A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [107]
I start walking. I have no idea where I’m going, I’m just walking. I take a Trail and I follow it and it leads me into the cover of Evergreen. It’s darker in here and I feel less vulnerable and more comfortable. I am breathing deeply, as deeply as I can breathe, and the air is calming me down. The Fury has dissipated and is a walking rage, an anger like fire, entirely controllable, and easy to stop it from burning or hurting anything.
The Sun is high, its light shattered by tree branches, their streams illuminate dirt, dead leaves and rotting plants killed by the Winter’s cold. Frost sparkles in the shade waiting to melt. In an hour it will be gone. In ten hours it will return. Another day another cycle here gone back tomorrow gone again. I am cold. Warmth is in the light but I avoid it. As I walk, I’ll get warmer. I’m in no hurry.
I follow the Trail and the Trail leads me along the Lake. The Lake is the same as it is each day the same. Sheets of ice, life below, birds above. Noise destroying silence, silence overwhelming noise. Reflections slowly move along the water distorting what is real the object or the image. They are both real and it is all real. It all is front of me life is in front of me and behind me above me below me surrounding me. I can see it and feel it and hear it and touch it. Inside and outside. Right now.
A bench is empty. I sit down close my eyes open myself. I don’t know to what I am opening myself. Is it God or something Higher. Is it me or what is around me. Does it matter do I need to know. It matters because it is what is keeping me together. This opening is allowing me to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. I need to believe in it to continue to believe in me. I need to know what it is. What is it that opens me.
I stand and I walk along the edge of the water until it ends in a Sea of yellow grass. The grass is dead now but will return in the Spring that is the way of the World. Things die and they return. Is that biology or God or something Higher. Are we biology or God or something Higher. I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song. Will this song exist when the beating stops. Will one stay when one is gone, can one live without the other. Does it matter. It does. I have to believe in something. It is holding me together.
Up the Pine walk and across the murky desolation of swamp and rot and life existing because of death. Back down into dense Oak and Evergreen. The Sun is still hot and high its rays still scattered still dancing across the floor of earth and my feet are moving easily. The Fury is gone, replaced with free air and the quiet emptiness of a solitary calm. I am quiet and empty. I am calm.
If there is anything I seek it is this. The calm. If there is God or something Higher for me it is this. The calm. If there is something that will hold me when I need to hold it is this the calm. There is no anger, no rage, no Fury. There is no want no need no desire. There is no hatred no shame no regret. There is no grief, no sadness, no depression. There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live. The calm I feel right now. What is it?
I am lost in the Woods but still on a Trail. I am seeking that which I have but will lose again. I have sought it before as a cure for the disease of myself. In a Church as a Child it did not come. I held my Parents’ hands and I felt nothing. Love only brought me loneliness and horror. In bottles and pipes I found emptiness and pain. At twenty-two after Jail and bond and flight I went back to a Cathedral where what I sought was calm. The calm did not come. I have it now. Without God. I have it now.
The Wood fades into brittle brown grass and a slope carries me to a point where I can see all that surrounds me.