Episode

ONE

It was snowing on my birthday. It was beautiful and impossible and I can’t think of a better way to start this story. I’m still here and there is something to be said for that. Where here is, is another story and I’ll tell you that one too. I need the company, your company. I am tired of my own. Stick with me because I am stuck, and maybe if you come, you will find me, or at least I will find myself. I’ll take either at this point, but both would be nice. I know now that the snow was nice. It was a nuisance at the time. I’m sorry. I’ll be better if I have the chance. This sounds like one of the bargains I tried to make with God. He must not take me seriously, or I did not take Him seriously, but He is not here. That I know. God is not in this place, but he is. This other he is not a companion like I have ever known. He also does not make deals. He has no need. I have no leverage here, but if you come, I will keep my promise. I promise.

It was my birthday, and what had life become beside moving my body back and forth between a series of familiar places. This predictability somehow wound tight enough that it had nowhere to go but to unravel. As I moved through life, my steps ticking off the time in rhythm, another was counting my steps with me. I never knew. I watched the cracks in the sidewalk pass like someone would watch the trees out a car window. If you go fast enough the trees become a blur of green and life. I imagine what I was doing as quite the opposite. If you go slowly enough, it all becomes clear. Sidewalk meets foot and grass grows imperceptibly through the cracks in the manmade slabs. In this way, time moves slowly until you simply stop. It all became clear in the end; the image sharpened and I see myself now the way he sees me, and saw me while steps and time ticked my way here. I can never see myself exactly through his eyes, but what do I have to do but wonder what it must be like inside his head, seeing me for exactly what I was. How would he describe me? What made him choose me?

Alone. That is one thing he saw. Lonely and completely unaware of the fact. Simply knowing no other way than these two feet. Never another pair. Never wearing the same clothes from the night before. Never coming from a different place. Never sad about it, but never enough of anything at all. Clearly a person in need of more. He could not trip me up as I studied my path. I thought that I was so aware of my surroundings. I never stumbled or failed or ambled. He imagined my world for me, then it was here. I was here. Here the days are never the same.

Today I did not walk at all. My feet have taken a rest as time stands still in this place, and other times it moves faster than my mind can fathom. I wish I was better able to describe this life for you. You may lack the imagination to understand it, only because it is outside the familiar. It is terrible and beautiful. Have you ever thought about how therapeutic photography is? I’m beginning to understand that we can find beauty in the tiniest specks of earth and the figure of a human. Making art out of the world around you is to search for beauty. Try it. Take a camera and point it at something, then get closer and closer and closer until it is only a shape and not a thing at all. That is how much beauty is in the world.

And then there is darkness. Sometimes there is no light here for days. It takes some time to adjust, but that is becoming one of my skills. Once the adjustment sets in, there are all of the sounds. I do not mean only the sounds of the outside world. You can drive yourself crazy trying to decipher the actions of others based on very limited information. Sometimes my mind moves in layers. One voice tells a story and my other voice asks it to stop so I can get some rest, then the voices increase as a third voice laughs at the voice trying to stop the sound because it is only creating more noise inside my head. Maybe this sounds crazy to you, but it is not. I do not have multiple personalities. I have not lost my mind, I have found it, and it is fascinating and complex. I never thought of myself that way before.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I am telling you all of the layers at once, and that is unfair. You have not had time to adjust. Let me start from the first day. How I arrived. We will take it slowly. It was my birthday, three years ago.