saanshaohana

[saanshaohana]

1.

On 10th of September, a Monday, Aelius Galanis sits on his desk fixed in a wall to do something.

To be himself, that which if he is not, he'll be nobody. And he realised that before he had realised that Virginia Woolf realised it before him, or how much he liked her, despite the initial jealousy that cropped up in the wake of her having claimed the thought that came out of himself, too, but sewn together in better words, with abundantly more recognition.  It was his last year of high school, and as much as someone would scoff at the sight of a young boy saying this, life was passing him by. He was letting it, and that was an act of folly anyone regardless of age could indulge in.

He opened up all his drawers to find something to do something with. He took a voice recorder in his hand, replaced with an old calendar, replaced with a box of mints, replaced with an old diary and a drawing pad, which he flipped through. 

And now he is sitting on his desk with a pencil in his hand and the look of a maniac on his face. He grabs a notepad and jots down ideas of fiction, of rebellious avant-garde, plots of cynical themes, satirical themes, eccentric themes, introspective themes, nonsensical-but-artistically themes, the same themes across different media-- film, writing, art, play, whatever he had seen, could remember, and was attracted to-- through characters, through worldviews, through inanimate perspectives, through eccentric situations, to find something, somewhere he'd find his place.

Soon he trails off to write about what he was doing and what he was feeling, then scribbles the names of tentative careers and ways he could make himself useful, with no more sincerity than he would doodle. 

His brother hated him, his mother had been a stranger among others after he turned three, who took his brother with her, who brought him back after a diagnosis of cancer, after all hope had left her, to leave her son of nine years to find family in his brother of eleven and their father, before their father was there every day, to date, for his sons of fifteen years and seventeen years, before their mother died five years ago, before she found love in their father again.

He blinks, and takes a deep breath, lets it go, and looks with a stoop in his posture at the things around him, at the corners of his room, at things that he had put there some time or another: some forgotten in their place and some acknowledged frequently. He looked at his many portraits of Alice--in Wonderland, in her house, in her mother's womb, in prison, one a gender-bender, one imitating Mona Lisa... He stops with a smirk. 

He takes out his phone and puts on Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) as he hums together with a dead John Lennon and relaxes his shoulders back into his chair and the sunlight takes no time creeping up and down his face, to its edges, and curves, to mountains and away from valleys. It covers his eyes before they snap open. The sunlight comes into his room from the declining Sun.

"The beginning. Close your eyes." he clears his throat and positions himself to write on his notepad, a tilted head necessary as he starts scribbling.

Close your eyes. 

You're laid on grass, open. The colour your eyes see when they are   closed is bright from the sun shining down. It hasn't gone cold yet.

It's summer, but temperate. The birds’ pealing closes in. Echos of different birds mix before some diminish, although the trace of their sound remains long after they’ve travelled far. The an array of sounds from the local inhabitants of the bushes and trees claim the air again. Birds and insects and squirrels, the mute ants, the occasional trampling on fallen leaves by a dog before reuniting with its opponent in a stand-off of barking, before quietening down and running off, as the birds all fly up towards the sky from the uproar and form a net in front of your eyes in the sky as they leave to settle elsewhere for the day.  The strands of grass feel soft before your limbs and toes and fingers are one with them. Today there's a song to remind you of that day. The memory is laden  in emotion, but the day it was formed, it wasn't so heavy to carry.

It's warm, and the corners of your eyes are cooler from their wetness. The sun is opening up the muscles in your body with the touch of its light.

You can breathe. No hand outstretched to stifle. Home is near. It's nearer than ever before or ever again; and it hasn't been long after you woke up from your bed today to now, that you're lolling on the grass.

The time is free and it is yours. You are not  afraid to be alone. There's a train whistling away, but not far.

Open your eyes.  Just open your eyes 

To the trick of the light.

He lets his breath go, and takes it back again. Lets it go. Takes it back. And it means nothing for anyone else, but him, it's keeping alive.

The day passes with his breathing.

He used to cry to song lyrics,

Spirit of my silence, I can hear you, but I'm afraid to be near you, And I don't know where to begin, And I don't know where to begin.

Somewhere in the desert there's a forest, and an acre before us, But I don't know where to begin, But I don't know where to begin. Again I lost my strength completely, oh be near me, tired old mare With the wind in your hair.

Amethyst and flowers on the table, is it real or a fable? Well I suppose a friend is a friend, And we all know how this will end.

Chimney swift that finds me be my keeper, silhouette of the cedar, What is that song you sing for the dead, What is that song you sing for the dead? I see the signal searchlight strike me in the window of my room. Well I got nothing to prove, Well I got nothing to prove.

I forgive you, mother, I can hear you, and I long to be near you But every road leads to an end, Yes every road leads to an end. Your apparition passes through me in the willows, and five red hens. You'll never see us again. You'll never see us again.

784 words, that repeated,  and repeated to make his soul shudder and be brought to its knees.

He also liked to make up words. He liked to use his own expressions, to own his metaphors. Aelius Galanis was a boy who had found a few boys like him, all of which lived very, very far.

Tonight, he lays in his bed glancing sideward to the moon and its light is different from the Sun's.

Yet they're both there for him. For everybody. For nobody. Only his breath.

(Note: the song I have used is called Death With Dignity, written and performed by Sufjan Stevens, and I did not write it, nor do I own it.

Everything besides the song is original, is created by me, of course, aside from the references to Alice In Wonderland, and John Lennon's Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), which, with no regards for my wishes, are not my creations either :) They’re beautiful songs. I recommend you check them out.)