Solitarius

In the best of situations, we do not belong to each other. There is no tinge of ownership, of thralldom. Each is separate and apart. This is essential to clear thinking and rational relationships. It is also Utopian, and not easily achieved.

Convention has caused so many mismatches in marriage. They are the answer to an overabundance of heat in the loins. They are the avoidance tactic of the tribe that has no wish to raise children resulting from too much heat. Ergo, promote the family unit as desirable, and at times inevitable, lest scandal ensue. It is financially sound.

Humanity reproduces itself and an endless supply of mismatches.

Occasionally though, like a streak of light passing through the early leaves of spring…a minor miracle of life occurs. A good match comes to pass.

But because life tends not to be kind, things happen, pieces that do fit very well get broken. Important words fall into dark cracks and are muffled by disapproval, covered by small stones, and twigs dropped by birds. Lovers dissolve, and invisibility is the fate of the glowing vision of forevermore.

So, this had come to pass, it seemed, in her life.

Time moved like a balloon filled with water, incapable of speed. The cheap clock on the wall ticked away seconds.

Tick

Tick

Tick

Tick

She played Solitaire.

Have you any idea how long a game of Solitaire can last? Oh, you think you do. A few minutes, you say. There is a game that involves four suits of cards laid out in ten rows. Lunatics and widows play this game. And what a strangely non-apropos term. Play. It is not play, it is the second-to-second quest for oblivion, and were it possible, it should measure itself out in moments which are uncountable, therefore making it last forever.

When involved deeply in moments of Solitaire, it is almost impossible to think of anything else but the Red Queen seeking the Red King from so great a distance… resolution is very difficult. A difficult pastime dedicated to smoothing out hours. The removal of jagged hours being the ultimate goal. Many hours become days, although some get lost in the shuffle and are never found again.

The jagged hours come though. No matter how many Red Queens find a Red King, no matter how many black nines find their black ten, the one that fits perfectly…the jagged hour of that day will come.

This is the time of the rusted knife, the scimitar gone too dull to perform, that succeeds only in letting one know they will live in a mangled half state. No clean surgical assassination. It is full of blood and howling. It is performed in the secret places of the heart. It is life extended to massive proportions, to be plodded through one thick step at a time, via the process of thought.

The question that is not asked for fear of the answer rings like a bell.

What an incongruous sound.

The loss of a good match leaves one halved like an apple cut cleanly down the center, the perfect symmetry of seeds on either side of the core, beautiful, but irreparably altered, and soon corrupted by the inevitable oxidation that spells ruin.

Solitaire n. 1. a game played by one person alone, as a game with marbles or pegs on a board having hollows or holes, or any various card games. 2. a precious stone, esp a diamond, set by itself, as in a ring. [L. solitarius - alone]

My Captain

Oh my Captain, you went so quietly,
I never heard the sound of your
step as you crossed the threshold
to that door I left hanging open
in my idealist's distraction.

There's a mist of sadness
that clings to me like the fog
I got lost in that year, when
the world became a
precarious pile of teetering
bricks that I tried to catch
when they fell without
warning.

I miss you my Captain.

My Captain, my shipmate
of the long life sea we
cross over in our fragile
boats---separate, and
saying little in the
long run,
after saying so much.

Captain, I thought I
could change things,
I thought I could matter
somehow on this troubled
Earth. I thought some
word I spoke would
turn a tide, save a life,
make the lunacy stop.

It was futile Captain,
and I lost you in the trying,
and I fall silent now
beneath the swollen
waters of too long
a time wasted.


A. Murray
For Alan Bok
September 21, 2002