small deaths are the saddest, she said. at first i thought she was dead wrong- you can't sweat the little stuff- it is inconsequential in the long run, but i thought of the quiet unsharable sad that goes along with that which can only be known by a lone consciousness. or maybe, the death itself is sad because it is so small. i wonder if anyone considers the feelings of their own personal death when they go about dying. i doubt that most people would worry that their death might feel cheated if they die quietly, peacefully in the midst of sleep.
as for me and mine, we have come an agreement. it is not so quiet to make my death sad, but not big enough to become impersonal or prone it statistics. relationships are about compromise, they say. someday, i will be riding my bike and i will be broadsided by a red volvo, killing me quite quickly, probably even messing my bike up pretty bad. this way, when the time comes, we can both have a little fun- or at least enjoy what we are doing. i worry that i will not fully appreciate my death's lifework, his crowning moment. i worry that i might get lost in the excitement of the moment. but maybe that is the point.
in any case, i hadn't gotten quite this far when she said it in the first place, so i did my usual response; the one where i smile, and almost laugh; nodding. sometimes i wonder if she has ever had a good conversation with her death or if she just liked the sound of that saying- it does have a nice, thoughtful sound to it. maybe it is the name of a song by some icelandic band. who knows?
long story short, it was not until some hours later that i came to really appreciate her company, by which time she was long gone; i didn't get her number. i didn't get her name. i don't even know what color her eyes are. but i am pretty sure that we could have been friends. i guess it is a shame that i think very slowly. if not slowly, then circuitously. maybe i need to change my tactics- get my priorities straight, because as things stand, i will be the very lone consciousness that can conceive of such a small death. and that would be sad.
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I'm often left reflecting on your narratives. You do so well with the omission/ inclusion of details. I think this one is a good example. I know the type of event that death and the character have planned, but I don't have any idea who "she" is/was. It makes for a captivating story. I'm often left wanting to ask questions about your stories: "hey can you clarify a few things for me." ...really I think that the omissions are just as important, but I'm still curious.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your excellent usage of the 1st person often makes me wonder where your stories fit between self-reflection and pure fiction.
...provocative of thought.
thanks very much for the comment. I think the dissatisfying answer, if you were to ask anything about who 'she' is, would be 'i don't know.' the hope is that you can get a better sense of this preoccupied character through how little he/she actually knows about anything outside of their oddly imagined self.
ReplyDelete[many of these anecdotes try to imagine a reality with different rules- fantastic places. however, there is usually room to interpret this bending of the rules as a delusion of the principle character.]