Day 3 - No preconceptions

The first thing I saw was an old man lying in a bed, one thin white sheet pulled up close to his neck.  The nurse said she’d leave me and as she went to close the door she paused and asked did I realize that he was in a coma?

“Yes.” I said for some reason, and she turned and closed the door behind her.

I stood there for a moment trying to take in what was there, and noticed that the nurse looked in - or rather I should say that I felt her look, although I didn’t actually see her, and then I knew she was gone, and there I was, in the room of someone I didn’t have any idea about who he was, except to know that he was in a coma, and for all I knew Aarla was long gone, maybe already driving off into the sunset, fading out of my existence never to give me one more fraction of a moment of thought, forever for all I knew to leave me with what was essentially nothing that I could grasp as any way to understand who she actually was, not even one small morsel of a scrap of a hint that I might call my own little piece of comprehension of who she might be or might have been.

But somehow I knew she was waiting, I trusted that she would be waiting, and I realized that somehow I trusted her, which I understood in my tired mind as being quite an amazing revelation.  

I was standing there thinking about that for who knows how long and the old man in the bed wasn’t doing anything more than just being there in the bed.

I stood there thinking about the implications of my trust of Aarla and understood that time was going by and days had passed but none of what had happened or was happening was really about time.  Somehow it actually felt nice and even comforting to be standing there in that peaceful space but then I got thinking that nothing was happening and that that sense of nothing might just continue on forever, and I made up my mind not to fall into that stupid trap and was about to leave when I heard a man’s voice say my name.

“Ray, right?”

I glanced at the old man in the bed and then looked around and didn’t see anyone else.  There was only the room, the bed, a bed stand and an old man in the bed.  Walls of blankness.  Sheets of smoothness.  Lightness and whiteness.  Windows of simple lines, four panes divided evenly, venetian blinds half-drawn creating stark shadow-lines.  I looked into all the possible places where I thought I hadn’t just looked and then finally looked again at the old man there in the bed, but there was nothing different; just an inert body, eyes fixed on everything and nothing.  There was nothing to indicate that the voice had come from him, so I turned to leave again but I didn’t quite turn, didn’t quite leave and then I heard it again.

“Hey Ray.”

I waited.  The voice had been clear as day but again, I had the distinct feeling that it somehow didn’t match that old man’s body.  There was some trick being played.

It’s ok, I thought, you’ve really only done this to yourself, haven’t you.  You’re allowing it to happen.  You do have control. It’s all about what you see and how you see it, isn’t it?  And if you look at it that way, it can all seem like it’s all just playing right into their crazy story and you’re allowing it, you’re just letting it happen.  And what if it’s all true?  Huh?  What then?  What if it’s all true?

“Hey Ray.  Yeah.  You.”

“Where are you?” I asked.  I let my eyes wander as casually as I could manage to re-scan the space of that room – sterile, white, nondescript, a room of nothingness and emptiness that all focused back on that man in the bed.  Back to those eyes.

There was nothing, and I suddenly felt stiff and tight and had an image of turning to stone, and as if  to fight it I rolled my head and stretched my neck and noticed the light-trails that I knew meant that I was thoroughly exhausted, beyond exhaustion, heading well into that heady feeling of zoning through a very fluid-surreal sense of sleep-deprived reality, I had been there before and knew that there was nothing I could do about it and told myself that things would be changing, subtly, easefully, and it was fine, I wasn’t worried, I was too numb to worry, numb to all the craziness, numb to the fact that I was in that room. 

I  stepped up to that old man lying there and looked closely at his mouth, at his eyes, at the contours of the curve running from his eyelashes to the bridge of his nose and down the left eye to his cheek.  I let my gaze pan like a camera lense, almost physically pulling my sight back away from the urge to take in more and more details to look at the body lying there still and lifeless like time standing still and I had a strange feeling - the hairs went up on my arms, I was tingling all over, the back of my neck got very sensitive to something that wasn’t quite as it seemed… 

No preconceptions, I told myself.  Here I am. 

I looked around the room, at the emptiness and vague wintry mid-afternoon shadows, at the fold of the sheets, at the hinges of doors; I couldn’t quite get myself to lean down and look underneath the bed.  Like not wanting to give in to an inclination to do something that almost every kid who has ever gone to bed alone has tried not to do. 

I thought of whiteness, of people dying and “going to the light”.  You gotta be kidding, I almost yelled to myself, you’re not there, you’re not there yet, this isn’t it, it’s not your time, what are you trying to do to yourself?  Come on, don’t freak out on me Ray, my mind urged.

I remembered the pills – the two little pills that guy from the band has passed to me during the Super Bowl a few days back.  Had that only been yesterday actually?  It seemed like month ago.  I seriously needed some sleep. The old man’s eyes had a look of kindness and sadness and did not show any sense of tiredness.  Did that surprise me?   I wished I could feel like those eyes looked.  I was so damn tired…

I wasn’t in any mood for pleasantries. 

“She’s here,” I said as conversationally as I could.

 “She’s always been here, Ray,” the voice immediately replied, and I just happened to have been looking straight at the man’s mouth and did not see the slightest movement.  Technology, I thought.  There’s some trick to this, some explanation.  Maybe even something like they’ve all been telling me.  But why go to the trouble?  But again I had a funny feeling that this wasn’t all quite as it seemed.

“You know,” I said, “I don’t really give a shit anymore.  You can do whatever or wherever the hell you want.” 

I really truly didn’t care.  Ah,we can talk, sure.  Seems like this is something that’s been planned just like the way everyone seems to have been planning things all around me during these past days, even to the point of somehow manipulating how I have now begun planning my own little mind-games, toying with things I feel I need to understand within this whole mad mess. 

Was that me thinking those things?  Jeez, man, what are you turning into? I thought.

I thought back to so many moments.  Things I could have done differently, things I might have done if I had known more, or less, or something other than what I had thought I had known.  The point seemed to be that in key moments I had hesitated, had stumbled, had fumbled when others hadn’t.  But no, you can’t think like that, I thought, everything works out as it does and for me it’s got me right here.  And here I was, talking to… air. 

“It’s truly amazing,” I said.  “I’ve been… we’ve been… driving this van, all for the purpose, or for part of the purpose, it seems, to get here to this place and to have me stand right here talking to…you.  The van was given to me, it’s a long story, sort of, but I have a feeling that whoever you are you might even know about all that and, well, it wasn’t me who was actually just driving the van…”

“She’s dangerous, Ray.” the voice said.  “Everything that you think you know about her is potentially wrong, distorted, or maybe even just a figment of your imagination.”

And then silence.  I waited.

“She’s a fantasy, Ray.  She’s everyone’s fantasy.”

“I don’t know if I buy that…” I said.  “I mean, she just showed me how to get here.  She…”

“What you think you know about her is not real,” the voice said.

“But why not?” I asked.  “I’ve been through this myself, so I mean, what’s the…”

“What’s the inspiration?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Sure,” the voice said. “Inspiration.  Motivation.  Manipulation.  Captivation.  Transmutation.  What’s the game.  What’s the deal.  What’s the big fucking secret that everyone seems to know but me, right?  What’s the, I don’t know, say truth, because I have a feeling that that’s not coming, but maybe how should I be taking all of this?  Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Ray?  Maybe that’s more like the question you should be asking.  But be careful, you might think, thinking that you’d be sounding like you’re already expecting that someone like me might have something like answers.”

I thought about that for a moment.  He’s sounding like me, I thought.

“So why not,” I finally said. “I mean, what the heck, right?”

“Yeah sure, serendipidy,” the voice said.  “A simple moment of clarity.”

I waited but the voice didn’t say anything else.  I waited for a long time, it seemed, but it might have only been for a second.

Finally the voice said:  “Do you want to hear a story?”

“Man,” I said, “if you only knew the stories I’ve been hearing these past few days…”

“I know, Ray, I know.” the voice said.  “There’s a lot to sort through isn’t there?”

“I just don’t know which way is up any more…”

“No preconceptions,” the voice said

“How do you know that?” I said.

“Know what?”

“That phrase?”

“It’s just a normal phrase that anyone might say.  Language is free isn’t it?”

“Yeah but that’s what others have…”

“Yeah, others, sure, they try hard don’t they?  So what do you say, Ray?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Well,” the voice said, “once upon a time…that’s the beginning of my story, you ready for this?”

“Sure?” I said.  I’d been looking at that old man the whole time and there was absolutely nothing that indicated that he had been speaking.  The body was just an unmoving body, eyes staring out at everything and nothing. 

Like he’s in a coma.

Which he is. 

The nurse said so. 

Hear kill and think dead, I thought, but the voice I had heard had been very real and as I looked at the body I could imagine the voice being the kind of voice that that body would have had if it was actually speaking and it all just somehow seemed natural even as I thought it was all just more craziness, yeah, the old voice-of-a-man-in-a-coma trick and I was falling for it, but the voice said, “Once upon a time there were five guys out getting drunk like good old boys do.” 

And what was I to do?  I just stood there listening.