Secret Stories

by Dwight Peters

most people’s, in this city perhaps especially, ideal of success. As she walked, she saw the man come out of his apartment in a daze. When he saw her, he attempted to smile but instead made a pained face. Concerned, she asked him if he needed help. He said yes, then turning around, moving away from her back into his apartment.

  Sad that she could not help, she kept walking, thinking of the man, trying to imagine who he was—what he has known and felt, what he knows and feels—pushed to understand why he wouldn’t ask for help if he needed it. After imagining and thinking these things for several minutes, she briefly drifted away from her usual awareness, her body still walking while she had no sensation of control over it; she, for a small part of a second knew for herself that she was connected completely to the man’s awareness and experience, fully within the now of his present state, fully within his memory, and also the history that pieced together the whole of him. When this ended for her and she felt within herself again, she wanted at first to run to the man—but continued to walk away from where he was in the direction she had been moving.

  She, while still walking, felt that she understood what the man meant by help, the larger meaning, it having been almost a joke in the way that he meant it to her while it was also very serious. She also felt she understood a view of the possibilities of the choices of life that she had never known before.

  By the time she got to the place she was going, she had an appreciation for the man where there had initially been pity; she had a respect for him that she would struggle to communicate to others in conversations later on.

  I Would Drink An Entire Volcano While Walking In The Middle Of An Ocean To Create An Island Paradise For You. But Wait, Don’t You Know You Are My Island Paradise?

  There was a couple that saw each other both physically and mentally as if they were still nineteen years old, the age they both were when they met. For very many years, it didn’t occur to either of them that this was done. For instance, after ten years or so of being together, aging together, loving together, in their own minds, not all the time but often enough to notice yet not enough to remember, each would say “poor ______ looks a little tired” or “______ looks a lot like an adult in a movie today” or even ______looks kind of funny today” and at rarer sometimes “I must be in a bad mood because ______ looks kind of ugly today.”

  After another ten years, there were some variations of these impressions but mostly they remained the same, and always they amounted to nothing. The main variation being a feeling while in each other’s presence when they argued of—though not as if either were there own or each other’s—the other being a parent of somebody somewhere in the world: it was an obscure feeling neither of them could place clearly; it seemed like it was no longer them alone in these moments—as if they were with a more mature authority though they didn’t know who.

  This couple lived together, stayed together, loved together until they both reached the amazing age of one-hundred-and-ten, at which time the both died. But it was around the age of seventy-eight that they both had some experiences that confusedly shook them.

  In their fifties and sixties, they had more impressions of each other, similar to but somewhat different than the ones of the previous few decades, such as “______ really should have a lot more energy” which related a bit to “why is ______ so often “tired” in bed?” also things like “it is sad that we have both lost our parents while so young” or “______ smells different” and “______ feels different” as well as “______ sure eats a lot of oatmeal.”

  Somehow for seventy-eight years it never came up in conversation with others that they saw each other as if they were still nineteen both physically and mentally. When they talked with others, they used the language that would seem to express that they understood that it was going to be the year of this or that birthday or that they qualified for senior discounts, but the real significances to them never had any weight beyond the surface of fleeting conversations.

  So it was then when at seventy-eight they were in a grotesque and tragic car accident while riding in the car with a couple they were friends with, a couple about their own true age. One of the couple was driving and the other was sitting in the seat behind when a large truck cut through that half of the car destroying their friend’s bodies as if the bodies had never had a solid form. With such destruction, with such devastation of their friends, they were not even slightly injured physically: no whiplash, no nicks or bruises. There was a lot of blood that covered their skin and clothes, however, and the horror of this, along with the loss and emotional trauma of the accident, shook them. At the funeral the deceased couple’s three children wanted to talk with them, and it was these interactions that confused them because they couldn’t really deeply understand what their friend’s children meant when the children asked questions or said things to them. All previous significance had lost form when their friends seemed to explode as volcanoes of blood.

  It took a few months time of living in confusion where nothing meant anything, but this faded and they began to understand. From the rest of the year of when they were seventy-eight up until the year they turned ninety-nine, they stayed together in a near continual embrace—whether with one arm each around each other on the couch, or holding hands on a walk, or holding hands with whichever hand had no fork or spoon while eating, or fully embracing standing up or in bed lying down. They spent most of these years reliving the past years as if they were fully aware at each passing present moment throughout those times: knowing a growing of simple discovery, a new-old time with fully rich experience; the significant sensations of those times moving through the feeling of their together bodies.

  After they turned ninety-nine, they still embraced constantly up until the time of their deaths, but they spent most of their moments with others, being as aware as they could be of their interactions, the significance of relationships, what this did and could mean, giving to other’s what they were able of their truest selves they could have present.

  Letter Written At A Café In Bright Sunshine

  Last evening, I said to the wind: “Tell me how two people meet.” In the morning, the wind responded in a single gust. In the afternoon, I say to you: “I want to see your smile as we play together, when the fullness of our openness is here and dancing in a single joy.”

  In the short distances of day-to-day seeing, in the most painful pulls and twists of struggles where we cannot see ourselves, and even in the furthest distances within the goodness of our imaginations where it seems we cannot meet because in moments of creativity we are invisible so cannot appear—it is from these places that we can step forward as if the traveler who has walked many miles though cold pathways to finally reach camp and build a fire.

  Even if the homes upon the planets we’re creating while alone are traveling in different dimensions, scream at me what you feel but can’t tell me that delights and frightens you—shout at me what you don’t yet know you love. In return, I will whisper to you everything I have ever known and all that I will. Together, with our strengths and the forgotten beauties of our broken pieces, we are free.

  The Philosopher Says Hello

  There was someone who, whenever the person met anyone, depending on age and other factors, thought questions such as: could this person be my killer? —My lover for a day or night? —My lover for my life with whom I will have a family? —Be someone who will dramatically alter what I know as my life? —Be someone who will as far as my ability to know affect my life in no way other than this one meeting and what I am thinking now? —Be someone who I met before and forgot and who has forgotten me, maybe met as kids? —Be someone who is related to me distantly or closely? At the same time the person was also thinking: there could be violence in these hands that I have met; there could be romance or lust; there could be permanence or impermanence to me in the relationship of this person to me; there could be something known or unknown, a familiar or a stranger; there could be truth in many of these at on
ce.

  And with these thoughts and questions the person was still vastly unsatisfied, knowing that the possibilities of relationships are greater than the capacity of the person’s own mind’s ability to think through them.

  All of the thoughts and questions—and then the dissatisfaction of their incompleteness—took the person over completely so that by the time the meetings with every one of these other people were over the conversations had were mostly mysterious to the person because the words heard were the thoughts and questions rather than hearing the words of the other person. This happened for quite a long time in the life of this person until one day the thoughts and questions thought about and questioned this—then allowing something different from what had been where the person could still think and question but also listen, allowing too the possibility of interaction.

  Impossible To Bear

 

  “If there were three whales that while singing their songs in the ocean just below a shark exploded and shot that shark out of the water directly at me teeth first so that I would be lying on the ground bleeding and screaming—even then