vanishing muse
The last time I saw Ron DeMarco...
He came to visit me in my time of dreamless sleep. At most I would sleep for three hours on any given day. This had gone on for over three months, and those were the days when I was lucky. But I couldn’t dream. Or if I dod, I never remembered my dreams. As an avid dreamer and recorder of dreams since the time I learned to write things down or even draw them, I yearned for anything that could draw me back to the land of visions. Even a nightmare would do. I went through my past journals where the recordings of my nightmares and dreams seemed to sparkle on the page, taunting me with the visions I once had. But when tried to form them into stories, as with all my attempts to put story to paper, my pen would dry up or my word processor would jam as my mind recoiled. Everything I wrote was puerile crap. There was nothing. I was sitting on a barbed wire fence, ready to fall. I ached with emptiness. Even the reality around me took on a menacing feel. So I was glad when he came, a thin thread of lucidity through the world outside my vacant mind.
I seem to recall us going to a restaurant. The seats were wooden plastic. The food was just as wooden; just as plastic. I remember eggs, not that the smell or taste of eggs rests so thick in my mind, just eggs staring up at me with their mocking yolks. Smoke and coffee also rings around my memory. But these smells and tastes don’t stand out since they penetrate every orifice of that time. But he was there, of that I am certain. His smell, that distinct balmy clean scent of him, permeated my nostrils as he hugged me. Hugged me and held me, though I’m quite sure now it was me holding onto him. It stayed with me the entire time he was there. I tried to hold onto it after he left, but it was like holding a cloud.
We talked. I have no idea what I said, but my distorted face reflected back at me in his concerned glasses. I looked so haggard, my smile was forced and hideous. I watched him remove the polished lenses from his face and wipe them with the edge of his shirt as he had done a thousand times before. But this time, his cleaning off an invisible blemish took on a kind of anxious feel. Knowing him as well as I did, I knew this was a nervous habit. I, who had been so much to him at one time, now made him nervous. I wondered if he wasn’t trying to swab my image out of them. He asked me about school and I babbled some nonsense, some half-truths about what I had been doing. I refrained from shrilly giggling and confessing that I had no idea about school; that I was failing all my classes. I guess I asked him about his life, 'cause he shrugged and said things were going well. Nothing specific, he didn’t want me to be a part of his life, not now. Probably not ever again. Not that I could blame him, seeing the state I was in. But it hurt me to know that he was brushing me away. I seemed to know even then that this was the end of something significant and cursed myself for not being more able to deal and cope and possibly understand what was really going on beyond two friends going for coffee.
As we sat and chatted, I smoked cigarette after cigarette and barely touched the food that had no taste and slowly, a part of me floated above the booth that trapped me. Though his grounded self didn’t even look up, I watched as he too sent a portion of himself to where I was. His phantom hand touched my cheek and I looked at him as tears flooded my spirit eyes.
“What’s really going on?” His voice was a whisper in the air as our seated selves seemed to freeze.
“It’s too much,” I sobbed, leaning into his chest.
Wrapping his arms around me, he asked, “what’s too much?”
“All of this,” I said. Then I told him about the betrayal of my ex-fiance, how I had uncovered his lie and how he had flaunted his new love at the opening of my play. I mentioned how he later blamed me for not considering him in my decision to have an abortion even though I had tried to talk about it with him. I told him of the flood that destroyed pages of my writing that went back to kindergarten and other belongings including many boxes that held Joy’s past with three feet of sewage water. I explained how sad I was when I was told that Carter was hit by a train before I was ever able to make amends. I explained how I had distanced myself from Joy and the rest of the family after her accident. “But the worst part of all this is, I can’t write. I know it’s selfishness, but I can’t see past myself right now and not being able to write is destroying me. My muse is vanishing.”
“Give it to me,” he says. “I’ll keep it safe.”
Looking into his eyes, I suddenly knew that I trusted him implicitly. This knowledge shook me to my core, causing a shudder to run down the spine of my physical presence in her frozen state. Reaching down inside of me, my hovering self takes something buried deep inside my chest, causing my physical self to slump forward. She offers it to his phantom self. He takes it, nods, then drifted back into himself.
Within an hour, he was gone and I was left with a gaping hole.
I find myself longing to find him; a desire to reconnect. I don’t even think that I need to take my muse back, for I have refound my words and my stories. But I want to thank him. I feel that when the time is right, we will find each other again.
He came to visit me in my time of dreamless sleep. At most I would sleep for three hours on any given day. This had gone on for over three months, and those were the days when I was lucky. But I couldn’t dream. Or if I dod, I never remembered my dreams. As an avid dreamer and recorder of dreams since the time I learned to write things down or even draw them, I yearned for anything that could draw me back to the land of visions. Even a nightmare would do. I went through my past journals where the recordings of my nightmares and dreams seemed to sparkle on the page, taunting me with the visions I once had. But when tried to form them into stories, as with all my attempts to put story to paper, my pen would dry up or my word processor would jam as my mind recoiled. Everything I wrote was puerile crap. There was nothing. I was sitting on a barbed wire fence, ready to fall. I ached with emptiness. Even the reality around me took on a menacing feel. So I was glad when he came, a thin thread of lucidity through the world outside my vacant mind.
I seem to recall us going to a restaurant. The seats were wooden plastic. The food was just as wooden; just as plastic. I remember eggs, not that the smell or taste of eggs rests so thick in my mind, just eggs staring up at me with their mocking yolks. Smoke and coffee also rings around my memory. But these smells and tastes don’t stand out since they penetrate every orifice of that time. But he was there, of that I am certain. His smell, that distinct balmy clean scent of him, permeated my nostrils as he hugged me. Hugged me and held me, though I’m quite sure now it was me holding onto him. It stayed with me the entire time he was there. I tried to hold onto it after he left, but it was like holding a cloud.
We talked. I have no idea what I said, but my distorted face reflected back at me in his concerned glasses. I looked so haggard, my smile was forced and hideous. I watched him remove the polished lenses from his face and wipe them with the edge of his shirt as he had done a thousand times before. But this time, his cleaning off an invisible blemish took on a kind of anxious feel. Knowing him as well as I did, I knew this was a nervous habit. I, who had been so much to him at one time, now made him nervous. I wondered if he wasn’t trying to swab my image out of them. He asked me about school and I babbled some nonsense, some half-truths about what I had been doing. I refrained from shrilly giggling and confessing that I had no idea about school; that I was failing all my classes. I guess I asked him about his life, 'cause he shrugged and said things were going well. Nothing specific, he didn’t want me to be a part of his life, not now. Probably not ever again. Not that I could blame him, seeing the state I was in. But it hurt me to know that he was brushing me away. I seemed to know even then that this was the end of something significant and cursed myself for not being more able to deal and cope and possibly understand what was really going on beyond two friends going for coffee.
As we sat and chatted, I smoked cigarette after cigarette and barely touched the food that had no taste and slowly, a part of me floated above the booth that trapped me. Though his grounded self didn’t even look up, I watched as he too sent a portion of himself to where I was. His phantom hand touched my cheek and I looked at him as tears flooded my spirit eyes.
“What’s really going on?” His voice was a whisper in the air as our seated selves seemed to freeze.
“It’s too much,” I sobbed, leaning into his chest.
Wrapping his arms around me, he asked, “what’s too much?”
“All of this,” I said. Then I told him about the betrayal of my ex-fiance, how I had uncovered his lie and how he had flaunted his new love at the opening of my play. I mentioned how he later blamed me for not considering him in my decision to have an abortion even though I had tried to talk about it with him. I told him of the flood that destroyed pages of my writing that went back to kindergarten and other belongings including many boxes that held Joy’s past with three feet of sewage water. I explained how sad I was when I was told that Carter was hit by a train before I was ever able to make amends. I explained how I had distanced myself from Joy and the rest of the family after her accident. “But the worst part of all this is, I can’t write. I know it’s selfishness, but I can’t see past myself right now and not being able to write is destroying me. My muse is vanishing.”
“Give it to me,” he says. “I’ll keep it safe.”
Looking into his eyes, I suddenly knew that I trusted him implicitly. This knowledge shook me to my core, causing a shudder to run down the spine of my physical presence in her frozen state. Reaching down inside of me, my hovering self takes something buried deep inside my chest, causing my physical self to slump forward. She offers it to his phantom self. He takes it, nods, then drifted back into himself.
Within an hour, he was gone and I was left with a gaping hole.
I find myself longing to find him; a desire to reconnect. I don’t even think that I need to take my muse back, for I have refound my words and my stories. But I want to thank him. I feel that when the time is right, we will find each other again.
posted by Ninian at 2:58 PM
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