entropy

it is said that life and the infinite number of actions comprising it are often grossly different from what you imagine. that is, a painting falls sort of the great masterpiece you created in your mind, your lover failed to touch the few trembling spots you dreamed of most vividly, your job turned out less meaningful than what you expected when you first opened that bottle of cheap Kobel champagne and announced that you were going to change the world. in most cases, the saying is correct, the mind dwells in a world unattainable by the body, unbelievable in the realm of heart beating, carbon dioxide exhaling reality.

but there was one thing that happened just as i imagined it would. no one believed me of course. no one believed that it could really happen and that it could really be so bad. my friends called me nervous, a rabbit living in human skin, a twitching, pounding, frantic scrap of cardiac muscle under a puckered, ever trembling chest, a face so scarred with worry lines they joked would one day it would collapse into the deep fault lines around my eyes and mouth--my smile washed into the deep sea trenches of anxiety. "you'll be eaten by your own fear" they would say passing around Oxycontin tabs like they were breath mints. my friends had a wicked love for hyperbole.

i feared many things. there was no denying. however, what separated me from the schizophrenic manic depressives, the anxious obsessive compulsives, or the just plain crazy space-age monster fearing lunatics, was that my fears, i believed, had real legitimacy. while my friends lived in a world of exaggeration and fanciful philosophizing, i lived in a world of probable rapid dissolution and inevitable entropy. "everything resorts back to chaos" i said putting the small white Oxycontin on my tongue.

"a plane could come crashing into the house right now" i said swallowing the pill, thinking what music would i play if i knew i was going to die in five...four...three...two...

"and pigs can fly" said my oldest friend Cherry. i had no idea why we remained friends for so long. true we got along, but our relationship was no more intimate than getting to know the mail carrier. yet it worked somehow. Cherry enjoyed what she perceived to be my dry, dead-pan sense of humor and i enjoyed Cherry's sweet potato pies.

"i don't think that's the same" i said thoughtfully, "a plane really could fall out of the sky and we would all burn up like roman candles on the 4th of July" i frowned, "only it wouldn't be as pretty as the simile"

Cherry laughed, "nothing is as pretty as the simile". but as i was about to engage her on the topic of life and perceived life, she had moved on to discussing Melanie's newest affair with a young graduate student named Michael. i looked at the three women sitting in my living room, Lauren with her thick back hair tightly fastened to her head like she was wearing a motorcycle helmet, Melanie's bouncy rich brown curls, falling about her neck and spilling over her shoulders like a voluptuous, drunken 1920s flapper and finally Cherry, her wavy red hair already aflame; i imagined all three of them burning, flames animating them into crossbreeds, half-human, half torch ginger. i was burning too, but i had no form, i didn't look like a flower or a person, i was simply the dissolution of things.

a plane never did crash through my house. in fact, most of the things i feared would happen simply because they could happen, didn't actually happen. i've never been in the bank during a robbery. i've never been struck by lightening, or kicked in the head by a horse, or choked on my own tongue after having had too much to drink. i've never lost a finger while chopping vegetables nor have i fallen in love with a man who i would later discover is my half brother. i've never been in a car accident or a boat accident or a plane accident and i've never slipped on a banana peel.

i did however slip. and the fall was all that i imagined it would be.

it was about eight o'clock in the evening on a tuesday. it had been raining for a week straight and the entire town was water logged. i hadn't read a completely crisp newspaper since monday of last week. it was a fall rain, the excess summer and spring spendings that had to be released before winter put a freeze to everything. if i didn't know any better, i would think the sky was always angled with striated frosted white lines against a somber grey. the rain was cold and as water is known to do, permeated through all barriers, chilling my bones so my insides felt like fillets set on ice to be sold at the market.

i needed a shower, a hot, steamy shower to defrost my organs. i had always feared showers, the thought of standing on a slick surface with nothing really to hold onto and then adding soap to the equation, well, it felt like suicide, felt like chaos waiting to happen. however, a woman had to bath, and if i was mindful it would be alright. i stepped into the shower carefully, paying close attention to my feet, making sure one foot was firmly planted before the next one decided to move. keeping my knees bent, i focused on my muscles, clenching them tightly to cement my bones in place. crouching like a rebounder waiting for the basketball in a game-making free throw, my quadriceps trembled. i slowly secured my right hand around the faucet handle and twisted.

water is as close to feeling the pure as one can ever get. it is as close to knowing nothing as one will ever know. i concentrated on the weight of the water's stream, adjusted my feet accordingly. i was strong, stable, whole. i ran the soap over my body gently, careful to put an even layer on the entirety of my body, excess in one place would unbalance me and i would fall, i would fall and be paralyzed, unable to move save the blinking of my eyes or the opening and closing of my mouth.

there was a dark spot in the corner of my shower. i stared at it. a little spider scrambling to get out. two of his little legs were wet and heavy. he struggled to drag them along. had he a little spider Swiss army knife, i know he'd have cut them off, an offering to the Gods that flooded his home so suddenly, and he'd been happy to get out with his life. i felt sorry for the little creature. what fear gripped him. i knew all about fear. without thinking i bent down to the little spider, knocking the soap of it's ledge. somehow i didn't hear the soap drop, perhaps it was the rushing of water all around me, perhaps it was the overwhelming whoosh of power i felt in sparing a life, i couldn't tell you. i pushed the little spider up onto my hand and lifted him into the air.

"what does it feel like little one? to be lifted up by a God? does it feel miraculous?" i smiled to myself, "do you feel like an angel?"

the spider stood in the palm of my hand, his many thousand eyes staring at me. life was just like the simile, i thought as i placed him on the floor outside my shower. as i stood up and took a step behind me to wash my hair, i knew. i felt the soft and slippery cube grease my foot, felt the scream of my left leg as it tried uselessly to support my flailing right leg. the dissolution had begun and as is nature, nothing can stop chaos once it has begun. the right side of my body became a landscape of combusted composure, an environment breeding entropy. the left side of my body held out as best as it could like the last rebel fighters in a war they were never going to win. at one point i was completely air borne, floating, held in some benevolent hand. "so this is what it feels like spider?" i thought, "to go from part to whole to divine back to part". my head was the first thing to hit, my neck cracking on the toilet seat.

it happened in a fraction of a second and it was exactly how i imagined it. the last thing i remember seeing was the little spider, i almost crushed him, almost. he drug his drenched legs across the floor, crying desperately for help.