an august ghost story
you really wanna tell me goodbye
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, but I can’t tell which one of us is crazy. I'm not even sure which one of us is dead.
But one of us has to be.
Here we are, walking down the street. Easy breezy early spring day. I’m a little underdressed for the weather, it seems, because I rub my hands up and down my arms and say “brr.” You know, I think it’s you. You’re crazy.… Does that mean I’m dead?
You say: “Would you like my jacket?”
I say: “No, then we'll both get cold.”
BZZZZ. Rewind.
Here we are, walking down the street. Easy breezy early spring day.…
Did we ever even have this conversation? Is it even possible something like this exchange, which says nothing at all, could've bothered you so much? We’ve walked down this street at least forty times. Every time it starts I resolve to break the pattern somehow. Say something new. Unexpected.
(“Brr.”)
But then, why should I be the one to break the pattern? This is your deranged scenario. Probably. You are the one determined to walk down the street a hundred times until you get me to take your jacket. Probably. I am the innocent victim here. Probably.
(“Would you like my jacket?”)
What street is this, anyway?
(“No—”)
I am a seventeenth century woman descending from a carriage. “Alack” (I say) “forsooth” (for good measure) “ah me” (that’s laying it on a bit thick) “mine eyes perceiveth—a mud puddle!”
“Fair lady” (that’s you) “shalt I spread mine cloak afore thee?”
“Nay, good swain,” I say. “For then we shalt both get wet.”
That was at least something, I’ll admit it. Even if I suspect the dialogue wouldn’t pass muster if we were really aiming for period, or even grammatical, accuracy. However, there isn't any time to think about that. You and I are both on the moon! We are fighting… well, what are these? They look sort of like cats and sort of like lizards, sort of like giraffes and a lot like squids. One of them has an insignia from the planet Venus—how do I know that?—so we are fighting Venusians, who are feline reptilian giraffe squids who want to take over the moon.
I am wondering how it is that these things live on the planet Venus, which is after all composed entirely of gas, when one of them hurls a rock at me. Crack goes the glass of my helmet. It’s curtains for me, I know, even as I futilely clap my hand over the crack and hear the hiss of the escaping air.
The radio crackles.
“Do you want my helmet?” you ask.
“No,” I say. “Then we'll both die.”
My theories:
Number one, I am dead. You are reliving a scenario over which you feel “guilt” because I am dead. I can only repeat my lines until you come to some kind of personal epiphany, probably that “it wasn't your fault.” I don't know what “it” means in that sentence. Maybe my death? Maybe it was your fault, I don't know, but I hope it wasn’t because in that case you will never reach that epiphany and I will be stuck doing this forever which doesn't seem very fair.
Theory number two. You are dead. Your ghost is afflicting me. You want me to feel bad about something. Well, I refuse. I refuse!
Then number three. We are both dead and in hell.
Given that I don't remember dying, and I don't remember you dying, it is natural to wonder why I'm so sure that at least one of us has to be dead. But you feel it too, right? Every time, no matter how we approach it, no matter what comes first, no matter what you or I want to say, it's too late. We can only be here at the reality of what happened every time. It is too late. All the possibilities have already resolved. We are what we are. We were what we were.
Where did all of this “we” come from, all of a sudden? It’s you and I.
It probably was your fault.
It is 10,000 BC and we—you and I—are riding on a Brontosaurus. There's a lot wrong with this picture, it’s true. Still, the Brontosaurus always was my favorite dinosaur, even if it did not exist. We are both eating gigantic turkey legs. Well, it’s probably not turkey, but before I even get a taste a pterodactyl swooped down and takes mine.
You emit a series of grunts as you offer me some of your turkey leg.
I emit a series of grunts as I explain to you that then we would just both be hungry.
If you want to know, I like the cold. If you want to know, the jacket is all wrong for my look. If you want to know, I don’t trust you. If you want to know, it won’t keep me warm and you will just resent me. If you want to know, it’s all an act of war, if I accept this from you it means my defeat or at least my diminishment, whereas if I refuse I triumph. If you want to know, you should already know. If you want to know—
If you want to know, I don’t want you to know.
Is it my fault?
We’re back on the street. This time, I don’t walk. You don’t take a step forward either. I make myself look at the street. Like all the other places, it is not quite right. On either side run old stone walls. The road itself is made of cobblestones. Down from the sky drift cherry blossoms. All things I have seen, sure, but not together. This street is not a place. None of these places are real places. They are all stitched together from other things.
I can’t smell the cherry blossoms; the trees sway with a breeze, but I can’t feel it. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve never once, in all these walks down the street, felt cold. I push my feet where the ground should be. They don’t move, and I don’t movie, yet nothing is pushing back at me. I felt nothing in that carriage, nothing on the moon. Smelled nothing.
I look at you. Behind me an immense pressure is building, trying to compel me to step forward, and eventually it will get too strong and I’ll have to take a step. But for now—
“The truth is,” I say. “The truth is.”
“The truth is,” you say.
The truth is, a Brontosaurus is not a real dinosaur.
“I don’t think,” I say, “I don’t think this street goes anywhere, do you?”
You say, “It only goes the length of three lines. But it’s your movie.”
“Can I change the script?” I ask. “If it’s my movie.”
You say, “Would you like my jacket?”
The truth is, no life can exist on the planet Venus.
The truth is—
“No.”
Maybe: the definition of insanity isn’t doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It’s not living in reality, a definition which encompasses but is not limited to the previous statement. Or, two roads diverged in a wood and I said “no,” after which there is no story. I ended the story. No matter how times we replay this tape I’ll end it because I have to, I’m the one that said no. I have no future, I only live here, in the moment everything begins and ends.
I have to….
That isn’t true.
Isn’t it a wonderful sound, no, I say no, nothing can compel me, no, I say no, I can end the world a thousand times over, no, I do not want anything, no, and I what I do want you cannot give me, no, I will say it, no, the word of absolute freedom, I will say no I will say no I will say no, and every time it will ring like a bell, I will say it, I will say no.
If you saw an earlier version of this with some incorrect tenses… no you didn’t.