Shoegazing/Negative Space

I spent my days searching for the hidden spaces between colors, the silent tones hidden in melodies, and listening for the unsaid words in every conversation. Negative space, they call it. It is there. The meaning, that is.

I found you there. Your hair was a dark brown braid, your voice was a wind chime of laughter, and I heard you say “Here.”

I looked again and it was just a rusty railroad track, unused and covered by kudzu vines, sapling pines, and locusts. I could smell honeysuckle in the air, and it almost smelled like a woman, or a girl, it almost smelled like you, but you were not there.

Did you hear me call your name?

I fell backwards in space. Time is just another dimension of space.

We fell together and separated into two. We were once joined together, one, in love.

In pieces.

And there should have been another conversation here somewhere. Another word, or string of words, or maybe even a simple goodbye would have sufficed? But no, I would have still looked.

“Stop staring at your shoes!”

But I’m not staring at my shoes. I’m looking through them.

To something that looks a little like you and a lot like me…

Unbirthing

My name is Jim. I’m not a Lord, and this isn’t an autobiography. I’m going to tell you the story as I heard it from someone I’d rather not name who heard it from someone else he decided it was better remain nameless (and, why yes, I am distancing myself from this as much as possible).

Recently, I’ve been reading stories. Two come to mind: “How We Keep It Fresh” by Christian Tebordo (Pank, 6.01/ January 2011) and “Afterglow” by Sandra Odell (Ideomancer, 9:3/September 2010). These stories, among others whose names I can’t remember, relate a desire to return to the womb. I heard there is a term for this. When you Google “unbirthing” you obtain disturbing links to odd furry fetishes I don’t understand (and don’t really want to know too much about – I say leave the bedroom in the bedroom), but still the fact that this is a modern fetish (which I assume belongs to more than one individual), and there is actual paraphernalia designed for the specific purpose of acting out this fantasy says something about modern culture. I think. Even popular music makes references to unbirthing: Beck sings about a girl leaping into a volcano in his song “Volcano” off the album Modern Guilt. Beck asks, “Was she trying to make it back/Back into the womb of the world?”

Is this a modern phenomenon? What is the interpretation? I’m not going to go all Jungian on you. I promise. That’d be dull. Besides, I’m not smart enough for that kind of thing, and neither is the person telling this story (or the nameless narrator, for that matter). I won’t look for mythic roots, proof of collective unconscious, or point out older texts referencing these kinds of things (not that I couldn’t do so, but I’m feeling too lazy today). You can do all that yourself. Google and Wikipedia are good starting points, but always verify with other sources, preferably in paper format inside the rotting walls of a library reeking of dust and neglect and other modern clichés.***

So why return to the womb? Why is this a fantasy and a fetish? Why is this event expressing itself in literature and music? Is it coincidence that this image haunts me? No, this is not an interpretation. What follows are simply my unenlightened observations.

A quick note on the positive traits of life in utero*:

• It’s quiet. All sounds are muffled. Sometimes mommies and daddies and others talk to pregnant bellies, and when they do, it’s always with a soothing, cooing tone. Sometimes people even read stories and play music, deluding themselves they will increase the child’s brain capacity, when in actuality they are only decreasing their own. **


• There’s no friction. Everything is well-lubricated and without sharp edges. If you trip and fall on your umbilical cord, you won’t get hurt. I guess you could get tied up in the cord and choke and die. I’ve heard of that happening, but thankfully, this is unusual.


• Mothers protect you in the womb. Sometimes they do this outside the womb, but when you are actually inside their body, they are even more protective. Perhaps it has something to do with you still being a part of them, physically, at that point in time? Whatever the reason, this is nice.


• When inside the womb there is blind optimism directed your way. Parents dream big for their child, buy footballs or art sets. Parents live out their own fantasies through their unborn. You haven’t disappointed anyone. Yet.


• It’s dark all the time. You can sleep whenever you want. This means lots of dreams, and in dreams you can be whatever you want to be. Even if you want to be a giraffe on the plains of the Serengeti, you can do that. Or you could be an alpaca tied up in a trailer park in Mississippi, or an inside sales representative, or a short order cook, or whatever. Endless possibilities. Personally, I’d dream of being an entry-level data entry clerk or maybe the back seat of a 1970 Chevy Nova . Dream big!


• Anyone who hits a pregnant belly is a jerk and can actually have attempted murder – or even murder – charges brought against them. Once you’re born, people can hit you all they want. As long as you live, it’s only assault.


• There are no temptations. There are no vices. You haven’t fallen. Not yet.

Negatives:

• You’re kind of trapped...


• There are no mountains to look at.


• You can only hear the ocean, not see it.


• Music is muffled and you probably only hear the beat and not the details of a melody.


• Voices are muffled and easily misunderstood.


• Range of movement is limited.


• There’s nowhere to jog, hike, or fish.


• You’re kind of trapped…

All the same, this is a cultural desire (and not just mine, whoever I am). The pros outweigh the cons. Besides, how often do you have days you simply don’t want to get out of bed? How much better would it be to be in a womb? It’s warmer, softer, quieter. Sure there’s no light for reading, but you still have time to dream. That’s worth something. Also, you are a blank slate. You are perfect.

Unlike me. I screwed up so many times. Too many times to count and disguised as many different people.

So, I went back. But there’s not much room in here, to tell the truth, and I really, really need to stretch. It kind of smells funny, too. It reeks of failure and other clichés.***

* …and a certain Nirvana album cover comes immediately to mind just like that!

** “"There are no studies on the effects of stimulation before birth on intelligence, creativity, or later development," says Janet DiPietro, a developmental psychologist who studies fetal development at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.” (http://www.babycenter.com/0_music-and-your-unborn-child_6547.bc -- Yes, I researched this online because I’m lazy. There’s no proof that if my mother played music to me or my father read to me in utero that I would be any less lazy. I’m also a hypocrite sometimes as you can see from my not following my own rules about using libraries to verify.)

*** Why does the verb “reek” often accompany so many clichés? Perhaps I’ll ask my friend to ask his nameless narrator. It might make for a good story.

A (Kind of) Fairy Tale

Sheila clutched a Swiss army knife in her hand. She extracted a small blade to carve an opening in the cardboard box surrounding her. This released a blinding stream of light that poured down like a phosphorescent waterfall. She closed her eyes and then opened them slowly, allowing them to adjust to the new light. It had been a long time since she had looked outside. A very long time.

She peeked through the new opening and saw that the world had not changed. It was still the same as it was before. The river coursing over the rocks had straightened a little. It no longer curved the same way. The white water had calmed somewhat, but other than that, the world was no different. The leaves were still green. The sky remained blue. The birds still sang.

Then the leaves fell and then winter came and snow collected on her new window. Translucent stalactites of ice dripped over her opening and distorted her view. She shivered, decided it would be better to hibernate, and fell fast sleep.

The world was her bed and it was soft and comforting. It made sense when nothing else did. She woke as the snows began to thaw, and she tried to remember why she was here, where she obtained the Swiss army knife in her hand, why she was in a box, but decided that these were worthless questions. She was here because she was here and that was all. This is no different for anyone else, no matter how strange or sensible or senseless they might happen to be. People aren’t all that different, though they often like to think they are special. She had had time to think and no longer clung to false notions. Maybe she wasn’t special, she decided, but at least she was free. She said, “Freedom is in the mind, not a physical state of being,” and she chanted this over and over and over until she almost believed it, but not really, because she was a protagonist, and this, by default, made her special. At least it made her special in her own self-contained universe. Without a character there can be no story, after all, and without a story there is simply nothing to tell.

Then the box dissolved with the raging rains of spring and she emerged during a storm. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, but then the winds swept the storm – and the dissolving remains of her box – away. As the clouds broke apart to reveal the sun, she outstretched her arms. Her joints popped. She ignored the pain and bloomed. Delicate and colorful petals flitted with a soft breeze. She was beautiful and fragile and, ultimately, meaningless.

A Letter Found Near The End

Dear Them,

In the beginning, we believed the fairy tales, the myths, the legends. We took all of the stories, processed them, embraced them, and savored them as Truth. This was in the days when The Light seemed to go on forever, when the sun stood overhead as a silent sentry watching over us and protecting us from the darkness on the edges of our enchanted places. Those were the days when we did not know any better.

But those days ended (as we always knew they must), and we were cast outwards into the unknown, to places where not even moonlight could break through to light the shadows in the underbrush all around, where unseen things crept ever closer. We jumped at the sound of breaking branches and shuffling leaves. We turned in circles, blind. We entered the night without dreams where stark reality ruled and cast away our visions and pleasantries, where nightmares replaced dreams, and horrors replaced fantasies.

We learned of murder, rape, and thievery. We committed necessary acts hoping to survive in this new world, the real world, where we never smiled. We missed those days of before when this present was the only thing we were incapable of imagining.

We despaired over the loss of daylight, the lack of kindness and happy endings. That was what led us here into this place beyond the fringe, to the land where stories are never told, and where books are used as kindling.

Our legends faded. The myths dissolved like vapors. The stories … We missed them. Once forgotten, we buried them in the mulch. Worms ate them, and we tasted rot in the air. We found it a sweet stench: earthy, real.

In the end, we lay down with our fading stories as our memories drowned. We fell down onto a mound of water-stained pages and inkblots. We closed our eyes and went to sleep, knowing that our sleep would be dreamless.

We stared upwards, watching, as clouds hid constellations whose names we could no longer remember.

And when The End came, we embraced it.

Sincerely,

Us

Context

… and the beach fell away …

When Charlie woke up, the room spun around him. He held his hand to his head and looked to the window. A shadow crossed the light – it was in the shape of a child, then a woman, and then it was gone. He heard something that sounded like laughter.

… the ocean receded …

The tractor whirred across a field of cotton. Charlie steered the machine forward and watched a column of dust rise in his wake. Something ran in front of him. His heart skipped a beat. He tried to steer the machine away from the object. He could almost hear a voice over the roar of engine. Something like a scream. He became aware of the scent of exhaust and felt suddenly ill.

… the stars fell to the earth and burned …

It was impossible to see through a veil of tissues and gauze. He hurt all over. The pain became all he knew. The never-ending aches overwhelmed his perception of the world. Every now and then he heard a voice, a whisper in his ear. More often than not, the voice sounded accusing and cold.

… but the stars were not real, the sea was not real, not even the beach was real …

Charlie sat in the wheelchair and looked out his window. The world rolled by as a parade of pickup trucks and automobiles. Sometimes he would see families pull up and park outside his window. It was never his family. They never visited. Not once.

… “It’s all about context. Without it, you mean nothing.” …

There were words on his page. He wrote them, he knew. They were in his handwriting, but he didn’t remember writing them. Charlie read them again and again and wondered what they meant? In the end, he gave up. They could mean anything. Or nothing. Images invoke feelings, sensations, and the impressions sometimes tell stories. Sometimes. Not this time. Or maybe he just didn’t like the story they told?

… the ocean, the beach, and the stars disappeared leaving behind a parade of cars which were pulled and pushed by endless unseen tides while circling a void …

Charlie can still smell the exhaust. He can still see blood stains splattered across white flecks of cotton. He almost remembers, but knows he will never understand. He touches his head where it hurts and notes the circular scars on his temples.

… “It’s all about context.” …

“I mean nothing,” he said.

… and the beach fell away …

The Screech

He walked forward into the woods until the vines strangled the path so that he had to duck and dive through briar-littered lengths of new growth, and dying leaves fell from the sky in slow lazy pirouettes, and the world lost all luster, and the grey bark of towering trees threatened to overtake the horizon, and deer leapt past him and ignored him, and the sun set behind the hills, and it grew dark, and the brook burbled, and frogs splashed as they jumped into cool depths and out of sight, and there was a screech on the horizon he could not place – was it some strange breed of owl or mountain lion? – and he did not know, nor did he care, and the world went on and on and on without him, and the world did not know anything of him or that he was missing from the cradle of civilization, and his boot tracks were a twin trail behind him sunk in wet red clay, and he kept walking forward on a trail long overgrown, and the briars scratched and ensnared his tattered clothes, and he ignored the tiny cuts, and the trail turned upwards, and, despite the chill, sweat beads rolled down from his forehead, and his shaggy hair plastered to his clammy forehead, and he breathed heavily with his exertions, and the sky grew a pale salmon then a deep purple then faded to black, and stars peeked out of the blackness overhead, and a pale orange moon smiled down on him from between the boughs overhead, and he lost himself in shadows, and he heard another screech – this one was closer – and he looked around and tried to make some sort of sense out of the nonsensical ideas which filtered through his head, and he remembered bogeymen and vampires and werewolves and zombies and men in masks carrying machetes and other oddities remembered from the television screens of his fractured childhood, but then he remembered who he was – what he was – and he smiled, and he touched the blade of the knife sheathed in his pocket and found it sharp and hungry, and he walked down the hill and towards another quiet little suburb of another sleepy town just waiting for a wake-up call, and he could see the lights through the windows where silhouettes of families dined together, and he imagined how they would react to his sudden entrance, and he laughed, and he realized that the screech had only been the echoes of his own twisted laughter all along.