
Knowing
What if I didn't know anything?
Perhaps I would see what is impossible to see.
Perhaps the world around me would grow.
Perhaps fear would find courage to hope.
Perhaps freedom would flourish in my bones.
Perhaps my lonely spirit would find space for love; to love and be loved.
Perhaps purpose and meaning will evolve into something more.
Perhaps I would know what I hadn't known: a life to live.
Lope
I went to bed like I did every night this year. Iphone in hand, laptop open next to me, and the TV on my dresser overloading me with images, posts and news about the latest protest, a new twist in the political climate and corporate control of the impending COVID-19 vaccine. I was addicted and dessensitized at the same time. Nothing is surprising anymore. The anxiety and stress grinding in the background; it only seems like I’m at peace with the chaos.
I read an article on a new form of trauma humans recently developed. And its bad. Really bad. I probably have it. I would know it if I weren’t so numb and furious at the same time. Actually, that’s one of the symptoms. So is having three screens running at the same time for more than 6 hours a day. Four or more editions of Murphy’s Law on your person is another symptom. Good thing I just have two - bunny ears and labels sticking out the pages like an academic.
If anything can go wrong… well, lets just say it did, because it did. All of it. And more. At least its a shared experience, #together. One day I went out to check my mail after a few days in isolation. I looked over to my neighbor carrying groceries in from a Walmart delivery. A subtle curl of the lip to one side with glazed eyes and a slight dip of the nose - we understdood each other perfectly.
I wasn’t asleep for long. I must have dozed halfway through a periodical fantastically predicting the next civil war if the Nation continues on its course. I was hooked. I must have dreamt the rest of it in a vision of post-apocolytpic America. I wasn’t fit for a world like that, and found myself constantly escaping horror after horror. Luckily the awkward position of my fat belly protruding into my chest into my neck against the headboard grumbled me awake. That and the strange man in my room.
I don’t normally wake to strangers on top of the covers next to me, but if I learned anything this year was to expect anything and roll with it. I didn’t recognize the man at first. Just like you might struggle to recognize famous people you’ve seen in movies, in books or montages of old world war footage who are somehow unrecognizable in person.
“Where’s the toilet paper?” The man asked as he combed the small patch on his upper lip with a tiny comb. Tension in his cheeks, a glare in his eyes. “I’ve been holding a rick of logs the past hour waiting for you to wake, but I couldn’t find the damn toilet paper!”
It was the third wave of the ominous tissue shortage. How do you tell Hitler he’s just going to have to shit his pants or live with a little between the cracks?
I forgot myself then remembered my manners and retrieved my Dunder Mifflin mask and snapped the straps behind my ears.
“Who are you?” Stupid question, of course I knew who he was and he knew it too.
What is that…he studied the object on my face, or possibly he was confused by the image it displayed. Perhaps it reminded him of the scientists he worked with back in the day.
“Ben.”
Wha…?
“JK - just call me Dolf.”
I didn’t know Hitler was a comedian.
“Dolf… what are you doing here… in 2020… in my bed…?
Its not Christmas Eve, I thought.
Dolf threw his arms about and kicked his legs in a furious rage. He spouted non-sense that seemed to be nothing short of angry jibberish. I sat completely undistrubed from his eratic stirring in the bed.
Then it stopped. I quickly grabbed an object from the night stand and tucked it in my lap.
Swish… swish… swish with the tiny barbie comb. Wiggle, wiggle with the upper lip then he tucked the comb away into a tiny shirt pocket.
“This is the dream I had when I was a little boy, the nightmarish vision that encapsulated my every method of madness to usher humanity toward greatness and the preservation of our species!”
“It has come true!” He went on. “My failure to protect humanity has triggered our doom!”
He threw another tantrum, this time jamming his fists down into the bed.
“I don’t understand. How did you fail humanity? You tried to destroy it!”
He was surprisingly chill with what I said, after he went bolistic and kicking the phone out of my hand that happened to still be there.
“I was trying to rid the world of a virus! And create the perfect specimen, to embody all that is great about humanity while weeding out all that is vile and wicked, what makes us weak!”
“You tried to create robots?”
Again, another fit.
“I tried to create strength, greatness!”
“oh… that…”
The next episode was different, surprisingly unexpected.
He cried.
Then sobbed. Wailed. Beat his chest and tore his clothes and tore out what little hair he had left on his chest - one angry pluck at a time.
No wonder people struggled to understand him.
I wasn’t sure what to do while he sat next to me in an emotional state. I found the stone in my hand, gripping tightly to it. The one my nephew gave me. He started a rock business at the age of 5 so he could use the money to buy socks and a toy for the poor kid down the street. He drew these crazy drawings - scribbles - on one side, and on the other side a perfect attempt at a word. Holding it gives me a warm chill - a swirling combination that lulls you into calm. The memory of him took me to a place, a wonderfully forgotten place. Until another memory pulled me into a monstreously dark place.
Dolf’s calm, gruff stare - and finger jabbing into my shoulder - drew me back to the moment.
“Goodness…” he started.
What did Hitler know about goodness? The thought propelled me into a swirling thought of doubt. What did anyone know of goodness?
“The goodness of men is surreal. Fake. Like a mask we wear because the real thing is impossible to grasp.”
Dolf was either a poet or a philosopher, or both. Who knew?
“It is the emptiness of mankind, the fear of one’s own wickedness that inspires righteous action. One must seek out evil within the other in order to ignore the evil within. As long as man vaingloriously fights against the other out of fear - the deepest and truest of fears - he can hide his true nature, placated by hate disguised as goodness.”
Dolf took a pillow to his face and screamed into it. He relaxed his face into the pillow pinned to his chest. He breathed deeply - his chest swelling, lifting the pillow and erecting his neck. Then he beat his fist into the pillow as if to soften the blow to his face.
Then he was done.
Dolf tucked his hand into a side pocket and held on to something without drawing it out. Something came over him, spilled across his face and into his eyes - a sort of peace that is more agitating than comforting. Annoying even. As if you had something you didn’t want because you didn’t deserve it. Something you can’t accept.
“It is a poison the world infects upon us. It drives us to do what we think is right. It drives us to believe that our convictions are worth tearing down the lives of others… countless others.” He paused, then finished quietly, “one other.”
Dolf pulled his hand out of his side pocket holding a small, bloodied heart.
What a poetic and vunlerable thing to say and then pull out a human heart from your pocket. Nope, not phased at all.
“... Dolf... whose heart is that?”
“Love…” he said. “Whose stone is that you hold?”
Nice deflection Dolf, good one.
The stone was choking within my grip. I opened my hand and the color returned. As my tears painted the stone, I told Dolf about my nephew and his great, big, wonderful heart. I told him about the tragedy that wrought my heart with hate, poisoned it against the world - against any hope for humanity.
He told me of the heart in his hand as blood oozed between his fingers. It belonged to a sweet little girl. His face echoed the memory of her smile. “As my soldiers fought for the future of humanity, lining her people up against the walls, the little girl broke from her mother’s grip and past my guards. She stood at my feet and bore up at me with her dark eyes and dark hair. I never thought of her people as beautiful, if ever they were she was it. She grabbed my hand and tucked a little clay heart in my palm just before the soldier pulled her away and tossed her to the wall with her family. I watched her there. Baffled. The smile on her face before the bullets wiped it away. The lingering warmth of her touch as she grabbed my hand... I can still feel the tiny phantom fingers.”
He mumbled into silence, into private thought. He wrestled with it.
I turned the stone in my hand and read the word my nephew scribbled onto it. A word too late for Dolf, but not for me. The word struggled past my lips:
“Lope.”
Somehow Dolf knew what it meant, the two words tied into one. We sat in silence, a millenial traumatized by 2020 and the strangley, peculiar Hitler sharing his bed.
Sharing a moment.
A stupendous moment.
That moment when the catoclism of clashing realities, of bombastic thoughts and irrational fears fall away and yeilds to peace. Not the feeling, but the knowing. The seeing.
“What now…?” I wondered, fearing the power of this moment slipping away. “What do we do about it all; the decades and generations of lives and actions and words that got us here?”
“Well, I’m dead. I can’t do anything, probably for the better.” He paused, tucked the heart away into the side pocket. “But you are here. The stone in your hand can be a burden - a trauma. Or, it can be your way forward - love and hope.”
I recalled a story. One that faded behind the anger and hate in my heart. A story it is time to remember.
“There was this man ages ago who was persecuted for his beliefs about love and hope in a broken world, a mission to create a community of neighbors and samaritans.”
Dolf sighed as he listened, as if he breathed away a heavy chain. The patch on his lip fluttered and he pulled his tiny comb out to fix it.
“Imagine if we lived in a world of people that lived that way. As neighbors, washing each other’s feet - metaphorically... or not - and caring for the needs of others above their own.”
I reached out with the stone to give it to Dolf, but he was gone.
To the world:
If you found yourself at the end of this story, somewhat fond of Dolf, the characterization of a most hated monster. Do you think, perhaps, it is possible for you, and me to put off old and fresh hatreds, grudges, harmful biases and prejudices, discord with family - with strangers? And then - perhaps - take on the mantle of being a neighbor?
The inside-out silence
I don't belong here. This ruminates in her head. I was picked for this very reason - they could see it across my face and deep into my nervous eyes. But they don't know me. They don't know what I know. She knows.
Truth is a game of lies - the lie that survives. I won't let the wolves devour him. I have to say something, I can't speak. What will they do to me? They decided he was guilty the moment we sat down in this room. She hasn't spoken a word. Her silence was her answer.
I can't agree to this. I can't let this happen. I'm too scared. She's scared.
Oh, no! They their standing, getting ready to head into the courtroom to give our verdict; their verdict. I can't let innocence be mawled by the lies of a system posing as truth. How will I change their minds. I must... speak.
the old book
A million faces. Two million beautiful eyes; a sea of souls seeking, struggling, hoping.
The old, withered book lies in the ally between Charlie’s and Chappie’s. It was dropped from the roof-top above by the son of an old lady. She lived in the apartment two floors up from Chappie’s, the bookshop her grandfather started when her family moved to the Great Society.
“Such potential for greatness, but far from great,” the book sighed. Its cover flaps open from a breeze sucked into the ally that swirled narrowly between the brick buildings. The gust flipped the pages with the cover - exposing its trauma.
The old book has seen better days from the weather it endured. It no longer remembers what kind of book it was - or the story it told, the moral it taught, the hope it bestowed. The old book could feel the phantom fingers fiddling the pages; turning them, brushing them. It can still feel the weight of a million stories from the tears stained into the pages.
Chappie’s alley door bursts open sending a current stirring the old book’s pages. A bulk of black flashes and plummets into the opposing alley wall. The bag bursts. The explosion of paper, books, bottles, a handkerchief and candy-bar wrappers tells a story all of its own. The old book cringes, “the waste of the world is a treasure unknown.” The old book pondered the value of its pages, “would a great society like this rediscover its worth; would she ever find the dignity of her once beating heart? She values a selfish thing that withers.”
“What’s that?”, the old book gasped. The sound of a voice reading from the pages of a vampire novel escapes into the alley before the door closes shut. “What if...” the old book thinks to itself. What a fantasy it would be; to be caressed in hand again, a deep melodic voice breathing to life the words of its pages before a grand audience - as it did 72 years ago.
The old book’s author shut the book in disgrace. This great society wasn’t ready for words such as these. The author battered his creation, slamming it to the ground at his feet as the crowd - a wondrous crowd packed to the street - exclaimed the treachery of such words. Chappie, wiping tears into his sleeve the pages did not claim, shelved the book with a prayer, “one day, the people of this society will be ready to hear, and on that day I hope they will listen.”
The old book moaned. The last to turn its pages struggled to accept its perspective. The grandson sought liberation; redemption from the rips and tears of his life. He discovered the old book, the title caught his browse along the dusty shelf. The truth in its pages - of freedom, justice, love, forgiveness - overwhelmed the grandson. He had no value in this world but the old book told him otherwise. He struggled to believe. The grandson snapped the book shut, swung his arm across the table tossing his coffee as he stood. He held the old book to his beating chest - the sweat soaking through his shirt into the cover. He shunned it away dropping it from the roof-top down into the alley between Charlie’s and Chappie’s.
“Such painful memories in hope of change”, the old book moaned.
The streets outside the alley roar in anger, rage, hate, and fear. It’s pages quiver from the rumble.
The voices of a million faces, a million stories bound to the same history. A history bent into competing narratives - many fighting for equality of life, some fighting to protect their privilege, some fighting to be heard at all, some fighting a war on crime, many fighting a war against injustice, others fighting a war on sin. History is twisted to fit into the different narratives. Parts of this shared history forgotten in the hypocrisy of progress and freedom, parts of this history remembered through generations in the pain and trauma of dehumanization.
Days pass. Weeks pass, or could it be months - years? The streets of chaos are endless now. A pandemic sweeps the so-called great society exposing it for what it is. A virus of the human soul. Hate blinding man against another man, holding self-righteously to his way by minimizing and invalidating how others see and experience the world. A virus of hate disguised as morality. The old book warned of this decades ago, it weeps tears of black.
The alley door opens. The sound of dizzying techno beats blares and fades as the door closes back. A young lady leans into the brick beside the door after she closes it. A digital light beams into her eyes from her hands. There is a sadness in her eyes the old book has seen before. It yearns for those eyes to look upon its pages, longs to give hope too-long rejected.
The old book studies the young lady, she is not the distinguished type. She does not resemble the establishment of Chappie’s, but as someone exploited by a world of profit; a world demeaning to inherent human worth.
She puts the phone away, the old book does not know where, as there are few places to put anything with what she is wearing. The young lady breathes in, and then out as though the air in this alley is somehow refreshing. The air inside Charlie’s is poison. It holds you captive, as if it is the only thing left in the world willing to give you air to breathe - and you begin to believe that it is the best life you can possibly have, until you step out into the alley. And the air within this alley is nothing compared to what you will find in the street, or out in the country where the street may take you. “The trick of it is”, the old book ponders, “is the air within the walls of comfort is the same poison inside Charlie’s. The only difference is how the air is filtered into circulation.” The old book could go on, but is drawn the the beauty behind the broken mess.
The young lady pulls a hit from a tiny pocket in her shorts and contemplates it in her fingers. The door beside her rattles as the man inside pounds and calls her in. The young lady stirs in surprise and the hit slips out of her grip into the busted up garbage around her feet. The pounding and yelling continues. She quickly falls to her hands and knees stirring the waste to find what she dropped.
The old book stirs at the touch of her fingers stumbling into it. She discovers it. The words on the cover capture her. The pounding on the door continues, a beck and call to return to her lot in life.
The world suddenly goes dark for the old book. It’s confused, “what happened?” It hears the door open and close and then silence.
Moments later - what could be hours, maybe days - comes a patter of noise and quiet whispers through the alley door. It’s cover opens. A soft melodic voice begins to speak the words on its pages. The young lady reads to an audience packed into the alley from Charlie’s and Chappie’s and to the street. Eager to hear - to listen.
“We are alone in a world full of people,” the old book excitedly shares. “The world is breaking and falling apart because we fail to come together. We cling to narratives that we claim for our fight in a war. A pathetic little war that divides people; that a society fails to become truly great. We fail to value each other, to love and care for our neighbors outside of ourselves - as ourselves. We cling to hold on to a life we have or strive for, for fear of losing it - and yet we are losing it. We are alone in a world full of people, because we have designed narratives to turn people into creatures, into something less than human, into something dangerous; a threat to our narrative. What if we decided to let go? What if we decided to see ourselves in each other; if we decided to create a narrative that is big enough for everyone, that restores the value of who we are? We are more than the labels that our narratives place on each other, more than the scars, the traumas and the sins we carry. What if we changed the war on sin into a journey of redemption, liberation and freedom for all people? We are alone in a world full of people, until we connect with each other.”
The old book can feel the change. It can feel its words take root, grow and spread through unexpected connections between people - crossing barriers, demolishing walls and creating a better society.