Anthology Complex (14 page)

Now I'm on the bus taking a trip to visit Kathleen, Joe's mom, because
it's Wednesday. On the bus I remember a dream I had three years ago. I'm in an
airplane, and the only other passenger is a man sitting to the left of me. He
begins to tell me about the evolution of man, how the creature first learned
how to communicate with its own kind and other kinds around it. He tells me how
all forms of language is simply the outward projection of the mind.

The questions someone asks, the way they react to a certain event, these
are who they are or who they want to be. He starts to tell me that man created
a part of the brain that deals with everything that is exterior to the body it
belongs to, and a part of the brain that deals with everything that is interior
to the body it belongs to. He tells me that these functions were birthed from
the need to survive.

Now the man is telling me that he once knew God, but that they had been
separated long ago because they disagreed. He tells me that they were working
on a project. They were nearing completion when they came to the last aspect of
the project, whether all the lifeforms in all possible places would have a free
will or not.

He tells me that God believed that they should have a free will, but
that he himself believed that they should not. That if these lifeforms had a
free will, they would eventually destroy the entire project itself.

He says he tried to remind God that even the beings who created him and
God had stated that giving him and God and all the others of our kind a free
will was a mistake. Apparently the mistake was going to happen again, and maybe
again sometime down the road.

So this man says he and God argued, disagreed, and then they were
separated, God being sent to one place, and the man being sent to another
place, and it was decided that God would finish the project alone. The man was
angry when he saw that God had decided to grant the lifeforms a privilege of
free will.

Several days later, the man swears to God that he will make the
lifeforms murder, steal and deceive one another to show God that giving them a
free will was a mistake. The man says he kept his promise for years, and
eventually the sins grew to a degree that he no longer had to continue to prove
his point. The lifeforms became so sinful that they teach their offspring the
ways of sin, and it simply carries on by itself.

Now the man says after so many years, he realized that God had not once
shown his face to his creation. He had not once intervened. He let his creation
destroy itself as if he didn't care. The man says at that point he isn't so
much concerned with the wills of the lifeforms as he is with the will of God.

For years he claims that God is a hypocrite, saying he has given will to
his creation yet has no will of his own. God never responds. This man says that
those were his last words to God, and since then he has been waiting for God's
reply. The man says knowing God for as long as he did, he will probably only
speak through the actions of his creation.

I ask the man how he knew God, and he tells me that he was once one of
God's angels. I start to wonder that if maybe it was this man who was running
the entire universe instead of God, if our lives would be better. We would
however have no free will, but that's of course if free will is what we think
it is. I say to the man that perhaps God has actually intervened. I tell him
about Moses and Jesus, and the man says that God was not in these people.

He says that Moses and Jesus were just two of the people who were born
from people who murdered and stole and deceived. That Moses and Jesus learned
and chose to deceive people because of the free will they were given by God. I
ask him about the people who God has spoken to, people like Abraham, and he
tells me that these people were disillusioned. They saw God because they needed
to see God in a world such as this one.

Now there is a familiar-looking man walking towards us, and after he
passes, the man I am talking to tells me that the man who just passed us is the
antichrist. I ask him why he looked so much like Jesus, and the man tells me
that it was merely a mask. Just like the mask he himself was wearing a mask.

I arrived at the home of Joe's mom, Kathleen, still wondering why she could
have possibly wanted me to visit her. By the end of the night I realize that
she has been alone since her husband died.

All the relationships she had in the past ended in bitterness because of
the sins of her son or ended because the other person had passed away. It's
funny how once someone reveals that they are a homosexual, they immediately
become a different person. The friends they had and the people they knew, some
of them disappear. However, that's not to say that some of them don't stay. There
are always people who will accept you for who you really are, or even who you
really aren't.

Like so many other people, Kathleen, Joe's mom, suffers from isolation
within. Like so many people she is surrounded by billions of lifeforms, yet
manages to feel alone, and so now in her times of desperation she reaches out.
She seeks forgiveness not from me, not from Joe, not even from God, but from
herself because self-acceptance is the beginning of the end. Accepting that she
was not strong enough to say no to her husband and the others who condemned her
son. She tells me that when Joe wakes up she wants to be next to his side, she
wants to move on with the little time she has left, and she wants to die
satisfied. Not in those words.

She asks me if I understand these words that she is saying, but I can't
possibly comprehend them the way she does, the way she wants me to, simply
because I don't have children. Because I've never had a wife or a husband.
Because I'm not so old that I think time is running out for me to fix the
messes that reach out from the past and into the present and await the future.
I can't possibly understand because for the most part, my heart is filled with
more hate than it is love. This misanthropic life.

As I'm returning back to my home, I decide to instead spend the night at
my parents' house because in my apartment building there are fools and
intruders. People like Lynne who ask you to garden with them. People like Joe
who put your name on a form. People like Jamal who seek refuge, and when you
show them kindness they lie to you. People like Mary who at the very sight of
them makes you feel sick.

Even my home is a place where I don't belong. I sit here and even the
home I grew up in, my parents' home, I don't feel I belong. I feel as if there
is no place for me in a world with so many people I can't call my own, but as
I'm beginning to fall asleep, perhaps to dream of a paradise where I do belong,
a utopia where I can find people who are like me, all I can think about is
Lynne and the time she said that your home is your home.

Chapter 28:

BLACK AND WHITE

I wake up and for a second I don't know where I am, but the painting of
Jesus Christ on the wall reminds me that I spent the night at my parents' home.
It also reminds me of the dream I just had, but I can only remember bits,
pieces and parts. In one part of the dream, Joe's mom, Kathleen, and I are at
the hospital visiting a sleeping Joe. She offers me a piece of gum and I take
it, but I don't really like gum so I put it in my coat pocket.

The next thing I remember is that I'm leaning over Joe's body trying to
read what's on the dog tags that are around his neck. Either I can't remember
what I read or they were just blank.

Now I'm awake and back at my apartment building and standing in front of
my door, trying to look in through the peephole from the outside, but of course
that doesn't work; all I can see is black. This is a one way street, one way
view, and you can't just expect everyone to see things the way you do.
Sometimes you just have to look at something at a different perspective,
through the eyes of someone else, but if all you can see is black, then you may
have to trust that person to guide you through the darkness.

As I'm trying to look into my own apartment I hear someone coming up the
stairs. I take out my keys and pretend to go through them. It's Boris. I'm
pretty sure he's Russian but that's about all I know about him. He looks at me,
nods, and I nod back, and he goes up the next flight of stairs.

Once he's gone I start to look through the peephole again but still all
I can see is black. I don't know why but I just keep trying to see at least
something, just a little color, just something other than black, and that's
when I hear a familiar voice. "What are you doing?"

It's Lynne, holding a basket of laundry. She's so small I didn't hear
her coming up the stairs. I tell her that I reversed the peephole so I could
see inside my apartment when I'm coming home, just in case there is someone
inside ready to attack me. She starts to laugh and that makes me laugh. I'm
getting better at this.

She asks me what made me think of doing that, and I tell her that it was
actually from an old television show and that my peephole wasn't actually
reversed. She laughs again.

She walks by me and she says that she has something she wants to show
me. I follow her into her apartment. Then through the living room. Then into
her bedroom. I see her bed and I can't help but think of the dream I had with
the prostitute. She points to her left and I come closer to see what it is.
It's a painting of a white rose with a Sun behind it, giving it life.

I remember that she told me that a white rose meant innocence and
purity, silence and secrecy, but I know that the feelings I have for her are
anything but passionate. This feeling that I think might be love is simply
obsession in disguise.

I've seen so many famous paintings by artists considered the greatest,
but I've never felt anything from them like other people do. I think the thing
is you have to see one of these paintings at the right time in the right place
under the right circumstances, and that's when you will truly understand what
appears before you.

For a second everything makes sense, and the painting stares back at you
and you understand it. That's how I feel looking at Lynne's painting, because
this white rose and this Sun have so many meanings to me.

I ask her if she painted it herself, and she says yes. She tells me that
she has been painting since she was a little girl. She starts to tell me she
paints because it's like gardening. You have an idea for a painting, and you
plant that seed. Once you start painting you are creating a universe of your
own and there are no boundaries.

Eventually your universe starts to grow and you paint what your heart
tells you to. It's just like writing or playing an instrument. She continues but
I lose focus of what she's saying when I hear the news on the television. I
tell her to wait, and I walk into her living room, she follows.

Police have discovered thirteen bodies in a small abandoned apartment
building. They say the bodies are, just like the other deaths, related to
drugs. I can't help but wonder if this is actually the work of a serial killer
instead.

Lynne and I talk about it for a while, and then I go home to find that
Jamal has left. However Derek is still here, and he is of course reading one of
the composition notebooks. I ask Derek where his brother went and he said he
left. He tells me that Jamal made a phone call early in the morning and then
just left, and that he told him to stay here. I then ask him what he's reading
and he tells me he's reading about the short story where the main character
realizes that their dreams were actually altered memories of horrible things
they had done in the past.

How the main character talks about how dreams are so similar to
memories. How when the main character had a dream of his parents dying in a
house fire that he or she barely escaped, it was actually him or her who set
the fire in the first place in the true reality. That was so along ago I didn't
even remember writing it down.

I ask Derek if he wants anything to eat and we end up ordering pizza.
While we are waiting, Derek tells me something I already knew. That Jamal lied
to me. That he didn't really owe anyone money, he was just trying to get
himself and Derek out of what was happening in the southern side of the city.
All the killing, all the drugs.