The Terrible: A Storyteller's Memoir

and I think about these parents of ours our makers our stars. (such impossible, complex stars.) How they came, exploded, and fell away. They are not ours, the stars, and have never been.

You may not run away from the thing that you are. because it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe. As certain. The thing is deep inside your linings, way down in the marrow.

I am somewhere else now. I am part human, part metaphysics, and I still haven't worked out which parts of me are which. I love this new form. I can feel space traveling through me. I am porous and wondrous and bold ... It's not that I loved to leave, rather that staying was always completely impossible.

Is life hidden in the lining of our seams? Are we wearing it inside out?

What turns the milk sky pink? Is it the sins of the world, bleeding up into the atmosphere reddening the clouds up above or is it love. Could it be love? Jesus Christ, can there be love? There will be more love, says the sky, There will be more love.

We're thinking, does life owe us anything. Did we get it wrong? And time is an animal, man. The years. Time is killing us it has us in its teeth.

Time is an illusion, say the scientists. It is molecular, it is bendable or liquid, it is soldered metal; or it is droplets of memory. I imagine it looks like mercury, silver and elusive...Burn all the clocks. I am free.

Just like that, something shifts and you know something and he knows something but nobody knows for sure. You have something to trade and you're not sorry.

I am porous. I am bold. I am a space-time traveling expert.

You may not run away from the thing that you are because it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe. As certain. The thing is deep inside your linings, way down in the marrow. people have a lot of words for it. There are ten thousand names for it and you. Wherever you are , it catches you up. It catches you in South Africa. Wherever you are and whatever it is, the terrible is trying to grip you and sometimes you're walking down the street and it tries to knock you clean off your feet and send you right underground. The terrible comes like a bang in the night. It takes a drink and several more and comes to plague you in the morning; it damn near poisons you with all the drink it needs to stay alive. it toys with you the morning after - stays the entire day, squeezing you by the shoulders, making your hands shake. it smiles at you, the terrible. Sitting, arms folded, in the corner of the room. It just can't help itself. It just needs friends. It's such a lonely thing. The terrible needs to eat and it eats whole lives up in one sitting. The terrible claps its terrible hands and everything falls right through them. The terrible is here one month and gone for a while until the middle of the next, allowing you to catch your breath - and just when you almost think everything is okay and when you're not over or under-breathing, it surprises you in the middle of the night again.

I can only see things in fits and starts. I cannot have a family; freedom is all I need. I need to be free to catch up with myself.

It's a little bit awful (especially if they're old) but not the worst. The Worst is doing nothing. Letting life sink in.

You are eighty percent water. Stop getting so wasted. Please. You should have married the kind one. This searching, searching for nothing, will kill you.

and I think about these parents of ours our makers our stars. (Such impossible, complex stars.) How they came, exploded, and fell away.