The Ticking Is the Bomb

by Nick Flynn

  All living things have shoulders. Period. The end. A poem.

  istanbul (the americans)

  At times, in the silence between when a question is asked and when the translator translates it and when the answer is given, the only sound is the clink clink clink of the artist cleaning his brush in a glass of water. After four hours we finish going over the photographs with Amir, and we are all completely drained. As we stand to thank him, he reaches into his bag and takes out a camera. It looks so odd in his hands. He asks the translator to ask us to stand against one wall—he gestures toward it. We all move, awkwardly, to one corner of the room, gather together in front of a painting of a hammam. Amir raises the camera to his eye and smiles—You see, it’s not only the Americans who like to take photographs.

  immersion (hotel pool)

  Swim, until the world becomes water, swim to the center of the pool, practice hanging, practice drowning, raise your arms above your head, let your body sink. Think of it as practice, for when they come—there is only so much they can do with your body. Swim to the ladder, hang from it as you catch your breath, let your arms hang behind you, like wings, then sink slowly into the water. Your arms will raise to shoulder height behind you, then to your ears—any further and they will dislocate. No one is forcing you to do this, you do it because you have heard that it is done to others. Sink further and you will sign the confession, you will give names, you will say whatever they tell you to say. But when they check your story it will be water, it will slip through their hands. On the confession you will have signed the name “Bird,” because that’s what you think, hanging there, your arms behind you. All living things have shoulders, you think, hanging there.

  five

  monkey-mind

  Some Buddhists believe that as you wander the bardo, that realm between living and dying, you will encounter the physical manifestations of that which terrifies you. Over and over they will appear before you—this is your karmic debt, and only those who are enlightened will walk unafraid. Some believe that enlightenment often comes at the moment of death, just as it can often come at the moment of birth. Most of us, though, spend our given time—our handful of hours, our teaspoonful of years—hovering between these two poles, muddying the water. Monkey-mind, some call it. Samsara.

  (2007) In Istanbul, while collecting testimonies, we asked each ex-detainee to describe the room where his torture took place. Each man looked around him—It looked like this room, each responded. There was a table, there was a computer, someone was always behind me. What did the person who tortured you look like, was the next question, and the detainee would look at me, then look at the artist, the only two white men in the room, and either point to him, or point to me—He looked like him, was the answer.

  In some ways we were mere shadows to them.

  One evening, over dinner in an outdoor restaurant, Amir asked if I was married, if I had children. I’ve been asked this question for years, whenever I travel, and I’ve been looked at with something like pity when I’ve answered no. My first child will be born in January, I told Amir. A girl. He narrowed his eyes and smiled, as if I had just come into focus.

  twice

  (1986) A fortune-teller (maybe she was a star-reader), the friend of a friend, laid some tarot cards out in a pattern on a piece of brocade. We were on Captain Jack’s Wharf, in Provincetown, the water below us black as a mirror. She looked at the cards for a long while, then asked me when I’d been born, what time of day. I didn’t know, I’ve never known, for some reason it’s not on my birth certificate. The fortune-teller told me that she saw something in the cards about my mother, something I needed to know, and the time I was born would help her. It would mean something. The fortune-teller didn’t know anything about my mother, as far as I knew. I thought it was hokum (three p.m.? ten a.m.?), but I also wondered what she might say, if I did know the time.

  A few weeks later I dreamt that I was in the waiting room of a hospital, a woman I thought might be my mother in the far corner, looking away from me, looking out the window at the city. Distant, barely there. As one does in dreams, I went to her, touched her shoulder. She turned to face me—yes, it was her, I could have wept. I said, I need to know what time I was born, and she slowly answered, You were born twice—once at five in the morning, and then again two days later. Then she turned her face to the window and said no more.

  the inventor of the life raft

  Each Christmas my mother would have a boyfriend—sometimes a new one, sometimes one left over from the year before. This boyfriend would buy my brother and me a couple gifts, make Christmas, well, Christmasy. Each boyfriend, it seemed, was like a life raft—all you had to do was pull yourself up, or let your body be pulled up. But a life raft is, by definition, temporary. It could get you through the storm, but you couldn’t live on it forever.

  (2003) I was back from Rome for a few months, living in Provincetown again—the last resort, the locals call it. One of my favorite spots, perhaps on the planet, is Hatches Harbor, an inlet between two beaches where at high tide the ocean rushes in and fills the flats with seawater that then warms in the sun. You can shallow-dive the swollen pools or swim against the current or simply float in the sun half-submerged. You want to get there just as the tide turns, when the water is rushing back out and your body can be carried along by the current’s invisible force. At the mouth of the inlet there is a riptide, an undertow, and it will carry you a few hundred feet out into the open bay if you don’t know to swim hard across the current back to the shore.

  Anna and I knew each other peripherally—we’d emailed a couple times to talk about poetry, and at some point she told me she’d be on the Cape for a few days, so we arranged to meet up. I even offered her a place to crash if she needed it. We spent our first day together hiking across the dunes at high tide, to swim in these tidal pools. On the way we talked about the relationships we were both in, about our doubts. She was about to move in with her boyfriend of six years, and part of her felt she was making an awful mistake. My girlfriend at the time—the playwright—had stayed in Rome for the summer. I told Anna my doubts about being able to meet this woman in eternity. Perhaps both of us knew these stories were merely versions of larger stories, meant to justify what we were doing at that moment (take her hand, pull yourself up, or let your body be pulled up). When we got to the water we dove in, our bodies carried effortlessly to the mouth of the inlet.

  That night, back at the house, after dinner, we lingered until we had to say goodnight, and then we went to our separate rooms. But we left the door between us open, and continued to talk, from our beds, until the space between our words grew larger, and at some point in the silence one of us called out, Are you sleeping? The other answered, I can’t. One asked, Are you cold? The other answered, Yes—and yes was the word that led me to her bed. I climbed the ladder to the loft, pulled aside the comforter, her body there, in my t-shirt, a glimpse of her underwear, her eyes, and as I put my body close to hers, the space between us filled with heat, and we lay like that, silent now, as minutes passed.

  facts about water

  Fish remember for only three seconds, then they forget.

  On Antarctica you must move continually just to stay in one place.

  Everything that swims in the ocean eventually sinks to the bottom and decays.

  The ocean is always looking for a way into your boat.

  These random facts, things you’ve taken in, for some reason are still rattling around in your brain. The purpose of the brain is to filter out 93 percent of what is taken in—this, again, is simply a fact.

  Here’s another fact:

  The last words my mother wrote, perhaps the last thought she ever thought, were these—Everyone knows each other so much longer. If I’ve told you this already, forgive me (samsara)—before this is over it’s likely I’ll tell you again. What I didn’t tell you (did I?) were her first words, the first sentence, of that same suicide note—I don’t know why I chose today
to begin.

  I don’t know why I chose today to begin.

  First thought, best thought.

  Strange verb, in this context, to begin.

  First thought, last thought.

  If I tell you that my mother had a problem with painkillers, that she worked nights as a bartender, that she dated a gangster, what goes through your head? If I say that the pills were for migraines, that she also worked at a bank, that she never missed a day of work, that I grew up feeling loved by her, that sometimes still I meet the old gangster for lunch when I’m in Boston, do these facts still fit your idea of her? If I say that it doesn’t matter to me if you get a clear picture of her or not, that even if I could somehow bring her back, let you sit across from her, ask your questions, you would still have no idea who she was. I barely knew her, yet I knew her completely. When I was younger I would wait up for her to come home from work, I’d wait in her bed. I’d be asleep when she came in, she’d shut off the television, push me over to one side, and I’d wake up in the morning beside her. If it was Sunday I’d go into the kitchen and cook her some eggs, and if her feet hurt I’d rub them while she ate. Some weekends we went into Boston, to the cat show or the flower show, and other weekends we drove down to Newport, to wander the grounds of the mansions. Some weekends we went to her father’s house—the big house—for lunch, and some mornings she stayed in bed with a migraine, and on those mornings I’d keep the television turned down low, offer to rub her temples. One afternoon we drove into Boston with my brother to see Monty Python’s Holy Grail at the Beacon Theater, which was nearly empty except for us. As the lights dimmed, my mother began to laugh, from some silliness in the opening credits, and she never stopped, until her laughter got so loud that my brother and I moved away from her, up into the balcony, each of us laughing now in our separate corners of that old dark theater, our eyes filled with tears.

  I was reading Paradise Lost when my mother died, finishing my junior year at college, and for some days, maybe weeks, afterward, I roamed campus like a ghost. It felt like my body was trapped in a bubble, the walls of which were difficult to push beyond (The Mind is its own Place, and there within, can make a Hell out of Heaven, or a Heaven out of Hell). It felt somehow benign—inside that bubble everything became safe, because nothing really mattered. Some of this benign sensation was drug-induced—self-medicating, I called it. Marijuana maintenance. It made the world simple—some days I swear all I had to do was to think of someone for that person to appear before me. If I was lonely, which I was, every night, I could knock on a friend’s door, I could just show up, and she, whoever she was, would take me in. Of course, there was a lot I couldn’t do. Like fall asleep. Like wake up. Like feel anything. Like stop feeling everything. So every night I slept with someone, someone else, another friend. It was easy, putting my body into another’s body—We seem good at it, I’d think, hovering a few feet above the bed. After my mother died, I still had a body, but it was not one I could enter, not one I could use. I was here, standing before you, only it was temporary—think of a snake, how it leaves its skin behind, and this skin looks like a snake at first, until you step on it and it powders. Then, after many disembodied years, a woman gave my body back to me. Slow, Inez said, go slow. Don’t come yet, she said, stay here with me.

  echo

  One day you will hear yourself repeating something you once said to an old lover—I’m not really in any shape to see anyone, or, No blame if it doesn’t work out. One day you will hear yourself saying these same words to a new lover—maybe you think it’ll put her (him) at ease, as it seemed to put the other one at ease, and it might even be true. Or it might be that some part of you senses that it won’t be forever, and you don’t want to take responsibility for the heartache it (you) might bring. Or it might be simply your shadow talking, tricking you, once again, into believing that what you are saying is real.

  (2003) After our first day together, after swimming in tidal pools, after our one night together, after ending up in the same bed, Anna went back to Brooklyn. She moved in with her boyfriend, while I stayed on in that small seaside town. We’d talk on the phone when we could, but I tried to give her (me) space to figure out what I (she) needed. Near the end of summer she came once more to visit. Then she went back to Brooklyn, and her boyfriend read her journals, found out we’d slept together, and they broke up. In the weeks that followed, I’d look forward to when we’d speak, to when we’d see each other next. I’d go to her whenever I made it to Brooklyn, show up at her door after midnight. She’d answer it in her bathrobe, take me in.

  That fall I closed on the rundown Victorian upstate, just in time to celebrate the anniversary of my mother’s death and to end the relationship with the playwright. I sat in my newfound ruin, on the orange shag carpet, the cheap paneling on the walls, wondering what I’d done, unsure if I’d made a terrible mistake. Anna invited me to go Mexico with her for Christmas, but I told her, told myself, that I needed time to be on my own. A week or so later I invited all my friends up, and twenty of us slept over, on couches and air mattresses. I set up a Christmas tree in that unfinished house, made a big dinner, and later we all had a snowball fight. The worst was behind us, I told myself.

  In January, I fly to Texas, to begin my first semester of teaching. Anna and I talk on the phone every couple days, remember what we’d read, what we’d seen, and at some point I’d ask if she was touching herself and she’d say she was. Whatever you want me to do I will do, I’d say.

  In May, when the semester ends, I make my way back north, back to the house. With the windows open, the shag carpet ripped up, the paneling torn off the walls, it isn’t so tomblike. The backyard is thick with tiger lilies. I feel more hopeful. It’s May—everywhere in the world looks good in May. For the first time I can imagine spending some time there, in that part of the world, in that house. It could be beautiful, this life. I make my way to Brooklyn once a week or so, to see Anna. I’m still in no shape to see anyone, not fully, and this still seems to be okay with her. Back upstate I hire a friend, a carpenter—Philip—to help me transform the house. As will happen when a project stretches out from weeks to months, Philip and I hang out more and more. One night, at his house for dinner, I meet Inez. Unbeknown to either of us, Philip’s partner, Caroline, had seen something in me when we met, and thought of Inez. The dinner that night was a set-up.

  the tricky part

  (2004) I call Inez two days after I meet her. I invite her to a play in New York that a friend had written and was starring in, a one-man show called The Tricky Part. Later that night, back at her place, we talk about whether or not we ever thought about having children. I say what I always say—I’ve always imagined that, one day, I’d have a child, that I’d be a father, but it’s hard to see when, or to imagine what that day will look like. We kiss a little, but I tell her my love life is a little complicated at that moment, that it is maybe not the best time to jump into something. We kissed a little more. We weren’t asking each other if we could imagine having children with each other, but we weren’t not asking that either.

  For years I’d told myself that I could live anywhere, for a year or two. I told myself I could be happy (or unhappy) anywhere. When I’d go to a new city, I’d try to imagine myself living there, and I always could. Some part of me did this with women as well, some part of me imagined a new woman as a city I could stay in for a while, then visit from time to time. I’d know my way around, I wouldn’t need a map, but I wouldn’t really live there either. But a child? A child wasn’t like a city, or even a woman. I couldn’t simply visit now and then.

  mistress yin

  (2006) A friend is in town for a few days from San Francisco. I ask him if he wants to go with me to a play, a retelling of Ulysses called Dead City. It’s in a theater called 3-Legged Dog, down near the hole that was the World Trade Center. We meet up beside ground zero, then wander for a while, killing time before the show, catching up. As we turn a corner onto another ordinary-lookin
g street, he stops, excited. Wait, he says, pointing down the block—I’ve been in this neighborhood before. Mistress Yin’s is right there—she’s got the best dungeon in town.

  A few days later I attend an event he’s organized, a reading in midtown to raise money to support Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections, focusing on close races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona. As I walk in, my friend is talking to a woman near the bar, and he introduces her to me as Yin. As she takes my hand, my friend remembers—Yin’s the one I was telling you about, he shouts over the din, the one with the dungeon.

  Nice to meet you, I say, still holding her hand. Clear-eyed, modestly dressed, beautiful—remarkably ordinary-looking, I think, though what did I expect? I’d like to see your dungeon sometime, I tell her, unsure what I mean by it.