How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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today, July 1st
First of all, Charon, let me apologize for the sad parts at the beginning and end of the last story. They are the moments I remember most clearly about June, but I hope you can forget them. I really do. In fact, that's what I try to do every day.
But other than that, did you enjoy having a happy life? I don't mean your actual life because I don't know anything about that. You might have been happier than any human who ever lived – kind of like a cat who finds a perpetual patch of sunshine. Maybe you lounged in that warmth for all nine of your lives. Or maybe you spent every day longing for something that you'd never get – like a cat waiting by a doorway for a mouse to reappear. That mouse might have run across the room just once but the cat will wait and hope. It will have faith that its patience will be rewarded. And it will pray for a little charity from an otherwise uncharitable universe.
But Charon, as much as anything, I hope you were loved deeply and completely until the day got lost in the woods. I doubt that, though, because you were found wandering alone outside Mars and that doesn't sound like the end of a happy story. It sounds more like the end of an empty story. Like that cat waiting behind a door for a mouse that never appears. I hate that thought because every life (even those in the teeming middle, the ordinary lives, the uneventful ones, the ones we walk past without ever noticing) shouldn't feel that kind of emptiness.
It seems tragic in a way but maybe that's the wrong word. Seriously, can small lives (like ours) actually be tragic? I don't mean to worry you, my dear, but I hear that word every day. Tragedy. I hear it outside your door. Over and over. It echoes up and down the hallways and everyone says it about you. "It's so tragic." "She's so tragic." You may not hear the word, but I do. It's like the 7 letters are branded on the tips of people's tongues and the feelings escape as sounds and sympathy.
I read once that every real tragedy is built upon some fatal flaw or monumental failure. So, Charon, what was your flaw or failure? Did you have faith in the faithless, hope against all hope, or were you charitable to those who chose to look away.
I really don't care about that because none that matters to me. Even if you had some horrendous flaw or lived each day with an awful failure, I can't conceive of anything more beautiful than the last six months I've spent with you.
I know I'm just looking at our time together through one facet of a flawed diamond, but I've been so happy. Happy spending my mornings with you. Happy fooling myself that I was finally doing something good with my life. Happy trying to forget. But (I hate to say it) at the same time, sharing stories this way has also felt like getting lost in a diamond desert of sand where every ripple means something and nothing at the same time. Have you ever walked across the sand, my dear. I'm sure you have, so you must know that every step is a struggle.
And each day, I struggle to forget my actual memories. And all this struggling makes me worry that the world's smallest tragedies are actually reserved for cowards like me. Cowards who mutiny against themselves. We are the cowards who spend their lives trying to wipe away the stain they've left on Earth. A stain that no one ever notices.
So maybe, my dear, the greatest tragedy of all is the tragedy of being too insignificant to be remembered. Insignificant like the daytime shadows of black (black) cats that escape their owners and wander alone through alleyways at night.
Your permanently lost guide, Edward Starling Prindle.
