Allister Cromley's Fairweather Belle (Bedtime Stories For Grownups To Tell)
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Swallowing A Walnut

4/30/2009

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Lacking in equal doses of sense and thought, Allister one day tried to swallow a walnut that was in equal doses of uncracked and whole. It was one of those flashes of reactions that happen before the mind can protest, a child running across a busy street in chase of a ball. It was one of those flashes of reactions that become lodged in your windpipe and suffocate. Allister had been alone and knew little of the Heimlich (as the Heimlich had yet to be born) and little of any other means of dislodging. He simply clutched his throat and wrestled to breathe past the walnut.

When lightness of the head took over, Allister succumbed to reason, that his passing would come as the result of the stupidest of knee jerk reactions. He sat in his favorite chair, closed his eyes, and let the glaze of suffocation take over. And there was, at first, darkness of the purest variety and then a sudden shot of light. A flare that opened Allister's mind and took him through images of his life, a flip book of memories. His first cry, his first laugh, his first job, his first love, his first child, his second child, his second job, and so on so forth in thirds, fourths, and fifths. There were hugs and handshakes and walks and jogs and yards and pastures and friends and families and birthdays and funerals and houses and apartments and the feel of felt hats and leather briefcase handles and all flashing so fast, yet so full, and leading up to the ultimate climax of death by walnut.

Each and every memory was given due thought and due flash. And as they raced by, as seconds ticked by, Allister's breath grew weaker. His body grew limp, until that last possible moment when the body should have, by all reason, given up entirely. At that moment, when all else relaxed, there was a pulse, a tremor that rushed through a channel of nerves and sent his fist clenched first above his head and then into his gut hard enough to manually push a burst of air up his windpipe and pop the walnut like it were a champagne cork on New Years, sailing free and into the air. Allister lurched forward, frantically sucking in new air. And when he had been respiratorally satiated, he sat still, as still as he ever remembered sitting and looked at his clenched fist. It was the first time he ever really thought about having a fist, having an arm, having two of both in fact. He stared in the silent and soft look that only comes in the most gracious of moments when words fall flat. 

When Allister regained thought, regained word, he thought of the flashes of memory and asked, "What," with utmost sincerity and confusion. For, the only memory that actually belonged to him was the choking of the walnut.
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A Whisper To No One In Particular

4/22/2009

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Allister awoke one day to let the breeze tug a whisper from his lips and carry it away. The day previous had found Allister at a loss, as if a void had filled the space once occupied by thought and tissue. There was no pain. Instead, there was the absence of feeling altogether, which hurt more than any pain-a hurt that could not even register. How this loss had born was not easily understood. For, it was possible that his schedule had gotten the better of him, that he was needed in too many places at the same time. It was possible that the constant motion of the world had once again thrown him back into himself. It was also possible that his conscience had filled with too many questions-of life, of death, of clouds, of dirt, of dreams, of chance, of direction, of fear- and had become water-logged. And, of course, there lay the possibility that all of these tied together into knots and strangled his thoughts.

On days like that, it was not uncommon to find Allister staring fixedly at a gutter streaming melted snow water from the edge of a roof, tears running down his face. It was also not uncommon for Allister to be unable to explain why he was crying, his tear ducts reacting to something in between the subtle sadnesses of the loss of snow and the subtle happinesses of the coming spring. And this theory comes only as an outsider's observation and analysis. For, it was just as likely that the tears came first for no apparent reason, that embarrassment had filled his eyes after the initial mystery tears dropped so suddenly. That frustration over the inability to control his emotions pushed the tears over the sides of his lower lids to stream down his cheeks. And that he, then, jerked his head up to make gravity work for him and send the streams to flow back into his tear ducts and that this just so accidentally brought him to look at the gutter's streaming flow. 

But, to muse for more than a paragraph on the cause of his tears in times as those is a most sincere waste. For, what is known is that Allister felt hollow. Felt disattached. And to state that takes merely a sentence or two. And in some cases, one and a half sentences.

When Allister found himself able to pull away from the gutter, he would walk home and sit in his study. Indeed, in times like these Allister found sanctuary in his study. Oftentimes, he believed himself more bookshelf than man. He would set pen to paper and follow. It was easy in times of hardship to lose yourself inside of yourself, to withdraw, to follow the lines that looped and swirled, to hold the pen and let it drip ink that surely came from a pulmonary well-the pen conducting just as much as the tiny twitches in the hand and wrist that led the pen to swirl and tumble along. 

And Allister would get lost in a paragraph, a sentence, a word. He would slide down the slopes of an s and cradle himself in the lower curvature of the e. And what he had written seemed like nonsense at times. But, when verbal tactics could not explain the loss, the disattachment, it was calming to see them drip, even if nonsensical, from a pen.

And it was easy. It was necessary-to be lost. How else could you be found? The tide must recede in order to flow back. And so on and so forth. And though it is necessary and though one must find a calmness in this to regain the strength, one must be certain not to get lost in the uncertainty. One must not remain disattached. We must not get lost in our thought. For this, too, was easy to do. To sleep in the curvature of the e alone in your study. 

But, we must wake, as Allister did. We must whisper something (however nonsensical) to the wind so that it will know we are here, that we are ready to wake. And we must believe that it will catch the understanding of another-that in the very least it will shake the branches of some tree or prick up the alert ears of some hibernating rabbit. For, we all hibernate a bit from time to time. And knowing that, we must whisper ever so gently until we have regained our full voice. It is as much to awaken our own spirit as it is to awaken the silent spirits of our friends.
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