In Brightest Day

A collection of short essays

Carousels of Sand

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, 
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; 
All the king's horses and all the king's men, 
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
 – Mother Goose

Nestled on the edge of the Pacific, standing on wooden planks scattered with sand, the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk lives like an old fairy tale. Neither forgotten nor exciting—at least to anyone but children. Amongst its many treasures, the most important is the Merry Go Round.

Watching from the benches, you can see the children wait, blushing, parents in tow. The intoxicating smell of cotton candy accompanying the jingle of the carousel.

The music slows to a dissonant stop. Dazed riders trickle out. The turnstile quickens as paper tickets are exchanged.

“Daddy, Daddy, help me up on the pony!”

On their way round, the horses furthest from the center pass by a slide, which dispenses rings, which the children grab from their mounts.

As the carousel turns, the face of a clown comes into sight. His mouth an open hole just large enough for a ring to score. His face painted on the wall, just big enough for the rest of us to miss.

The children stretch out their hands, snatching at the slide—earning each ring. Then, with deliberation and hope, they throw them away. The rings rickashay off the hard wooden face. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Until a little blue boy, sitting on a pony, clinging to a pole. Raises up off his seat to claim a chance. There is no knock, the door is open. He wins. A bell rings, and the ride keeps spinning.

Falling, Asleep

What do you think about before you go to bed? Of course, there are days when as soon as your head hits the pillow, all your thoughts escape into exhaustion. But what about the other days, the ones where you put the book on the nightstand and turn off the lights only for flickering images to race into view? It’s in these moments, before sinking into the bliss of rejuvenation, that I enter the most lucid state of pointless daydreaming. The cusp between sleep and sense.

Daydreaming is never more dangerous than before bed. Prior to surrendering to the realm of narrative and drifting off to sleep, the checklist must be marked: Alarm– when?, routine– check, exercise– what?, homework– finished, work– ready?

If I don't, then the morning will feel like I am pulled over on the side of the road, trying to decipher a map from 1986 because the GPS won't work.

Questions finished. I am still awake. I would often catch the tooth fairy at work—not because I am a light sleeper, I'm not, but because I was still saving Matt Murdock in my head.

Is it a waste of time? Staring out the window for two hours on that train ride, watching people dance in a make-believe time in a make-believe world?

I do not yet need to write, I might not even need to read, I may need to do a dance of a kind, but I am sure that I need to dream. I must let the choices be already made and take myself on an adventure—looking not for what is there, but for what I can imagine—for a little while every day.

I'm pretty sure that when we die, we will lose consciousness and turn into mulch. So ends the sublation of finitude to the infinite, and with that, our only vice within life and the lie of freedom becomes the infinity of imagination and daydreams. Not the unconscious dreams that come out of us when we sleep and lose control, but when we let ourselves wake up as we fall and slip right into our own skin: a character we have imagined, and he says, “I will not be afraid of the circumference of an egg.”

Sympathy for the Sleepers

Absent as mothers and fathers, our battle with sentimentality dances to the sound of breath against the statistics lecture chalkboard. “Prove to me,” we students of this generation demand of an empty stage, “How do I know that you can feel too?” The whole story consumed by ever-ending doubt, always dying just in time to be born again.

Our army of disenchanted tacticians deny pain with hopeless questions, just as lacking curiosity as driven by it. Everything in their shuttered eyes, braced against the hurricane, in intaglio relief. Though to them we appear only strangers, these are our brothers and sisters. Whose laughter keeps us up into the early hours of tomorrow, and tomorrow again. We sit in the pit of the orchestra, holding our bow strings taught, quietly bonded by truth forged in strife. How could you ask us, children of the summer, to again defy the machines of silence and lie flat in the trenches of our western front?

Sympathy for the sleepers—stuck in their moment, sleeping through our dream. 
Never awake—until the autumn leaves fall to the ground.

The audience, the balcony of proud parents, sings from behind, “I try not to wonder, brain’s impatient, my heart’s still willing to wait.”

Confessional: 
(Just outside the Batcave)

Robin: But, am I guilty?

Batman: Victor Freeze toppled a skyscraper, killed a security guard, and stole the work of others, all to buy his wife more time. She was slowly succumbing to cancer, now she is cryogenically frozen, shielded against the future. Is he guilty?

Robin: Yes, you can’t attack others just because you love someone.

Batman: Pamela Isley listens to the radio. She heard the genocide of forests echoing across continents.

What was she supposed to do against the tyranny of the bulldozer but teach the trees to fight back? She killed five men, but saved a thousand trees. Is she Guilty?

Robin: I don’t know. What is the worth of the life of a tree?

Batman: Eduardo Dorrance, was born to serve his father’s life sentence. His childhood was imprisoned by violence, abuse, and addiction on a cellblock in the Caribbean. Now he haunts those who forgot him, he broke my back. Is he guilty?

Robin: No. I don't think we should inherit the sins of our fathers.

Batman: 
This is just to say, 
Vengeance is my burden. 
The true name of innocence, 
The only way to tend the fire, 
Is forgiveness

America Etymological

Picture a charming child, a devious adult, and an unmarried monkey taking the train to America.

A charming child is a peculiarly castrated being. A child who neglects their Legos to sit at the grownup's table. He wants to make his parents proud. He separates himself.

A devious adult, on the other hand, has outgrown her childlike delights. No one knows when, but she has become a childish monster—metaphysical evil dripping from her dull fangs. She is separated.

The monkey is a monkey. Ignorant of what it is to understand. But this monkey is free. Free from the bonds of care and to the wilds of choice. Together but still alone.

So how did we get to this rocking train and its dirty red, white, and blue felt seats?

The child's parents told him they were proud and sent him on his way, eyes already turning back to his problematic younger siblings. He who has adored experience and shunned repetition fails in the shadow of victory. He is empty.

The adult, who once tasted the tangy joy of a cold glass of orange juice on the breakfast table and laughed at the sound of a flatulent woopie cushion, now has lost her sense of taste. Her eyes, once full of mischievous curiosity, now succumb to anger– she knows she has been lied to. She is empty.

Monkeys do not marry; maybe that is why Thomas Mann chooses to believe the creation of humanity was the aim of the cosmos. But this monkey needs more. Bananas may leave the stomach full, but they leave the soul empty. Maybe in America, this monkey will find a lover and prove Mann wrong.

It is hard to imagine today that America was once a child—as hordes of the educated ramble on about running back to Europe. We have reached the post-teenage crisis and thought: maybe our parents were right? You know what they say about the grass.

But still, we find three havoc souls on a journey to the land we were born into— America, the drive to destroy. America, the drive to create. America, the drive to go forward.

Maybe when they arrive, they will stumble and find for themselves something more than free.

Or maybe as they arrive at Penn Station, Lady Liberty will turn to the Hudson and say, "You mean the world to me, but you don’t matter."