Phil's Story, Chapter 16

Life.

Some people would say I haven’t lived. In many respects they’d be pretty accurate. There are a number of venues in life I have yet to experience and many I refuse to experience. Want a list?

I’ve never done drugs (with the exception of caffeine of course).

I’ve never smoked a cigarette.

I’ve never been drunk.

I’ve never broken a bone.

Here’s the kicker, for all my ideas of love and romance, for all the words, poetry and prose I read and write, for all the hopes, I’m ignorant… ignorant, naïve, inexperienced, unaccustomed, and absolutely and totally oblivious to any forms of intimacy. I have never so much as kissed someone in intimacy… yet. Then again, there’s more to intimacy than that.

Still, I don’t think that disqualifies me from the subject of life or love. I think that the honest approach of inexperience is capable of identifying profound truths. A number of philosophers throughout the ages would take issue with that I’m sure, but I’m not writing an essay, I’m writing an opinion. I’m writing an opinion compromised by biases and prejudices and pain and pleasure and a ton of experiences of varying magnitudes of which inexperience is a valid part; in fact, I'd go so far as to say there is no such thing as inexperience, as there is no such thing as darkness. Each only exists as an absence of something else, and in the case of experiences, their absence is often far more beneficial and constructive than their presence. Still, I’m writing the insignificant beliefs, ideas, standards, ‘whatevers' of a twenty-one year old university drop out. Actually, I have plans to drop back in, so that last statement might need amending. Nevertheless, I’m just one person, like everyone else who can still be reached in a one on one context. That isn’t everyone. Ideologies, ‘ism’s, factions, sects, dogmas, I can’t reach those… so that excludes some people who have succumbed to be the embodiment of such generalities.

I’m not knocking sensation, I’m not demeaning reason, I wish I could wed the two.

“Life isn’t all about experiences. There’s a higher purpose and it’s not fortune, it’s not fame, it’s not pleasure, it’s not highs, it’s not lows, it’s certainly not me… it’s you… and it‘s who lives within you.”

That’s what I want to be able to tell Hope. More so, I want to say it honestly. I want to live it. My life could end up being someone's story one day, but I’ll be the first to tell it, but not on paper. The first telling is living. If I speak too soon I’ll only draw a conclusion of hypocrisy.

I’ve sat up with Hope for hours talking about ideas; Life after death, human nature, free will versus determinism, pleasure or pain, nurture or nature, past present and future, I’ve treasured these discussions (arguments), for all that I’ve learned, and all I’ve reasoned, but more than them, I’ll covet the smells, the touches, the glimpses, the tastes, the sounds and the associations I’ve made that lead certain sensations to ignite specific thoughts and evoke particular feelings. I’ve woven a web I love to get tangled in… that I may weave it all again.

I don’t think life should be as complex as we make it. Standards exist, internal and external, and we have to live up to the set we acknowledge. The problem comes in meeting those people that make your present set seem inadequate.

I remember Phil telling me bits of pieces of his childhood, that which he remembered and that which his mother relayed to him, sometimes in a drunken stupor, so the fractured history is hardly gospel truth. He told me stories of men. His mother’s suitors that would call at all hours, show up with flowers and chocolate, and take his mother away… sometimes for days. He grew up feeling like a burden… an inconvenient load that, as a result, was often left behind. I know some people who would say that it was Dungeons and Dragons, or other role playing games that Phil got into during those absences, that killed him. Some would blame the one instance that one of his mom’s beau’s got violent… which is fact, the police have records of the assault that was spawned from ‘too much whining’, first four year old Phil’s and then his mom’s, not the ‘wining’ of the accountant. Phil grew to detest inconsistencies. He hated complications and factors and fractions and numbers and he loved the converging and merging and uniting and bringing together. Phil saw a movie once and had an epiphany… there was this line in it: “Just one thing…”. He took it literally and ever since he worshiped the idea of wholeness. He was active in his worship too.

When Phil met Angelica a whole new set of standards was birthed in him. I’m convinced that when Angelica met Phil she was faced with standards she never knew existed, and when she found out that she was the source of those standards, she was made to feel unworthy to the extent that she hated his purity and devotion towards her. I can imagine that being confronted with love is difficult, especially for those unaccustomed to what love really is. Phil’s last written words to me were ones that have haunted me ever since I’ve managed to put them into an applicable context…

“It’s too much.”

Church Hill Sonnets (I of VII)

Sonnet XXXVI (Church Hill I)

The decent down Church Hill is lined with trees

With their limbs stretched up to heaven in praise

They form a cathedral roof with a maze

Of boughs intertwined to catch the disease

That falls from the firmament to appease

The lusts of earthly thirsting hearts ablaze

As though this balm of rain would aptly raze

This passion that would incinerate seas.

Yet do I love without reason or rhyme;

In fact, all stands against this fire to try

To extinguish it with tears and a sigh

Before all is engulfed in fueling time.

The road I tread is dark. Too dark to see.

Maybe I’m wrong and there’s no fire in me.

Phil's Story, Chapter 15

Death.

My twelfth Christmas… it was actually the day after: Boxing Day; we were visiting my father’s side of the family. We pulled into the visitor’s parking lot at my relation’s apartment building. A police officer stood in the frigid outdoors guarding a blanketed bundle beside him. Throughout the day, between gifts and hugs and visiting, I sneaked peeks at the hustle and bustle of the different emergency personnel that had been converging in the lot while we celebrated. There was something that kept drawing me out to the balcony and kept pulling my gaze to the ground… it wasn’t gravity either, it was a far more powerful a force. And for a brief moment that morbid curiosity was satisfied. Some inspector must have arrived on the scene and the blankets were pulled away…

I heard later that the man who fell that day had slipped while trying to affix something back on the balcony above him. He had fallen some seventeen stories, nearly double Phil’s fatal decent, but it’s still his twisted corpse I visualize when I think of how Phil died. Unnaturally bent and twisted with a graphic display around him that I dare not try to capture in print. That remains the closest I’ve come to fatality… coffins are too far removed.

There are some things I need to come to terms with. There are also some terms I need to define. Ambiguity will ruin me. This is the epitaph of hope. Frosty died when he ceased to hope. I’ll die if I don’t cease to hope. Hope for me has always revolved around a person, rather, a relationship with a person. I named that person ‘Hope’ in order to protect myself. I can deny an identity if it remains anonymous. I can pretend that it won’t hurt should Hope read this and hate me for it, or laugh at it, or do anything but see the truth I’ve poured into it. Then I could pretend that she was not Hope at all…

All I really want is to be the me I am inside.

We, people in general, are a selfish lot. This is one vast generalization I’ll adhere to. There are no exceptions to selfishness, especially if Christ worshipped God and was who he said he was. Children don’t lose any time in learning what it means to possess. Maybe it’s not so bad, but I’ve seen too many smiles and tears evoked from the presence and absence of things. I think if we could learn to become selfless in our actions we would live in a perfect world. I’m an idealist, though. I aspire to absolutes, or my own understanding of objectivity, so I guess my Idealism may as well be selfishness. So might everything. That must be why it’s better to love than to deceive ourselves that selflessness is even possible of being a virtue worth practicing.

I moved a few months after Phil died. I was living at residence in school but the institution had administrative problems that led me discontinue my enrollment prematurely. I had lived with my mother for a few years and was planning to move in with my father after the school year. I ended up making the transition sooner than I had expected to.

I had lived in the same city for twenty years. I knew that place like the back of my hand. In my lifetime the population had probably doubled and the boundaries too. I lived in six different houses, three apartments, attended eight educational facilities, and probably as many religious ones in those twenty short years spanning my life thus far. Everyone I knew, everyone who knew me, my old workplaces, old hangouts, old everything, was left behind. When I left my mother on the porch she wept. I left all of my personal history without a second thought. It’s only hard to leave when you feel like you have a home. After Phil’s death a sense of urgency struck me. Not that Phil’s death drove me away or opened any doors, but it unearthed a sense of desperation that was in the process of surfacing for a long time. For years I’d felt like I didn’t belong. I tried to look ahead and remain occupied in studies or employment but everything just seemed so temporal and trivial. I graduated high school without any resounding milestones to mark my way, and proceeded to university as though it were just one of the innumerable roads to drudgery. My dime a dozen dreams of fortune and fame were being crushed under the burden of so-called reality. I was stuck in the mundane morose ‘real world’ and I knew that greater things existed elsewhere. I was lost in a labyrinth of directionless choices and futile opportunities and I knew that my only hope was to get away. Besides, Hope had my heart for months already, and if home is where your heart is, mine was nowhere near my place of residence. I risked my comfort for two reasons, hope and Hope.

I buried a lot with the handful of dirt I dropped on Phil’s coffin. I buried dreams and ideas, some of them have been resurrected to new life, some have been resurrected to new death, some have remained buried and some have yet to be buried. Sometimes we don’t realize the magnitude of an instant until we distance ourselves from it; time is a necessary spacer. Phil’s funeral was fairly quiet. No trumpets, bagpipes, or twenty-one gun salutes, no nationwide moment of silence, just bereaved relations, a few inconsolable classmates and a few like myself who stood in an eerie pensive confusion. It rained; even if it was only misty drizzle in the cemetery, there was a torrent in my head. It wasn’t fair. The world would never know him. The world would miss out on an incredible human being because it rained one day in May. Phil would have liked that. He would have come up with some diminishing perspective and reduced the whole fatal chain of events to the first drop of water that hit him on his way to work when ‘it was really coming down’. Phil loved the simplicity of confusion. He loved to pass over the grandest obstacles and lose himself in details. There is so much missing from his story. So much remains a mystery, to die with him. I didn’t even know whom to hate at the funeral; the only thing I knew about Angelica’s appearance was the color of her eyes. They were green. I looked around for the enchantress that bewitched my friend. I scanned in bitter frustration for the green-eyed monster that consumed this human sacrifice. She wasn’t there. I didn’t know many there, there weren’t many in the first place, but none of those who made an appearance was the siren Angelica.

When I thought about it I was astounded by how few people cared for the passing of a twenty-year-old out of this existence. The minister’s eulogy, taken from some manual for all occasions, book-marked and highlighted for service time-allotment, scripted between weddings and christenings, was an empty monotone oration. The songs, decided upon by Phil’s grandmother, were mumbled out of dusty hymnals, few knew the tunes. The people, faced with their own mortality and the ultimate illustration of the consequences of choice, were consumed with their loss and how this tragedy would affect their lives. Phil used to go on about how the system teaches us that the standard of worth in society is contribution. How our education equates worth with notoriety. That is such an inaccurate and unattainable standard for the majority of people who will live malcontented because they’ll torture themselves with overwhelming feelings of inadequacy for never being more. Still, I could almost picture Phil rising from the dead, by the hand of God, in answer to the prayer of some charismatic zealot, only to see his funeral and jump again.

“Popularity is no measure of worth, Phil.”

“Life is relationships.”

“Quality not quantity.”

“If someone couldn’t write a book about your life, it was wasted. I want people to know my story. I want there to be a story to tell.”

“There are only two people who will know my story: God, because I can’t help his reading it, and my wife, whoever she turns out to be, because she will be the only one to turn certain pages.”

“It’s funny… in this day and age you’re lucky if you get a moment of silence for your labors in life. I won’t be happy with less than a holiday… at the least nationwide news coverage.”

He said this with a cynical smile as if he knew he’d pass with less notice than the dying flame of a match. It’s only if you’re holding the match that you pay attention to the flame… and it’s usually the one holding the match that extinguishes it too… before they’re burnt. I’m sorry buddy, but it was a quiet event, open invitation, where few showed up. And you left your story in bad hands… I’m not worthy of articulating a life, let alone a life like yours… I can’t even live my own.

“If you’re not living you’re dying.”

Too many times we vowed to get busy living. Usually proceeding a bad movie or an evening spent witnessing an acquaintance’s binge at an excuse for alcohol consumption labeled a ‘party’. The problem was we couldn’t escape the parameters of living laid out for us… and we wanted to on several occasions; the parameters aren’t made with everyone in mind, regardless of how often we’re made to believe they are.

I think that the first step towards living is ridding ourselves of everyone else’s preconceptions of us, being those useless anxieties of expectation that lead us to examine our sorry selves in the mirror in search of our shortcomings; if we could free ourselves of those impositions then we might find our own worthwhile pursuits. I don’t know what dreams I’ll have tonight, or what they’ll birth tomorrow, but I won’t be defined in a day. I may never know who I am or all I’ll come to be; I think those questions may only be answered in how I’m remembered by the one who knows me, or in a compilation of all who knew me, but it is my sole ambition that one person will be able to answer that question by saying that I was her one and only truest love. That is the contribution I want to have on one solitary individual; I want to be the love of my love, the hope of Hope, the dream of my dream. That is the only thing that keeps the shell of faith and desire from cracking, under the pressures that the world brings, and spilling all I’ve held dear all over; the hope that my beloved is awaiting me with the same fervor I wait with.

It is my desire to know hope that I might discover love. It is a fear of mine that I’ll content myself with hope, and never pursue love, because of the inadequacies I see when I look at that image in the mirror. To be as honest as I’m capable of being, I don’t think I’m able to love myself until someone else sees something worth loving in me. I have yet to find it and I look. Every time I look in the mirror I scrutinize myself, inside and out, for the blemish or flaw that makes it impossible for me to accept admiration or encouragement or the intimacy of love that is my heart’s desire. I have difficulty accepting that someone else could love what I could not. Phil summed it up once while I was driving…

“Sometimes I think you’re naïve to believe in this reclusive Love, especially to the point of torturing, sorry, 'saving' yourself, for someone yet unknown…”

He was talking to me but I was pretending not to listen. He was looking at the speedometer while I lowered the window.

“Then I remember that you think speed limits are naïve, unjust, presuppositions enforced by pseudo authority figures and that that thought reassures you of some notion of a greater absolute and principles and truth and perfection and eternity, which in turn leads to the contemplation of the other virtues of peace and comfort and joy which all eventually leads back to God, and I know that you know that love must exist somewhere out there for those who believe in it and it’s that thought that sustains your will for another day without that which you so strongly desire.”

I just looked at him while he looked out of my window, to the officer, whom had just ambled into view and was now shining his flashlight throughout the interior of my car. I had been pulled over doing one hundred in a sixty. I put my head on the steering wheel. The cop looked at Phil and I in turn. Phil said afterward that his face looked like it was chiseled out of granite, I couldn’t say, I couldn’t look at him.

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

“Sir, the speed of thought cannot be measured.”

“I’m addressing the driver, son.”

“Sir, the one driving this car can only be reached through devoted prayer. My friend here was in communion with higher purposes.”

“Have you boys been drinking?”

“No, officer.”

I took the liberty of professing this much… I didn’t think Phil could keep my account balanced much longer.

“He’s lying, sir.”

I looked at Phil. In an instantaneous intoxicating fury, I yelled at him.

“What the hell are you doing!”

“You see, sir? He’s totally out of control, he’s gone, he’s wasted, he may as well have been drinking all night. He’s a wreck officer… he’s in love.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s in love, sir.”

“Let me get this straight, you were doing a hundred and three in a sixty zone because you’re in love?”

I looked at Phil. I swallowed, hard, and looked at the officer. Phil’s description was rather accurate; I was looking at the tombstone marking my open grave… and I jumped right in.

“If you knew her, officer… you’d know my hurry.”

He actually smiled. He checked himself and looked sternly again at both of us. Then he addressed me, all business.

“License and registration.”

The time for talk had passed, even Phil could sense as much. I handed the articles requested to the officer.

“Now don’t go anywhere…”

He said it almost playfully, like we were the toys. He turned around and started back to his cruiser. He was there for a good ten minutes before his flashlight bobbed back to my open window. Neither Phil nor myself had ventured anything but breathing for those ten minutes, only mine was considerably more irregular than Frosty’s. The cop handed back my license, intact, and registration, and a ticket, all in a neatly folded little package.

“Slow it down, boys, you’ll get where you want to go quicker if you get there alive.”

He drove away.

We stayed parked in the dark on the shoulder of the street in silence for another good fifteen minutes, expecting the cavalry.

“I think he bought it, Fost … you can go now.”

“I bought it, Phil… and I pray to God I can.”

Phil's Story, Chapter 14

Issues.

“You have issues.”

Phil knew about my issues. He helped bring many of them to light.

“Like what?”

“Trust for starters.”

“How would you know?”

“Trust me.”

“Why.”

“See?”

“No. Just because I don’t trust you doesn’t mean I have trust issues.”

“That’s not the issue. There isn’t even a desire to trust; that’s the issue…”

“I’d love to be able to trust someone.”

“Then trust me.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Sure it is.”

“Trust takes time.”

“Trust takes risk, not time.”

“I’m not big on risk.”

“No?”

That day Phil took me cliff jumping. Forty-odd feet to start. Our phys-ed teacher had taught us how to deep dive off of a three meter board… but that couldn’t prepare me for sprinting off of a forty-plus foot plateau into nothing, and then water. It was exhilarating to say the least.

“Now do you trust me?”

Treading water after the fall. High on adrenaline. Elated.

“Enough to follow you off of a cliff… not enough to reveal my heart.”

He laughed and we swam for shore.

“Are you going or not?”

“I don’t know.”

This was the night he met Angelica. He was trying to convince me to accompany him to this party for some guy in our Algebra class I had never spoken to in my life. I’m not big on parties to begin with, not the kind I figured this would be, and especially not parties for strangers.

“What else are you going to do?”

“I don’t know… something might come up.”

“Someone?”

“Something.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know… something I’d enjoy.”

“You’d enjoy the party if you gave it a chance.”

“There’s a lot I might enjoy that I will never give a chance for that very reason.”

“No one could say you’re a hedonist… but they could say you have a commitment issue.”

“How so?”

“I told you about this a week ago, and you’ve kept putting it off in hopes of something better. Hope isn’t worth waiting for, Fost. You’re going to miss living for hopes of living.”

I don’t think he could have known then about Hope… but he sure hit the nail on the head… sort of. I am aware of my commitment issue, but that isn’t to be confused with my indecisiveness issue. My indecisiveness comes from not caring about certain decisions and not figuring that they’re actually worth the effort of thought and weight of commitment. I take commitment seriously. Remember, my problem with commitment is that I commit to things that don’t exist… but I still take it seriously; this was my first act of commitment towards Hope, but I had previously acted similarly with both Jules, and Alice, so it’s an issue with a history I’ve never bothered to delve into. This wasn’t indecision, it was commitment-oriented: determination not to enter into a circumstance in which I might willfully or otherwise compromise my chances of being with Hope.

“I’m not going, Phil.”

He left it at that. I ended up trying to call her that night, long-distance, and getting the answering machine. I left a message and spent the night waiting. Had anyone called that night they would have been the recipient of uncharacteristically prompt, well-mannered, and good-natured greetings, but no one did, which meant I didn’t have to explain much the following day, especially because Phil was doing most of the talking during coffee. He was going on about Angelica. I just kept agreeing, thinking of Hope.

“I know what you mean.”

“You couldn’t, you haven’t met her.”

“It’s your turn to trust me. Have a little faith.”

“Faith is one of my issues. Prove it.”

“She is the cause, and the solution, of every problem. She poses questions and she is the only answer. There are traces of her everywhere, but they are not enough. You’re thirsty, and only she can satisfy your thirst…”

I would have continued but he interrupted me.

“Ok, you’re close… perhaps one day you could make me a believer… today, just let me…”

He trailed off, so I finished his sentence.

“Hope.”

He looked at me looking at him with my smug smile. That coffee we said little, considering the time, but we communicated much.

“It’s not so much communication… more a lack of honesty therein. You’re very good at articulating thoughts and stuff… just not yours.”

He was exploring another one of my issues, this time during lunch, after a drama exam. I had to tell a personal story…

“We left early enough, but that was because we didn’t have a clue where we were going. I had booked the test in a nearby town, that I wasn’t familiar with, to avoid having to wait eight months to take it. Let this be lesson, patience is a virtue. I ended up arriving early, despite numerous detours, and parked with my licensed-driver friend in the parking lot. While I waited patiently for my appointment time things began to happen around us. Cars started lining up in the street, the uniformed transportation officers arrived, and my friend spilled hot coffee down my front. I was supposed to be one of the first scheduled to take my test that morning, but I didn’t know that the timetabling was just a farce and that the real MO was to line up and wait your turn. I only figured it out when the driving authorities made their way to the line of cars that had formed before my very eyes not far from where I sat parked.”

I started my story with the utmost sincerity. I was seated before my peers telling the tale of my failed driving examination, not the easiest thing to share with classmates, and as the imminent humiliation was presented to my conscious mind, along with the realization that all eyes were on me, I started to feel cramped and violated. This all happened during “We left early enough”. In the time it took for me to take a breath, a change occurred. I paused, realizing I was on a stage, in the spotlight, and a strange thing happens to me when I perceive that I am the center of attention… I start acting. So the change that took place between “We left early enough” and “but that was because…” was subtle, but enough to convince Phil that it was no longer myself telling my story but a character, birthed out of convenience to distance myself from the associated shame and simultaneously actively entertain those who were watching.

“I mean, it was over before it began. The man who kicked my friend out of the car and asked for my permit was a hulking beast who must have stood six five and weighed in at over three hundred pounds. He later claimed that he was the least intimidating of the driving instructors. He entered what information he needed and then prepared himself for another leisurely drive down the familiar streets he knew so well.

‘You can go when you’re ready.’

He seemed pleasant enough. I was as ready as I would ever be so I went, smoothly and safely, wherever he directed me to go. Then it happened, the one little mistake that ruined it for me. He directed me to make a left down a small residential street. I did; he critiqued my steering. As I drove down the street I was haunted by the horror stories of those who had taken similar tests before me. I was calculating and anticipating what to expect and how to overcome the trickery I would face at the whim of this man beside me who held the key to my immediate future in his hand. Then it registered, something was not quite right with the scene composing my field of vision; facing me, on either side of the street, were two stop signs. Which was fine, of no relevance whatsoever, so long as I didn’t have to…

‘Turn left at the stop sign.’

I bet he said it with a malignant smile of deviant victory. I scanned around frantically for a logical aid. There was no oncoming traffic, no lines down the middle of the road, and there were two stop signs, on both sides of the road, facing me. On the other hand I didn’t see any ‘One Way’ street signs… but I had been distracted, and besides, every road test is supposed to take you down a one way street, every story I had heard foretold of the dreaded ‘one way’ situations. On every account my reason was backing the decision I made. I lacked confidence however; if reason were enough, we wouldn’t need laws. I began hesitantly to drift into the left-hand side of the road, trying to test out the water, until he grabbed the wheel and the water froze and trapped me under, in the frigid darkness, and he won. I knew I was finished.

‘You realize that you’re driving on the wrong side of the road.’

It didn’t matter that I had preformed flawlessly up to that point, or that I triumphantly overcame my attitude and completed the test without peeling out into the nearest throughway and playing chicken with Mack trucks until he passed me, or crushed me, or I killed us both. He failed me mercilessly. He even had the audacity to say I parked too close to the curb (without hitting it) while parallel parking. I guess that’s the price of the road less traveled…”

When I finished my story I sat for a second and slowly came to myself. As I stood and returned to my seat in the audience, my peers congratulated me. My teacher’s criticism was that I was too comfortable (‘too close to the curb’?). Phillip, seated in the back, was shaking his head. We didn’t talk until lunch.

“What was wrong with it?”

He hadn’t even sat down yet, but I was curious.

“It wasn’t you.”

I put my drink down, he was starting something.

“So.”

“You have issues.”

He took a bite of his sandwich.

“So do you, so does everyone… so what.”

“True. But when you know what they are, shouldn’t you try to work through them?”

My greatest issue is just that; I’m comfortable, even content. I embrace these personal quirks because I think that they define me.

“You won’t be remembered for your problems, Fost. Like you said, everyone has them. You’ll be recognized for overcoming them, because you not only have the ability to do so, but you can do so in a unique way.”

“What are you prophesying or something? You’re starting to sound like some of the guys from church.”

“I may not believe in your religion, but I believe in you.”

“Stop, you’re making me all teary.”

I’ve never been able to accept compliments or encouragement easily. I tend to get offensive when people try, thereby dissuading their praise, that they might direct it to one more worthy… another product of institutional religion and circumstances affecting my developmental stages.

“I’m serious… there’s potential in you”.

“There’s potential in everyone.”

“Maybe… but there’s not hope in everyone. You’ve retained a means of hoping, and that’s going to empower you to heights many can’t reach. Hope is going to give you wings, as soon as you cut the binds tying you down.”

“I’m sick and tired of hoping, Phil. I want more.”

“There is no life without hope.”

“There are greater things than hope.”

“Hope comes first.”

I’m not intending to illustrate how inconsistent people can be, while remaining true to themselves, and true to the given scenario, but that seems to be the case for Phil at the moment. I’m coming to think that we, as people, are capable of making issues out of just about anything. The more we talk and think about things, without professing them in action as well, the more apt we are to make hypocrites of ourselves or clichés of what we say. I wonder if the law of supply and demand applies in literature. If it does, and I have a store of one million words to share, what is the worth of one?

Phil's Story, Chapter 13

Art.

I work at a hotel. One of my regular duties is to set up tables for afternoon tea in the lake lounge. There’s a piano located in the room and it’s usually locked up to deter potential nuisances. However one day as I walked into the room, carrying a table under each arm, I noticed that it was particularly crowded. This wasn’t too unusual considering the house count was relatively high for the off-season, so I didn’t take much notice, and I went about my work. Then the playing started. My initial reaction was to approach the young man who had begun to play and politely ask him to desist. The décor is not a toy. However, by the time that thought was fully formed, I had noticed that my eyes had begun to well up. I managed to hold back any full-fledged tears, but my throat tightened, and while my fingers worked their way around the table, preparing it to be set, my mind was carried away by the melody hammered out by those skilled young fingers nurturing those aged keys, giving them purpose, unlocking a portal to a realm of emotion that only music can penetrate.

There is power in music; there is power in art.

I have a tendency to create artistic associations, especially with music and songs. I’m not a follower of bands or a fan of groups. I’ve been to a couple low-key concerts and I’ve decided they’re not my thing. (But I’d gladly accept U2 tickets.) It just seems like too much hero-worship for mere people. I know, that’s coming from an aspiring actor/writer/whatever, but musicians have a unique effect on people because their mode of expression is such a universal one.

I’m particular to love songs; heartfelt ballads professing passions and amour, love and romance; they nurture my hope; they nurture my hope for my Hope… sometimes. There are those times that they make me realize that my hope for Hope is still just a hope and a ways off from becoming the love that they, the songs, profess. I’m big on pictures that capture beauty and color and some natural emotion; the anger of the sky, the tranquility of an evergreen, the joy of a waterfall, the resolute mountaintop… the world is full of expressions not our own. I love audible and visual sensations, but sound and sight lead me to reflection, and reflection leads me to act.

I love to act. It provides me with a means to release all of the emotional baggage I have a tendency to collect and store in the recesses of my being. All that I receive from the limited relational inputs, and all that is infused from the ongoing bombardment of external artistic stimuli, is harbored until I find a spotlight or a stage. I think I’m most myself when I can don the guise of being someone else. I can profess my love as Romeo, I can be angry and confused reading Hamlet, the shame of Proctor, I can even cry, with a painted face, for all the agonies of humanity because I know how to express my own agony; hatred, fear, desire… I know how I would portray most every thought that traverses my mind had I a character to excuse the purity of my expression, because you never know when honesty will end up risking more than you’re prepared to risk. I have a problem with risk.

Inspiration?

You lived in the age of Empires, both real and ideal,

But Rome and Byzantium fell to ruin by fire;

Their ashes are a memory we no longer feel.

Disbelief has rendered mute your revelations of the divine.

In time it will not matter, for now silence whispers lies.

Youth once sought you in the wisdom of the ages

Today they can't be bothered turning pages

And instead of heeding those who heralded your virtues,

We send them off to die.

Why not? They will not yield your tales to their children anymore.

You were rich in Love when Love was treasured still.

Now Love lies down for lust and lures not worth a lover's skill.

Yet the truest hearts remain outbid in their affection

In a world where everyone is wooing their own reflection

And bankrupt Love has failed to make good its past collection.

Your last refuge lies in nature.

Nature lies in need

Of nurture, love, or holiness to water nature's seed.

Where has Inspiration gone?

Why have poets ceased to write?

Their memories scrawled on subway walls,

Lost in tired faces,

They've vanished in the night in search of meaning in these spaces.

Phil's Story, Chapter 12

Hope.

Pandora’s box is problematic, especially for me, because it raises the debate of the nature of Hope. It begs the question: is hope a strong virtue, to withstand being packed away with so much evil and survive, or is it the weightiest vice, so thick, heavy, and consuming that it must lie in wait to be found? I’ve known a few Hopes in my lifetime. Each, in succession, has raised some standard of what it will take for me to hope again… and each has brought me to Pandora’s box.

I have a commitment issue. Actually, I have a lot of issues, I’m practically a subscriber; I even have some issues with my issues, double-sized with glossy covers and pullout sections. None of them are Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions either; sorry Phil. My problem with commitment is that I have a tendency to bind myself to relationships that don’t exist; I commit to Hopes. I guess my way of thinking is that ideally I’ll wait patiently building up trust and faith to becoming a friend, and should a mutual attraction develop then the investment of Hope matures into Love. This is still just theory, and a seemingly naïve one. What usually ends up happening is this: I slowly open myself up, one petal at a time, to the one I have my heart set on, meanwhile they, in full bloom, meet someone else, hook up, sometimes break up and find another after crying on my shoulder and leaning on me through the difficult time(s), otherwise things get serious, they become engaged, married, or simply detached, and I end up in one of two positions; lying wilted in a heap with a myriad of others tossed aside, or displayed nicely in a vase labeled “best friend” or “like a brother”. My idea of love is that it isn’t put on display. Love takes root; true love is grafted on, then takes root, and a whole new hybrid is created.

I think the real problem in that, is not with the plan in itself, I think it’s essentially a good plan. One vital thing needs to be remedied in the equation though. Hitherto, what I’ve done is this, I’ve fallen in love with Hope, and in so doing I’ve stopped hope from maturing into love. If Hope is a blossom, Love is the fruit.

“Hey, you know that girl who served you at the counter? She wants to talk to you.”

An employee of a movie theater came to the place where I was sitting with my father and my brother and said this to me five minutes before the movie was scheduled to start. I couldn’t believe it.

“Excuse me?”

“She wants to meet you. Her name is Leslie and she thinks you’re hot… Do you do drugs or any other freaky shit?”

I looked at my father and my brother incredulously… they were doing all they could to refrain from laughing out loud.

“It doesn’t even matter. Just go talk to her. She’s really sweet.”

I could tell they weren’t going to take the hint that I’m not well versed in these kinds of situations and would rather just sit, relax, and enjoy the show, because I’d be lost in going and talking to some girl whose only association with me is having served me a box of candy.

“Fine. I’ll talk to her before I go.”

“Her shift is over before the movie gets out.”

“Then you’ll have to give me a minute.”

“Alright, I won’t even start the movie until you come back… that way you won’t miss anything.”

“Thanks. That’s very considerate.”

There are times that I can’t even tell when I’m being sarcastic.

The employee left me with my thoughts, and my father and my brother, and their chiding. I excused myself, because anything was better than having to put up with my familial harassment. Leslie was in a back room when I came out of the theater, but as I approached the counter a different fellow employee went to summon her. I sensed that something was afoot.

Leslie, the girl who sold us our snacks, was a very attractive girl, she had longish dirty blonde hair, a beautiful smile, lovely eyes that always seemed imploring because she was rather petite in stature, but that seemed to suit her athletic frame. I was actually somewhat taken aback; the only girls who ever seem to show an interest in me are ones I’m not attracted to; Leslie was the first and only exception to date. When she emerged from the room she was in, I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pride. Naturally that led me to try and hide the fact that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

So far, so good.

“So…”

It was all down hill from there.

“Your friend said that I should come and talk to you.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. I mean, I’m glad I was given such an opportunity. I’m not one to speak up unless an opportunity presents itself.”

“No?”

“No… I’m pretty bad at this.”

“No you’re not.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“Are you from around here?”

“Yeah, not far. I live right around the mall… in the apartment buildings.”

“East or West?”

“West. Number eighteen.”

“I have a friend in five.”

“What about you?”

“I’m in the ‘L’ section.”

A pause followed. An awkward one. I broke it.

“So… do you go to school?”

“Northern High School.”

“My brother went there. I went to Mayland Arts. I’m in college now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, look I really should get going… the movie is about to start.”

“Here.”

She handed me a folded piece of paper, on which was neatly printed “Leslie” and seven legible digits.

“Call me.”

I know why I said it and I’ll admit it could have been a grave mistake not even giving such a seemingly great individual a chance, but I couldn’t help it, I had met Hope first, and I was taken… Hope just didn’t know she had me.

“I have a girlfriend.”

“Oh…”

“But maybe we could still chill sometime…”

“Sure, call me.”

I never spoke to Leslie again. I took my seat for the movie and stared blankly at the screen. I don’t even remember what movie it was that was ruined for me. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I had made a mistake. For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I’m sorry that I am how I am at times, but, c’est la vie. It’s no excuse, I know, but I’m aware of my limitations and it would not have been fair to be with Leslie and still be thinking of Hope.

After my father remarried he went back into the ministry relocating four hundred miles away. Regardless of what a relationship is, there are factors that are apt to influence it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder only in contrast to the presence that makes the roots go deeper. I’ve only just recently learned that there’s something to be said for history. That’s getting ahead of myself… Needless to say, my father and I, once quite close, drifted suddenly apart. Efforts made to close the gap mended little. My relationship with my mother wasn’t much better, despite the close proximity or due to it. In short, I ceased to have a home when mine broke; from the time I was fifteen years old I lived in hopes. I’ve sustained myself with ideals and dreams and futures less bleak, none of which have been realized to any degree worth articulating. Changes have occurred in my life, both major and minor, but I’m still alone and homeless, albeit sheltered and better off than many, so what right have I to complain? My complaint lies in myself, in who I am, and in how I’ve become this faithless hopeless creature in search of meaning and identity.

Phil said he knew me. He thought he could predict what I would say or do. He’d try to prove his case by finishing sentences that I ended in some predictable fashion, or mimicking some gesture or expression. He said I was deep and superficial.

“What does that mean?”

“You have all these ideas locked away, trapped behind masks and fronts. When will you learn to open up and risk yourself?”

“Someone will break me.”

I met Hope at a church function of my father’s congregation. My previous Hope, Julianne, had been engaged some time ago and that had marked the definitive end to that hope. No one had since evoked in me the same purity of passion and inspiration that emerged from my time with Julianne; that is until Hope arrived at the banquet in a black evening gown and glided across the dinner hall to the table I alone was sitting at. I tried to close my mouth but I don’t recall succeeding, watching with awe and admiration her grace and finesse, she was introduced to me by her sister-in-law, an acquaintance I had met during an earlier visit.

“This is…”

Hope.

A new Hope is distinct and separate from all those that previously held the title. What makes them so is the very fact that they are given the same distinction. To hope, one must anticipate an unforeseen ecstasy, realized only in possibilities rather than experiences. To be Hope, one must embody that same anticipation. From that night to this, I have been in a constant state of anticipation of the next opportunity I would have to see, hear, touch, smell, or otherwise sense her. Hope is sensory. Each hopeful experience births a greater hope, until all that remains is an action I’m incapable of carrying out… that covering cocoon of confession that enables the metamorphosis of hope to love.

Hope isn’t something you can just turn from at a whim. I think there’s only three things that will break Hope’s spell: Hope’s betrayal, a greater Hope, or the transformation of Hope to Love. All are capable of breaking someone, but it’s only the latter that will set you free in doing so… and I think that in everyone love eventually takes priority…