On earth

visitations

I. Heaven

Through a window overlooking the sea, the sky becomes calico. Writing that now—calico—seems incorrect, superfluous. At worst, hyperbolic. Calico like the coat of my cat who, like me, would prefer to stare out the window than do most other things. Of all the colors on this earth, there’s not a singular one that perfectly captures the sky’s color. Though I’ve devoted my life to description, sometimes I can’t let myself describe things as they simply are.

We talk about God like we’re teenagers. I tell you about how when I was a child and was baptized, the pastor told my mother he had never felt the hand of Christ so strongly on a child. That probably ruined me for life. Or at the very least, gave me fodder for countless of therapy sessions trying to determine the root cause of why I must be seen as the most special to anyone I’ve ever loved. 

Naturally, we start talking about our love. I call the place where we are—physically, on an island, and metaphorically, that is, the place of our love—heaven. Nothing bad could happen here, despite some sickness passed back and forth between us like a note in class. Because I mean it, and have no evidence otherwise, I say that I’ll remember this place we share for the rest of my life.

What I’ll remember is not a specific day but places. But these are places tied specifically to watershed feelings. Wading through a downpour to watch a matinee with the person I love. A hillside under a lunar eclipse in my sign. By the lake during a once every X years solar eclipse. The Manhattan Bridge. A bed where arms pull me into them between sleeping and waking. 

Was putting my feet in the river Thames beside my first love, feeling older than I was. A sweetness that solidified like hard candy. If I could go back and tell myself anything, I would say don’t bite down. Keep this under your tongue for as long as you can. Don’t ask too much. There he is, by the river, if I can choose to keep him anywhere.

Was a street Annie walked down one summer night. Overwhelmed by the canopy of trees, her lover said they needed to smoke a cigarette on a stoop and watch the summer night pass. Annie said without thinking she loved them. It was only the second time they saw each other. The story told to me one night in our kitchen transported me there.

The back porch of Charlotte’s childhood home. Looking over the green California grass as her mother narrated every change the house had undergone. How Charlotte inhabited it. 

Was my own home in North Carolina, lazy with honeysuckle in early summer. My mother’s voice on the phone to her sister. My father calling up the stairs because it’s too late in the morning to still be sleeping. Finding my sister resting her head on the couch arm. The dog barking relentlessly. Stray cats in the yard, some that resembled ones we buried years before. An omen that was comforting.

Was a different homecoming. Touching down after being gone a week. Someone told me the best part about living in New York is coming back. I would agree.

To give this place a superlative is to say I can’t imagine life being better than where it is right now. Which is also to say I guess I’ve died because it can’t be this good otherwise. It’s very much real, I’m very much still alive. In the beginning, I told you things were not only likely to turn out fine, but potentially very good. Entrance into heaven, in the Protestant tradition, is some kind of reward that has to be earned. That’s the difference—I arrived here without working. It turns out heaven is effortless. 

With you on an island in New England. We hear from downstairs our friends’ voices. The smell of mushrooms cooking slowly. Finally, the sun is gone. You tell me you love me again. I understand heaven may be a place, but I can never get close enough.

II. Hell

Where nothing ever happens. The same day over and over. Stuck in traffic on a neverending interstate. Man I hate this part of Texas, I listened to these lyrics when I stood at an intersection waiting to cross the street in Dallas. A hotel room playing The Breakfast Club on loop until I stop breathing. Exile without explanation, exile for bad behavior. Two weeks without your best friend. Anywhere away from the person you love.

As a child, I was scared of hell because it was some confirmation that I was bad. I didn’t understand then that everyone and no one can save you, so I became dogged in my attempt to save myself. That’s hell in itself. A refusal to be saved. I was afraid, too, because I knew hell was irreversible. Once you were there, you were dead. And that’s it you’re dead. There’s no going back.

I know it’s grief or nothing. If it’s heaven to hold, it’s hell to lose. Winter when it’s time to say goodbye. On February Fourth, I said goodbye a cat I adopted only three and a half years prior. Three years ago, on the same day, my former partner’s mother. I buried an owl in the yard the family found on the side of the road a few days before she died. Two Februarys before I was born, my grandmother passed around her birthday. Before spring comes, it requires an offering. These are correlations I can’t help but hold vigil over.

It seems dramatic to say I am always burying, but the older I’ve gotten, I’ve realized that’s part of the contract of being human. Continuing to lose, and being forced to bury, is one way to accept loss. 

A new friend asked me in the car what I’d prefer—burial or cremation. Let’s get into it, she said. The answer was complicated. Others offered their own choices. Why aren’t we allowed to do it ourselves? I closed my eyes and saw a cliffside. My future children and a pyre. Out loud I said burial because it’s all I’ve ever known. Maybe it’s a desire to continue to take up space even after I’m gone. 

III. Somewhere

On the fire escape on another starless night. Half a cigarette. It’s not a full moon quite yet. If you got stuck out there, I’d probably know where to search for you. I lost you so I could read someone else’s bookshelf. That night, I looked like a French movie star, though earlier in the day, I had fallen asleep in a French film. Sitting there in scene, a man told me it was strange to find me there looking up. Strange as I ever was.

I read a few pages from a memoir that features a former teacher of mine. About the writer’s relationship with him and how it tormented her dying best friend. A woman between great loves. Because to have one meant effectively losing the other. That choice is not freedom, but loss. My father used to warn me that I couldn’t sit on both sides of the fence. I put the book back on the shelf and looked out the window instead. I don’t ever want to choose. Prefer suspension in the free fall even if that meant a life of going back and forth.

A few weeks ago, I left the city briefly and saw every star in the sky. I couldn’t believe how brand new the sky looked to me. So many constellations that I had forgotten the names of—or maybe never actually knew. The Big Dipper as obvious and dense as I felt. I thought of a friend last summer asking me how I could write about the stars if I lived somewhere I couldn’t see them. She meant writing about astrology. I told her I didn’t really write about the stars, only love. I couldn’t see that clearly either. There was too much pollution in my heart. I didn’t know what or who I was headed towards.

Half the time, I have little to no sense of direction. The other half I know how to pick my way towards something like what I always believed my life would look like. But I’m no geographer. I arrived here by half luck, half design. 

I’ve been told my systems of organization are illegible. Then others have told me that every decision I make is predictable, completely understandable as a course of action. I make moves with feeling, not logic. And feelings are rarely logical. Most things remain a mystery to me, but in the last two years, my systems and choices have become clearer. So much about my life didn’t make sense until I moved to New York. Being in love with the right person is similar—what didn’t make sense before now seems like the soundest logic. Something like belonging. 

There’s nothing new under the sun. Or, at least, nothing new except what’s already been forgotten. But everything looks new under this particular moon. I see you how you see me. Every feature illuminated so I can kiss them better. Happiness is somewhere between remembering and forgetting everything you thought you knew.

Days of Heaven, dir. Terrence Malick (1978)