Well of Urð.
Remember when we used to hang out at the mouth of the well? Junior high school, drawing the metaphorical waters of our murky fates, dragging on clove cigarettes, chipped nail polish, plotting out victories and defeats. Weaving sad attempts at haiku:
Eyes closed, there’s no sleep
No cognizant gold slumbers.
Because we’re asleep.
(A time machine in my mind machine stretches from then to now. And while I’m still flipping the same keychain thoughts around my ring finger, there’s suddenly a whole nest of beard-hair on my face-plate.)
I wonder what’s going to happen at the end of this oversized iced coffee? I tend to worry about the interminable, too.
Done. That’s all there is to this whole death thing anyway. I’m sure it stings on the way down into darkness. But it can’t be so bad once you get there.
Until then, I see a world of static underneath the fastened lids. Like those blocked cable channels from when I was a kid, I only make out semblances of the seductively unattainable. Adolescent loves lost. Police sketches, vague outlines, muffled conversations, muted pavement. Unshaven Klonopin dealers floating ghostly above the allegorical backstreets of Brooklyn. Twisting and winding recollections, back to the Norns from across the road.
With my scratched night vision goggles, I lazily survey a murmurous night scene: those drowsy nocturnal hustlers are really just trashy raccoons sipping watered-down lemonade, drip, drip, dripping off a softly squeaking porch swing.
The mind-world is buzzing and fuzzy.
Dammit! The nocturnal hustlers left jammy paw prints on my memory of the Norns.
The Norns? Until today, I saw them as a splintered gaggle of auspicious neighbors. They set their house on fire, lost everything preparing family-style Saturday night spaghetti. Just standing there, rosy and warm in the cleansing inferno.
There were rumors. Some said the girls lit a pile of dirty dish towels while their mother was ladling out the gravy. Some said the father couldn’t stand to see them happy while he was working so hard to keep them all impoverished and alcoholic (the same inverted emotional capitalism that occupies so much of the modern virtual world).
The Norns grew up, got married and forgot about their penniless relatives. They probably forgot about us, too. (If you close your eyes, you can see them un-sarcastically considering the simple beauty of slow-moving grasses at sunset.)
All that time, waiting at the mouth of the well to see if they appeared, when there was nothing to catch but the vague reflection of ourselves in the shimmery, blue-black water.
A take on fate that’s as wrong as rain. Everything we heard about who we are and who we’re supposed to be is in the literal palm of our caffeinated hands.
I broke all the mirrors, crossed each cat and stepped on every single crack. There’s never been a bolt of lightening that was anything more than meteorological, nothing greater than the now-ness.
Lightening! Thunder! Electric guitars! I once choreographed an illustrated rock opera to keep myself insulated from the onslaught of the outside world. (I’m not saying it’s perfectly in tune or totally attuned. Honestly, I can’t clean up after all the simulated schisms.)
I fell in love with the characters, the roles I realized were real only after they were gone. Somehow with an empty iced coffee and all alone, somehow they’re still with me, stronger than ever.
All hail the hot, powerful, mortal women who make life seem limitless.