The writing behind the image...

The meaning behind "Life after Death"

August 1st, 2018

It’s been over three years since you died. I had to sit for a minute and figure that out. Time has been funny. That is to say, I haven’t been perceiving it unfolding in a linear fashion. There are gaps, wormholes, chasms and dead ends. Fast forward buttons are pushed after long periods of slow motion.

My memories of you are locked behind closed doors. Most of the time when I try to remember you, I fumble with an overwhelming amount of unsorted keys and the doors stay locked. Every now and then a door will swing open unexpectedly. Some doors I wish would stay closed. Others, I’d give anything to find the fucking key. But it doesn’t work like that. I’m not in charge.

I pretended for a long time after you died that I didn’t know you and you didn’t know me. This I had to believe because the pain of losing you was too much to bear. It was easier to say to myself that it all meant nothing. But that’s all bull shit. Denying the existence of our bond is tantamount to denying the existence of my right arm.

You told me this painting should lead on my website. You had discussed it with a friend and felt it was my strongest piece. We never talked about the meaning behind the painting. It had been born out of a salacious origin and we didn’t discuss things like that. Instead, you would assign your own meaning.

You bought the painting for a fair price. You never wanted me to undersell myself. You saw something in me that I couldn’t see at the time. Something that you couldn’t tell me. I had to figure it out for myself.

Not long after you bought the painting, you were diagnosed with lung cancer. Within a year, you would be dead. I wonder if you looked at the painting and saw destruction. This is an image of two lightning bolts simultaneously striking a utility pole. Unbridled energy toppling control. You would tell me this was a metaphor for your diagnosis. I see the painting’s pulsating red as your rage.

Originally, the red was passion; Lust not wrath. The bolts of lightning symbolized the climax of lost inhibitions. You laughed at me when I said I fell for a bartender. Your exact words were “I thought you were smarter than that. They get paid to pretend.” Some lessons I’ve learned the hard way. The bartender told me when I write about him, not to use his real name. Well that’s easy. It’s really not about him anyway. No matter where you begin, all roads lead to entropy.

I remember when you weren’t angry. I remember when we laughed until we couldn’t breathe. I remember when you listened. Really listened. Undivided attention listened. It was easy to feel invisible as an adolescent and you knew what that felt like too. The gods saw it fit to give me an atheist god father with a sardonic wit. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

The last week of your life has marred my memory of you for a while. What a cruel act of my brain, to obfuscate an entire lifetime with you, leaving me with the agony and anger of you on your death bed.

The last time I saw you I didn’t say a word. You were barely in there, but still holding on. I hope you knew I would be alright. I hope you knew that I love you. I only remember telling you that once…

Now the painting is back in my possession. I stare at the lightning on the wall and think about how many lives it has lived. Lightning strikes the Earth about a hundred times every single second. About a billion volts of energy in every strike. You thought you were the utility pole, but you really are the lightning.

My memories of you are coming back now. I will keep them alive. This is life after death.

The Meaning of “Serenity”

A Good Bye Letter

It’s been a long time since I last saw you in person at Gatwick Airport. It was sometime in the end of January, 2011. It’s 2018 now and Donald Trump is president (that will always look weird).

Thought I would have seen you again. I’ve never loved anyone as much as I loved you. From the moment you told me your name, I just looked up at you and felt like I was home. Like I found a fellow extraterrestrial blending in with the humans. Our truth was our little secret.

I was 26 and now I am 33, home on a Saturday night thinking of you. Wondering where you are and who you are with. You moved on and well you should. I had moved on too, but it didn’t work out. I really thought I was in love with him and I tried for a long time; swimming in toxic water so long that I didn’t know I was drowning.

I look at my phone’s black screen. In the mirror, I see my reflection. I’m getting older. I resist the urge to press the button. Just a touch a way and I could open the window to your life. Well… your digital representation of a life. Doesn’t smell like you. Doesn’t taste like you. I can’t hear your voice or your laugh. I see you though. Read your posts. Track your trips with your new girl. How happy you both look. You look at her like you used to look at me. I hate her so much and I’ve never even met her.

A pit in my stomach grows to the size of the ocean that lies between us. The physical distance pales in comparison to the space that grew since our paths diverged. It’s hard to see back to our love and I question that it ever existed at all.

All I have now is the feeling of your gravity faintly pulling on my heart as I make my way through the Kuiper Belt. It’s so weak I become nauseous from the weightlessness. I see the event horizon and beyond that the freedom of Interstellar Space. Cold. Black. Lonely.

I pray to Janus, the ancient Roman god of beginnings and gateways, to open up a wormhole and get me the fuck out of here. But the only answer I get is from Bobby McGee and it’s nothing left to lose.

So I sit here, Voyager of 1, and reflect on past relationships like the one we had.

“The love between the moon and the deep blue sea” was a line from a Jimi Hendrix song so lovely that I had to paint it. When I painted it, I painted us. The ocean dark and mysterious, glimmering in the lunar light. The moon commanding attention, with its only competition twinkling light years away. Locked in a dance 238,900 miles apart, the moon and the sea are never to be united.

But then I realize, this isn’t just our love. It is all the love between the people that can never be in the same place and time again. I sit in the universality of it all. My pain is no longer my own and I am not alone.

I paint the moon and sea again. This time I call it “Serenity”.