Shuffling back and forth, switching weight from one leg to another, I’m struck by how uncomfortable I am will this silly thing. “I’m not being dramatic, I can’t see anything. Is it broken?” I jest. “Am I doing it wrong, come on don’t laugh at me, am I in the wrong position? No look, my feet go here and here right, I stand up straight and I look at it straight on, from here. It’s all black, I see nothing. I told you this wouldn’t work, these things never work for me. I’m cursed.” I shake off the last thirty minutes of attempts, roll my head on my neck, and shrug my shoulders violently, hearing the bones creak and crack audibly. “Can’t believe I let you talk me into that Karen.” I am genuinely annoyed. All of these attempts at it’s use never work out for me. I’m a black hole where conventional wisdom goes to die.
“Gary, it’s no trick. I stand here and…” woosh, a wave of sensation washes over her, her face lights up, she is seeing all of it. From birth, until death, every great achievement she’ll ever make, each tender moment, each sadness, with an equanimity I can’t fathom. Such highs, evened out by her lowest lows. It is the newest phenomenon to have made itself available to humanity. But I for one can’t access it. I know exactly why, but oh Karen, my dearest Karen she refuses to hear. She is just tickled pink that I continue to try to see anything at all. That’s all that has ever mattered to her about me, that I am always seemingly willing to try.
“They say that once you stare into time, it will stare right back at you.” Karen is trying to be nice about it, but it must be hard to be with a man who only sees blackness and empty nothingness when he looks into time directly. I let on that I don’t know what it means, or why it’s happening.
“Come on Karen, it’s time to go, you’re going to come down with something terrible, I just know it!” I implore her to step away from the edge, step back from the temporal phenomena that has been using up so much of her time and energy of late. “Karen!, let’s go. If it starts to rain you’re going to catch your death.” People around us have begun to stop and stare. Phones are out of their pockets and a cacophony of sound has begin to rise. People look anxious, and there are furtive glances between all the others on the bluffs waiting to see their own lives through time. Few things can kick up a stink quite as fast as a twenty year old girl with half of her head missing. Her ghastly visage poking out from behind new cloth bandage wrappings. We step back from the ledge, and wander around the cordoned off grounds for a bit. The lazy sinuous clouds are rolling in off the ocean, a thick curtain of mist has started to hid the view. It has creeped along the waves to come cover everything in a salty dappled mass, obscurring all but the brightest of lights from the parked cars and street lamps. Time passes on and the light pollution turns to Neon smears streaked across the wet pavement, the huddle of bodies slowly thinning out for the night. Karen wants us to try again.
It would be all too easy to step one foot too close to the edge in an attempt to hold on to the sights you are shown by the temporal phenomena. A last ditch effort to cradle a moment that would otherwise be entirely lost in time. Clutched to your breast as you plummet onto the rocks below. Back broken, body burst open, bones emptying their very marrow into the ocean. I am death. I am dead. One day Karen will be too, and she knows exactly when.
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