The Instance of Now

The craggy fields stretch out in curves from my windowsill to the sea. The wind is bold and chilly, and it speaks to me through my walls and roof. I listen to it, most days, if my mood agrees. Beyond the fields, the sea collides with the cliffs, filling the wind with substance, and menace. I like the cliffs, watching the spray from the waves. Some mornings, when the wind is calm, I like to throw small things off on to the rocks below. I listen to the sounds they make when they hit the rocks. And then, just as the sounds become music, the wind howls again. I feel the wind, and I imagine myself splitting into ten million snowflakes, borne on the gale, swept from my fields to Reykjavík, To London, and then to Paris. To Marrakech as rain perhaps. I imagine some of me misting into the Sahara. A particle of me lands in Madagascar, bringing nutrients to a fledgling flower, just now pushing its head above the soil of the rainforest floor.
I am alone here in my home still. My home is more of a shack with a leaky roof and shaky walls than a real house, but it is home nonetheless. I didn’t use to be alone, I used to have a wife, but she died some years back. I have no calendar to tell me when it is now or when it was then. She slipped over the edge of the cliffs, and I couldn’t catch her. But she wasn’t really my wife, not technically; we were never officially married. We talked about it frequently but never got around to it, there was too much else for us to do to waste time on something like getting married. It didn’t matter that we weren’t married, not to us anyways. Our relationship was beautiful and filled with purpose, like a rushing stream carving and meandering its way through fields of flowers and forests of bamboo. Wandering, but with a purpose, and a destination.

It was Sunday when she died. Her second trimester was about to become her third.

That Sunday, the wind was fierce and more menacing than usual. The wind came and swept her off out to sea. The village just down the road, of which I now merely pretend to be an inhabitant of, tried to console me, and brought me food and more grief, more apologies for my loss, as if it was their fault. As if I didn’t have enough of either food or grief, they kept showing up everyday for two weeks. Eventually I quit answering the door, but it didn’t stop them. I stopped getting up when they arrived, quit acknowledging them at all, and eventually no more came. But the habit stuck me in its grasp, like a cigarette smoker dying of lung cancer, but he still smokes a pack a day. Except, I am not dying, and this is a serious problem for me.
Right here, and right now, is the only now there is. What wife? What child on the way? That wasn’t life; that was something else, a dream maybe, or a movie I saw and forgot about. My life is simple now, much more than whatever may have come to pass, and I wait, everyday, for my final to come. The final day of a life. What would you do if you knew it was coming? What would you hope it to be if you had no idea it was your last? Does any of that bullshit even matter? And so, you may think about what your last day would be like, if it went perfect, movie-perfect even. Mine? It would be something like what snow experiences as the sun returns it to its liquid state. We could all only hope to be returned to our liquid states, to the earth, so gracefully as snowmelt. It is now day god-only-knows-how-many after the death of my love and child, and some things never change. But then again, some things do.
I haven’t seen anyone except the grocer in as long as I can remember, which is why the knock on the door was so unexpected. I remember it well, it was a cold and brutal day, and I had been conversing with and cursing the wind all morning. I can still see the water dripping through the roof, a ring of ice growing steadily larger around the hole with each pitiful drop. Outside my window the snow was in a blind rage, banging against the glass and threatening my warmth. And then the knock came.
It was a heavy knock and it startled me out of my suicide fantasy, one of my favorite ways to pass time those days. I always wanted my last day to be perfect, movie-perfect. So I would fantasize about my perfect end-of-life, end-of-misery day. It was always cloudy in my fantasies and the wind was always brutal. The wind would sting my face with razors, slicing it to strips of meat. And I would feel alive, truly. I haven’t felt alive in the absence of pain since she died. If I were to die, I wouldn’t need pain to feel alive. But I have a problem; I can’t pull the proverbial trigger. Am I scared? No, I must be missing something, maybe the whole point of it.
I sat in my chair trying to bring myself out of the fantasy to understand the magnitude of the possibilities of the events about to transpire. Is it Sarah? Or maybe my child? Am I dead? No, I am not. Too bad… It must be someone real, someone not missing from this life. I got up slowly and opened the door. The man was large, and cloaked well; I could not see his face. The amount of snow clinging to his cloak made it obvious he walked quite a distance to be here now. How strange, someone had traveled a great distance by foot to see me. He had somehow survived the harsh weather for a long time. This was a strange man to be sure, and he had yet to say anything. Perhaps he was a wanderer, frozen to the core and desperate for warmth. This I believed to be the most probable and I let the man in without so much as a word between us.
After years without seeing another soul outside of the grocery store, the man now standing by the fire was a wraith to me. He was fiction, interjected unnecessarily into the biography of my life, a bad editing mistake. There seem to have been so many of these over the years. My editor is probably laughing at me behind my back. The man still hadn’t said anything, and all I could do was stare as he warmed his hands. Finally he dropped the hood and looked at me. The eyes I remember more than anything. Black and cold, but with a light behind, and white snow surrounding the iris, they were unlike anything human. They had something, something that could only be called mystique.
Mysticism was never part of my life until Sarah died, but I have found nothing more real in my life since. The world is a mystifying place if you look at it properly; the way the snow moves in the wind, or the sound of the leaves in a breeze, is this not art or music? The art of the gods. The earth is a canvas on which the gods experiment with their art. How else can you explain the beauty and diversity of the earth?
The man’s eyes had mysticism about them that was wholly natural and not at the same time. He looked deep, almost through me and finally, I was the one who broke the silence.
“Did you walk here?”
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.” His voice was cavernous, a cacophony of echoes like you would hear in the caves.
“What are you doing here? Who are you?”
“I am here for you. To serve your greatest need. At least, what you think is your greatest need.”
“I don’t need anything, I don’t need anybody. Who are you, again?”
“You do need something, you know you do. I am here to show you the way.” The man moved toward me, and he seemed to drift, like weight or gravity was of no concern. He had such a strange way of him, and I remember I couldn’t grasp it. There was nothing to hold onto about him, as if he were a fleeting dream. I had no idea what he was doing there, but he had a purpose and a mission, even if it was lost on me.
“You can’t give me what I need.” I said.
“No, I can’t so much as hand it to you as I can show you what you need to see. I promise you, it will be unpleasant, but it is necessary.” The man moved closer still, and then I could smell him. Lilac, maybe a hint of jasmine. More art of the gods. The world is a riot of sensory overload. How could a man who appeared to have been wandering the world smell so sweet? I remember he said one last thing to me that night.
“Tonight is not the night. Tomorrow will be the beginning of the end of your nightmare, of this era of your life. A new epoch begins tomorrow.” I don’t remember what happened after that moment but I do remember a feeling I had. It was like the sun emerging from 30 days of night in the dead of winter and spilling its warming life giving rays all over me. I felt warm and calm and I had a sense that he was right. I don’t remember going to sleep, but I do remember waking up.
The wind was again the first thing I heard, just like every morning. Yet, it was different this time, the wind’s cadence had changed. I remember it well because it shook me awake faster than I had bothered to get out of bed since she died. It was beautiful the way the wind harmonized with the sun and beat syncopated rhythms into my walls and roof. The day was different, and I felt alive and comfortable, a combination unheard of. I listened to nature’s symphony for what seemed like hours without ever thinking of the man. I had forgotten about him, he was nothing more than a figure in a dream, a fading specter in my mind. But if he was nothing but vapor, why was this day different? I hadn’t killed myself, this wasn’t heaven, and this wasn’t hell. What had changed?
I was lying on my back in bed, still drowning myself in the music of earth when the door opened and the man in the cloak walked into my room. Again, he seemed light and ethereal, and even in the daylight his eyes jumped out at me.
“It sounds different, doesn’t it?” He asked me. He was still here, and he was very real. His gaze was a car accident on my life, and I couldn’t help but look. I wasn’t even upset that this man was still here in my house and I couldn’t remember what happened last night.
“I love this music.” The man spoke again. “The earth is a composer of the utmost genius. Reminds me of Mozart during his most impressive moments. Anyways, today is the day.”
“I still am a little confused. Who the hell are you?”
“Never you mind. Come with me.” The man held out his hand and I took it without reason or thought. His skin was soft and warm and it smoothed the roughness of my own. He took me into the living room and stopped, turning me around to face him.
“You want to know why I am here?” The man asked. “I am here to take you to Sarah, to where those who are missing lie. I am going to kill you. This is what you want right? You want to see her again? Tell her you love her maybe?” It was what I wanted, all I had thought about through all these years, wasting away alone here in my cabin. How could this man do that? Was he for real?
Death… I had fantasized about it so often and now here was the way, and how, and quite possibly the why. What did I have to think about? It was simple, really. Just say yes and your fantasies come true. It was all too easy.
The man took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table.
“Are you ready? Are you ready to see her again? To leave all of this misery behind and leave this place forever? Are you ready to leave these walls to their stories, free from you?” I was and I told him so. It was time and there was nothing left for me here. The wind would continue on, and so would the snow. The cliffs would still exist and the waves would continue to batter them. I had heard enough music in my life, and was ready to give up everything for the chance to see her again.
From under his cloak the man drew a long knife and held it out in front of me. He told me to take it and I did. It was a beautiful thing, its curve smooth and its blade sharp. I rested the blade on my wrist and hesitated. I couldn’t do it. Once again, I found myself unable to pull the trigger, to just opt out of life. It was so simple and easy, and all it would take was a fraction of a second and the damage would be done. Why can’t I just leave this life? What is keeping me here; there is nothing for me?
“You can’t do it, can you? Are you unsure of you want? This is the way to her, to salvation. Just do it.”
“I can’t. I’ve never been able to.”
The man grabbed the knife from me and slashed my wrist. It opened and bled, and the world fuzzed around me.

She was just as beautiful as I remembered, maybe a bit younger looking. Her hair danced in the warm breeze coming onto the beach as large thunderheads formed behind her, rumbling slightly. She buried her feet in the grey sand and looked at me, her eyes more vibrant blue than I could ever remember.
“You are early. What are you doing here, love?” Sarah’s voice was gorgeous, just as it had always been.
“I am not sure, I couldn’t do it. But I tried, I tried so hard so many times to get back you. My life is nothing without you.”
“But you shouldn’t be here. The now of our reunion is not now. It is much later. But I promise you it will come.” Her body began to fade as she danced into the waves, looking at me still.
“Remember honey, I love you.” She said. “Today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow, but there will never be a tomorrow without today. We will be together again, when the tomorrow after the right today. Now, go home, and live today so there may be a tomorrow.”

When I woke up, I was still at the table; a knife lay next to me, an ordinary kitchen knife, and someone was standing over my shoulder. It was the grocer, rapidly talking into a cell phone. She looked down and saw that I was awake. I tried to move and found that my arm hurt terribly and when I looked down, I saw a bandage and a large puddle of blood, now starting to dry. The grocer hung up sat down in front of me.
“Your awake. How are you feeling? I came over to deliver you some extra cheese we got and when you didn’t answer I got worried and came in. I found you just as you did it. I have been fighting with emergency services for five hours to send a chopper all the way out here to get you and take you to a hospital. They said the storm was too bad and I agree. My car is buried outside from the blowing snow all night. What the hell is wrong with you?” I found I could still speak, even though I was weak.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong with me. I am okay, I’ll be okay.” Again, I began to hear the wind battering my home. It sounded as I remembered it, beautiful and raw. “Was there someone else here when you arrived?” I asked.
“No, it was just you, bleeding out and talking to someone named Sarah. Who was Sarah?”
“Huh? I don’t know any Sarah’s.” I looked away as I began to cry.
Eventually, an ambulance came and I went to the hospital. They fixed me and sent me home. Now here I am again, alone in my house, and still I talk to the wind. I haven’t seen anyone since that night. I guess I am back to my old habits. Some things never change, but some thing’s do. I know now that I’ll be with her again. The world is too beautiful and mystical a place to miss. Today is now and tomorrow is an illusion. And now, I am alive and alone, and that is all that there is for me now, but maybe not tomorrow.