Resurrection of Past Hauntings

Sometimes there is a resurrection of past hauntings. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the memory of a forgotten face. I wonder how the darkness fares—or the light? Perhaps I remain to be and always will be a silly girl—a silly, loveless girl, motivated by longing. Perhaps my neediness will never give way to a greater reality. Eros, turannos. I am helpless, constant, and eternal.

Swelling life seems so utterly useless. It is all void of true vision—timeless, ageless impression—all breath is but a mere blinking pleasure—pain—complete impermanence. For what great gain do we live here? Or breathe? Or sigh? Some say that life is beautiful and some say that life is a precious gift, but the inconsistency of it seems—to me—to outweigh the blinking fascinations. We love, we all love. We love those who do not love us—those who do not know us and those who know us but do not care. And then there are the few whom we love and love in return—those lovers who are rare and come closest to relevance—but those, they, the lovers, they all fade, or die, or melt away with a selfish lie. No earth-bound heart is true or pure; we all breathe the same tainted air, the same mass-marketed deceptions. And though all living—the politics of it—seems so timely and insurmountable, an implantation of thoughtfulness is engrained in us all. There seems to be a higher order in our institute of time, of mortality. Yes, breathing is redundant and repetitive—there is nothing new under the sun or the Son, but what is this great seed in me that pleads to go on with this cumbersome, tiring journey? What is it that leads me here?

Music is immortality. Melodies and harmonies, flashes of retrospect well captured in vibrant color. Music is the search for purity in the living and the dead. Heartbreaks and first loves, death and resurrection all captured, summoned by the bellowing of belated bells and horns, symphonic sweetness. How complete living would be if it consisted of musical residency.

How many times I have prayed that I do not succumb to the same content mediocrity as others I have known. I fail to see the expectation of wanting to forge myself into a dull and dreary society. Marry, bare children, work for that 401K, and pray to God your marriage of 41 years doesn’t leave you a widow, regardless of what number husband you’re on. And your kids—you hope to God that they don’t get shot down in their 8^th grade biology class by a 14 year-old with an automatic. Meanwhile, everyone in superb suburbia has matching sport utility vehicles and matching cell phones so everyone can cross-communicate on their way home from their 9-to-5 in the daily gridlock over the hills that once were pastures for cows. But there aren’t any more cows—they’re something you see in illustrative books, full of paintings of things long expired. All dairy and beef is now manufactured with chemicals and beakers and test tubes in a factory in some smoggy city.

We’ll continue to honor our sport icons and our movie starlets over those nameless, faceless people who are trying to preserve the farce of human goodness. We do not make ourselves good. We cannot have good in us as an uncomplimentary source.

Living equals medication. All urges are to medicate: medicate with sex, with money, with greed—this false paradigm of love, this false world. But no one knows how to truly be okay with their ailment, to resist the urge to medicate. How much stronger those people must be—if they exist. I medicate. We all do. And that is why life is useless, for good is something we fail to recognize within ourselves.

What do the dead have to say about the living? Not the dead in the ground or in fancy vases, but the dead in jars—bell jars—while everyone else walks right past them, oblivious to the fact that there are dead people all around them. These dead people in their cylindrical glass jars, sitting quietly, yet restlessly waiting for their status to change. Some urge for life while others are perplexed that death does not equal finality—where to go now? Now that I am dead? Dead and bored, a spectacle for the aimless; yet I get to be a spectator as well…

The living walk by with their Starbucks latte in one hand and their Wallstreet Journal in the other; they pass by all the bell jars, brimful with soul (yes, the dead still have these), on their way to work, oblivious. They wonder what traffic will be like on the way home, that beautiful new home they bought with the green lawn that looks like a retired cow pasture, where they will sit down to watch primetime TV—ER or West Wing—which one to choose? They wonder how their new BMW is doing in its automotive playpen, while walking down the granite street to the quickest coffee shop, hoping that all the other flashy cars are playing nice. The living walk on green—always—motivated by its stench, consumed lustfully by its shape and color, while our poor players pant and sigh noiselessly, our poor bell-jarred players—some born dead, some dead by suffocation of the living, some clueless to their death and that there is a contrast between the two. They are as oblivious as the living.

It is a risky business, the politics of humanity. However risky or trivial, it is pointless. There are office politics that I do not understand. Politics between the sexes, so softly uttered that it is beyond the eardrum’s capability. How much easier life would be if it were void of deceptive politics, but we have built nations upon this principle.

Breath is utterly void of meaning—tasteless, suffocating. I rather like my place in my transparent apartment. I have gotten used to the passerbys. Sometimes one will stop and show me the time and I am mesmerized by the gold Rolex on his bony wrist. Sometimes I am even pacified by glittering things, shiny, flashy nuances, but I remember the sacrifices made. I go on feigning breath by consuming my lungs with placebo oxygen and it soothes my core. I go on. I go on. I go on in my bell jar. I go on, I go on. Something greater must drive me. Perhaps it is because there is nowhere else to go after death.

Some say that I am dark, deep—depressing and darker still. Some say I am hard to consume but I say, No Matter. No Matter to you, No Matter what you refuse yourself. No Matter what you smugly say about my honesty. I am sorry I’ve upset you—No Matter. Apologies are window-dressing. A deceitful person always apologizes; apologizes excessively. No Matter. I’m sorry.

What is darkness? Would it look so black if lacking contrast? Or would it stand on its own, its own separate entity? No Matter. It would still exist. Darkness fluxuates with the light, they are one.

Copyright © 2005 by Melanie Faith