Page 15 (1/2)
He is not wrong to do this When you need to hold on to soh, take it
Harry needs hiht now, it’s there He is so safe within it that he hardly realizes it’s present Like the coolness of the night, like the small sounds that soundtrack the stars
We knohat it’s like to need to hold on We hold on to you Which is to say, we hold on to life
You haveyou want to hear, there it is
We marvel at that The infinite jukebox
If ant to hear a song, we must steal the sound waves that you send into the air But there arewe once knew, that it plays itself fro-lost cassette player that even our memory doesn’t seem to control
Like the moment Ryan wakes up and thinks of Avery, and the moment (forty minutes later) that Avery wakes up and thinks of Ryan There is only the sound of their breathing as they blink themselves into the day, only the shift in the mattress, the accidental fall of a pillow to the floor This should be all that we hear, but there is also the un "What a Diff’rence a Day Made" They both wake into happiness instead of uncertainty, into a better version of the world because yesterday was so welcome There is no way they would articulate it in the same way Aretha does, when she bursts out with "It’s heaven, heaven, heaven when you / When you find love and roht now--you have it right at your fingertips, for less than the price of a candy bar The lyrics sound old, but the ht person at the right time can open all the s and unlock all the doors
The world wakes up around Harry and Craig
Harry lifts his feet, wiggles his toes, and only feels soreness, bloat His back feels like sandpaper has been put between each vertebra His neck is a wire hanger that an elephant is pulling on His eyes are dry, but his body is da But maybe that’s just what sweat smells and feels like after twenty hours Despite the fact that he’s surrounded by electricity, he finds hi it to rain
Craig wants to brush his teeth He and Harry experi, but it never worked--it was i’s fantasies of Harry are elaborate--dancing in tuxedos across the floor of Grand Central Ter on a lake as the world around them turns instantaneously fro into color at once But now the deepest, clearest fantasy Craig has is of the two of the down That’s it Hi down Not even holding hands Not kissing Just sitting there, resting No one else in the whole world Just the two of the down
We think of ourselves as creatures ence But one of our finest features is the inability of our expectation to truly si Our anticipation of joy is never the same as joy Our anticipation of pain is never the sae is in no way the sae itself If we could feel the things we fear ahead of time, ould be traus will feel, but knowing nothing of how things will really feel Already, Craig and Harry are far beyond any expectation, any preparation Theyso, they are creative Yes, creative You do not need to be writing or painting or sculpting in order to be creative YouThey are creating a kiss, and they are also creating their stories, and by creating their stories, they are creating their lives
This can be a very painful process
We, who can no longer create, can stand for hours and days andYou wouldn’t think that ouldall the pain that ent through But we do We miss it We miss the price we paid for life Because it was part of life
Craig and Harry are exhausted, to a degree we can understand well Soh this, especially if they fail But we understand the need to push beyond expectation, beyond preparation We understand the desire to create, to step on new ground To feel every ounce of space you are taking up in the world To endure
Around the world, screens light up Around the world, words are flown through wires Around the world, ies are reduced to particles and, moments later, are perfectly reasse and find soirls wake up Around town, men and women mobilize Around town, complaints are made and disbelief feeds within an echo chamber Around town, breakfast is served and breakfast is taken Around town, it feels like an ordinary day, but also not, if you knohat’s happening on the lawn outside the high school
Cain to arrive
Shortly after waking, Peter is at his coraphy--scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the inforhly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn’t really care what you have to say The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation But more often than not, it only leads to uise of reality
The headlines on Yahoo don’t require irl with her own TV show, the latest poll showing that for the first time ever, Americans prefer dark chocolate to arding the its way into your consciousness, trying to take residence so you atch the ne, buy the new chocolate He quickly clicks on to the feed of the two boys kissing, and is relieved to find they are still there, still kissing Twenty-two hours gone, less than ten hours to go He scrolls through the coement and more than a few haters These words are now in his bedroom, now in his life How can he not take them personally? If you let the world in, you open yourself up to the world Even if the world doesn’t know that you’re there
The camera crews unload their equipht Harry takes some satisfaction from it--attention was the point of this, and now it has coht uneasiness, and also a little relief that he doesn’t have to worry any on the channel and finding so unexpected