Somewhere Over the Sun

I am staring at the guitarist’s fingers in awe. The way he knows exactly in what order to pluck which string, coordinating his other hand’s movement on the guitar’s neck, while not looking at his hands at all, and the words he is singing, the fact that someone decades ago wrote them, and the millions of people have sung along to them, and that the vibrations are travelling through chords through some comprehensible feat of engineering to be amplified and turned into music that, through some incomprehensible feat of humanity, is immensely pleasing.

I am in awe of melodies. Of our need for them, our capacity for them. I am in awe of music, and the entire intricacy of humanity that is at this very moment represented in just one guitarist’s fingers.

My next thought is this: “My first wife.” These are three words a Dutch man at a French restaurant in Mexico City said to me about a week ago. Like a guitar chord, the sound of these three little words can be taken at face value, but when one thinks about the music, things get a little hazy.

My first wife. The implications of these three words unravel in my head, and I have problem listening to whatever else the Dutchman is saying to me. I’m imagining, in no particular order, the fall of the marriage, that way affection can rust over time, how it makes things less functional. I’m imagining an argument, with lots of yelling, the kind that makes people uncomfortable enough to call the cops. I’m imagining the aftermath, what it may have been like for this Dutchman to try to sleep in the weeks and months after his divorce. Those bits and pieces of love that have managed to survive the ugliness are keeping him awake, and pouring another shot too late at night. And all of this so far in the past, far behind another marriage, maybe more than one.

In a cover letter this week, I wrote about people converging from a dozen different places, diverging to hundreds of others. I think about the future and the past unraveling in exactly the same fashion. Actually, I see this happening in everything: implications, histories, fates. This world is so huge, and it is most evident in guitar chords, in fingers, in words.

A great thing about writing is how, to make something beautiful (a knuckle-sized puddle beneath your toothbrush; the memory of the back of someone’s neck; life), you only have to point at it a certain way.

It is sometime between two and three in the morning, the freeways are mostly empty and it is particularly pleasant for an August night in Vegas, where, even at this hour, the heat stays awake. Eighty-four degrees, the thermometer in my car reads, which sounds warmer than it feels. I have had about 6 cups of coffee and because of this, just like everyone at some point in their lives has been or will be, I am gassy. These details, unmemorable on any other night, are worth mentioning because my brother’s son has just taken his first breaths.

I know few of the details of the day I was born and have never asked much about it, so perhaps the things I am noting now will someday be irrelevant, forgotten.

Inside the delivery room, Sylas is being re-wrapped burrito-style, true to his half-Mexican roots. I deliver a quotation, my almost first words to him (the very first words, since this is a night about firsts and I had forgotten my plan to welcome him into this world a certain way, were, “Hey, Sylas.”). Everyone thinks he resembles someone else. 

In the nursery, he is bright and pink and kicks his legs like a dog dreaming of chasing squirrels. My brother rubs a finger down his newborn’s chest. He reminds me of the first fictional father I wrote up: a man who will be a good and loving father, but who right now seems to be a student that has shown up to a class unprepared for a test. He’s been sporting a silly moustache and goatee thing for the last few months and still expects others to be interested when he talks about video games. His wife looks maternal, at peace, tired and happy. 

One of Sylas’s grandmothers goes outside for a smoke, careful not to dislodge the rock with which the nurses on shift have propped open a side door. A young-ish man with a cane and poor teeth offers to pay for a cigarette. He talks about his knee, his asthma.

On our way out of the hospital our heels click on the linoleum hallways, echoing behind us on the long walk to the E.R entrance, which is the only one open at this hour. The grandfather receives phone calls in Mexico, his flight only a few hours away. Stars twinkle and I cannot see the moon.

Why, on the drive back, do music and light bulbs seem a touch more beautiful? Why are these details, these things Sylas may one day read and not care much about, inherently worthy of mention, inherently precious? Oh, because they always are. Because the only reasonable thing to do when life— fresh, young, pink life— is shoved into your face is to be aware, appreciative. On nights that are meant to be Memorable, the only thing for a person to do is try to remember, try to notice, and see if life hangs onto the details.

I sit up in bed, transferring words from a notebook into a computer, like I have on many other nights. The lights are on, the three framed pictures of descending sunsets that hang on my wall are crooked in different angles, as if the sun has decided to, for a change, rock itself to sleep.

Sylas’s life begins fairly quietly, among hushed details that exist every other day but are brightened, emblazoned, beautified by his birth.

“If this was the only life he’d ever tasted, who was he to judge whether it was rich or poor in the stuff that makes life worth living?”- Timbuktu, Paul Auster

I posted a variation of that quotation as my Facebook status recently. As typically happens with uncredited quotations or lyrics, the words were misconstrued as being my own. Among the comments I received was this philosophical one:

“You don’t feel that there’s, objectively, anything that makes a life ‘rich’ and worth living?”

I failed to elaborate on my thoughts until now. Here’s the thing. No, there isn’t an objective measure of what makes a life worth living. But let’s say there was. Let’s say, for example, that orgasms were a measure of something that makes life worth living. Would someone who’s lived through more orgasms automatically have a life more worthy of living than someone with fewer orgasms? Do premature ejaculators, then, have an unfair advantage? Would a very busy internet-aided weekend give someone a shot at a happier existence? 

How about love? Surely, if there’s one facet of the stuff that makes life worth living which we all seem to be striving for, it’s love. Do you measure love by how many people you’ve loved? If so, doesn’t that contradict the very notion that many people have about love’s singularity? Is it how strongly you’ve loved? How often? How long? Where’s the measurability there? Do you revert back to orgasm counts? I love you’s spoken or heard?

What about smiles? Does smiling more than anyone else mean you’ve lead a richer life? Orgasms might be reasonably estimated through a bit of arithmetic (or maybe algebra in some cases), but what about smiles? Do any of us even have a slight approximation of how many times we’ve smiled? Who cares about the honesty of an orgasm; but a smile’s honesty surely changes the amount of value it brings to a once-tasted life.

What about nights so good that their memory is too painful to relive for the mere fact that they could never be relived outside of recollection’s limited parameters? How much value is in a night if it is only tasted once? Or is there more value in a night so good that its inability to be perfectly repeated brings pain?

People seem to count the richness or poverty of their lives in plenty of measurable ways, none of which truly determine how rich or poor their lives have been. Money in their bank account. Time in between sexual encounters. Number of times that their book has been purchased.

I was asked, too, by the same commenter, whether the question was rhetorical, whether I agree with the notion that we’ve only tasted one life, whether everything is relative.

I think the question functions well (best, actually) as a rhetorical one, but we’re far past that point. I think we can only taste one life, and the fault is in thinking we live a buffet. We think we can taste others’ lives, and we try to compare their measures of happiness with ours. An orgasm is not a centimeter; it has no universal value. All smiles are not created equal. I dislike peanut butter and you do not.

This is the only life you’ve ever tasted, and who are you to say whether it is rich or poor in the stuff that makes life worth living? What it comes down to, in my opinion, is that if you think or feel that the life you’ve lead has been rich in the stuff that makes life worth living, it probably has. If you think or feel that the life you’ve lead has been poor in the stuff that makes life worth living, it probably has. Or you just like complaining. 

Yes, this post has previously appeared on this site. 

Here’s one little fraction of my day: (although, I must admit I’ve never been great at math. I could be, if I tried. I was at times. Seventh grade, I was in advanced algebra. Slept through class with my ass way beyond the seat and my neck resting where my lower back should have been. I still got A’s, and that’s probably when I realized I could afford to not care that much. After that, the only classes I struggled in or ever had to retake were those that had to do with numbers and formulas.

I wrote an essay in place of a statistics test once, “I’m sorry that I don’t care more,” my test said, “I sit in your class and watch people instead, think about their little movements and what they mean, think up stories behind the movement of their barely noticeable artificial shadows.” I failed and got a post-it note that said, “Maybe you are in the wrong major. If you need to talk, please come see me in my office.” I was in love at the time, how could formulas compare?)

I walked through the boulevard, which looks like this: street one way, split by a large red-brick ‘middlewalk’ lined by very tall trees and the occasional flower stand or fountain, then an opposite-headed rush of traffic. It was dry and walkable and even sunny at times, for the first time since my return. I was singing along to a song I didn’t actually know all the lyrics to but I tried anyway, stumbling over my (their) words and feeling happy that no one was around to hear me or correct me. I had just finished a perfectly lemon-flavored popsicle and was on my way to a cafe to have a hookah and write some words before the rain eventually showed up again. A bald man, young, about my age, half-glanced at me. We passed each other wordlessly, just fractions of each others’ day, lives.

A phrase that’s unfortunately reserved only for athletes and musicians.

“Come and watch me play,” he says, “Saturday night at Quincy park.”
“Oh, an outdoor thing,” she says, “That’s cool.”
“Of course. In this weather it’d be a crime to play indoors.”

When she shows up, high heels flaunting those legs, the rest of her attire flaunting her everything, she is unprepared for what she sees. No stage, no music other than the raucous sound of laughter coming from some darkened elsewhere, some meaningless elsewhere that, due to its lack of court or amps is not worth coming out to see. She gets out of the car, already dialing his number.

“Hey, where are you?”
“At the playground,” he shouts, way too loudly. “We’ve got a pretty epic game of hide and seek going. I’m it and I can’t see you so feel free to just hide. The big oak tree is home base. Or you can sit this round out and join in next if you like.”