of stay
as i keep to reprieve...
but try as i may,
i want together and
the piano excels, what i,
the silence when
i continue with sitting
alone.
i love her to dream, so
the nice whiles
make up for the mean ones
but And is the music
that comes from the future
and i am the
wildlife
in and
the way.
this is a lovesong forever.



I don't know enough about the real world to say that anything is anything for sure.
The reason for this is that I am only just beginning. I feel this way because I was not me until only a year and a half ago.
Before that, I was a figment of existence. I was a passing feeling.

(closes eyes)

I express my head and wait for it to make sense to me.
It doesn't want to happen.

The music in the trees is listening to my silence and I find that ironic. Because I'm not like this.
It's the late afternoon. I'm lying on the ground where eucalyptus leaves discuss the weather. The grass and stuff presses to the dirt under my back and with my tentative finger, I trace the shape of the clouds.
Love is weird.
I sit up and think for a second how dark the whole "heart" thing is. With its beady little eyes and its unmentionable variables.
The piece of paper that just pushed my heart to the back of my throat is supporting my weight in the dirt.
She promised me forever. This must be a misunderstanding. The same way Hiroshima was. Or AIDS.
"I swear we thought that bomb was strapped down. We had Higgins use a fishing knot that he promised was legendary, and we swear with didn't know the monkey was sick. At least not with that."
I shake my head and try to remind myself that I am not the entire human race and this is not the most horrible thing that's ever happened in the history of the universe.
But love is still weird.
"Promise me we'll always be friends" plays at the forefront of my head, trying to be the comfort it's supposed to be and not President Truman giving the people with arms growing out of their faces one of those big swirly lollipops.
"We're cool right?" (wink)

I look around and the shrill world keeps rushing by just to keep the mood nice and numbing.
I wonder if that is on purpose.
I feel something buzz and it shocks me. A thousand emotions jolt through my body like a bunch of lightning people in a race to the metal rod and I am the poor little rain cloud in the way.
I shake it off and convince my head it isn't her. That it isn't her calling me to tell me that the letter was a mistake and that she's thought about it a lot and that she's changed her mind. But half of me is only convincing myself of it because it wants to be even more delightedly surprised i(when)f it's what I'm really hoping for.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I can't stand the thought of it being anyone in the world but her so to delay the moment I accept the call without looking at who it is and am very slow about bringing the thing to my ear.
"Hello..." no inflection.
"Where are you?"
It isn't the voice I'm hoping for so I hang up.
There are wet eucalyptus leaves stuck to my sleeve. A hummingbird exists it's way into my peripheral vision, twitching it's position and moving in instances that are far beyond me.
The stupid buzz happens again and again I'm flooded with conflict.
"Hello..."
"If you hang up on me again I'm going to−" The same voice as before. So I hang up. I sigh heavily and think about how much of a douche bag I'm being. I wonder if I'll regret it later.
I lay back again and spill my limbs in all directions, making leaf angels on the forest floor.
It's funny and I always laugh when a girl wants to be friends every time she makes an enemy. "I'm going to throw up on your heart but promise me we'll always be friends." Then when time assumes its proper role and you don't go to the great lengths to be friends with her, suddenly it's your fault because you're being a jerk.
She wasn't even all that special. I don't even know why I came here for her.
Buzz. Only this time it's shorter.
I look at my phone.
A text. "r plane leaves in 10 min Im not getting stuck here w/ u just cuz you got ur feelings hurt. teach ur uterus to walk if its 2 heavy."
I wonder if it's possible to teach leaf angels to fly.
Probably wouldn't be any harder to teach some people to spell.
Just the same, dead leaves are made of dead leaves. Live leaves maybe. But dead... Dead leaves just don't care.
That's the problem with people and spelling too though so it all kinda works out.
My head suddenly reminds me that eualyptus trees are parasitic. That they don't belong in the states. That some genius brought them over from Australia or something retarded like that and that they choke out the environment here because they have no natural enemies.
I continue to make angels in their dead shavings and wonder if I could think of a way to make that fact ironic.
"Srsly dude. u can cry like a little chuci all u want back in ca."
By "chuci" he means "bitch." T9 doesn't have most expletives. I figure it out by the context then I think about it for a second and I'm certain of it.
I really want him to stop talking to me.
I really want a lot of things.
I feel like I can't taste anything anymore. Like she was the cup of hot chocolate that burns the roof of your mouth on the first sip so badly that it doesn't even hurt. Completely numb. A soft smooth patch you can't stop feeling with your tongue because it's just that interesting.
She is exactly that.
I'm not even that upset. I just don't care. I gave her everything but not because I love her. I don't love her and I never did. I've lied to her over and over again telling her that I did. But the reality of it is that I only gave her everything because I was bored. I wanted to see my "everything" go somewhere besides my own backyard of thought.
Maybe not hot chocolate. More like boiling salt water.
I've never tasted that but I'd imagine it's gross.
Therefore, love it weird.
I'm still not used to these kinds of restrictions. That's the negative part of forming attachments with people. Because the truth is distance is not actually distance at all to me. And to people, it is. Because I love. Like no one else I've ever met.
I'm not saying that because I deserve something. I'm not saying that because I think it's even very much of a good thing. I just do. A group of people are in my car and I can taste the level of personality around me and I try my absolute hardest to balance it all. To make everyone happy.
I get up too fast and have to crouch over because I'm starting to black out. I think about leaving the letter to lie there and biodegrade with the dead skin of the parasitic trees. But then I remember that the world will in fact keep going in the direction it always has and I will most likely want to read it when I'm back to myself.
That's how good I've gotten at this. Being dumped is something I'm an absolute pro at. I could teach a college course on it by dating every person in the class, and dumping each one of them a different brilliant way.
I'm not saying that because I think it's a good thing either. It's just the truth. The crappy crappy truth.
What other words will "love" make in T9? I pull out my phone. "Loud" and "jove."
Figures.
I really don't want to be left behind. I don't like this state very much. The plane won't leave for another twenty minutes though. He's exaggerating.
I pick up the crumpled up piece of paper and start marching for the airport. I hadn't walked that far away. Just around the corner. I'll make it in no time.
My phone buzzes and I feel my almost moment of almost almost close to almost contentment or clarity turn around, raise its cobra head and strike at my jugular.
The venom sets in when I try to not care and open my phone but then it really is her.
"let me know when your plane takes off and lands so I know you got home safe. i'm sorry this trip wasn't what you thought it would be. i really do love you. as a friend."
I loud you too sweetie.
And it's funny when you can separate the different sections of your heart that hurt when certain things happen. Like there's a little color-by-number diagram. This one hurts when you realize you hurt someone else. This one hurts when someone you love gets hurt because of something else. This part gets dark and aches when someone hurts you.
Right now it feels like the bottom of my heart. Not so much deeply. More surface. But the bottom. Like it's pulling me straight down.
I walk up to the doors to the airport and hold my arms out so they can take away all my machine guns and machetes. I wasn't going to use them this time anyway.
I close my phone and put it in that little tray they use to bypass the sensors. My wallet, keys and the three pennies and one dime I have there. That bottom section on my heart tugs again when I realize what that was the change to. That cup of hot chocolate I bought her yesterday. I remember because when I took a drink of it, I burned the roof of my mouth so bad that I didn't feel it and now I can't stop feeling the rough patch it left. I remember thinking I should try to compare it to life somehow later. Good thing I was prepared for that one.
I really had run out of pants... I was wearing the same ones. I suppose it's best that I'm heading home, either way.
I slip through. I already know right where my hangar is. An airport is like one big automated machine and all people really are is the electrical current that runs through it. One of those ridiculous machines that goes through this stupidly huge process just to crack an egg. Or whatever. They usually involve ball bearings rolling down tracks and balloons getting popped. Lots of levers and string. What's so different about people?
I pass through the waiting area where there's people staring at the plane out the window. Right as I approach I hear "last call for non-stop to Los Angeles California."
I hand my ticket to the stewardess. She glares at me. "Well come on let's get moving! Enjoy your flight please. Thank you."
I walk across the removable walkway and wonder why they really have to make everything movable in an airport. I mean isn't that what's so great about planes in the first place? That they can do the moving?
I pass the pilot and he looks at me with relief. I wonder if he actually cares or if my lack of arrival would just mean more paperwork for someone.
I plop into the seat next to Morgan. He shakes his head. My phone buzzes again. Morgan looks a little uneasy. It must be a text he sent me right before I walked into the plane.
"Is our plane leaving?" I say to him.
"Move," he says and pushes past me. Going to the restroom.
I scoot over to the window seat. He won't mind. He'll be on his gameboy the whole time anyway.
I pull out my phone and read the text. "u r such a puppy. stop making evrything about u."
It isn't hard for me to figure out what he means by "puppy" but I like it better that way so I decide that's what he really meant to say.
They announce overhead to turn off any cell phones or electronic devices. I wonder if the plane would explode if everyone called someone at once right when it was taking off. I bet you that's why.
If it were only that easy...
It probably isn't the eucalyptus tree's fault it's a parasite. I would be a parasite too if I had been stolen from my home and planted somewhere I had no natural enemies.
I still was having a hard time not blaming them though.
I wonder why...
On the flight home, the sun doesn't move for seven hours. Because we're flying in the opposite direction that the Earth is spinning. I stare at my reflection in the window and think about the poetry in the image I see.
One of the reasons this breakup is upsetting me so much is that now I'm going to have to go through my iPod and delete all of the songs that meant something between her and I. It's a good thing I was only pretending to like a lot of those bands because she liked them.
Like those eucalyptus trees. The parasites that don't want to be there and no one wants them to be there but they're there and they have no natural enemies. So they might as well flourish.
I feel a little bit better already.

Exactly one month, three days and seven hours pass by.

I drop the massive pile of wood into the sand. I hate making two trips so I always completely wear myself out by taking everything at once.
I brush off the pieces of bark left over on my jacket but then decide it isn't worth it. So I take my jacket off and toss it to the side.
I take a second to remind myself that this will all be worth it.
Silas sets down the guitar case and the backpack behind me and sits down indian style in the sand. Everything about the way Silas moves feels soft and controlled. I hear the clicks of the little latches being flipped on the guitar case.
By the time I find what I'm looking for in the backpack, he's already strumming some random chords.
I pull out the hatchet and find the most promising piece of wood I can with plenty of small slivers of bark flaking from the sides. I start stripping off pieces of kindling with the edge of the hatchet.
"There are two kinds of people in this world. People who believe in lighter fluid and people who believe in kindling," I say and the words sound more serious than I'm meaning them.
Silas doesn't say anything. He's too focused on the sounds. He hears how you say words more than he hears the words themselves.
I pull out the newspaper we'd just taken from a stand and start tearing out pieces one by one, crumpling them up into tight balls and pushing them together in a ball in the sand. I start building a tiny teepee of kindling over the ball of paper, gradually using bigger and bigger pieces of wood.
I flip open my cell phone to use the light from its screen to find the lighter at the the bottom of the backpack. I discreetly look at the screen to see if I've missed a text. Nothing. I click the phone closed and slip it back into my pocket as I start lighting the edges of the paper on fire, one section at a time. The friendly little flames immediately respond to me like I'm the only thing they love, licking softly at the paper, turning them to black curls of ash, gently caressing the thinnest edges of the kindling.
Silas is trickling a gentle stream of notes, finger-picking their way from the guitar and it's almost like he's talking to the light smoke as it comes to life.
I collapse into the sand. Nobody ever realizes how much work it is to make a fire but nobody can ever appreciate the fires that I make in the same way I can. I feel accomplished. Like it's my child.
I breathe in a heavy sentence of salty air and listen to the crashing of the waves against the sands a couple hundred feet away. There's nobody else on the beach. Everything around us is dark, but the very edge of each wave is white with the foam and shines lightly. The moon is enormous tonight and it's staring down at its reflection like a lover swooning over the only picture it has of the girl it lost.
"There's also two other kinds of people in this world," I say.
Silas keeps staring at the fire.
"There's sun people and there's moon people."
Silas stops for a moment and chews on that. "What am I?"
"You're a moon person."
"What are you?" he asks almost, but not quite, absentmindedly.
"I'm a moon person too."
"Must be why we're friends."
"Must be."
I stare at the universe above us. We all think differently. I run my fingers through the sand and wonder what defines that difference. Knowing how someone else thinks is like understanding how your own language sounds to a person who doesn't speak it. Most people can tell that someone is speaking French or Spanish when they hear it even if they don't know any of either language. But knowing how your own language sounds is something that requires the utmost removal from the self.
I pull out a can of Mountain Dew and crack it open. The sound is like a rushing wave of goodness.
The universe above us speaks in a language that everyone understands. Beautiful. The only language that no one can translate and no one will ever need to. The stars against the sky always feel familiar even though I don't know much about constellations. I think I know more about them than I do. Maybe that's the recognizing of the language that I don't completely know.
Silas puts the guitar back into the case but doesn't close it. I lean back into the sand.
"I love it here," he says as he curls his legs up and wraps his arms around his knees.
So do I but I don't say it out loud. He also listens to the way people are silent more than he listens to what they really say. So he knows.
Our friendship is based on some very fundamental truths. For one thing, we both love as deeply as the other. For another, we've both betrayed the other by our own standards just enough to understand the difference. It is for these reasons that I trust Silas completely.
I flip open my phone. Nothing. I close it.
"Do you think you'll want to stay here?" He suddenly asks the question as if he'd been trying not to but finally succumbed.
I mull that over for a moment, shaking my head around so the sand crunches softly against the back of my head. "I think that depends on what happens."
Silas looks up at the stars but then hugs his knees and looks around him like he's dropped something. It's a faint motion. I wonder if he ever notices that he does it.
A long silence ensues. The bass notes coming through the sand as the ocean pounds on the kick drum of the shoreline, resonating through my body. I try to breathe in harmony but I don't have an ear for bass notes. Because I am a falsetto mind.
Silas is just pushing at the burning pieces of wood with the stick he's holding. He pulls his hood up and carefully holds to the end of the stick. Everything about how he positions his fingers is careful. His fingers are his life. Because he could never stand the thought of them getting hurt. He couldn't play piano. He couldn't play guitar. He would be locked in his acoustic thought patterns, unable to talk back to the universe the way he's come to love.
"What does that depend on?" He suddenly asks the question and it reminds me of my dad. Sometimes a conversation feels like it's ended then after a forever of silence, he picks it back up. I smile.
I try to think of the right words. I'm not even sure of how to put it without sounding desperate for love. "On who I end up with."
"Mmm..." He creases his lips together and pushes them up as he squints his eyes a little bit. He taps on a burning log with his stick. A few sparks leap and die.
"Do you?" I pull my head up to look at him from the awkward position I'm in. The sand softly crunches against the back of my head again.
Silas uses the charcoal tip of his burned stick to draw a circle on a two by four that isn't burned yet. Then he clumsily writes the word "lovedrug" on it. It's a band he's just recently become aware of. He lightly chucks the stick into the fire, pulls his hood back off his head and leans back on his hands. "This place will always be home."
I nod at the non-answer and go back to my thinking.
"Do you remember the day you got back from Boston?"
My heart pinches a little bit but not in a way I'm not used to. "Vividly." My eyes don't open.
"Do you think you would've ended it with her if she hadn't?"
I tap my fingers against my stomach for a moment. "I like to hope I would've. I didn't want to move to Massachusetts."
"You really would have though?"
I push past the dark feeling that comes with that. I didn't want to leave my home for anyone. But I loved her. I said so even; with my own two lungs. I want to believe I would have moved; that I would have lifted my life up and tossed it over the fence of the United States of America. "I liked it there." That's kind of true.
Silas shakes his head slowly.
"I'd like to say I would've ended it. I wasn't happy with that level of stress in my life." The prospect of moving across the country loomed over my head like a halo with pointy teeth. "But I honestly could not find another answer that I would come to on my own."
Silas doesn't agree. This is because he is not as stubborn as I am. I lead my heart as a slave, cracking a whip from behind in a not so kinky way. Because I can't give up. I consider the idea of moving across the country for a girl I've known for three months. I even fly out there to check it out. Even though I'm not happy with her. Even though I know it won't work out from the very moment I meet her. I still try.
It's so stupid.
Silas doesn't say any of this out loud though. He just thinks it. I mean I can't read his mind or anything. It's just what I would be thinking if I were him.
Then again, I don't see the universe through his acoustic mind. He probably doesn't even hear what I said. He probably knows what I meant though by all the inflection. I wonder if he could be compared to a bat. Reading the world around him by clicks and beeps that he bounces against his cave. Catching a bug in mid-air simply because that spot of sound got back to his ears first.
I imagine a bat with his head and skinny jeans. I would have to Photoshop that the next chance I got.
Eventually the time comes for them to close the parking lot to the beach. They can't enforce closing the beach so they have to close the parking lot and charge ninety dollar parking tickets to keep people from stealing all the sand. We start to pack up everything we need to bring back to the car.
It's a tired a affair.
I'm about ready to go home and pass out from exhaustion. I work the night shift five days a week and my days off are my chances to sleep. But I don't go home. We pack everything up into my car and get in. Silas picks up my iPod when we get in and searches for a while for a song to listen to while I turn on the car and pull out of the parking lot.
The streets at night are terrifying to me. I have nystagmus and strabismus. It's two different problems that both make the other one worse. Nystagmus is a condition where the nerves in my eyes cause them to shake horizontally but they stay together. Strabismus, though, is a condition that causes the muscles in my eyes to shake and twitch in a vertical motion. But they shake independently. When one of the two conditions acts up, like in dim lighting or in lighting that has lots of contrast (playing piano is the worst) it causes the other condition to act up. It's a perfect harmonious dance of nausea.
People don't know how hard it is for me to see. That seeing three of everything does not in fact help at living. It's a pain too considering I'm an artist. Seeing is pretty important to me.
So driving down the road at night when it's starting to rain with the road all shiny and stuff... is one of those "don't talk to me; I'm trying to keep you alive" sort of things.
We pull into the quiet parking lot. Opening the door, a dance-floor of memories spills into the car. I can hear drunk people having fun far away walking the streets of downtown Pismo Beach. I can smell the freshness of the ocean air pirouetting with the mist of the almost-rain. It smells like good times. It feels like beauty.
The irony is that no matter how many good times you make, the good times from back in the day were always better. Even when they sucked. Silas and I are stuck on that track. It's always impossible to not think of "last summer." And the irony of that is that "last summer" was two years ago. We call it last summer because it was like... the last summer. Even though there's been plenty of summerness since then. It was the summer after I graduated though so it will always be the last summer.
Silas and I grab our pile of swimming trucks and towels and constantly scanning for cops, slip across the street. We go around the building and approach the condo complex we always sneak into.
"I'm so sorry, Skylar."
It's the last thing I want to hear. I don't want her to own this. I want her to be safe. Especially from herself. It was what I tied my life around for months.
Everything in my head already knows what he's going to say.
"We aren't even to the hot tubs yet and you're already talking to me about this..."
"Sorry. The official session hasn't begun yet," he says with the voice he uses to mock his father but then always comments on how his father doesn't ever make a voice anything like it.
I roll my eyes and throw my towel over the retainer wall right over the Absolutely NO climbing on fence! sign, make a quick glance from left to right, then leap over after it. It isn't climbing if you're a ninja and you just... morph over. If they had an Absolutely NO ninja morphing over fence! sign, I think I'd be stuck. The next two seconds are always the seconds that make me nervous. I'm not a rebellious person. But lo and behold, there always seems to be someone watching very closely when I finally do something I'm not supposed to.
I scan slowly, then pop my head up over, "clear."
Silas follows. He isn't rebellious either. But he is never visibly nervous about things like this. He's good at separating things that matter from things that really don't. That's like, the thing he's good at. He doesn't realize how good at that he is or how envied he is. It is the veneer of confidence that he displays.
We dash across the ivy pathway to the sidewalk that leads to the pool. The gate is one of those that has the metal overhang right above the doorknob so you need to be fairly tall in order to reach all the way over it.
Again, though, I am a ninja. I toss my towel and swimming trunks over and swift as the night in which I swim within, I slip over the gate. I open the gate slowly from the inside and let Silas in.
We check to make sure the hot tub is actually hot. Because sometimes it isn't. It is this time though.
We change under our towels and finally sink into the hot tub. It's always the moment that makes the effort of sneaking in, and risking getting noticed... always... always worth it.
One time, we got caught. This girl (about the same age as me ironically) came out from the office of a hotel when we snuck into its hot tub.
"Why did you guys just jump over the fence?" she said like she had caught us with our hand in the cookie jar.
We looked at each other then back at her and I tersely said "because the hot tub is in here..." And it was perfect logic. It made complete and perfect sense. There was nothing she could say that made the moment getting in not worth it.
We aren't getting caught this time though. I can feel it. There's no way.
"Do you think she's okay?"
I close my eyes and clutch to the contentment that's slipping away with the subject. I remind myself that this is why we are doing this tonight. The hot tub is where we talk about windmills.
I don't answer him and he knows why.
For the past few months, I've been obsessively focused on a girl. She is nothing like what I need in someone. She is nothing like who I would ever want. What she was was a very convenient drug I was using to satiate an addiction I have. A lot of boys of my caliber have it. The addiction to the kind of girl that can't be saved. The kind of girl that is obsessed with her own despair and can't find a reason to live. But she wants to.
The kind of girl I would have reamed Silas for dating. I would have told him that she wasn't offering anything to the relationship and that, though she wanted him, she didn't need him like he needed her.
Only Silas wasn't dating her. I was. I think I'm in love with her.
I check my phone from the side of the hot tub. Nothing.
Silas' eyes narrow slightly again with his half of a smile as he says "mmmm."
"I don't know what I'm going to do. I feel like I need to see her again."
"Do you think that would help?"
Right now I think about what I would be saying to Silas if he had been dating a girl like Kira. I think about how I would be telling him that he's an idiot and that he needs to just move on because she will only drain him more. Or again. Because she's an emotional leech and she doesn't know what she wants but she knows exactly how to get it.
But he's not. He wasn't. I was. And she shattered my heart. But I want her back. So I check my phone and click it closed immediately. Nothing.
"I don't know. This is just driving me crazy."
"But you love her?" he asks.
"Yeah. I do," I say and know I'm lying.
"Then I think you should do what you feel like you need to do."
I sigh heavily. "Do you think that if you were in my position, you would stick it out? Like do you think you would have broken up with her and just moved on or do you think you would try to get her back?"
Silas tries to put it delicately after a few moments of silence. "We're different people."
"I know. I know we are. I'm just... I'm trying to figure out if I'm doing the same thing I always do. Or if I'll look back on this whole relationship slash lack-thereof and respect myself for how hard I tried. Whether we make it or not."
Silas sighs.
We didn't make it. We were already over. This is how denial works.
Silas looks at me kindly. "Three-thousand miles is a long way. You have to point through the ground at an angle to point straight at it. That means the curve of the Earth is in the way."
"Distance is hard." I try to avoid his point.
"Yeah. It is." He listens to the ocean again.
I wave my arms under the hot water, pretending to fly while staying perfectly still. It's started to rain and the mist of it hitting the surface of the hot water is adding to the perfectness of the moment. I think about moving to Massachusetts. I'm immediately pained by the thought. I could do it. But the idea hurts.
What Silas means by his silence and what I know I mean by everything I feel is that everything about the relationship was wrong. And that every ounce of me should move on and never look back.
This idea sickens me also.
I think about the eucalyptus trees that watched me the day I came home from Boston. They made the best of where no one wanted them to be.
Parasites.
I try to find one single way that I'm different from them.
I'm not from Australia.
That'll work.

Dark

The next day is a figment of trying to balance the world.
I wake up and wander into my kitchen, and like a zombie, I pour myself a steaming hot cup of brains. I mean coffee.
I work tonight. Which means last night I tried to stay awake for as long as I could and sleep as little as possible so I would be tired enough today to take a nap so I could stay up until eight tomorrow morning.
"yeah I'd like to make an appointment to sleep?"
"take a number..."
It's hard to explain to people who don't know what it's like. Of course that's the case for most things. And for some people, it works. For a lot of people actually. It works and a lot of people don't have any problem with it. But for me...
Working nights is like the day never ends. It's like yesterday wasn't and tomorrow is just more of today. It makes no sense either. I sleep enough usually. I usually get home from work around eight in the morning and I usually fall asleep almost immediately. Then I usually wake up about three or four in the afternoon. That's seven or eight hours a day. That's more sleep than I would usually get when I was diurnal.
But for some reason, staying awake all night is like every moment I spend awake is like always floating around in the alpha stage of sleep. Where nothing is real but nothing is a dream.
"Well it's your fault for taking the night shift" and "it's your fault for not sleeping enough during the day" are the things I hear a lot from people. It makes me feel worse that nobody cares that it's hard. It's like, okay I understand that everyone reaps the consequences of their choices. That doesn't mean other people can't be sympathetic.
I have a lot of friends that I wish I'd never met.
I don't think the whole nap thing is going to happen. I can tell my eyes are going to be wide and ready for another groggy day. It's just how my body operates.
I get on the computer and check my email. Nothing.
I check my phone for any missed calls or texts during the night. Nothing.
I try to get the remainder of the sleep from my eyes already as I wander back into my room.
My room is a legend. One of those places where everybody hangs out and writes stuff on the walls and plays guitar and stares at the ceiling while they talk.
Silas is asleep on the couch. I don't know why but I'm always envious of him when he sleeps on the couch in my room. I got that couch from someone's front yard, a FREE sign tapped to it down the street from my old house. It was like I'd found a chest full of gold. We call it the therapist couch. Big, brown, squishy, fake leather. So comfortable. I don't know why I never sleep on it.
When Silas wakes up, I'm sitting indian style on my bed, drawing a picture of something that I'm not really feeling at the moment.
"Sup babe..." Silas says in a mockingly bro voice.
"Hey."
"You work tonight?"
"Yeah."
"What time is it?"
I have seven clocks up on the walls but they're all broken.
"Eleven."
"Nice..."
"You want some coffee?"
Silas smiles his flat funny smile again and he goes "mmmm" and his hand reaches down to the ground and he pretends to be reaching for me.
I stare at him. "So gay."
"Heh," he reverts back to his bro voice. "Yeah could you get me some coffee? I'll just be reading this Photo Ad. So hot." Ironically there really is a Photo Ad sitting right there on the ground, left over from the paper we used to start the fire the night before. He picks it up and starts leafing through it.
I roll my eyes and set my picture aside. In the kitchen again, I start making him a cup of coffee. He likes it almost like I do. He likes it a little sweeter. Because he totally would.
I hear my name from behind. My mom. She's so cute. "Hey mom."
"Hey. Is Silas out in your room?"
"Yeah. We just woke up."
"What'd you guys do last night?"
"Bon fire and hot tubs. It was nice."
"Hmmmmm."
"What?"
"What? Nothing. Just thinking about something. I have some errands to run. If you could take out the trash and do the dishes while I'm gone, that would be really nice."
"Okay mom. See ya later. Me and Silas are probably going to be heading up to San Luis later or something."
"You work tonight?"
"Yeah."
"You should try to get some sleep."
"Yeah probably."
"Okay well I'll see you later."
"Okay bye."
I slip out the back door and back into my little shed room detached from the house as I hear the front door open and close.
As I pass the back yard, it hits me like a surge. I halt.
It's one of those moments you can't but be surrounded by. Remember how I was saying that thing about how Silas and I live the past? Well I do on my own too.
A memory of being with Kira here in my back yard dances around me and I can see us just walking around in circles. She had come to visit and it was her last night here before she had to fly back home.
It was not that special of a moment, and now it's a painfully venomous memory. But every time I pass through my back yard like this, the image hits me. It's just hitting me harder than usual.
I hear Silas playing guitar in my room and I keep walking. By the time I'm back, the memory is fading but the ache is still there, that same bottom half of my heart all tender and bruised. I'm embarrassed about it. Silas doesn't notice that though.
I hand him his coffee and he places the guitar lightly to the side to grab it with both hands. I curl my legs up slowly and continue drawing the picture I was drawing when he woke up.
"What do you feel like doing today?" I say without looking up.
"Raven just texted me. She wants to hang out later."
I smile. Raven is a very easy person to be around. "I'd be fine with that."
Silas stretches and starts to get up. I put a Radiohead song on as he leaves.
While he's gone I have a moment. I look around my room. It really is ama(ridiculous)zing the way someone can fill a room while being so disgustingly far away. Like they're morphing through the phone you're using to talk to them and into the room there with you. I suppose it's mostly because everyone who talks to someone on a regular basis sort of sits in the same places every time they do. So talking to that person usually means looking at the same stuff. My problem with that is that I always choose to look at the stuff that's going to always be there. So when she leaves, it's hard to move on.
And the irony of that is she's only left once.
I look over to my door. In the wood is a carved sentence she made with a pen, so it's carved and written with the ink. It's literally tattooed into the wood and it says "I will love you forever."
I just stare at it and for a few moments let the pain overwhelm me, surging through my heart and up through my eyes and through my hands. And suddenly there's two goals set before me. A primary and a secondary objective. The primary one needs to be done last, because the primary one relies on it. So it's sort of backwards. But I'm no terribly worried about that.
I stand up and take a delicate sip of my coffee. I pick up a pen and suddenly it's my best friend in the world. I walk over to the door and start tracing the letters that make the sentence, but I extend every stroke. The best way to scribble out words is to turn the letters that are already there into different letters. It is preferable to turn the entire words into words that actually do make sense. That way there is no way anyone could decipher it. I turn the I into a B. I write an A in the space between the first two letters, mimicking her handwriting beautifully. I surprise myself in turning the W into a C and a K. I turn the I and the two L's into a W. The space between it and the next word makes it easy to turn the L into an A. The O, i turn into the top of a capital R. I turn the V into a D and the E into an obscure S.
I step back and look at it. "BACKWARDS you forever."
That will have to suffice for now. I can hear Silas coming back and I don't want him to know I'm in the manic phase again.
I sit back down and keep drawing with a renewed sense of emotion to pour onto the paper. I feel like I'm doing the same thing I was with the letters. Turning something into something else like that. Putting it only where it fits, but making it fit where it doesn't really. It's a lot of what art really is.
Silas gets to the open door, stops, and holding his coffee, he pats his belly and says "Mufasa!" victoriously.
I don't ask.
"What are you drawing?" he asks as he plops down on the therapist couch.
And suddenly I notice that I haven't even been paying attention to what I'm drawing. I focus on it and it's the drawing of a person with enormous eyes and a covering over his mouth. He has a light that's shining over his shoulder and he's holding a paintbrush and swiping it down the front of the drawing. It's as if he's looking over the point of view like a doctor, painting the face of his patient. I try to think of a way to incorporate that into the book I'm writing. "It looks to me like a doctor."
"Taking work home with you huh."
"Must be."