“Let one live alone doing no evil, care-free, like an elephant in the elephant forest.” -Buddha
She was coming to visit. She was coming to say goodbye. We both knew so. Six years of hellos and now there would be a goodbye. It made me feel sad or something akin to sadness; perhaps a twisted numbness. It was hard to describe.
Regrets? Gods there were many! But mostly it was the act of existence itself. It was a joke that had no humor. Given a wish I would exist without impact, consequence, effect, or intent. I would like to be a ghost among the darkness; or I would like to be not at all.
I was six years younger and it was very early in the morning. The sun had barely risen and I was at work. She stood in the center of the room with a coworker, and I didn't particularly want to meet anyone at this hour but she had the kind of face I liked to see. The simple introductions were best. I smiled; "Hi."
I was a new person in a new country. The world was so vast that sometimes I lost myself in the space of it. This life was terminal at best. It was shockingly bizarre and glorious and the dichotomy of it all took my breath away. Sometimes memories would flood me at once and in no particular order. I heard screams in the night on a New York street. I embraced my sister on her wedding day and a pig squealed in the Tennessee heat. I lowered pipes into a reservoir and peered over the edge of the dam. In high school a grown man beat me half to death. Later, in the slick Seattle winter a car struggled to brake on the ice and a woman flipped over the windshield. In the red desert of Arizona I coasted to a stop and walked away from my vehicle, dumbstruck by the sun hanging there like a dead friend. The stillness took my breath away.
We held hands during field trips in the park. She bought me drinks at our favorite dive bar. I carried her up the stairs on her birthday. We peered into a glass tank and she promised to find me a pet octopus. "I love you," we said.
There was stillness in other places, too. The ridgeline of the mountains, hidden by trees. Distant fireworks in the rain on top of an abandoned Boston apartment. An empty bus station in Vermont. The middle of a wooden bridge over a lazy river. A rare quiet moment on the subway, watching the buildings of men pass by. In places I had visited or would encounter one day, the stillness was there. Perhaps it was always there under the surface. But there was that chaos too. I never had the ability to reconcile it all. How could we have both? I could only close my eyes and splash cool water across my face; drink in a dark room. Pretend.
A fire broke out in our kitchen that left both of us shaking. We listened to her father speak at her mother's funeral. We had a pregnancy scare after one drunken night. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in the mountains. The owner said I reminded her of her son and to come back anytime. We never would. Later, we argued in that small apartment. She said I didn't communicate and it was true. I loved her. But I just didn't know what to say about the future.
Reality seemed to fragment at times. I tried to clear my head. This was all temporary. It was these things I couldn't explain. A man with one eye screamed and slammed his face into the wall. A tiny bird broke its neck and stared at me weakly. There were cancers floating just out of sight and they would kill us one day. The world was aflame. One only had to look outside in a crisis to see it was all as hopeless as a god.
There. There. In a few hours a van would take her away for a flight of 10,000 miles. I couldn't reasonably imagine that distance. I also couldn't reasonably imagine the future. Would I see her again? Our past experiences together began to seem like a memory of a memory. As far away as she would be. I wanted them back. But I also knew the person who had shared them was someone else. Someone younger and less weary. Was this surreal or was it ordinary? I couldn't tell anymore. And who did I miss in my life and who had I forgotten about? The truth was I wasn't sure. I missed everyone. But more than that I missed a time of blackberries and June bugs. A time when I could still witness depravity with innocence. I missed a time that had existed before the darkness and crowds, if ever there was one.
At the end we sat at a cafe and I nudged food with a fork. It probably tasted good but I didn't know. I hadn't felt hunger for a while. And she told me how she felt and I knew she was saying goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. I think this is goodbye, I told myself.
What was there to say? I relished the idea of absence ever since I could remember. I had hoped it would lead me to a quiet dark place. A spot to rest my head. How could I explain that? To a lover or to anyone? I didn't want a family or a home or a future. I just wanted a dark room to forget. A quiet place under a tree where one could fade away. One more beer after the last.
Alone. It was a strange feeling. I wasn't sure what to do with it. But perhaps it was as it should be. Perhaps I could stay that way. Singularly doing no harm. No one to drag with me and damage. Back at my place in the dim light I cradled my head in my hands. I had rarely felt so lonely. I felt tattered and stained and aching and exhausted but at least I wasn't taking anyone else into the chaos I felt growing around me at times. And there was a stillness just beyond that door. Past the cusp of time was the smell of clean water. Echoes of bird-calls. And something in me stirred. Maybe now I could go back. Back to where I came from. Maybe now it was finally time to return to that elephant forest.