We hit a patch of ice, sending my father’s Buick spinning, my head bouncing off the window with the first full 360 degrees. I can’t tell if the world is coming toward us or we to it. The warped motion outside the window. A stonewall supporting the bridge we’ve passed under. The snag of the seatbelt. Its thick stitching. That time slows during trauma is a myth; the brain’s activity increases, rendering one’s memories more acute. It’s Christmas afternoon. Someone’s given me the same toy someone else gave me last night: Inferno, a Transformer that turns into a fire truck. This is my second Inferno. I say as much and am scolded for it. An hour later, half way into our next spin, I’m convinced we’re going to die. In ten years, I’ll learn that the second circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno is an endlessly spinning whirlwind. But first, now, I’m going to have to die. It’s okay. I’ve never been more calm in my life.
Death
The dying person is a messenger who has a packet to hand off to an individual who is “being born,” just coming into the world. In that way, death is like a relay race and there is a secret torch to hand off.
I believe, too, that there were messages waiting for me when I was born, and that I managed somehow to receive them. Also several people, dying, left me with various messages as they went. These communications were not material, but were transmitted in other ways. Sometimes the departure has been abrupt and angry, disruptive. Other times it has been solace. I feel that it is a human responsibility to be attentive to the subtleties of this process, to perceive what is there to be perceived.
Will it be in winter? Under sullen skies? Skies like prayers? And will there be animals? Something with fur and claws to keep vigil? To lick where licking is wanted and howl when it appropriate? Will there still even be animals? Or will animals be only a memory? Something thought of between feedings? And what do animals know anyway?
What I remember is that it almost happened once when I was a kid. This was on vacation. And we were hiking through trees and tall grass and up a mountain. Not a mountain of any distinction. Not a particularly or a fearsome mountain, just a regular old mountain, but a mountain nonetheless, or maybe a very tall hill. And I don’t know what I was doing or what I was thinking but I almost walked right off the side of that mountain, off of a sheer cliff into deep and terrible ravine, but for my best friend, who, at the last minute, pulled me back. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me back. And then we both looked down at the ravine in awe. Shortly after this he was no longer my best friend and when we saw each other in school we mostly just nodded.
What I remember is probably not true.
But maybe it will be indoors, who knows when, a room with windows, or without windows, but certainly a bed, but something more meager than that, always more meager than that. Alone in a room: is that it? Alone in a room with certain voices: is that it?
I am in the kitchen. I am in the kitchen over the sink and watch the blood mix with water. I am in the kitchen over the sink and I watch the blood become something other than blood. She says that I should pay more attention to my own habits. What I don’t say: Have you ever?
I mention this for several reasons.
Let me tell you all about them.
(Submit responses to question 3 - What do you know about the sentence? - to redroverinterview [at] gmail [dot] com.)
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