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just thought that a chunk from the middle of a novel is just what this forum needs...! well, it hapens to be just what i'm gone post, anyway... 
this is a scene from the opening part of part three of a four or five part book - it is just before a funeral. won't tell any more than that - want to see if the piece is holding up even though now i know what's going on and who's who... do you?
Milestones. Markers in the path to indicate significance. Sometimes, the significance is arbitrary, like the distance covered or remaining, and is pre-ordained. Others signify divergences to new paths. Heathen happenings, actual events and artefacts pressing us into a direction, often one we hadn’t bargained on. And sometimes these two occur concurrently.
Why do we mark events with anniversaries? What should an imposed duration have to tell us that our more visceral responses lack? Is it the pattern against which we can all agree, a starting point for communication. This perhaps is the meme in action then, another infestation.
Birthdays and anniversaries, milestones to life’s duration, its carrying on, our enduring. But fluid organism that is the vitality of our uniqueness, each of us a thriving living thing, manifesting our existence at different paces, at different directions, galactic. When one passes a pre-set milestone with another, hand in hand, even brethren, they no two take it to be the same thing. From the outside, it seems everyone glides along in their life, sailing beside yours. Their dance through time to music unequal to yours. Yet from the inside, it is all so discordant. How are we to know where to go next? Is there a next note, another beat of time? What if it all went stagnant? Am I sinking?
“He told me once, that hitting forty was like a breath, pausing against a wall to consider how far it is, and pushing off again, out into open water. He was so assured.” Juliet sat inside an atrium café, froth and clatter tinkling from the high glass and metal casing. “It’s good to be out, Rocky. Thanks for coming down.” A waiter interrupted and placed coffees and bread on the table. Juliet smiled up at her, “Thanks.” Roxanne was already tearing open the paper tubes of sugar, pouring them onto the froth of her coffee.
“Oh, sweetie. But really, you’re dealing with this amazingly well. I hope there won’t be something later. You really ok? Call me and Ren any time, any time.” Stirring, twirling, dissolving. “Ok?”
“Sometimes I wonder, yeah, if I really am ok. Like when Stu told me that? I imagined me, vividly, turning forty and pushing off against the wall. And found it gave way.” Eyes noticed shimmer of metal table liquid swirl dissolve the world above it, stay focussed there. “Didn’t tell him; it was just inside my head, just there. I went straight through the wall, Rock, it swallowed me up. Just a wall, but between me and the sea. Frantic. And I have to find the hole that lets me back through. Just gotta find the right hole. Stu’s out there, swimming ahead of me and…” Choking a sob, napkin to face, Roxanne’s hands reach across the basket of bread, knocking a roll to the tablecloth. “I’m sorry, Rock.”
“Oh, don’t be, oh sweetie.” A waiter patient by and by, by the table, holding plates and generous silence. Roxanne’s glance, turns and heads back to the kitchen.
“You’ve got me teary too. Can’t be teary here, Loui’d kick us out. Then where’d we get a decent coffee? You’ve found the hole. Or all of us are back behind the wall with you. Stu’s just still out swimming ahead, ol’ Stu. Hey?” And as later later the pyramid of their embrace across the tablecloth begins to collapse, Roxanne catches the owner’s eye, Loui catches the waiter’s and the arrival of their food completes the manoeuvre. Napkin back on lap, eyes red above now a smile. “We’ll get through tomorrow, Ju. We all will, together.”
Tomorrow. |
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