On the starboard side, green lights flourished. Passengers and crew alike staggered to the deck and to the cold railing, peering over the frigid boundaries between ship and sea to glance at the strange phenomenon. We are on the Titanic, and the iceberg has just sunk in a fury — the ship creaked and lunged like a woman full of sehnsucht. The captain screamed, predictably, “Damn the icebergs! Full steam ahead!” A poor old woman lost her footing as the invincible ship lurched in a moment of rare mortality, slipping on the ice-coated hardwood floor, landing on her side with a thud. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
And here is the beginning, a mess. The cacophony will subside accordingly, with respect to the destination. There it is (the beginning), in front of you:
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We go from here, a short little journey — long-winded perhaps, but short. By the docks. The clouds twisted thick and dark, and people in long black formal wear march onto the ship in roves and clusters. What follows is a polite non sequitur. Watching the birds dance overhead, cawing atonal tunes, torrents of sounds, intersecting with the lapping of waves ashore, Harold meets Cathy for the first time. He bends down a little, reaches her hand and kisses it gently. His voice comes out rough and coarse, but he quickly catches himself by coughing slightly and restarting his sentence. Politely smiling, Cathy avoids Harold by excusing herself to her imaginary husband, which she quickly names Germain. Foghorn blows, twice — three times before the last passengers and crowd members turn around to look at the ship, ready to depart.
The first three days consist of almost constant diving into black holes, swerving across whirlpools and gusts of tremendous winds. Several crewmembers, including the generic black cook, were tossed overboard, never to be seen again, giving off Wilhelm screams as they flew upwards and fell downwards in beautiful arcs. The captain is also generically old with a thick white beard, wearing also white. He speaks with a slight French accent, or so it seems — he might be Belgian, or something along those lines.
Furies are furious — obvious, yes, but the hisses are quite piercing, like none other. The type that blows up windows and slices eardrums open, leaving sloshes of blood on the deck for poor boys to mop up. They appear once in a while, usually when the clouds turn red: full red, red enough to gloss over the ocean ripples and give the horizon a hellish tint. Psychedelic shit.
Waves rolling on and on and on.
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They do get broken up by the gigantic hull, the peaks stretching upwards desperately against gravity. Over yonder, gravity flips out every so often — twisting and turning, pushing and pulling at different rates at different times, depending on the Earth’s mood and the sun’s generosity. When gravity feels angry, as it did some two and a half weeks into the trip, it tosses the boat and the sea sideways, so we were sailing up the sky, like a rocket, or more like a reverse shooting star.
I am the other side of Twombly’s canvas; I am Pollock’s brush; I am Picasso’s circle. So it follows, that our ship is the Queen Anne’s Revenge’s nuclear engine. Fling your (my) arms on the deck, and spin around like this insane world, and breathe in the insane fire-infused air. Such is the volatile oxygen we love — and then the helium that lifts up the sails and suspends our disbelief and the sweet water below. Ick ter ram bles tem frim dur
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Let us, as Eliot enjoys saying, bring ourselves out of this circumstance of confusion and absurdity, to more of the same. Except this time, we have become elevated, in an inverted sense, like Virgil tugging your arms, coaxing you to see Brutus. “Look at him, laughing his liver out. Prometheus would do the same, but he has to make do with his goddamned gallbladder.” Yossarian would say the same about Snowden, while I’m stuck at the front of the ship, looking through binoculars at Zeus and his small “thunderbolt,” oh what a wrinkly sight. Cue the censorship that inevitably comes, like greed with capitalism and stupidity with general humanity. And oh the humanity, and this pathetic monologue that continues with spite and inscrutability and your utter [negative emotional response]. Sing a Christmas carol for Uncle Ben; we have just arrived at a snowcapped village in the Alps. Say hi to Santa; he’s working on some brandy at the moment.
Sailors dance and laugh and clap their hands. Oi oi, yes?
…and the mast crashed down, with a surprisingly quiet thud, but conjoined with terrifyingly loud shrieks from the scampering crew. I arrived with but a bucket in my arms, probably with a panicked look on my face, whole body shivering, unable to take a single step in any direction. Beyond this initial spasm of shock, I realized that I was also utterly confused; having only woken up minutes prior, I had no idea what the origin of this commotion was, and that the sky was perfectly blue dispelled my first suspicion that it was a terrible storm. This confusion refused to subside, even after I most convincingly saw with my own acute eyes two large tentacles drag across the watery deck two sailors, and then yank them with alarming force down to the sea. I must have dropped the bucket at this point and ran — and I ran towards really nowhere, stopped by the torrent of water flooding in, and then stopped in the opposite direction by flailing tentacles thrashing every inch of lumber into wooden shards in front of me. This, as interpreted by me, my cue to jump ship. And I did, without hesitation or second thought, though the moment my feet ceased contact with ship, the falling sensation brought my mind back to rationality for just a brief moment in time, in which I flashed through highlights of my life — but it was so quick, it was only a crumpled collection of sounds and blurred images — and I was back. My eyes widened and then slammed shut as my body prepared to meet the waves face first, and the second it did, I felt an electric tingle go through me, followed immediately by the complete loss of control. The next memory I can remember is waking up in a white room, and thinking to myself with the greatest amount of certitude that I was in heaven. When I had regained full consciousness, I asked the nurse (a young and pretty brunette) if I indeed was. She chuckled, and said cheerfully that most people think so, and then added with an ironic sense of glee that this was Hell’s waiting room; Satan has a sense of humor, she quipped before walking away.
As the sun sets, we now can see dolphins following our little ship. Look how happy they are! Shall we have them for dinner? I’m kidding of course; dolphin is not a proper dinner item. We’ll save them for tomorrow’s breakfast. Harpooning is a wonderful and fun sport, and I’ll teach you for free. Assuming that you decline, I think we have more space for weird…“anecdotes,” if we may call them that.
Scylla has hives.
Charybdis retired last year to a shit pension.
Remember Odysseus? He dead.
Land is not yet in sight, and I doubt it will be for some time. Nonetheless, the band has begun playing a lovely, catchy fanfare to celebrate the occasion of it being Thursday yesterday. To be clear, we’re currently sailing towards the day after tomorrow; if our maps are correct, then there is a passage that is approaching quickly that would allow us to cut across tomorrow. Time is of the essence. The ship’s traversing a difficult patch of sea, so patience would be good to have at the moment — in the event of a wheady mile, one must be prepared for nothing.
The crew spotted dancing eggplants the following morning, right after sunrise, dancing little purple things on top of oversized lily pads. The boat slowed considerably, rocking and creaking, pushing the lily pads out of the way with conviction but without force. The photographer emerged and pulled out his camera, snapping tens and hundreds of pictures of the curious sight. Curious, yes, because some of the eggplants, once under the long morning shadow of the ship, stopped their jolly dance and leaned in towards the ship, as if inspecting it, or listening.
In the middle, there is a dream. It’s full of fuzzy lines and slurred words, foggy and such. Neither of us is in control. You’ve become possessed, you and I are puppets of the unconscious, and of society. Tada, you’d say. Look at this mess of blood you’ve created. Wielding a rusted dagger — pointing at a child. You have the sin of loneliness. Drifted off course, floating aimlessly, where the horizon no longer exists, and sea and sky are melded together into a choking mix of air and water.
And. Here…
We.
Go.
She and I were sitting on the porch, watching the birds fly in circles in front of us caw and sing. It had been a terrible week, for the both of us, having lost so much. We never bothered looking behind, where we knew it was still smoking, and smelling of burnt bodies. We sat there forever, not saying a single word; only placing our fingers on top of each other’s, and breathing quietly. Then, perhaps after several hours, once we could feel the heat on our back, we looked at each other — there was a smile below the sad eyes.
I ran out to the street to the snow and the fire. The flames were blazing loudly so that I couldn’t hear myself shouting in glee. Next to me, June ran alongside with her hands flailing and her face gleaming. It no longer felt cold. The moon was smiling from above, up in the cloudless sky that was just starting to disappear amid the smoke. We ran for a long time — I can’t remember — until we were out of breath, panting heavily, and the sound of fire felt distant. I turned towards her, and her sweet little face, hidden behind that long, brown hair. She smiled, and we sat down in the middle of the street and held hands, and looked around at the dark woods surrounding us, those tall skinny trees that somehow looked so innocent now. Away from the fire the air was chilled and quiet. And we just sat there, silent, for hours probably, waiting, faced towards the oncoming storm. I think she fell asleep, leaning on my shoulder. I must have fell asleep too, but when I opened my eyes, the sky was still dark. By then, June was up, staring into the woods to her left. The trees had started bending, its trunk buckling, the branches swaying slowly.
Sooner or later the temperature will start rising. The sky will turn orange and red as a hot wind blasts through the helpless, feeble forest. I’ll hold her close by as the radiance becomes piercing, and the intensity leaves us breathless. And before this final sunrise takes us, I’ll turn to her with watered eyes and a wide, nostalgic smile:
“Let’s go now! Let’s go somewhere extraordinary!”
We’ve come to a dark place, and you’re not welcome.
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