They ask was it good or bad? The way of humans in the modern era. Designed from ones and zeroes DNA. Bipedal creatures operating in binary. Seeing the world strangely. Through rock quarry water. Must be exhausting having no space to move around. No area to stretch arms and legs and lie down. Being crammed into cubes of this or that staring out at the vastness of the world. Breaks my shale heart to think they wear blindfolds, gloves, masks to stop seeing, touching, tasting magic just because they can’t explain it.
The mystery about not knowing draws me. Sits me down. Says I have a place for you here. I wonder why we have forgotten it is okay to sit quiet, on the knoll, and be. Maybe because we were not allowed to be. So now we have to know.
We were made for more imagining than knowing. But we know everything. Putting our shadow lipstick on streets. On gutters. In foxholes. Painted thick. Nothing left to the imagination.
Moving gets us unstuck. That’s where awful knowing steps in to stop the door shutting on mundaneness. Imagination takes certain humility. Pleads with us. For everything beautiful close the door on knowing. For everything in the world don’t let her walk out the door. Don’t let vermilion birds emergency out the fire escape.
I am twin towers burning. And the firemen running to the top with purpose. Nothing else matters now. They ask if I know what awaits me at the top. I share my secrets: it doesn’t matter if it crashes when I get there. When something is everything. I have been ready to go home for a long time.
What it’s all for: my final breath. Someday I will be dying on that final harvest road. Closing my eyes for the last time. I must know there is something left behind. Some trace of self before the crashing fall.
I feel love when I write that I do not feel when people speak it. I give everything I have for pens and pencils and red ink and paper and old typewriters and time and parchment and blinking cursors. In jail. When I had only pennies I bought a tablet and pencil. And one extra in case of breaking. Because writing is a fever. Love, too, is a fever.
Maybe I know nothing. And these words mean nothing. And walks on winter days wearing old man soggy when wet sweaters mean nothing. Maybe love is a red herring flying errant like an arrow from battlements.
In Washington I walked my drive on the weekends. When the ground had soaked the rain and the forest was in my nostrils and I had nothing but a house that felt like an empty VCR. I woke and drank beer. Whatever was left from the night before. Maybe writing memoir is easy. Maybe writing memoir is only easy if you’ve had easy memories. Who wants to read that.
I took my cigar to the wet blacktop and walked to the creek. Sucked on the tip. Even in the middle of the pain I was free and freedom felt best. Why must love always feel like claws sinking into my skin?
Even the best love feels like being trapped. Not so in the woods. Not so with the ocean. Not so with words. They love me. And never make me prisoner. This is the way with people. Nearly all of them.
Midwesterners are close with their families. I do not understand it. Wanting to be close with anyone. Wanting to be near. When I left home I never looked back. Like a sailboat into ocean I left from Oregon to New York to escape human traps needing me to need them. Bacteria people trying to store me motionless in the same vacuum sealed city.
I have to be away from them. They aim to destroy me. Even the well-meaning ones. They tell me they know me better than I know myself. All their words. Their knowing. While the rivers and stones and trees stay silent. All their knowing makes me cry. Crushes me with squeezing weight. I go thin and flat. Lifeless and stuck.
In Washington I walked my drive on the weekends. When I was not in Fort Lewis mud. When I was not in Afghanistan. From my patio I could see a finger of the Sound. Cool regaling winds floated my neck. I drank and drank until I passed out. Then awoke and wrote. There is nothing romantic about the process of dying while writing. Which is what writing is. Dying very many times. And giving all love to blank pages and words at the expense of everything else.
Things changed there. Beneath the brutal lifeless starry skies of Afghanistan. In its havoc sea. Tossed and thrown. Love nearly killed me daily there. And I said no. Never again. I ran. Over rocks and blood. Found voice. Penned words mysterious and unknown to me. Came out the water like fish becoming amphibian. Read A Farewell to Arms and stared at walls of night in every direction. Even the best stories end in truth. Truth is the only romance. Maybe the best romance.
So I no longer look for Washington. Or Oregon. I no longer fret or fear pain or chase death. I sit calmly. Wherever the tides are, in or out, I stay put.
I would do it again and again. All the same choices. Because they are mine. I am fine with being alone. Being untouched and not close. I know it well. I am not something to be pitied. I bend words. It’s people who are unwieldy and tiresome. It’s not knowing that makes me love you. And I never know my words. I imagine them. Like Henry Church and Rose. Like Friday and Thomas.
I am made for more imagining than knowing.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.
I run from people who say they know me better than I know myself too. They never do. They know the mold they want me to fit in. They can see it so perfectly. Except they can't see I don't fit in it. Jill's comment made me smile. It is a great piece. :)
When it comes to love, I believe we see the world differently. However, I enjoy reading and sharing your worldview because you write so captivatingly. Love helped create empathy in me and I can feel everything you are communicating with your words. You do it so well.