The Madman
The Madman
There is a bench in a park in my town in my city in my state in my country where I once sat and knew what I wanted, where I was going to get it, how I could get there, and why I wanted it. And there was a girl that I used to sit on that bench with, and we would talk about what we wanted and how we were going to get it. And there is a river in front of the bench with ancient waves that carry ancient bones across the void of the land, not wanting anything more than to crash in and out. In and out. Unfortunately, permanence is not my forte. I froze in winter just to thaw in summer and die again in fall, “OH LORD!” We all suffer the burdens of The Grey Monsters. Grey Monsters that carry what was, towards a place where it will no longer be. Grey Monsters, whose existence is upheld solely by the authority of existing. A being that does not concern with the good and the evil of men, sometimes its just fucking hungry, and you might be lunch. I see so many goddamn things go in and out.
We all drag bones through water and time, for the river and life are restless bodies, they are endlessly churning complexes of movement and action with little regard for any mortal wish that they might bring a lost hope to the shore. The water of the Hudson crashes against another Grey Monster, whose arms stretch wide across the river, the colossus of a flooded valley. The Tappan zee bridge breathes, you just cannot see it. It is he who churns our chaos in and out, midnight head-lights and midnight faces crash from city to state, in and out, as if they had a choice.
How do I tell you about the fragility of belief without sounding like a madman, raving through the streets. Have you not heard of that madman? The one who brightened his light in the fair hours of the morning, drove to the mall, and shouted to all that could hear him: "I seek God! I seek God!" They themselves not believers, only saw him as a relic, as if he were lost to something. “Has he lost his way?” “Where is his mother?” “Has he lost something? Perhaps he is hiding?” They laugh and they shout and the madman sinks deeper into himself.
The madman cries louder to those who will not hear him. "Whither is God?" he cries; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. How could we do this? “We have undertaken the role of pallbearers without the direction to go.” “What gave us the rags to wipe the sun across the sky, the horizon from the sea, life from death? Grey monsters, too, decompose.”
What great Monster will we construct in his place? What sacred games we have invented to keep the dark night of his emptiness at bay? Is God a fucking football? Is God is a fucking iphone? Who knows? Who cares? Who will clean his blood off my hands? the waves when it is too late, then it will reach them. Sweet roses require time to blossom; the light of suns requires time to stretch across the sky, and although actions are immediate, the thundering implosion of their undoing requires time to be heard.
They put down the Tappan Zee bridge, like a dog. I watched them do it, I watch everyone do it. Everyone is scrounging to cement their truth to the earth and just as they do someone else is blowing it up. Someone’s driving a car to the moon and someone’s shooting up the school. It's a cosmic fight for room and space and the right to exist, so they blew it up and built a new one, poof. Its as easy to blow up a bridge as it is to blow up a God, so if Nietzche says churches are the sepulchres of God, what is a falling bridge? Can it stand for something? Can anything mean anything without it being ripped apart?
Well I’ll tell you, there was a girl on a bench in a town in a city in my life and she had a hat. She wasn’t a hat wearer per se, but it was a hat she had gotten from a really good university, despite how WASP-y it might’ve been. A college in another city in another state with another bench somewhere, probably. Regardless of the fabric on her head, there was a brilliant golden pollen that surrounded her, like the spring went wherever she did. The flowers bloomed as she came and died as she went. Radiancy blew through the fiber of her soul and as I’m sitting on a different bench, I guess it blew through mine. Like a flower, in the early morning of my glory, I let the ideas of eternal spring chase me to each horizon I saw. There are horizons that are here and horizons that aren't here anymore. I go to bed wondering how many people must be in love with her today, and I wake up a different person.
It’s the end of another summer. I am a piece of driftwood, moving through life and Hudson, wading in the waters of a place that feels both familiar and foreign. I have come back to a dream that I know the meaning of, but it is surreal and confusing. Home used mean a lot less until I blew it up and built a new one. I see the hat on the floor of my room and I go to throw it out, but I put it on instead. Somethings are hard to see go.
I must be in my room. It's dark in here and it presses numb static through me. I’m a junkie for the pins and needles, I need another hit. Maybe I’ll stop blowing stuff up, maybe I should just let everything be, in the dark there isn’t anything to blow up. As I’m about to sink into the floor, my phone buzzes and cuts through the painlessness of the blackness. God hath saved me in the form of cheap chinese metal. I see a name I haven’t seen in a long time. Another piece of driftwood shouts across the water while the Tappan Zee falls. I go to ignore the message, but I reply instead. Somethings are hard to see go.
I feel like asking her to drift with me for a while. That we should go back and watch those suckers blow up the world and put it back together again. We could even be made into a bench, but I know that hats last longer than people do and people last longer than what they believe in. A Grey Monster pulls around the corner, its eyes glow palely like the light from a dying star, she has grown weary of her own brightness. It claws through the street with the heavy weight of time gone by. Finally, it comes to a rest and its hum reverberates through the night-time street.
She looks better in the hat than I do, but I can’t give it back. I think that for now, it will sit in my room and keep changing into more and more things as I pass it. Hopefully, one day it's just a hat. Some things get torn down and then stand themselves up and it looks like they haven’t changed. I wonder if she has changed. I wonder if I’ve changed. I wonder if the world has changed. Through it all-water and time. As I’m about to leave the house, I get another message through the window:
Can you give me my clothes btw?
… ofc
Do you have my hat?
… nah
