“If the world is mine to hold,” she replies, “then why am I so reluctant to pick it up?”
He smiles slightly at the concrete vision she has created from his metaphor.
“You tell me,” he quips his usual back step.
“Because it would hurt.”
“You are afraid that applying yourself to living will cause you to hurt?”
“Yes because I already hurt. I hurt very badly.”
“How badly is that exactly, say on a scale of ten?”
She sighs and becomes quiet with thought. He waits for the answer, as if truly interested, intently.
She wonders what those numbers mean to him. They trade off for her, they are never the same and they are as slippery as salamanders. What are digits after all, but phantoms of a wearisome disassociation from the reality of passing time?
“Ten being what?” she asks of him.
“Ten being the worst you can imagine and zero being the best.”
As always, he is of no help. She amuses herself by devising a system that works for her at the moment, but one of which she is certain he will have no real insight into even if they hacked it out together. She begins with zero. Zero, being the normal state of background anxiety, the aches and pains of daily wear and tear on flesh and bones. Ten being a terrifying mystery, one’s head sawed off slowly at the neck with a hand tool, in front of a video camera. The numbers between seem duplicitous, each one comparing itself to the other with infinite shards of fractions between them.
“7.”
“7?”
“Yes.”
“So it is fairly bad, but not intolerable?”
All she knows is that if she moves the hurt within her will begin to express itself. It is a sort of ‘thing’; it lives and is ever changing. It cannot be captured or pinned down. Once it is codified it will rebel and morph.
“If I am quiet, if I don’t move then perhaps it will stay at seven, at least temporarily.”
“Where do you feel it?”
For now, it is wound tightly around a place somewhere deep inside of her, lurking yet silent. What is the place around which this pain is spun? Is it wrapped about her heart? God knows. She chooses not to answer. Her stillness is often perceived as strength of character. He seems to respect it and it gives her space. No doubt it is a power of some sort but it is not achieved through vigor. It comes to her by nature rather than effort. It is just, ‘her’ and therefore it is not something she gives much credence to.
He is just as noiseless. He is matching her, echoing soundless. He sits across his diminutive office in a chair against the darkened wall. The sun is streaming through the blinds, from a few places where the slats are tilted. She imagines moving them back into place, again and again, caught in an infinite circle of correction.
“Tell me more about the voice inside of you. When did you first notice it?”
His words cause her to bring her attention back to him. She glances in his direction momentarily, catching sight of his white hair. His pale curls, scattered around his face are as always sheltering his gaze. His eyes appear to her as if they are hiding in a deep wood.
“It’s not really a voice. It is a consciousness, like a man who has lived forever inspecting the depths of all he sees and hears. It is like he carries a camera or some kind of telescopic device that focuses in on whatever passes in front of him. Even when I was young, he was there.”
“You use the word ‘there’, where is ‘there’?”
He was anywhere, everywhere. For instance on the playground, I would run to a swing and begin to pump and then suddenly he would be there noticing how the clouds drew closer then fell away and how the sun streamed around them in pointed blades. The bird’s songs transformed into cries. They were no longer singing – twittering in the background but demanding attention beating the air with their influence.”
“How do you know he is a man? If there is no voice then how can you tell?”
Once again, her attention shifts toward the white hair and hidden eyes.
“I just do.”
“When does he come to you?”
“Whenever he pleases.”
“When does he leave?”
“I am not sure, really, it’s a lot like a day dream. It appears, you notice it and then it isn’t there any more.”
“I see.”
She notices that the sun has shifted and is making a diagonal line at the tip of her shoes. She pushes one toe into it.
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