My eyes traced a string of lights for a hundred miles. A solitary road. The blackness beyond, unfathomable. I was drawn along with the lights. The ground below must have been flat because the roadway hardly altered in its course. I touched my forehead against the oval window and felt the vibration and drone of the engines. The other passenger were asleep, the cabin dark and the window was cold against my skin. Mesmerized I kept watching, Sleep eluding me. We were flying between here and there, somewhere above somewhere. The Middle East I mused, but I had no real sense of time or place.
Every now and then the road would divide and led off in another direction and following with my eyes, the road would explode into a bright oasis of dazzling lights. Too regular a shape to be a village, too small for a city, a rectangle of lights framing a central glow. The cluster of lights looked like a walled palace or compound or an industrial estate ...a single road leading to it from nowhere in particular. My eyes flicked back to the main road as it traversed invisible terrain and I followed its path until eventually it lead to another glowing palace.
Every now and then the road would divide and led off in another direction and following with my eyes, the road would explode into a bright oasis of dazzling lights. Too regular a shape to be a village, too small for a city, a rectangle of lights framing a central glow. The cluster of lights looked like a walled palace or compound or an industrial estate ...a single road leading to it from nowhere in particular. My eyes flicked back to the main road as it traversed invisible terrain and I followed its path until eventually it lead to another glowing palace.
My thoughts go often to those strings of lights now, because that’s how my memories of him form. In clusters that bunch together like inflamed synapses. Raw. Intense. Emotions huddling around street corners, his old school, the streets where I taught him to drive, his kindergarten, his best friend’s house... all of the places he inhabited. And in between the nerve endings, the memories thin out along gossamer threads that connect to one another so ethereally. The in-between places are where I can breathe.
The strings join all the places he has been, the places where the memories reside and the places where I feel his loss so acutely. The memories hang together like those illuminated "Palaces of light" in the desert, strung together with rows of lanterns. I walk through them. I pass by them, sometimes in my car, sometimes on foot. Sometimes I linger and sometimes I hurry by... trying not to get caught in their filaments. Globular clusters of starry matter thick with energy and nuance and context. As I approach I feel a billiard ball clump in my throat and my breath labour and my heart clench. And as I come out the other side, the symptoms wane and I doppler-back into the now.
“Try and breathe through it.” My psychologist advised. “Control your breathing, tap your meridian points, bring your focus back to the present.” But its not always easy. Sometimes I tarry in those emotionally charged nebulae and sometimes they cling to me like a tear drops welling on a spider’s web.
The lights shine so brightly in some locations that I still expect to see him. In the supermarket. I bumped into him there once, not expecting him to be there and now each time I go there the memory is as sharp as a shard of glass. If I walk to the end of the row, if I turn the corner, will he be there, dressed in his summer shorts and a well-loved, well-washed T-shirt. Hairy legs. Shopping basket over one arm. Grinning because he is so glad to see me. The expectation is too real for it not to be real.
There is the grey "Besser" block corridor that leads from the underground car park at work to the back of my studio. I photographed him there once. Lit by one of three fluorescent tubes. He was wearing a pale blue singlet and jeans and his signature white leather Lacoste shoes. His pimp shoes we used to call them. But he was unfazed, he could care less of what we thought of them. He loved them... He had posed for me, leaning slightly forward, looking tough, biceps and blonde hair. His arms pressing against the walls on either side, muscles flexing. Just 20 years old. I step through that memory twice a day. The fluorescent light is ironically on-its-way-out now, flickering a sickly pink light. Not the one on either side, but the one he stood underneath. Sometimes, foolishly, I touch the wall that he touched.
As if.
The street corner near his high school. I get such a strong sense of him there. Tho' I can’t recall ever seeing him there. I know he crossed at those traffic lights every school day. But I can’t remember him in his school uniform. I can’t conjure up one memory of that. Whether he wore long pants or shorts or whatever shoes he wore.
At the airport, the last place I saw him happy and well, embarking on a new adventure. He had packed characteristically light. His leather carry-on was visibly empty. They were going to Mexico so he could practice his Spanish. His girl with shiny eyes. Going home for the holidays, Christmas in the snow. I can’t walk easily past that point. The memories sear. If I stop there I will burn, I step quickly over a threshold that only I can see, through memories that mar my vision of what is ahead.
“Do you want me to come to the airport to see you off?” Katie offered before my last overseas trip. “No. Don’t.” I replied. “I can’t say goodbye to anyone I love there anymore.” Not there, not next to the sign that reads International Departures.
