the habit of being

The scene is charred black with a hint of navy in the air. White strips stretch along guiding the way to the edge of the sphere. Every now and then a strangely bent tree shows itself, and she assumes that even a tree must feel some pain in being made to stand in such positions for so long. The rain which pounded the windshield on the drive down has backed off into cold humidity and mercury puddles. An old tape plays. She knows all the words, but she isn’t listening. She only stares off into the distance as if in a trance, seeming so enchanted by those long long lines. Her breathing has fallen to clockwork, her senses blurred over by disinterest, her mind will not shut up.

They are complete opposites, these two I yearn for. She is true beauty by nature, but on closer inspection it becomes obvious she is a genius as well. He, the reverse. Together they lay out the spectrum for everything I’d want to be. If by this age I have drawn in all my wanted attributes, so that I might eat them alive and suck out the juices, if by this age I have seduced all my lacking virtues in others, then certainly it could not be such a terrible thing that I have neither beauty nor genius on my own. I must have something sincere in me, if this glass creature allows my lips on her thighs, my eyes on her thoughts. There must be something unforgettable in me, if she lets me mangle her imagery into a winter coat I’ll never need. Surely I am not stupid, if he’ll put up with my faulty logic and never-ending ideals. He never said an unkind thing about my dramatic unreality, so he must be protecting my pride out of some kind of admiration. There must be something there, or else I have fed myself the harshest lies thinkable. I’ve swallowed such a lethal pill that so much as a breath after its discovery would render me inconsolable with such acidic self-destruction as to turn me to ashes in the waterfall.

Yes, my soul might prove to be nothing more than soot floating in the bubbles of my own private waterfall within the wet ripe redness of a cherry not yet reserved for purposes other than to decorate the vanilla-specked dreams of another. But what of the alternative?

The music shuts off with a click.

Katharine, what are you thinking about?

[pause] Homework.

What homework do you have?

History.

What is it?

Reading.

But that’s not homework, it’s reading. Is it a lot?

A pretty good bit.

What else do you have?

Nothing.

And that’s what you were thinking about?

Yes.

The driver lets it go, but the music is not turned back on. The lines become bright again. She notices the crippled trees, the cold color of the sky, the drizzle of returning rain, drops running races across the passenger’s side window, the the absence of other cars. A rabbit runs across the road up ahead. Did you see that? Yes, you did. Really? Uh huh.

A collage of our relationship would do best for Lust. Many small sketches molded together into one idea with some sloppily scripted words. These words wouldn’t even have to entirely mine, I could use yours. Stolen beauty is such a theme with me it wouldn’t even be insincere to use them on my art. But it is so silly to try to bring sense to it all. I cherish the jumble. The jumble is what I should capture. Something of wilderness, because it is indeed wild. I don’t want to bring margins onto something so nonlinear. I want the rub of grain against grain to be evident, the unfinished understanding, the partial unclarity and ghastliness of it all, along with the have-had equilibrium that exists only when we give up our quests for completion. The pictures pile up so quickly. To tackle them one at a time would take a lifetime. A mean, a consensus, is the only approach to recording it all.

They stop. A gas station. The driver, in her full-length coat, stands out in the cold dampness pumping Premium. She, our hero, walks to the convenience store to use the restroom. On the bathroom wall, above the sink, hangs a mirror. Most of her hair has fallen out of its half-hearted ponytail, but she doesn’t take the time to fix it. On the way out, she passes a car full of boys who stare and shout a few unrecognizable greetings. She won’t look back. In the car again, she locks the door.