Into the Gape
That summer, on the island, the grass grew vigorously until it was a surreal monument to love: green, serpentine, reaching desperately to the sky.
Tides are an instrument of the moon, a precise dance choreographed by the entwinement of cosmic desires. Grass is different. For though it also ebbs and flows, its rhythms are dictated solely by the wind, a fickle force not bound by such predictable orders of magnitude as the laws of Johannes Kepler. It is said that today, with a twitch of wings, a butterfly waves goodbye to its young and that tomorrow, in a tantrum of righteous indignation, the wind snaps the noble spine of a one hundred and ninety year old pine. And this meteorological model, though predicated on a false appraisal of the role of chaos, is in fact, not far from the truth.
In the photograph, taken the day before we disembarked, we peer out from between long strands of achingly green grass, parted as though the hand of God had once more come to rend the sea. Your eyes are glossy brown magnets, and I followed them then as I follow them now. Ah, dear Moses, where have you led me? Shall I ever find my way back to the home I abandoned at your behest? For this life that you promised, free in the desert, has turned out to be just another gilded cage.
That summer, on an island, we both fell hopelessly in love. The grass grew vigorously. The worms tunneled blithely beneath.
* * *
Here, there is the unsettling sensation that I’m an intruder, and yet who better than I? The law dictates it my right. Your kin dictate it my responsibility. Not a single one of them was ever closer to you. Still, it feels criminal—rooting through your remains. I suppose the illusion of privacy stops with the heart, exposed for the house of cards that it is. I breathe. It scatters. I’m scattered. I can’t keep doing this. I don’t want to find out the things you didn’t see fit to tell me. But they’re here. If I’m going to stay in the home we built together, I’ll find them eventually. Better to suss them out now. Better to hang them out to dry along with the clothes I washed for the last time this morning and hung out in the coarse afternoon sun. Today they’ll be kissed by God. Tomorrow they’ll go to the poor. Tomorrow is a better day than today. Yesterday was a better day than tomorrow. Today is always the worst day. This much is certain.
We don’t know anything about ourselves. For instance, I don’t know why I’m here right now.
Back to the photographs: I didn’t know you’d kept photographs. I didn’t know it. Johannes Kepler may have known a thing or two about Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Castillo, but he didn’t know a damn thing about the other fifty-five moons. If he had, he might have done us all a favor and told Galileo to leave Jupiter well enough alone. This is only speculation. Life is also speculation. Time and time again. It is proven wrong by death. I’m not a pessimist, but I have a fine grasp of the facts. If you plant a fact, you’re likely to end up with an island overrun by grass.
Undiscovered worlds abound. Some are flung across the star-sprinkled void. Others thrive beneath our feet. This one sat with me at the breakfast table for twenty-eight years, read the Times, drank black coffee, chattered idly, and one day suddenly disappeared.
* * *
Fact: Johannes Kepler, born 21 December 1571.
Fact: Johannes Kepler, died 15 November 1630.
Speculation: everything in between.
* * *
Knowledge is fiction. It is predicated on an agreement to hide certain truths. You say I wish to understand the world. I say it can be explained, but you must disregard these contradictions. You say that’s ok, I just need to understand, it doesn’t have to make perfect sense. Okay then. Everything you knew is wrong. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. Bullshit. Ignore these contradictions. The truth is this: Love is the most dangerous thing.
2 + 1 = 2. Back to the photographs: Should I be happy that mine is there among the rest? I’m not. One conceit. I could accept the principle of your fruitful diversions. I just didn’t want to be categorized with the rest. Why couldn’t you leave me to believe that we were special? That’s all I wanted. But we’re arrogant. We know we’re going to die but most of us never fathom that it will happen tomorrow. Denying the possibility is necessary if we intend to accomplish much. It makes us careless. It made you careless. I know you didn’t mean to leave my picture amongst the others. But there it is. You must have thought tomorrow, I’ll separate it. You didn’t. Now it’s far too late.
2 + 1 = 4. When you kissed me I would sometimes taste another. Secretly, I found it tantalizing. There was you. There was I. There was the other. There was the other that I imagined—strange fantasy, perhaps, but one that was entirely my own. At night, when we gave our bodies over to explore the uncharted depths, sometimes I thought I felt a spectral heartbeat. Since you disappeared, it’s all I’ve had. Then I found the photographs. My fantasies obliterated by the truth. Now, the one comfort I still could conjure is gone.
2 + 1 = 0. If nothing else, you promised me that I would never be alone. I believed you. You were wrong. What can I do? I take long walks and find myself entranced by the sight of children playing in the manicured grass. But when they look in my direction they see through me as though I were a ghost. I retreat to home. Haunt the stairwells. Rifle through the photographs again. Search desperately for a reflection of you in any of our eyes. Take something from nothing and nothing remains. I am entirely alone.
2 + 1 = cut out my heart. Throw it to the field. Let it spread. A crimson stain upon green blades. Better to live without a heart than go on like this.
* * *
Jupiter. A god with countless lovers. The Greeks called you Zeus. When they spoke of you their eyes must have fixed on their sandals. I know that’s not the truth. But it’s comforting to say. Why is a lie sometimes better than any knowledge at all?
Death means nothing. It is an isolated event. The absence of life is what haunts my bed at night. Slowly, I can confront mortality, but how am I supposed to confront absence? I can’t. Instead, I daydream about Johannes Kepler. Who lived and died without any intersections that can cut across my life. His absence cannot haunt me. So perhaps I can learn from it. For there are similarities. You both loved generously. You both lived carelessly. You both traveled when you didn’t know what else to do. You both died alone, clinging desperately to truth, resolute that the sky be seen a different way.
How much of yourself did you see in Jupiter? On clear nights I stare through a slender metal tube, with a 50mm refractory lens that magnifies the sky, so it’s just as Johannes Kepler once beheld. Jupiter is but a speck. I don’t see how he learned anything from this. It is small and insignificant and only leaves me feeling completely lost. The truth eludes me. You elude me.
Another thing: My lens is too weak to make out the satellites. This is no accident. I want to see you without seeing any of the others. So why does Castillo hover insistently at the periphery of my thoughts?
I met Castillo once. You were careful to avoid encounters between us. Even with the ones I explicitly knew about. We met by chance. It was brief. Two moons passing in the shadow of a planet. Yet I will never forget those sapphire tinged eyes. The way they left me riveted to the wall, like a pinned butterfly, macabre and beautiful. It’s there. In the stillness. Considering my insect self it suddenly becomes apparent. Night lifts. The truth left wet upon the grass.
I might have loved you both.
* * *
2 + 1 = 3. Back to the photographs: The usual meaning doesn’t have to mean the usual things. I’ve memorized every single face. Here’s the truth: Jupiter may have come to dictate the orbit of its moons, but moons also dictate the orbit of a planet. And each other. The truth is this: We’re all intertwined. We each hold a lonely sliver of an already insufficient whole. So I’ll choose to keep my eyes open, approach perihelion without a flinch. Maybe we’ll fall in love. Maybe we’ll share a story or two. Maybe we’ll just pass each other quietly with a knowing glance. I don’t know. Everything I knew is wrong. And that’s ok. To go on, all I really need to know is this:
That summer, on the island, the grass grew vigorously until it was a surreal monument to love: green, serpentine, reaching desperately to the sky.
– Joseph A.W. Quintela writes. Poems. Stories. On Post-it-notes. Walls. Envelopes. Cocktail napkins. Anything he gets his hands on, really. Did he mention that he likes your eyes? You may lend them to him at http://www.josephquintela.com
