What Never Happened: An Observation
by Nick Stokes
Copyright 2014 Nick Stokes
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
What Never Happened: An Observation was first published in Waccamaw, Issue 7.
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What Never Happened: An Observation
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What Never Happened: An Observation
THIS IS A story I tell people when they seem to want a story. You can tell when this is so by the expectant look in their eye, or by how they hold their brain in their hands and ask you to take it for a while, please. How can I deny that look? (Think puppies in the kitchen begging for scraps, or a full-grown dog whimpering for the leash.) I can’t. The weight of another’s want is too much for me, and I begin. As I begin the story, sweet relief spreads like butter across their face. (Yes, “their” is a plural possessive pronoun and “face” is singular, but I have not misspoke, for all of the people to whom I tell this story have but one face.) They smile, nod, and coo in understanding. As an incidental side effect (in the interest of full disclosure I tell you), when I tell this story I often feel a certain dissipation of pressure in my sinuses and from behind my eyeballs, as when air hisses from a balloon. In my experience, both parties involved find a tissue or hankie useful.
But I reiterate: this is fiction. What I tell you is a lie. The events as I will relate them did not happen, are not happening, and will not ever happen. If you reflect on it afterwards, I think you will realize that events in real life do not transpire as they do in this story, at which point its essential veracity or lack thereof will become transparent. (If nothing else, an hour of a man’s life would consume reams of paper, mind you, and let us not even discuss his last hour.) If you are looking for truth, you should read something else. I would not suggest, however, anything that purports to be truth. Perhaps you should in fact read nothing and should instead do something. Seeing as how, however, it is difficult to truthfully do anything, perhaps, in the end, you should do nothing. After all, you possess free will. I digress.
I begin.
I was a boy. (Dear reader, for the last time I say to you, please remember that this is only a story, meant to comfort friends, relations, and acquaintances, and as such it only exists in your head and those heads who have heard it.) As a boy, I was not especially different than other boys, though I was somewhat indifferent towards them. Of girls, I remember the existence of none save my mother and other assorted relatives: a passel of cousins, an aunt, and a grandmother. I was predominantly interested in myself, though not in a selfish way. I was simply not aroused by games of sport or make-believe or conversation. Allow me to make myself clear: sport, make-believe, and conversation were three of my most cherished pastimes, but they were activities I preferred to conduct with myself. With others these pastimes were diluted, somehow losing their piquancy.
What I was most passionate about, though, was observing. I would sit for hours in the same spot, quietly taking mental note of my surroundings. I would not speak my observations, nor would I write them down. I would simply take mental note of the position of a fork on a table, of the number of tines it had, of the sharpness of those tines, of the curvature of the head, of how gracefully the head met the handle at the neck, of any ornamentation on the handle, of any fingerprints. I would note the construction of the table, how its disparate parts were joined, the lay of the grain of the wood, the pattern of the sunlight splashed on the tabletop, the angle of sunlight entering through the window, the shape of a leaf outside the window. When I could fit words to my observations, I did (silently), but I never forced the issue. I did not wish to force my surrounding reality to conform to words if no words were adequate. For example, if the pattern of light on the table was rhombic, I would say so silently to myself, and so too if I could say with reasonable probability that the light passing through the window (forgiving refraction) entered the kitchen at an angle of 30, 45, or 60 degrees while my mother spread peanut butter and jelly on bread for me, I would use just those words. But more often than not, the pattern of light was decidedly unrhombic and indeed indescribable, just as the angle of the sunlight’s penetration was generally immeasurable and inestimable. In such instances, I would wordlessly observe and make wordless mental note. The words, after all, were not what I was after. Words were merely tools. I was after the thing itself. I wished to take in the thing’s very essence, not to consume it, not to digest it, not to steal it, but simply to have it, to have noticed, noted, and notified myself of it, and therefore of the plurality of reality, to have my surroundings within me. (If only a selection—I recognized my limitations; do not think I thought myself God! I knew even then that my faculties were limited and was undistressed by my inability to observe every detail, just as now I remain unperturbed by my inability to observe the movement of electrons, for example. I am made content by science having made their presence known and I do not long to know them any more personally.) To have, in short, life. (What good were all these details, I thought, that life presents, if they pass unobserved?) Or, at least, to have had. Even then I was aware that these details began to pass away as soon as I made mental note of them, that if I attempted to return to my mental notes of only a few minutes prior, they would have evaporated. Granted, a few most startling observations would remain, such as the jangle of my mother’s bracelets, or that her glasses, which did not just up and walk off the face of the earth, had been on the windowsill above the sink, or the way a spider’s leg caressed the web strung between the house plants also on that windowsill. But except for a few notable exceptions, the particulars of that previous, time-sensitive existence had passed. Forgetting did not bother me. I was not one of these boys who wanted to relive every moment. I wanted to proceed and make more observations to feed my ever more infinitesimal and insatiable curiosity. I lived under the auspice that it was better to have had than to have never had, and that it was best to be impervious to the past and always face forward. And that, possibly, the residue of all those details would accrete, even while the facts themselves sublimated, into a reflection of life.
One afternoon, not particularly unique in its nature, my mother sent me out of the house with the complaint that I was always underfoot, sulking, and unresponsive, as if I lived in a dream and the better part of things was in my head. Mother, I insisted, I am no sulker! I was an observer. As such, I knew the better part of things was in the details, not in my head. I will grant her that I had and have little time for unobservant or pandering conversation when there is so much to be done. But underfoot? Please, I preferred an out-of-the-way corner or nook, where I could observe my experience while affecting it not, the exact opposite of what she suggested. My stated goal was not to be a roach squished on the bottom of her shoe. (I routinely observed the skittering prehistoric creatures in that house, and how my mother squished them with the sole of her shoe. Though she seemed ancient at the time, and was not one given to moving quickly, she could move just as fast as they. The roaches crunched audibly, and often their innards were propelled across the floor by the pressure of her foot. I tried to remain the dispassionate observer to these episodes, but never did I cease to flinch.) It was little skin off my nose, though, if I went outside; my job could be conducted just as well, if not better, out of the house, where my surroundings never ceased. I exhibited a charming optimism as a boy. I have no doubt that my mother wished me to ride my bike about a
nd find some boys with whom I could play some sporty game, or even perform some hi-jinks. She found it odd to have a boy who got into no trouble.
She gave me two dollars and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (crunchy peanut butter, apricot jam of her own making, the bread’s crust cut off and eaten by her as her only lunch) in a non-zipping sandwich bag placed in a brown paper bag with an apple (a pink lady with an aesthetically pleasing apple shape and a rose hue) and told me that I was not to return until two hours had passed, at the minimum. Ours was not a neighborhood where you worried about children being out alone during daylight hours, though truth be told, children ran around and adults screamed at all hours of the night as well. But certainly, my being out alone was not cause for anyone’s comment.
For my mother’s peace of mind I took my bike, but I walked it. Bikes were too fast. The feeling of air breezing by as I rode was noteworthy, but I preferred to walk so I could make observations. At this remove, I remember nothing about the walk, except that it was pleasant. It was late September I believe, an altogether pleasant time of the