he was genius, of course. i knew it from the start. something about the way he said things… no one says things like that unless they understand the futility of meaning.
i think the reason i remain so angry with him is because, for all his futility, for all his meaning, he still made the mistake of calling futility meaningless. or was it meaning futile? you see, that’s the paradox, the conundrum, and the mystery. it’s both. and of course, that’s the crux, the shoals, the reef, and the iceberg upon which everything always shatters…. some damn fool always needing to have it just be one or the other. as if that were/is possible.
oh stars, how i loved him. i loved him in a deadly and doomed way. i would call it limerence, but it passed. he called it stalking, of course. what else would he possibly call it? there is no other possible result if you believe in the truth of all absurdities as its own proof. i loved him in all the traditional, acceptable ways, of course… but those never really mattered except as the means by which he could affect the punishment due anyone who is fool enough to still believe that love conquers all. that’s just the goop they feed you to keep you standing in line, obediently waiting for…..
he wanted to write meaningless words. it was something of an obsession. i think it still is, really, only he’s gotten better at drowning it out. loud music, alcohol, and interpersonal drama. he tells himself it doesn’t matter and i suspect will continue to do so until he stops breathing. i know that’s how long he’ll do it because i know he’ll never believe it. but it’s funny, because now he’s angry at the world for being what it is, and he’s angry at himself for not being able to remake it. took me a bit to realize — he’s actually angry that he’s not god. both because he thinks he should be even as he whips himself for believing god exists, especially in himself.
he once said pensively that he used to write like bees make honey. or maybe it was that he said that someone said that of him. i think it’s the same. i remember i told him that i write like bees make honey. he said nothing in reply, but it was the first time i felt hate actually hanging in the air. ignored it, of course. he missed the point, as he always did. it wasn’t about trying to compete with him, and it wasn’t about being what he didn’t think he was, and it wasn’t about ego or arrogance or any of the mundane things that fuel the human engine. it was just about letting him see it in me so he could remember it well enough to find it in himself.
because more than anything, i knew how lost he was. how could i not? it was why he found me….. here… in the damned corner of all the multiverse. he got the angriest when i would insist ours was a transitory thing. that, no matter how wonderful or deep or touching, it would end and likely not well. this was when i realized just how deeply disturbed and truly lost he really was… lost enough that meaning actually meant something, but only because it was one more crumb along the trail to the place where it meant nothing… and he was too hungry to do more than deny that eventually, even the bread crumbs run out.
and of course, here, an admission… but only because it’s you reading. i didn’t remain angry with him. in fact, i never was angry with him. but i often appeared to be because you don’t make bread without radiant heat and where else do you think bread crumbs come from?
eventually, he wandered off. convinced at last that he’d found something that made bread crumbs meaningless. i think he forgot they didn’t exist until he needed to follow them. in fact, i think he forgot the only reason i made them was because he said he was hungry. and i’m pretty sure he forgot that he was the one who gave me the recipe; all indigo ink on ancient paper, with splotches and tattered corners.
it doesn’t matter, of course. none of this is true. and neither was he.