She walks by the same landmarks everyday. A blur of chinese herbs, bank security guards and cheap clothing. Slushy streets splashed through by uncaring boots. Mumbled no sorry's and begrudging thank yous. Shenever notices that the crates are stamped dragon fruit, or red snapper, or chinese onion. She doesn't notice that the storefront next to her sells live seafood, that the plant store around the corner is actually called the egg store and sells farm fresh eggs. She never sees the misshaped brown, white and speckled eggs lined up, hidden behind the dazzling foliage of an otherwise barren storefront.
She notices the occasional addict shooting up on her doorstep; she hears the haggard woman mumble rock, rock? under her breath, but she doesn't really see them. She answers her friends' I love yous with similar sentiments; she lines her eyes and paints her lips according to the place she is, the people she's with, but she doesn't actually be any of the things she so cunningly mimics.
She relates to boys easily enough; she thinks she feels them but the really don't exist, they tend to fade easily, becoming an unsettling miasma of almost-ness that melts into her steady fog of almost-being. She works and she breathes and eats and walks and still manages to be a ghost.
Then suddenly, the chinese herbs become preserved vegetable, or dried lizard, or powdered shellfish; the red snappers splash her from their tanks and the lobsters try to escape their elastic-band handcuffs. As she walks by, the previously benign produce crates become crafted vessels of exotic goods, emblems of faraway places that she wants to see. The eggs start to shine like jewels from inside their glass case, each one as unique and precious as a precious gem. The empty storefronts are really full of brightly coloured milk crates stacked in castle-like formations.
She begins to understand that the I love yous are structured spaces that hold her up, make her solidify and congeal, that she isn't actually pretending because she doesn't have to. Her friends line up like soldiers ready to do battle, heavily armed knights that will rush to her defense. The people that were once completely invisible become distinct entities; one guy teaches her to jimmy open the door of the ATM that always closes too early; the local bartender sells her the last six-pack and hugs her every day afterwards, commerserating a frustration that she never saw she shared.
She realizes that she lives in a warzone, that she lives in a community, that she lives in a wonderland. She begins to understand that she is protected by laughter and love and the uncertainty of existence, that she can stand strong and know that there will be something to catch her.
These understandings, these revelations, radiate from one being. A bright shard of light that blinds the doubts and the worries and the instinct to ignore. That illuminates the utterly insane beauty around her. She begins to understand the spaces around her, begins to see their individual value. She starts to collect them, to hold them close to her heart, to compile an entirety meant to be shared with the luminous being. She realizes they are what she has to give, and that they are part of what makes her shine so brightly to the one she loves. She starts to build a life, however tenuous, however temporary and uncertain. She thinks at first she is grasping at straws, trying to build a house of cards that can masquerade as a stone castle. But then, suddenly, she realizes that she herself is the stones and he is the mortar. That he is the stones and she is the mortar. That they hold each other together, and that her sharpened perception is the newfound thrill of seeing everything through another's eyes. She mistook the revelations because they seemed so utterly identical to her own understanding of the world.
The words begin to spill out, and the fog fades, the world sharpens and rotates and is suddenly so clear that it takes her breath away. Instead of fairytale stories of besotted misfits, sitcom plays of dramatic romances or stoic tales of practically enamoured corporate ladder-climbers, she discovers that love pulls her into herself, forces her to realize all the hidden fears, to examine her lapses and failures and push them into the daylight. That love isn't a definable goal, or a quantifiable set of qualifications. That it is an entire set of contradictions that become undeniable and permanent even while they are frightening and unsure. That it is not needing or wanting anything else except for him, because without him, she isn't herself.
logically though, it makes sense to look to our own planet for ideas of what composes the interstellar macrocosm. if it happened once, it likely happened twice. maybe life has not manifested itself in the same explicit way that it has in our own backyard, but ignoring the likelihood of some flora or fauna exsisiting somewhere in the universe is a pretty narcissitic way to interpret the infinte. why is it so easy to believe in an invisible, omnipotent bearded guy but impossible to consider that there is or was bacteria living on Mars?
in any case, i think it would be cool to spend your time digging through icebergs and peering through telescopes, looking for a truth that is both evasive and substantial. not very lucrative, possible totally futile, but at least real.
