mictlan

Sunday, August 07

My name is not my name. I'm somebody else.

You wake up every day as somebody else. This is true of everyone. Most of these people that we are, they are alike enough that we don't notice, but this only makes the realization more unsettling when you do notice, eventually, on some far distant morning, that all the decks have been shuffled and cut, that the hand you're holding isn't the hand you thought you were dealt. You wake up in a different bed, that old house of two stories receding over the months and miles. You wake up to a bed warmed by a woman, and you watch her sleeping and whisper to her when she trembles in her sleep.

(You don't think she hears you whisper, but sometimes you wonder if whispers can trickle down into dreams and manifest in nightmares as some weapon, something with a strong haft or pommel to grip, something with a sharp edge to fight with. And you fall asleep again to the comforting smell of wood, a scent you've only known in dreams.)

And then again, in the mornings; sunspill stripes across your face, and the absence of a chill you've come to expect. In your new house, mornings are warm. Mornings are different now, and you realize with some stilted shock (all the decks, reshuffled) that you've only ever known some nine thousand mornings.

Hardly any time at all.

I come from long-lived stock, and so if the cigarettes don't kill me first, there are some twenty thousand mornings to come. I should start counting down; nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine... ninety-eight, ninety-seven. The thought is tiring, reminiscent of all those cautionary tales about seeking immortality; like some hapless Tithonus, pining piping cicada shrill. And then again the thought is hopeful, because surely twenty thousand mornings is long enough to see every reversal reversed in turn, time enough to heal all the wounds yet to come -for surely (some old darkness insists this) this golden morning can't last? If horses were beggars, then wishes would ride, and surely the skies would be black with airborne swine. Surely this perfect colaratura cannot hold, and must descend eventually to bass tragedy. But still, but still -twenty thousand mornings is long enough for it to rise again.

Or perhaps these stories I started in evenings and nights have finally found their way to a dawn that once seemed so distant, and what I'm looking at —being used to night-time, I'm a little blinded; I'm only a little afraid— is the prospect of a bright noonday sun.

posted by: mictlantecuhtli at 20:10 | link | comments (11) |

Comments:

#1 07 August 2005 - 20:18

yay!

giuli

#2 07 August 2005 - 20:24

it's about friggin' time!

(yay.)

howard

#3 07 August 2005 - 20:31

i was too taken with joy at seeing you back to comment on the post itself. it is a particularly dense liquor with a long dwelling finish, just the kind of bittersweet taste that makes me long for another sip.

howard

#4 07 August 2005 - 21:17

its a happy day at motime!!!!!

rustymadgal

#5 07 August 2005 - 21:21

Most enjoyable. I was hooked in by the opening.

Jackal

#6 07 August 2005 - 21:36

Happy, Happy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy and as Mikey would say, ALL THAT and more!!!

Leigh

#7 08 August 2005 - 03:28

I don't know you because I was gone from mo'time a long time, but everyone else seems to rejoice that you are back...and so do I because, damn it, that is one hell of a piece of writing. WOW. I love the concept of changing until you realize that you've become someone else. Congrats on featured post.