Highlights from the Blueridge Parkway, 2016

The Unbearable Weight of Gravitas

this is the end, goto part 1

Part 9

One by one the balls rolled from her hand, and clinked, almost musically, upon the ceramic tile.

 You’ve been presented a challenge worthy of the movies, and taken several lifetimes to wind your way through, and beyond the obstacles. It’s not all been the stuff of legends. Some has been fun, the commendable distraction of light hearted fluff. You rode some rapids, won some races, and flew some missions. You’ve met the loves of your lives, and screwed the entire football team. There have been bridges to cross, and some of them burned.  Murder, death, blood in plenty. Life, love, family; Nessay, you had it all. What else is there? How long can you tinker? How many mountains will you climb until there are no more?

                “There are more, it’s infinite.”

                Do you think there is something you may have missed?

                “I do. The most important thing.”:

Dust obscured her passage. It wasn’t a stealthy approach, roaring down the open road on her electric beast. This was a scenario Nessay had lived a hundred times, or was it thousands. She had crossed so many times, the details were foggy. This time was born of necessity. She felt an ache in her heart that had been absent for many, good, years. That last dimension, while it had ended in a slow and heartbreaking way, was nearly perfect. All bodies died, there was no escaping that, and Nessay rode that one out to the end. Her death had been a triumph, a fruitful end, and she could have left it at that.     
           Nessay might have Gone On then, at that point. She walked through the front doors of the house, as a wrinkled old woman, and wandered the rooms and halls with her cane clicking on the floors. Back in the way station Nessay felt the rot slowly creep away, sucked through the ceilings and walls, until she stood renewed in the old familiar library room.  The little book was there, lying closed on top of a fading yellow crossword page. She picked it up, but really, what could it tell her now? Nessay walked to the wall and replaced the small tome onto a shelf. All was in order. She struggled, this felt like it might be the right time, but something didn’t add up. A hot cup of tea and a night of rest settled her mind, but it didn’t make her happy. Nessay then pushed through the curtain, into the mist, and began again.

                She made it back early, skipping the sunset, and rushed into her little village. The electric animal was abandoned, off in a hidden place, and Nessay let herself into her home. The shared hallway was bright under Tesla’s wireless bulbs, as she made her way to the last door. She let herself in and walked to the window.  Life was still outside, and the light began to fade. Nessay climbed the ladder to her bed loft, and above that she pulled down a hatch and climbed up to the roof. Up here was a small landing, and steel railing. She lay down prone on the floor and looked out over the village, waiting.

                There had been too much death in her travels. Agony. Heartbreak. Blood. Nessay vowed to end it here, even if it meant her own death. The night had come. From above Nessay saw the plume of sand and dust kicking up on the road, and a man rode through the gates.  He pulled up in front of Nessay’s house and halted there, looking at the door.

                It was Jocu’le. He got off the solo ride and walked through the front door. Nessay lost sight of him, but she heard through the walls the faint sound of knocking. He called out her name, but he must know she wouldn’t be home. Her electric animal wasn’t tied to the stall out front. He called again, then she heard a loud crash and the splintering of wood.

                He was rummaging around the shelves and drawers, looking for something. She could only assume it was the space ball she had missed, and brought back with her. Nessay felt a deep pain well up in her chest for the man. Hadn’t she just spent the better part of fifty years with him? Living and dying? She heard him curse her from below, and the sound of breaking glass and crashing shelves.

                The crunch of sand swung her around, back to the road. Another vehicle pulled into the complex, and parked behind the shelter of another dome. From inside a glass cab a woman emerged and walked out into the light of the lane. Hildy! Nessay breathed in deep. Hildy swept her gaze around and nervously stepped toward Nessay’s house. Before she could enter, she heard a loud noise, and ran back the way she came, stopping at a tree, then crouched low behind it. Nessay saw the glint of steel in Hildy’s hand.  Too much, too much. Nessay sobbed on the roof, frustrated, confused, angry. Nessay stood, she didn’t care now what happened. She only knew that she was done with the blood.

                Slowly, Nessay climbed over the railing and carefully walked to the edge of the platform, where the dome curved and plunged down. Nessay lowered herself onto the curve and let go, sliding faster than she had hoped toward the ground. She hit hard, and rolled. From the trees Nessay heard a gasp, then the front door swung open, hitting hard against the outer wall. Jocu’le hurried out.

                “Nessay, stop right there,” he shouted, striding over and grabbing her by the arm when she tried to rise. Nessay cried out as she put weight onto her ankle. “Shut up. Where’s the ball?”

                “What ball?” she yelled back.

                Into the light another figure rose. Hildy came forward. “It’s too late for that Nessay. I know you have it, and he knows too. Jocu’le read the note.”Hildy pointed the gun at them with one hand, and with the other she brushed some hair from her forehead to show the dark bruising and crusted blood there. “I’ll take that ball.”

                Jocu’le hauled Nessay up in front of himself, as a shield. “I should have made sure you were dead. It won’t happen again.” Quickly, Jocu’le pulled a knife out and rushed forward, throwing Nessay into the woman, and hurling the knife. Hildy stumbled, but the knife only glanced off her shoulder, handle first, and tumbled, sticking in the dirt. She pushed Nessay aside and fired the gun directly into Jocu’le’s chest as he hurled toward her. When Nessay looked up again, Hildy was standing over her with a smoking handgun.

                “Hildy,” Nessay said. “Hildy. I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry.”

                Hildy stared down, and she tossed the gun onto Jocu’le’s sprawling corpse.  “Whatever for, dear? She kneeled down and hugged Nessay. “Come on, let’s go in. There will be police soon enough.”

               There were no more mountains. Nessay put away her climbing gear and spent her remaining years, on this plane, in the loving hold of Hildy’s strong arms. Another long life, another slow heartbreak at the end. As Hildy lay dying, Nessay brushed her lips with cool water and looked into her open eyes. They were cracked, like a door to another world. Instead of waiting around to the end, Nessay reached out and closed Hildy’s eyes, and edged her way through, sideways, as the door closed. There was no more sorrow, only joy.

The tips of her fingers glowed and opened, splitting bloodlessly, and all the little balls released, then tumbled back into the palms of her hands.  Nessay lowered herself, her legs folding in, and she sat cross legged upon the bathroom floor.  One by one the balls rolled from her hand, and clinked, almost musically, upon the ceramic tile. On? she wondered, and pondered the ramifications. More of these heavy, dense lives would be unbearable. Hadn’t she, by now, wrapped up all the loose ends?

                “Yes, on,” she said, but not over.

                Nessay was four, she had a coloring book under one arm, and her tiny hand gripped a few vibrant crayons of bright greens and yellows, and blues. She reached up to the door and pushed it open, and a final tiny ball dissipated like the fog in the morning.

All done.

Conquering the Stumbling Blocks is easier, when the Conquerer is in tune with the Infinite

Part 8

The electric animal hummed ever so slightly. It was her preferred method of getting around, even in this dimension of luxurious gasoline powered automobiles. Behemoths, Nessay thought. She liked the handling of the animal, and the open air. It was a trick, getting the machine across the threshold, but by now Nessay was part magician, and a seasoned astral navigator.

                She was sitting cross-legged on the wide seat, munching on a sandwich, and looking across the Nile at the complex of monuments rising from the desert. The air here was different than what she was used to.  Nessay figured it was the cars. The smog was heavier in the city, but even out here she could taste it and feel it on her skin. The dirty air tickled her nose.

                And where she had known only one monument, the Really Big Thing, now there were three. Three pyramids and one crazy big stone beast with the head of a woman.  The site was as fenced off as a militarized zone, so there was no going in, at least not in this guise charging through on her other worldly electric beast.

                Lunching, Nessay heard the loud engine break her reverie as it turned the bend and rumbled up beside her. A dusty man leaned out the open window of his black Model A and whistled. He slapped the side wall of his Ford. “That’s quite a contraption you have there, miss,” he said. “What is that dad gummed thing, anyways?”

                “Nessay swallowed a bite, and smiled. “Oh, it’s just my little Tesla electric animal. It’s not from around here.” She liked to keep it simple.

                “Oh, foreign model, eh?” he said. “Is it for sale?”

                “No.”

 

Come back home, we miss you here. Me, your internal voice – that chapter in a book - and the phantom Nessays that come and go, recounting the pages from your lives. This was never really your home though, it was only meant to be a jumping off point. Still, you’re always welcome. We’ll be here when you need to take a break, or, you know, go on:

 “Mom, do you need to take a break?” asked her daughter. It was 1970 and Nessay was struggling to get down the linoleum covered hall of St. Thomas’ recovery ward.  “I think Columbo is coming on soon, in your room.

                Her life had been long, and full of love, and loved ones. She met her husband at that dig, so far back, in Giza, and they never looked back. She and Jocu’le were together almost fifty years, before he had had that massive stroke that left him paralyzed, all but dead, and lying like a vegetable in the bed they had set up in the old dining room. The wall paper there was peeling from the walls. Nessay could smell the rot in the walls. The air here was different, much different from the dry, sandy winds of the Middle East. For one thing, there was always water in the air. Here she could smell the earth. Now all Nessay could smell and taste was decay. Her whole world was crumbling around her.

                “Mom?”

                Her hip surgery was a desperate attempt to slow those internal, damnable, devices of the human body. In the hospital there were no rotting walls. The air was clean, antiseptic, but she could still smell the rot coming from all those around her, and herself. Nessay didn’t like the bland food. It just tasted like rot. It all was rotting away. She didn’t know what she waiting for. Yes she did. There was her daughter, and the grandchildren. But they were all busy in their lives, and Nessay was a burden.

                Twenty years on, Nessay was in her armchair in her daughter’s living room.  Diana, her oldest granddaughter, was changing her baby’s diaper on the floor, while Nessay watched an episode of Columbo on her video cassette machine. The family was visiting on a Sunday. Her son in law was watching football in the other room and occasionally yelling, or swearing. He was on his third beer.  Nessay frowned and tried to pick up the remote, but it slipped out of her hand and fell clattering to the hard wood floor.

                “Grandma, you dropped the remote. Grandma? Mom! Come in here, it’s Grandma.”

                For a moment Nessay’s fingertips glowed. This had been her longest sojourn, but when infinity beckoned, Nessay followed.

goto part 9

another Sunday Thingy

click on pic for mass ambiguity

the door is ajar

Part 7

The world was a blast furnace. It had been for a century, and it was in the epoch between heating and cooling. The dunes were a surf of glass, caught in the act of cresting. White dust skittered and eddied over the icy surface, sometimes forming a ghostly silhouette of what the minute ash particles used to be. Nessay was consumed in the fire, she burned white like tissue paper caught in a campfire, her fingers glowed. It was a hell, and hellacious fast.

 You’ll find when you’re at this long enough that there is such a thing as reoccurring themes. Or running gags, if you will. C’mon, lighten up a little, life is a cabaret! The universe is full of practical jokes and jokers. What happens when a quark, some dark matter, and the speed of light walks into a bar? Uranus. Ha! Experiment, jump around a little, especially if you have a pocket full of space balls. And please, figure out, soon, that blood-and-death isn’t the only key to moving around. There’s always blunt force trauma. H’yuck! Have fun with that:

 She made for the desert. There were places out there a person might escape to, places to get lost in, and lose oneself. Nessay knew some of them, the watering holes and oasis’s of ill repute. A few even had flop houses and she knew with luck she could hide out in one of them for weeks. Maybe that would be long enough for everyone to forget about her. She could sell off her electric animal, what did it matter? This was just one universe, and in the next she would possibly have it back again. Or not, Nessay had very limited control of the doors in general, and none over what lay on the other side.

                In the meantime, the sun was nearly down, and there were no real roads out here, where she wandered. The animal beneath her hummed to a stop. It wasn’t moving fast anyway, and Nessay dismounted, leaving it stand while she moved off a few yards over the warm desert sand. The headlight stayed on, it did that for a moment or two after the motor was killed. She pulled off her shoes and let them flop at her side, slapping against her thigh as she walked ahead of the animal. The light shone around her, throwing a ghastly shadow ahead, into the sand, and it sunk lower into the desert as she chased it.

                Something else then began to shimmer in the light, like a water mirage on a low dipping highway. Nessay stopped, and from the satchel she had looped around her neck and shoulder like a purse, she plucked a ball, and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. She clutched the little ball in her palm and reached out to the glistening portal that formed like glass risen from a furnace of molten sand.

                She had her hand on a machete. Some dumb ass Bedouin wannabe had left it in plain view even as he and his friends tore the clothes from her body and tossed them around the dirty, dark barroom. Now they had pinned her onto a table, it was wet and sticky and hadn’t been washed properly for months. A filthy desert rat was rubbing his unshaven mug in her cleavage and huffing like a camel. One of the dirt bags let her hand free as he shoved the scruffy rapist off and grabbed one of her breasts, and in that second Nessay found the handle and swung the machete round. She fought like a berserker, having no regard for body and soul. Nessay waded into the mass of sweaty men, swinging and cutting, until she gashed open the chest of the thief who had taken her jar of marbles, then she threw it to the ground and fell, scrambling onto the shattered glass and dirt floor. Nessay grabbed a handful and filled her mouth with a dozen metallic steelies, then tried to rise up, swallowing hard, painfully, but she

                As before, Nessay came to be in the minutes between light and darkness. This time she had no solo ride, and she felt no kinship with the earth. Nessay was solid, but not really of this cosmos. For a while she drifted from place to place on the plane. Nessay visited her various homes, touching the smooth walls of her bedrooms, and laying on the fresh sheets. On the brick exterior of her grandparents’ home was an etching she didn’t remember, put there by a child other than herself. Could it have been a sister she’d never known, or was it just a random, unknowable delinquent wending away the boredom of another hot, summer day? Nessay wandered, for days. Sleep would come and go, but hunger and thirst never occupied her thoughts. Faint desires flared as she encountered and touched the faces, arms, and chests of people she passed in the streets. The men and women she laid hands upon would gaze into her eyes, and some would attempt to embrace her, but Nessay only smiled and moved off among the crowd, touching as she went.  She shifted amid the desert, rising and falling with the dunes.  The monument was there, but it was uncared for, and one side was scavenged and the sand had eaten away at its crown. Nessay forced her way through the piles of rock, squirming through the collapsed tunnel like a burrowing mouse, until she found the inner chamber. Here there were even more alcoves and smaller tunnels that led to deeper chambers. This is where those women could have been held, kidnapped, in that other universe she would never see again. There were space balls here, embedded in the ceiling and walls, and Nessay brushed the protuberances with her fingertips, and the balls absorbed into her skin, replacing the fingerprints and callouses with shiny, fluid translucency. Within this small chamber was a smaller hole, and Nessay thought she might have seen enough of this place, it had no hold on her, no faces she recalled or loved or lusted for, and

                                She was staggering on the street, tearing at her hair with bloody hands and fingers. Nessay turned back to the woman, fallen, dying on the ground, and she kneeled down at her side. Nessay pounded the dirt and swore, legitimate curses. Hildy was limp, a rag doll, her head lolled to one side, but her eyes were bright, and they gazed, almost enchanted, upon the haggard face of Nessay.

                “Why, why?” Nessay implored, blood mixed with the spittle and tears that collected on her chin. “I loved you! Look at us, look, I’m killing you!” Nessay clutched the fabric of Hildy’s saturated blouse in her grimy hands. She smothered her face into a fading lover’s collapsing breast. Hildy moved her mouth, but she had no breath to give any hint of explanation a chance. Her face looked like love; it looked like hate. It was something in between.

                Then, for that moment between life, even just the spark of one, and death, Nessay squinted, and the pinkish light of sunset brushed against her face, unfurled a curtain of eyelashes, and fixed her mouth into a stony grimace. Nessay reached down to Hildy’s hand and pried it open. The little ball that was there flared with the dying light, blazed, holding on, lingering until the last, and even before it started to dissolve along with the life it protected, Nessay knocked it loose, and the unfortunate ball rolled free onto the ground, a world away from far flung fingertips. Hildy’s eyes flew open then, and remained open in death, staring horribly into Nessay’s. For an eternity they would be like that, open, staring with disbelief, and with hate and love. Nessay would never forget those eyes, they would remain open like a door, just cracked, that she could see into, travel through into any space or time, and lament for many, many lifetimes of sorrow.

goto part 8

Thingy in the News

Long Lost tales of Love, and Blood

Part 6

Nessay heard the clinking, felt a rattle. It was there, the jar of balls with a paper lid tied around the neck to keep the contents from spilling out.

                There had been a gunshot, the sounds of a struggle, would there be guards coming soon? Did anyone hear? Nessay plucked the satchel and tossed into it the jar. The gun she left lying, but squeamishly, Nessay dislodged the axe , forcing a spray of coagulating mush to fly out at her, and she hurried back out the way she had come, to the electric animal, and away.

 Okay now, the players may have changed, but the game remains the same. By players, and it’s all allegory – just basic terms thrown around to give you reference – we mean… you. Up to now it seems you have chosen to stay. Not to move on. And it’s causing a bit of confusion, but you’re handling it well. I’m impressed. However, which each new venture into these new, alternate realities, you are mashing up the Nessays, creating Frankensteins of another color.  They are you, yet not you. They are good, but they are evil. They may forward your cause, or be contrary. As long as you possess, or regain the space balls you are secure… but to what end?:

 Beyond the door there was no new reality, not this time. Nessay had requested a different sort of excursion, a tour of the house. It seemed now that the doors had different purposes, and perhaps she could choose, up to a point. She was learning as she went, maybe not the best, but as an archeologist it was a methodology she was familiar with. So she stepped down into the sunken room. This space was markedly different than the formal, stodgy, library. It was cozy, filled with plush furniture and decorated gaily with vibrant wallpapers and framed art. Peacock feathers stuck up from bright urns in the corners and flowering plants sprung from pots and draped their tendrils over ledges, glistening in the mote filled sunbeams that filtered in through venetian blinds.

                This was a large room, but cozy. In the center was a huge connected sofa that sat in three parts, its open end to the wall opposite Nessay’s entrance. Even as she moved into the room, an arm came up over the back of the closest cushions, and then some floofy hair showed, and an eye peered over at her.

                “Oh, there she is, how precious. Come around and sit with us, Nessay.” Nessay went around. Three women had nestled into the cushions, fairly disappearing into the comfort of the fluff, and an explosion of textile patterns. They were dressed in eveningwear and spread out, but lounging together, on the middle section of the couch. “Hi, Nessay,” the three harmonized, in disturbingly identical tones.

                Nessay sat on the edge of the next sofa. There was a warm cup of cinnamon tea on the end table and she picked it up and sipped, looked over the top as she tipped it. She sighed, then sunk back into the pillows. “Hello, Nessays.”

For a while they chatted, mostly the three, while Nessay sipped and listened. The waystation idea stuck in her mind. None of this was real, she was in a holding pattern or booking transport to the unresolved aspects of her life. The pieces were drifting out of reach, but coalescing nonetheless. Here there were bodies, no…ghosts, to help her on the way. “How did you find your way here?” she asked of the Nessays.

                The lushest of the three answered. She was more filled out, more elegant and confident. She laughed at her own jokes. “By the usual way, dear. Limousine, and right on through the front door. Really, you should try it.” Ha ha. “This place is like a mausoleum. You should see it from outside, if you only could. A drafty old castle. Why I’ve stayed here for a month is beyond me.”

                “Well, there are no men, so it’s a mystery! Why have you stayed?” asked a second Nessay who was more neatly aligned with the Nessay removed. She stroked lusher Nessay’s arm and giggled. “When I rode my bicycle up yesterday this place looked more like a Rubik’s cube!”  They all three laughed and snuggled closer. “We’ve been talking about boys, Nessay. Join us, girl. How’s your love life?” More giggling.

                They laughed and cuddled for the best part of the afternoon, and the sun dropped behind the hills hoarding its light and heat away. Finally they coaxed the truth out, for Nessay was never one to kiss and tell. If you couldn’t talk to your sister ghosts, who could you?

                She hadn’t taken a lover since graduating college, not a man anyway. When she finally came home to Egypt, Nessay lived for months with her parents in their small apartment in Giza. She had her resumes mailed out and several interviews under her belt. For a while she interned and eventually made some contacts. A German woman befriended her on some evening digs. They became friends, Hildy had contracts with her government to work with the Egyptian teams and she hired Nessay. Their relationship grew more intense and in time the two became a couple, secretly. Hildy was the manager of the archeology firm Nessay dug for; they met only inside the city walls, rarely meeting, or touching, the field.

                “Oh my,” the Nessays breathed, sizzling in their PJ’s. The candles flickered in sconces upon the wall, and one by one burned down around their wicks, much the same as the Nessays, who faded into the night, absorbed it seems  into the sofa… the darkness stealing away their souls like it did colors and sight.

Much later, after a period of reflection, she took a deep breath, and tried another door.

                Nessay was on the electric animal again, its throaty growl reverberated between her legs as it thrust ahead, throwing pebbles and dust up in its haste. The night hadn’t come as quickly this time. She had turned back to the monument, revisited the chamber and discovered Jocu’le had been released, and the dig had been put on hold. Jimms let her in, she was still the project head, but severely out of the loop. Nessay hurried down the tunnel into the open chamber. Here were the work tables, and the tools. The niches and their artifacts remained, and as she moved so did the ever-present dust and sand. The new chamber, little more than a larger sized alcove, that Jocu’le had just discovered was there too, but nothing of its contents remained. The jar of balls was not to be seen. “No” Nessay breathed out. The fear of her realization echoed off the chamber’s sloped ceiling. “No, no, no!”

                She had searched the chamber, gotten down on her hands and knees looking for any strays. Nessay picked through every little stone statue and pottery shard. She checked her cuffs and pockets and, in vain, the treads of her sneakers.  Something in this reality had moved the pieces, like a magic square, and the game had changed. Nessay’s next stop was the office, but it was as empty as the chamber was of clues. Only one thing stood out: the note she had left her boss, Hildy, was not in her door tray.

                The electric animal surged forward on the heels of her rider, and Nessay’s little homestead neared. As before, she left the vehicle off the main entrance and crept stealthily in avoiding the road and street lights. There, she spied the lone figure lurking behind the cover of some bushes and low fence. Nessay peeked around the curve of her house, staying low on bent knees. Whoever it was seemed nervous and kept glancing around down the road, and back to the dome’s doorway. Nessay saw the assassin’s arm move up and down, and the glint of steel gave a gun away.

                Her murderer. And Nessay had no little metal ball tucked away for emergencies. She snuck back behind the house and tiptoed around the back of two others so that she could come up behind the intruder. The ground here was a mix of sand and concrete, so her footsteps, if gentle, would not give her up. Nessay lifted the small pick axe she had taken from a saddle bag; it was do or die… for real. There was vegetation here, and her shoe snapped a twig. The assassin jumped and turned, bringing up the weapon and fired, but off mark, and Nessay’s arm plunged down, catching the shooter solidly in the neck. The axe bit down and lodged there as Nessay’s hand slipped off the wet handle and slapped the target’s chest, and bounced off.

                It was Hildy, she dropped the smoking gun and grasped at her spurting neck. The gods misbehaving! Devils and wood-eyed hedge trolls! Nessay crouched, stunned at the revelation, and watched as her boss, her lover, sagged to the ground, dragging down a branch of honeysuckle with her. Hilda only stared, her eyes nearly bulged, while she lay there, gushing blood. Her arm fell to the dirt and when her hand hit, it was a fist, opened and a tiny ball lay there, glistened in red. “You took them!” Nessay hissed, and she struck out to snatch the ball, but even as she did, the steely dissolved, and Hildy was dead, taken away to another plane. Yet her body remained. Quickly Nessay kneeled into the mess and searched Hildy’s pockets, and the small satchel she had tied to her belt. Nessay heard the clinking, felt a rattle. It was there, the jar of balls with a paper lid tied around the neck to keep the contents from spilling out.

                She didn’t know where she would go, Nessay just rode. Would all of these episodes end in death? Her chest heaved, racking her ribs with the heavy sobs, and tears ran down her blood streaked face, fell and mixed with the dust.

goto part 7