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I:
Dare (Who)
I’m scared. I’m
always scared. No matter if I’m in a 20th floor hotel room in
Washington DC, or high on the roof of a friend’s apartment
building. I’m scared, every time I’m high above ground. Not
because I’m afraid of heights, but because I’m afraid that I
will suddenly obey my unconscious desires, and jump out into the
empty space in front of me, not even caring if I died when I
splattered onto the ground. I fear that a smile will form on my
face as I fall down, as I enjoy the feeling of freedom, a few
seconds before reality kills me again. I’m afraid. I’m always
afraid.
My
subconsciousness urges me to jump off high places, to fall down
into that darkness below us, where light can’t penetrate enough
to show us an end to the fall, where you hope that the abyss
would have no bottom, so that you can keep falling,
free-falling, until the darkness engulfs you whole, until
nothing more is seen in your life. Falling, until you can’t feel
any more, until you can’t live anymore. The freedom, of leaving
and letting go, of losing the glimmering chains that tie us down
on the surface, that tie us down onto the schedule of everyday
life. If I fell, I wouldn’t have to answer to that. If I fell, I
wouldn’t have to answer to anything.
“If we died right now,
would anything we have done ever matter?” this came out of my
mouth on that summer day, as I drove goallessly with my cousin
Mike, trying to kill the time that unconsciously moved along.
“If we died right now,
would it be worth answering that question?” was his emotionless
response, in a tone almost as dull as my own. The Sun was
already hiding behind the blue roofs of the urban houses, the
children running home to avoid the terrors that comes with the
Moon’s rule. The time goes on, on, and on.
I didn’t know how to
answer that, so I just stepped on the gas pedal, and let go of
the steering wheel. No car was behind, no car was in front, so
an accident would only kill us. “I don’t really know.” I
replied, as I lay back on the fake leather seat. “Do you wanna
find out?”
The car was going
faster than 60 miles per hour then, as it moved unpiloted toward
the center of the two-lane road, the yellow partial lines in the
center now ripping under its rectangular body. I was sure we
were going to be caught by cops or something like that,
considering how bad my luck was, always. It did not happen.
Nothing happened.
I got bored of that
after thirty seconds or so, and my right hand clamped back to
the round, unfashioned wheel, my foot letting go of its press to
rest on the dirty floor. The car regained sanity and went back
to its rightful lane, and the boredom limit that it was supposed
to break wasn’t even bent. “Ohio must be crazy to give a
suicidal maniac like me a license.” I smiled a little as I said
this, as if I was trying to convince myself that that was only a
joke.
“Just wait till they
give me one, then we’ll know how crazy they are,” Mike answered
in a bored tone, looking out the windows to the nothing world of
the outside. He already knew that he was going to be in a car
accident after he got his license. He already knew, for the Lin
family curse dictates that every man in the family will be in at
least one car accident, if he drives some kind of mechanical
vehicle. This is true, my Dad got into an accident when he was
riding his motorcycle. It took a bunch of his teeth out, reason
why his teeth are now mixed with shining silver and gold. Both
my cousins got sued after each crashed into another car. And I
got into a crash last winter, even though I kept insisting that
I wasn’t drunk when that happened, for a few beers can make no
man drunk, or so my grandpas say.
The radio murmured
songs that weren’t important enough to register in my mind. The
car went on without stop, only a few pauses in between. Damn
traffic lights. I still didn’t know where we were going, or
where we were, as the night blanketed the world as we know as. I
think there were trees by our sides now, instead of low-roofed
houses of the city. I didn’t really know, for it was just too
dark to know. They might have been green giants from Mars for
all I knew, or shimmering ghosts of the never-pasts. I don’t
know, I didn’t see them.
The car pushed on,
going forth in a never-ending road, pulled by some invisible
force that urged it to move on, move faster, reach the end. Why
were we going forward on this road? I didn’t know. I just moved
on. I was just an object moved on by time and car.
When we finally
stopped, I wasn’t sure anymore of who we were, or who we really
were back then. We stopped at a gas station called Amoco, for
the gas needle was almost on top of the “E”. I knew I should
have filled it up before we started on this trip. My egg-creamy
yellow Chevrolet seemed so old and depressed when I compared it
to the other cars in the station. Every car seemed to shine and
beautify itself with its pretty bright colors and black
leather-coated seats. My car didn’t care. It was just ready to
die.
“Where are we?” Mike
asked as he brushed his right hand tiredly over his short black
hair. His black Nike shoes made a soft stepping sound as he got
out of the car, sick already with the new world we were in.
“If I really knew, I
would tell you.” I said as I pulled out the gas pump from its
resting altar, ready for the gas that was worshipped by the cars
it gave life. A nice breeze migrated through as I pumped gas
into the car, who swallowed the odorous liquid with
anticipation. I felt the wind pass through every root of my
hair, playing and dancing with the dark hair that composed parts
of me. The wind claimed my hair its, just as it had with those
tall grasses of the country fields, waving them like the waters
of the oceans blue.
I looked back at the
dark void from where we came from, before I looked forth to the
dark void that we were planning to go. It really made no
difference in the dark, for everything was just a black void
waiting to be lighted, waiting to be filled. “Shall we go back?”
I asked with a soft-weak voice, doubtful again of who we were
and where we were going.
“There is no other
choice, is there?” Mike replied, looking also into the void that
spread in front of us. Our T-shirts now flapped in the wind like
broken flags, waving unsurely in the course of life.
“Let’s go.” I said
simply, as I placed the pump back onto its hibernating stand,
before starting for the temple the pump belonged to.
* * * * * *
“I hate my job.” I said, as we moved back through the road we’ve
been to before, looking once again for that invisible goal we’ve
been set out to find.
I was
working in a shit hole of a Chinese restaurant, in the kitchen
with the rest of the kitchen crew (90% Mexican, 10% others). The
restaurant, China Cottage, was the best Chinese restaurant in
Kettering, that insignificant little city near Dayton, Ohio.
Yet, even though it was a prestigious restaurant, it was nothing
more than a sweatshop to the kitchen crew. We weren’t only
underpaid ($50 for 11 hours of work), but we were also sweating
like broken faucets, thanks to the heat and smoke that cooking
generates. I was enslaved here because of the stupid promise. My
parents had sold my life to them for fifty bucks a day. I didn’t
know that my life was worth that little.
“Quit then.” Mike
replied, as he looked out once again to the world that
surrounded and passed us by. Just like the wind that entered and
left through our open windows, the world that I saw in front of
us changed as each second went by, too fast for me to feel any
remorse about the worlds that we’ve left behind.
“I can’t, I can’t
break the promise Dad made.”
“Yes, you can. You
control your own life.”
A lonely car passed us
by as we spoke, all that’s seen of it being only the headlights
it owns and shines. “Maybe we don’t control our lives at all.” I
said, as the headlights rushed us by. “Maybe we do get to that
intersection in our lives, where many possibilities follow and
many possibilities end, only to have Time guide and pull our
arms towards the one possibility that he likes, even if that is
the worst possibility that we can get.”
“Or maybe you’re wrong
and we don’t get guided at all.” Was Mike’s reply as he turned
to look at me. “Maybe the possibilities we end on is nothing
more but a random throw of a dice, in where our chances of
getting a good ending are as good as the chances of getting the
ones we hate.”
I nodded once in
agreement. The car went on without care. “Maybe we all are
really only characters in a story, written by Gods,” I smiled a
little as I said this. “And just like the characters in a story,
we believe and think that we will be able to choose the future
of our endings, yet we cannot in reality, for it is all already
decided by the plots of our writer God.”
“So why bother
fighting forth, huh?” Mike asked in a strength-less voice, still
looking out at the world that changed and passed us by,
impatient to leave and look at the past behind.
“Maybe because the
plot demands us to struggle,” I replied, the road in front of us
now slowly becoming brighter with the city lights. “For it would
be a boring story to read if nobody struggled.”
A minute of silence,
nothing more heard but the dull noises of the running engine.
“We think too much.” Mike said, a chuckle emerging from his
smiling mouth.
“Yeah, we do.” I had
agreed then, a smile breaking into my face. “Being a writer
totally sucks ass.”
The car ignored the
laughter, bored of the senseless talks that happened in it. It
continued to hum its song, of a melody that captured its mood,
moving, going forth in the often-curving road. It could only
look forth, and not back, as the colors and lights changed in
front of its eyes. The car could only move, directed by the ones
who lead it. It had no other choice. |
