Harmonious Arrangements

Most days were entirely uninterrupted, but every now and again, in a dense lawn, a stack of papers, a grocery store, or any other such large collection of meaningless things, sitting there for all the world to see was some object of supreme beauty glowing with a golden corona.
From the moment he was able to recognize objects, the glow existed. Before his fundamental understanding of the world had formed, he knew one thing to be true that these objects were of the highest order, complete, and perfect. He knew not from anything other than the feeling of pure bliss in his soul.
The first time he can recall the feeling was in a grocery store, of course. The only place truly capable of providing the mass quantity of items that would enable something of such supreme quality to be brought into his life. Sitting buried under an assortment of apples, was a glowing beacon to the fruit, so perfectly shaped, and a stem large enough to distinguish itself, but not so big that it overwhelms the rest of the apple. He could only imagine what sort of taste it would produce, but there was an intense and zealous part of him that needed that apple protected while it held that form. That immaculate and holy form that made it the object of his attention.
Noticing his eager eyes on the apples, his mother brought the cart he was sitting in closer to the display and started looking at each individual fruit. Inspecting and grading in her mind each on. Some were put back, others put in a bag. Sometimes she’d hold one out for him to view and get his opinion on. He, with what limited capability he had at the time desperately tried to get her to look please look at the glowing monument to the other pomme’s spread around it. And finally when her hands did hold that most glorious of items, she did see his movement change as the beacon was in her possession. She looked at him with a smile that may as well have glowed as the apple had and said, “This one hunny? You really like this one, huh?” and with no thought she places that apple in the bag and tried to make a note of which one it was, but, of course, that wouldn’t be entirely necessary.
When they arrived at home, the apples were placed up high and he couldn’t see them any longer. He was okay in the interim as long as he knew that the beautiful yellow-red flesh would be gazed upon shortly. And, of course, as his father got home, not maliciously or capable of understanding, grabbed the exceptional apple and began eating it. He became inconsolable. While the mother had some vague understanding of what might have happened, it was so outlandish that she felt embarrassed telling her husband what she suspected might be the cause of his tantrum. The husband was equal parts in disbelief, but also he knew what she said must be in some part true as to lie about something as mundane as a child loving an apple was so absurd and beyond what his wife was capable in terms of dishonesty that he found himself believing that his child loved and apple so dearly that he became almost disgustingly sad. The child cried for hours and even after a fear-based trip to the pediatrician and a concerned visit from a Children’s Aid Society counsellor, still cried for what he could only at the time describe as “Apuh.” The L syllable not in his wheelhouse quite yet.
The despair eventually faded, the child returned, although affected, to normal. The parents breathing a sigh of relief and then breathing in a large stop-hyperventilating-hold-your-in-breath-for-thirty-seconds breath as they began to see specialists in child psychology to attempt to see what exactly had happened, but without any sort of way to communicate with the child about what exactly had gone so wrong, became ultimately fruitless.
Over the next few years, the parents stopped taking him to the grocery store. Maybe once, twice a year he’d spot something that would get his metaphorical hackles up and he’d beg for it, each time in English that was better than the previous time. They tried not purchasing the item, buying the item and keeping it for as long as they could, and when his communication skills were strong enough, just plainly asking him what was so special about these items that they really felt were commonplace.
In the early kindergarten stage, the boy would in his best words available to explain, as well as he could, that these items were more than the other items. That there was a Cheeto in that bag that was more than the other Cheetos in the other bags carefully arranged around it. That there was a jar that was smooth, and was more jar-y that than any other jar in the store.
The parents were only slightly disturbed, but they found it far easier to no longer bring him to the store. He wasn’t safe at home, however. The TV would play and he’d note as fast as it appeared and disappeared that the bush that was in the chase scene was the bush that all other bushes aspire to be. On the cover of the edition of bush magazine that bushees and bushettes have somewhere in a closet, or drawer or other such place of safe-keeping for youthful bushes that their most treasured items go. And the parents start to find the whole thing a little funny, especially as the emotional maturity, and the maybe novelty of these items changes for the young boy.
And he quickly learns that these items, no matter how perfect, are not seen the same way by others. That he realizes through either maturation or a loss of innocence that despite understanding in his heart that something is so absolutely 100% the pinnacle of either human or natural achievement, he can’t even begin to share that with another person.
That often enough when pointed out to someone, an object’s perfection is in no way viewable to anyone he’s ever met.
At school, his teacher’s hand holds something that catches his eye, a piece of chalk that glistens and speaks to him as if what people have told him God is communicating through the chalk to let him know that this is his holy unfurling. And, of course, the chalk scraps the blackboard harshly and ignites a hot searing flash in utter disappointment that causes the boy pain and he tears up and asks to be excused. He can contain the anguish, but he never fails to feel it. In moments where he finds himself emotionally unstable, he must remove himself from the situation or else succumb to anguish more extreme than is appropriate for any scenario. At least this is what most of his shrinks and counsellors and doctors recommend.
The amount of mental, physical, spiritual, and dietary, professionals tasked with assisting the child could field a full NFL football team and maybe a small practice squad. None of these professionals are suited to resolve the issue that faces the now young teenager. Medical doctors prescribe SSRIs, and other such antidepressants, but he isn’t depressed at the deflowering of a perfect object, he’s intensely uncontrollably sad. Psychiatrists and otherwise try to get to the root of a problem that truly has no inciting incident other than the child’s birth. Priests and rabbis and imams and any other religious leader internally shudder at the idea that God or what they personally believe to be a god(s) have given this child some form of “true sight” to see (G)god(s)’s perfect visages. They are not trained in the advising on such a specific baroque circumstance and possible religious implication that they give near similar talks as the psychiatrists et al. Counsellors seem to offer the only thing that will help in the moment. Practical advice about how to navigate the here and now. His counsellor, a youngish guy who’s often just there to sit and listen for the first third of a session to the young man’s ramblings, will usually take 5–10 seconds to think when the boy has given him the space to think about the word vomit and then responds in kind. When you feel this start to come on, what can you control, and what can’t you control? What steps can you take in the moment to reduce this feeling of despair? Noting that this has seemingly happened at least several dozen times and maybe more, is it possible that it will happen again and understanding that you as a smart young individual can prepare yourself for the despair such that its effect is dampened because you understand that it is temporary?
And this actual advice is what gets the young man through the throws of a western commercialized life where the number of things that are interacted with are in the millions, maybe billions. (Uncertain what the affliction qualifies as a thing, if there were a perfect quark in front of him, would he notice? Would the glow be too small to see? Would he still get the same sense of tragedy were something no matter how unlikely to happen to that quark that would cause it to lose its perfect status?) He has what could really be called a perfectly normal for the most part childhood.
In high school, however, he has several interactions that go the same way. He’s with a friend or friends, and something divine appear before him, once it was a slice of ham, another time it was one of his friends water bottles. He, understanding that the social fabric can be fragile and tenuous, chooses to stay in these situations despite understanding that despair may afflict him at some point. He does, however, try to point out to these people that they are lucky in fact to be holding something so incredibly 100% absolutely by the definition of (G)god(s) him (them)self(ves) as perfect. Ordained by some sort of higher power to be the most perfect version of whatever it is that they have in their possession.
The responses range from laughter as some sort of perceived joke is understood, to confusion if the statement is believed to be serious, but they all share a common underlying note that positively infuriates the boy. That the objects they are looking at are in fact flawed, see this part right here is a little off, right? In the first few instances arguments took place, but when your only supporting point is, “I can see something fundamental about this object that you are just simply incapable of perceiving,” you aren’t going to win hearts and minds no matter how sincere or with full honesty you portray this point of view. And thus another defence mechanism gets established, just no longer talk about how pure these objects are. Outside of his parents who he learns feel the exact same as everyone else, but some paternal instinct tells them the right path forward is to lie and agree with the troubled child, nobody else will entertain him on the beauty these items possess.
“Um, in your pencil case, there’s something in there.”
“What do you mean?”
“No not the pencil sharpener, although that is cool that it’s Scooby-Doo, but why does the pencil go up-Yeah that’s it that pencil.”
“What about it?”
“Well, can’t you tell? It’s perfect!”
“What do you mean? I guess it’s a good pencil.”
“No, it’s without flaw, you shouldn’t use it; here I have some Ziploc bags, that should protect its integrity. ”
“Without flaw..?”
“Yeah, it’s absolutely glowing, I just see these things, I have since as long as I can remember”
“No sorry you don’t really believe that this is the perfect pencil, it’s just a regular pencil there’s nothing special about it.”
“I don’t ‘believe’ I know; again I’ve seen these things since I was a kid. ”
“Nothing is perfect, and this pencil most certainly isn’t, it’s sharpened too, wouldn’t a perfect pencil have to be in that starter state, there are errors in the sharpening.”
“I’d have to see that sharpener you used as well, the blade would likely glow I’d have to imagine, and did you sharpen it?”
“Is this some sort of weird come on? Am I to think the next line is, whoever sharpened this pencil also has the perfect glow about them and I’m supposed to be flattered?”
“It’s purely the pencil I’m interested in.”
“You’re very strange.”
“And probably the blade of the sharpener at least.”
And this was how these conversations would flow for the most part. You can’t communicate to someone something’s perfection and have them believe you in a way that is in any way meaningful. The pencil, the apple, someone’s nose, a cloud. Always things that are transient, moving away from you. Thank goodness no part of his own body harboured this perfection. Although when a new hair would rise from his not so freshly shaven face, a finger nails status changed from cut to sort of not cut, or in looking in the mirror overnight or after a shower he still hopes to see a perfect glow for a day. He thinks he could manage the sorrow understanding the fading nature of the perfection better than anyone else he knew at least.
His parents told him he should enter residence for university. There was only the kind of love parents can offer in this sentiment despite the boy questioning their motives. Despite his affliction his childhood was almost completely normal from the outside. Who doesn’t have their idiosyncrasies thought roughly 75% of people who would meet him? He was sort of smart and became slightly charming as he got older and people found that endearing. His brief bouts of despair were nothing anybody else had to deal with on their own and for the most part people were capable of dealing with this.
The 25%, however. They presented such an interesting dramatic irony. Maybe smart enough to understand beauty in a way that allowed them to be able to detect the reasons for something not being perfect, but smart enough equally to understand the idea that nothing is perfect. This was the right path of thinking, but maybe the maxim nothing golden can stay was far more appropriate. These people understood that these items, as they appeared, weren’t flawed in the way that would lead them to being “perfect.” There was the equal and opposite force in their mind that there had to be something wrong with them as perfect things don’t just exist. A perfect triangle doesn’t appear in nature and all that.
Law of large numbers, however, plays effect here. Humans with their need to create, created creating machines so constantly creation would happen. Factories, farms, factory farms, printers, computers, and every other method of producing something. The scale of human creation on par with the scale of the universe itself, here at our doorstep and we live and take it for granted every day and the boy had come to this conclusion himself that we invented perfection. That maybe there had been more people before who’d truly seen perfection, but never in their life got to experience the bliss that was beauty more than once or twice in their lifetime because humans just persisted. Persisted long enough for this mutation of the human psyche to otherwise go unused and lay dormant until now, in the western world where everything you could ever want and more and more and more is all around you at all times.
And these 25% were often sad. They were often melancholic. They had enough to see perfection and they also had enough in them to understand that as time moved forward and backward these things at points weren’t perfect like the boy wanted them to be.
The boy kept a beer fridge in his residence building. The Bud Light logo faded, it was the perfect young adult mask. In it he stored some items, he found on his own in states of perfection. Some had admittedly lost their glow, but he wouldn’t know until the next time he’d open that fridge and see that they were just a normal sun flower, a normal Post-it note. The comb that he’d put in their last had remained perfect. He knew as long as he didn’t view the items in their changed state they’d remain perfect. The anguish wouldn’t defect his demeanour and he’d reduce the perfection in the world out there, but only he could appreciate it, so there was no need to allow the beauty to remain to those who preferred the imperfection of things.
And so his little fridge would sit there, like a box with an uncertain cat. His university days so similar to his high school’s days, with no warning his mood interrupted by an object fragile beauty. So often were the items of perfection so easily mutilated. He would wear the anguish proudly as he got older. His cross to bear. He was okay, though. His sad eyes after the brilliance of something lost was noticed by some. Usually these people imagined some deeply troubled boy. They saw his eyes welled with tears, someone trying to be strong behind them, but still choosing to let them flow. The tears must have been for something tragic. Like a loved one lost and the thought occurring to them that the world for one second won’t stop and let them just remember or forget that person in peace.
And someone sees this pain and sees the eyes behind the tears but in front of the boy, and they see his mouth and how it’s smile is smug. They see how perfectly straight the boy stands, and they see that this boy wants someone to engage with them. They see that this boy, and he is a boy, wants people to engage in this game, because most do. Most do engage with him in this Socratic methodology of perfection. No matter how many numbers of people deny the existence of these items, he still presses people to see things the way he seems to them, the glorious and all-loving entity that has impressed upon him that these items are sacred, and temporary and he must catalogue them, keep them perfect for as long as possible and mourn them as they pass on from perfection to regularity. Normality not being worth protecting.
Someone will see this in him and they will be entirely disgusted. They’ll hear his entirely unprovable hypotheses, see his overwhelming sense of superiority in both his understanding and his torment. They will be totally and utterly averse to him. These are the 25%. They are smart enough to understand that even if what he says is true, it is vile, and lacking the supposed purity these items contain.
He maintains his course, and he finishes school on time, at the exact moment he’s supposed to. He collects and preserves items along the way, they decay as they always do. The comb remains perfect, however. Its structure of something that will last forever especially cooled and being unused and he likes that it remains the little piece of perfection that keeps him going. Understanding that he may have an effect on the items and that he’s fulfilling his role. The items that lose their perfect state are thrown away. They are removed disappointingly from his vicinity. He feels he’s failed them, but in part he also believes that these so-called higher power induced objects fail him in some sense as well. They are perfect, and yet they fade. They are no longer perfect to him and so were they ever even perfect to begin with.
She was the first one who glowed fully. Not a toe, or a hair, she was a person who radiated. And, of course, he wanted to preserve her. He was slightly funny and moderately charming, and she’d talk with him in cafes about beauty and she really did like him. Of course his all-knowing eyes couldn’t see that from her smile. He just knew it was important, by whatever gave him this vision that this girl is with him. And he thought for a moment that maybe he did glow, and that his own eyes couldn’t see that. That maybe he was okay in a way that was different from how he’d been “ok” before. That all of that self-reassuring didn’t matter if he was himself, in the eyes that he’d been given, perfect as well.
But time wore on. And unfortunately the visions of perfection kept happening. And she’d spied the look that he had when things change, and found herself upset at her disgust. You see she could see in between the tears and the boy, because he was still a boy, and she saw the smile that got plastered on his face in the moments of transition. Her fear grew that there was something about this disclosed perception that he wasn’t telling her. That maybe, just maybe what he’d said about the beauty in the world, and it fading away was true, and that the things he found beautiful he also found equally reviling given the timing of their decay.
And finally she began to wonder about herself. He treated her like he did a comb. He kept her safe, he fed her just right, exercised just enough and spoke to her like she hung the moon. And she realized that to him, she was an object, and more saddeningly, a trophy.
She did not fade from him, but he faded from her. He wasn’t sad when she left, because that golden corona that had surrounded her at the beginning, in those coffee shops and in his apartment stayed. He did not understand, and it made her move faster away from him.
He didn’t anguish. He couldn’t even begin to grieve something that remained, even if it weren’t with him.
She didn’t know what the glow was, she had never seen it. She’d never considered herself pretty, but she didn’t think herself ugly either. Her esteem perfectly level, wanting maybe to look more one way, but loving how she looked ultimately as she was unburned with any features that made her stand out much more than she wanted to. After school she went overseas and worked with children who had much less than she had in their whole lives than she had in her first year of life. She saw their smiles, bright real smiles, and she wanted them to grow up and never know perfection. She wanted them to misinterpret beauty.
He continued. Comb now contained in a larger fridge in a house he rented with his own money that he earned working a job maybe below where he belonged, but brought him much joy. He worked in an office, there were things all over the place. Pieces of paper most commonly shown to him, he’d see one maybe monthly. His computer another source for searching for the mystic items. In his drawer were several journals. Pages organized into several columns. He only needed a few journals for the office, he had a few journals at home. Some that would come with him on walks and others that stayed at home in case of something changing suddenly. This had happened to him once as he was toasting bread, it was so brief, however, and he hadn’t cancelled the toast in time, his toaster needing to be fully unplugged to finish its process. And also he’d have to have been able to predict that his toast would cook to perfectly toasted perfection in front of his eyes because the heat of the toaster doesn’t instantly dissipate, and all of these many inane caveats wouldn’t change how terribly sad he would become when the toast lost that golden sheen that he craved more than anything else. And since that incident, he stands over toasting toast like a hawk hoping the atmospheric conditions present themselves in such a way that the golden perfect toast appears again.
His work friend was one of the first people to truly love being informed of these heavenly artifacts. His eyes would look almost as if he could see that glowing beauty radiating off of them himself when the boy pointed them out, but, of course, the boy knew he couldn’t truly see. If you have to be brought to the beauty, then you cannot truly see it. But the boy admired how deeply his friend saw. He noticed the lack of miscoloured fibres on perfect pages. He’d see the smooth curve and perfect little indentations on oranges. He saw the forearms of the women who sat in their desk clump together and noticed their perfect musculature, and tone.
They would hangout after work and walk through the city. At first the many buildings and their glass panes seemed like the perfect place to spy something wondrous, but quickly they were usually too high to appreciate and access to most windows was particularly limited. They decided eventually that their personal interests were far more well suited to the various industrial zones on the outskirts of the city. And this satisfied them for a brief spell. Perfect 2x4s lying in a stack of hundreds just on the other side of a fence, but when he wanted to climb and claim the items the friend would get nervous and say that couldn’t they just admire them from far? He didn’t have the burning desire to preserve them as the boy did. He felt his sole mission had become the cataloguing these perfect items. Noting in as much detail what made them perfect, or what wasn’t there to make them imperfect. He would scrawl and rattle off the notes to his friend, and with a smile on his face, the friend would agree that, yes, there’s clearly something symmetrical going on with that HVAC piping, you can tell from this side. But no you don’t really need to go and check the other side, there are cameras everywhere these days. And he would get anxious, but never upset at his friend who loved the world as much as he himself did. When the boy had come to the office, he could see the sadness in his eyes, but also noted his recognition of beauty. The man that became his friend felt that so few in this life choose to see beauty in the things that exist around us. And that this young man, he thought at the time, could see the radiating beauty in everything was such a wonderful gift and he truly believes that God had given him this site to make the world better. He felt the cataloguing was a bit over the line, but that eventually seeing God’s perfection in the world would allow him in some way to help the world get better. The world he was so scared of losing all the time. The world that at so many points during his modern day feel transient and fleeting. And that the world today was worse in so many ways than the world of his youth. And all of that sort of similar sentiment. The man was scared, and not that the boy didn’t make him feel scared as well, but it was comforting to know that objects from when time was perfect still existed.
But as the objects moved from one form to the next, so did their friendship, doomed thanks to the decaying effect of time. The boy would grow frustrated with the man and his insistence that these items weren’t changing. They’d first argued in spirited and well-meaning fashion, but the arguments, when they became predictable to one another grew tiresome. They both wanted the other to relent. They both wanted to be right about why the objects lost what it was that made them special. Both felt time was the blade, but the boy thought time held the blade as well. Whereas the man felt in his soul that the culture of degeneracy that was borne through rotted social dynamics of the generation’s culture. Which everyone has their idiosyncrasies the boy thought.
One afternoon, now just simply walking through every grocery store in the city over the course of several work days, the boy had decided it was the last time they would browse the aisles together. In a Walmart, the man had made a scene about how the air was infected, and rotted everything we held, dear. That we did this to ourselves and that God will make us pay for destroying what we held so sacred. This was during the busy shopping hours of directly after work, where people were at their level worst in terms of mentality and quickly became agitated and herdlike at the man’s soothsaying. And embarrassed the boy so profoundly that he felt something close to the despair of losing one of his subjects.
He had begun to feel now, as if he was no longer okay. That despite everything in his mind pointing him to believing that as long as he kept searching out these items and cataloguing and attempting to preserve and understand them that he’d find some raison d’être. But obviously.
He continued his mission of preservation even in the face of this doubt. While the comb stayed packaged, he’s now moved it from his college mini-fridge, to a much larger refrigerator that he kept in the basement of the house he rented. This fridge was larger, and nicer than the fridge that was provided by his landlord.
He also bought bookshelves for his journals. He needed a steady supply of them as his mission outside of work was to attempt to find as many of these items as possible and to preserve them for as long as he could. It was his burden. Finding and preserving beauty in the mundane. When he wasn’t in stores purchasing what he could, he was broke. His good job wasn’t enough to support this habit he had succumbed to. He’d spend weekends at his parents’ place mooching food and taking leftovers home to subsist on for the week. Then next weekend, without notice or otherwise, he’d come back and do it all again.
These days he was merely surviving. When he no longer had any money, he began to steal. Eventually having pictures of himself in every storefront across town. Eventually, the stealing bled into his workplace and he was sat down with his manager.
“I’m sure you know why I’ve called you in here today.”
“I wouldn’t hazard a guess sir.”
“You’re being fired with cause. We have many, and I mean many instances of you stealing not only stationary from the office, but also peoples personal belongings! Printed is a list of the items stolen from here. I do not care about the paper, pens, staplers or otherwise. You stole Anne’s picture frame that held the picture of her granddaughter. You constantly take items from people’s lunches. You seriously need some help.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but all I can say is I’m comp—”
“There’s no reasoning with you, I know that. Your issue is your own. I do not know what to do. Your work was good, and outside of these ridiculous decisions to steal what isn’t yours people generally think you are a kind person. You have to get over this ‘perfect item’ nonsense.”
“Sir, you don’t—”
“I won’t hear another word about it.”
“I’m sorry sir.”
“I will escort you out of the building, you are not being allowed to go back to your desk. You are being trespassed here and your stuff will be sent to you by courier.”
“But sir one of the pens I found today was—”
“Enough!”
A police officer is on standby outside the office and gets involved in taking the boy outside. He isn’t upset sad or anything. He’s slightly annoyed that the pen will be handled by people who don’t understand its significance, and he complies with the order all the same.
Losing his job and income meant he could barely afford to live. His failures, although not capable of manifesting emotionally or otherwise in himself, certainly affecting his parents. Simple people who had done everything to give their child, despite his oddities, the best life possible. They had conversely seemed to set him up for failure. That he was nearly spending all his time at home felt like an abject failure on their part. His mother would slink into the corner of whatever room she was in when he would appear, his chipper demeanour in the face of life crushing consequences making her anxiety all the worse.
His father, who should have been well into retirement, but at this point was almost providing for a child again, would push a lot of the stress down and put on a good act for the boy. His love was overriding, his love for the boy was incapable of being reasoned with. To his detriment the father allowed the boy his parasitic nature. The boy used whatever resources he could get for the least amount of effort before attempting anything else. His state was almost paralytic in its routineness. This feeling in the father’s heart burned strong, however. A belief that eventually the son would realize how ridiculously much the parents were sacrificing, and like a normal person, he’d begin to feel embarrassed and do everything in his power to repay his more than generous parents for what they’ve done for him. Days, weeks, and months trod onwards but the boy became more dependent on his guardians. He would use money from them while they would give it to him willingly, and then eventually he would just take credit and debit cards to go on his adventures. Daily, without looking for a job, the boy would travel around the area’s convenient for him searching for objects to catalogue. The parents’ house filled with journals, and multiple fridges, purchased on lines of credit opened with reluctant approval from either of the parents.
A veritable disaster of situations leading to the family nearly going bankrupt, after stern but loving conversation with the boy, they felt that they had maybe made some progress, and that he’d be getting a job and moving back to the apartment that he had them continue renting for him so he could store more journals and fridges.
In moments alone, downstairs amidst fridges and Rubbermaid containers, the boy would sit and think. He rarely took moments of introspection. They were meaningless and inefficient with regards to his stated goals. They did provide some guidance, however. Thinking of new places to look for the things that so often slipped like grains of sand through his fingers. For a moment he thought of something else. His father’s failing health. It wasn’t related to any illness, but instead. The stress of needing to provide for the boy again at this heightened age had truly started to take its toll. This portion wasn’t plainly clear to the boy, he did notice his father’s decline, but couldn’t place it at the moment he had previously lost his job and started leeching off his parents remaining wealth. This was the manner in which the boy existed, he lived unaware of those around him and incapable of relating to them in any meaningful way. The world he had concocted in his head didn’t allow him to feel and see things the way everyone else around him had. The light was blinding his vision and there was no discernable path to allow him to escape this. He did not think in a way that was human.

When his father passed away, he felt nothing. The funeral had a rose that was immaculate and was accidentally jostled and soiled by a distant relative. This gave him the tears to proceed through the function hiding that he couldn’t feel a single thing for the man he truly never got to know.
His mother, older now and needing help walking, used her cane and clung to his arm. Her weight was a non-factor in his movements as he brought her around the funeral home and the church and the graveyard. He saw the perfect woman again, and as if by fate she was still glowing and radiant, and seated next to a man just as magnificent as her. Beside them both 2 glowing children of varying ages, behaved, but slightly restless as a tiny protest.
He saw the man, sombre, alone and still smiling at the back of the church. He waved warmly and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, he raised such a bright young boy.”
And while the comment floated off him in the stress of trying to feel, as his father was lowered down into his grave, and he saw the headstone, and grave, and casket all begin to incandesate. He, for the first time at the sight of a scene in itself that was beautiful, began to weep. He was reminded of the story his parents told him about the first apple he had seen. That something so beautiful had moved him to a worrying amount of tears that child services felt he may be being abused levels of tragedy. And his mom held onto his arm so tightly and said that she saw what he did, that someone so beautiful was gone.
The boy realized in this moment that comment made by the man was true. That he was a boy. That how he saw the world was flawed. He did not have perfect vision, in fact. Whatever entity gave this curse to him had ruined his life. He damned every perfect object, the comb, the apple, her, every last one. He opened the fridge and grabbed the comb from there. He grabbed a large garbage bag and placed every journal he had in his possession. And when that bag filled he grabbed another, and a third still. He drove to his place of work and did the very same. Grabbing the journals with disdain and no due care to their contents. He drove out towards his childhood home in the country. There were a few journals left in that place. His mother, staying in the city for the funeral had given him the key. He went to the basement and found his last hidden scratching’s on the items. In their yard, erected by his father, a large stone fireplace sat. He piled the first bag’s contents tossed some gasoline from the toolshed and lit the sonofabitch on fire as his father might’ve said. He watched his life’s work burn away. Some pieces floated up high. Others would fly and stick to him. He would incessantly brush them off. His tears were still falling. Sometimes they would roll down to his lips, which were not smiling.

After that day, the visions ceased. He went back to those honest to (G)god(s) helpers he had seen in his youth. Counsellors, therapists, priests rabbis and all of them. He worked on himself. And for years, he wasn’t okay. For years, he was tortured by what was seen as beauty removed from him. The bind of wanting to be rid of and also needing desperately an affliction he was self-aware of and yet totally incapable of traversing in a matter that made sense. He was still a lost little boy in a world that had utterly passed him by. He kept at it. He was stubborn, that wasn’t an effect of the sight, he was stupidly and pathetically stubborn and for once is his life that was going to make all of this so much easier.
And as things got easier, his shoulders relaxed, his jaw would unclench, and he saw like the man had, that beauty was everywhere. It started so simply. Driving home on a winters day. He saw how the warmish snow stuck to the trees, and made them look black and white. That the blue backdrop of a moist warm winters day along with the grey cloud cover of the endless winter they chose to live in reminded him of the same drive he’d taken with his father. He found that beautiful, if not perfect. And he began to journal again. He’d write about how a former teacher had recognized him in his old town. How at his usual park a dog being walked by its owner had taken special attention to him. How after a longer time, her laughter would press goosebumps in sequence down his spine. How when his mother passed, the tears were for the both of whom he had lost and not just for himself.
How one morning, with no indication of how long after, the sun rose, and glowed on all of the world a little brighter one day.