After a too-long night of pulsing bass and flashing strobes, I weave with Dan and Jason through grimy streets until we reach the river, which is made clean by shadows and moonlight. The wind whips my torn chiffon dress and I perch on the pier’s edge. For no reason, I recall a fourth-grade history class in which I ignored the teacher and drew a drop of water divided into small squares, each reflecting the same pencil squiggle. In clumsy cursive I wrote, “All the passages of time are packed into one small plane in the sky, the beginning, the end, before and after. We all live those horrifying and joyful times over and over for each second and split second. One person representing yourself in each moment is actually a very different person. The future for you is the distant past for another and you think you have one life, but you live forever, being born to dying. It lingers forever.”
(forgive a small girl’s grammar, for she had not yet assimilated into the crushing world of literature)
The boys talk about classic post-punk and the breeze shakes off the stench of a hundred cigarettes and everyone’s spilled cheap vodka. Dan’s studded leather jacket and the river’s waves catch the same fragment of moonlight. So cold at the river–which here in this arid land is really only a creek–flowing through a muffled stream of quiet time-space.
This is the end of something I can’t quite comprehend, like a tickle in my mind and a dragon nipping at my heels.
***
Music inspiration for this piece: Sonic Youth’s “JC.” I showed this to someone and they wanted to know if I had really written that passage in the fourth grade. Yes, I did. I still have it. Also, the photo is courtesy of Susan Thomas, who shot this years ago. That’s me on the right, and Chris on the left.
