Triptych

1. Horses

All things pass. I’ve said this many times lately. Not just to myself – I say it often enough to myself, it ought to be tattooed across my chest – but, now, to my friends. My friends who are collapsing like marionettes whose strings have been cut. That’s a good simile, I think, if overused. Our lives by the whims of others – maybe a puppeteer named God, maybe the casual glances of strangers, maybe the approval of peers. We live our lives inside other lives. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon; you wake up one day and realize you’ve lost everything.

It’s a wonder we don’t all collapse. It’s a wonder we don’t all cut the strings ourselves.

I like the irony of tattooing the words ‘All things pass’ onto your skin. I shiver thinking about it. It would feel good and right, I think, to dip the needle in ink and draw it across your skin. I think the words would feel good, going in.

I am stuck on the word ‘good’ lately. I’m not interested in the definition of good. I recognize good when I see it. I sense it. I hope I understand it, in a wordless way – a tacit, instinctual kind of way.

All this will pass. All things must pass. To everything, there is a season. I don’t give a damn about the Bible, but I like Ecclesiastes, by way of the Byrds. A time to every purpose. For me, it’s not that there is a lofty meaning to it all. It’s not that everything happens for a reason. It’s simple, the ebb and flow of it. The moon’s nightly work. That’s it.

I watched the water today. I sat on a stone step, and I watched the waves roll in. I think I finally saw horses in the waves. I saw them in the way the water galloped gracefully to the shore and broke, the way it tossed its head and white mane at the crest. I saw in the water and in the liquid movement of horses the undeniable flow of time. It moves, and we move in it. The current changes directions; the horses stampede on.

Still, it’s a wonder we walk into the waves at all. It’s a wonder we don’t all open our mouths wide and drown.

2. Like Russian Dolls

Sometimes I put my hand to my chest and I press until it hurts, just to remind myself of the heaviness of being. Funny how time moves us so lightly, so effortlessly.

Who hasn’t made a decision that has haunted them for years? Who hasn’t been a willing puppeteer? Who hasn’t jerked the strings and watched the puppets dangle? Who hasn’t laughed – silently, loudly – at the desperate swinging movement of puppets?

It’s okay if you don’t want to admit it. We all like to think we are good people. I won’t admit to half the mistakes I’ve made, not out loud, not to myself.

Sometimes I think I have a premium on goodness. What a joke.

All things pass, even the good. Especially the good. We don’t wallow in goodness.

We live our lives inside other lives. He lives his life inside my life. She lives her life inside his. Boxes inside boxes; stacked, we are smaller and smaller and smaller. I crush a butterfly’s wings; you wake up tomorrow and realize you’ve lost everything.

Put your hand to your chest and press. Press until the beat of your heart matches the pulse at his wrist. Press until the throb of her is in you. In this way we know we’re alive. In this way we know we are monsters, in this way we know we are good.

3. The Holy Trinity

I like to write in threes. Three is a divine number. Three is where I find the end.

Three is the number of lives we live – mine, his, hers. On either side of me is a life that I will touch, destroy, save. And on either side of you is a life, and on either side of him is another life, and so on, and so forth. Russian dolls. Puppets on strings. Stacked boxes. Horses and waves and heartbeats. Me and him and her. And so forth.

I know that all things pass. In the three days since I began writing this, much has passed. My friends are happy, now. Their strings have been cut, but they dance and dangle still. Two little Pinocchios. They are in the waves, they are riding the horses. They are triumphant. They have found the good.

Everything passes.

I will sit by the water more often.