The things I mean when I write

Beauty, if we’re lucky, only runs skin deep. It is dangerous, as you know, to delve any deeper. If I search for beauty any deeper, swim through the arterials of your slender forearm to discover bits of gold, or sit down after dark, over bourbon, while you talk about your childhood, we’ll wind up in bed together again, the sweat cold against our bare skin, nothing left to say, waiting for the light to separate us.

During graduate school, we all listened closely to the stories to see if we appeared in them. At best, you’d get a secondary role, recognizing an observation you’d made one night over dinner, or a particular way you had of walking. When you know someone, you suspect, deep down, that at least 25 percent of what they are writing is secretly about you. I want to assure you that if say someone is beautiful or kind or funny that it was written about you. If the person said something interesting or profound, it was also probably about you. I want you to know that if I wrote about someone acting terribly, then it was probably about me. The closest mirror is our own conscience. If I said however, that someone was standing outside, gazing up at bits of the moon in a velvety sky, the stars strung across the sky—a rope of light, then I am talking about me. However, if I describe someone who has bad breath and is domineering, I am probably remembering my teacher from kindergarten. If I write about someone who loves music, I am writing about the person that I wish I was. If I write about someone owning a pet, and intentionally running over that pet, but then denying the fact to his family, then I am also writing about the person, though in this case, merely the person that I could possibly be. If I am writing about a trip to Europe, and someone is riding on trains, I am writing about a movie that I saw when I was a teenager. If I write about the ocean, and the stars, cold footprints in the sand, then I am writing about CA. If I write about a bunny rabbit, or a cat, or blackberries, then I am writing about childhood. If I write about the sea, then I am writing about longing. If I write about someone being useful, then I am again writing about a person I wish I could be. If I write about a man who builds a time machine out of a pair of shoes to travel back in time to save his family, lost in a world war 2 bombing, then I am writing about regret. If I write about Missouri, Oklahoma, or the Resurrection, then I am writing about religion. If I write about facebook or Twitter, then I am writing about confusion. If I write about television, then I am writing out of the urgency to connect. If I write about biking down to the water and skipping stones into the creek, then I am writing about childhood, though I am also perhaps writing about the inevitability of death. In fact, I may often be writing about the inevitability of death. If I write about trees, I am writing about aesthetic, nature, and perhaps the inevitability of death or change. If I write about the rain, I am writing about school, childhood, and passivity. If I write a story in which an astronomer believes that he sees people inhabiting the moon, then I am writing about unrequited love.  If I write about anything else, then I am writing about regret or sex or failure. If I write about the cold, I am writing about the inevitability of death. If I write about time, I am writing about it passing. If I am writing about the wind, I am merely writing about the wind. It signifies nothing. Sleep now. There are no more stories to tell.

Sailing past the outer reaches of the Bay, it was easy to forget the dead. We’d accomplished so much, mapped the rivers and valleys of a once dark territory. Our names would live on mountain passes and lakes long after we were passed from this life into the next.  Out here, the wind whips up the sea, and the salt stings. I think of my children, five and seven now, a year and a half since I’ve seen them. I think of their small blond heads, like lanterns across the water the night that I left. It was a mistake to think of them as now I’m remembering the dead. At night I think of their bones, the small parts of them that we could gather together that now lie in the hull of the ship. Their names will be on no river valleys, no mountain tops, perhaps a clavicle or pinky toe will be pressed into the red clay along the river. They can keep watch over the places we’ve named after ourselves, these lost souls. For now we will bring back what’s left of them to those other children who will be waiting upon the docks--those children whose hair was just as pale the day that we left. Forgive me, I whisper, to the uncaring wind.