A Collection of Short Stories

Pictures

Pictures

Copyright 2016

How can I see with no eyes?

I'm staring at a brick wall plastered in white and my loosely constructed haze is almost immediately replaced with your image. Your hair turns in its usual fashion, your skin is so gracefully smooth. My tunnel vision of your being drinks this moment like a fine wine. You are bliss and I am wonder. We share. You move your emotion from your mouth to your eyes; I don't need to ask to know. I soak in melody. I am there. Your blue eyes are so blue, yet mine continue to stare. They stare at a brick wall, plastered in white and shrouded by my loosely constructed haze.

I am here and living but I am also there and reliving. Blink and beat, each part of me is one. Reality is the stage, reminder of the task and the time and the importance and the schedule. My eyes consume every color and contour and motion of this world; I pair with the tingling placement of all my limbs, the crisp intake of air conditioned atmosphere, the small rustle of scratching and shuffling and white noise. See, feel, touch, smell, hear. I am present.

I am here and living but I am also there and reliving. Blink and beat, each part of me is one. Memory is the dancer, fleeting and changing with its own desire. It enters the reality and may leave just as quickly. It becomes the event to watch, replacing the stagnant prominence of reality. The stage remains but is given something new and worthwhile, savory. Remember, rebuild, reconstruct. I am presented.

As quickly as I notice this fact I turn off the spotlight, only half able to experience the memory's art. It is taken over by a sour static; the awareness of the moment makes it vanish. Molding in my mind, it becomes a train speeding towards discovery and curiosity. The picture flashes like a firework, a spark of invigorating emotion and remembrance. It explodes and overtakes the present existing truth in my open eyes. How can you seem here? I am not there. I am now. How are you so powerful? I am not there. How can I see with no eyes?

These pictures gather into something not quite close to a photographic memory, a fragmented framework of my life. I could blink and allow reality to be taken over with sensations of tear-drowned restaurants, screaming playgrounds, endorphin paths. Currently there is nothing more vivid than you. I see it all but I am puzzled as to why these are restricted to the confines of my mind. There is no outlet to let me know that my thoughts exist. They are just there, and I am here.

It is a single strand carrying an electrically charged impulse on a winding trail. These trails collect and combine into bundles, bundles that collect and combine into lobes, lobes that collect and combine into a brain. This is my mind; it is nothing more than the wires that light up a bedroom, that power a microwave, that charge a cell phone. How can the simplest of charges make me feel? Every impulse surely cannot be responsible for my feelings.

I have learned that the parietal lobe of the brain acts as the filing cabinet for our existence. We store our life in a section no bigger than an apple, able to recall our own experiences so that we can better adapt to our environment and make better decisions. From caveman days, this part has only existed to survive. Our hand rests on a heated stove, and the parietal lobe connects that heat is hot and hot is hurt. We yank our hand away.

This, however, does not explain why I see you at the most unexpected of times. It does not explain why that moment was projected like a picture to a screen that only my brain can witness. No sight, no feel, no sound- just my soul reveling in enjoyment. It does not respond to a stimulus, it does not appear as an inference for seconds to come. For in reality I am only sitting in a chair facing a stagnant wall, this blossoming memory serves no practical purpose. Will I somehow deteriorate without these human flashes?

I cannot bring this image beyond the confines of my skull. As tempted as I am to watch it like a high definition film, it is fuzzy and mumbled and mixed. It is trapped, unable to manifest. It is garbled with the thousands of other sentences and emotions and pictures that fade in and out. I can see it, but not like I am seeing this wall. One day, I suppose it might fade back into the filing cabinet of my life, losing a prominence and relevance. It may still keep its glory, but it will rust over the years.

We take pictures to capture a moment. I wish to capture these, so that they might be as real and tangible as every passing second before my eyes.