I Am a Number

We are a number, a score that identifies us as reliable, as good citizens, as upholders of the common good. I am none of these and my number is indicative of my true nature as an undesirable and unworthy black mark on the fabric of society. While others conduct their lives in ways consistent with a perpetual striving to increase or stabilize their number, I have taken a different approach. I deliberately and actively strive to decrease it. It is an experiment to see how low it/I can go and still remain whole, still exist as a person before disappearing entirely. It is an affront, this behavior, and I am constantly prodded to reverse and rehabilitate my self-destructive ways. But I have come this far and it is proving more difficult than I thought to simply disappear. It is not so much that they want to save me, or even reform me, as it is a reaction to an assault on their logic. So they try everything to get me in line. At first, there are gentle reminders. Almost immediately these are followed by aggressive threats of arrest, imprisonment or being shamed before my neighbors, family, and friends. But I simply ignore it all and go on about the business of dismantling my social standing. And what did I get for this? Not imprisonment or even shame. Rather, I found that their tactics eventually changed to an almost motherly appeal to senses, my better nature. To carry out their threatened punishment was to admit that there was another way to live, that there was a choice to say no to their particular and peculiar way of life.

But I began to disappear some time ago. I was born with an inexplicable disability. I was born with an utter inability and desire to make money. Well, I think really that this is an oversimplification, but it is the purest manifestation of my affliction. It was in my genes, like hazel eyes or lactose intolerance. I knew very early that this would cause problems for me and the questions I ask adults about how they lived were always met with derision or banishment to a room uninhabited by others. I’m trying to pinpoint the moment I decided to disappear, to take control of my own fate. When everything around me was telling me to say “yes” to life I sought a way to always answer “no”.  Life goes on until it’s over and we suffer as if it matters. And I suffered a lot in the beginning. One of the first things I learned that solidified my suffering was this: that human beings (and adults specifically) can, and will, justify anything. And though I still suffer, I suppose, I no longer perceive it as an assault on my fragile self. Instead, it is a reminder that they cannot touch me, that I have something they can never possess. And it’s odd, really, I am nothing, nobody. No one will miss me or wonder what I’m up to these days. I will never receive a card or an invitation “to get together”. I have been forgotten in the most remarkable ways. When I take a walk or sit in a cafe, I am left alone. I carry the most abhorrent markings. I am never approached or solicited with opportunities that will change my life. I am not even a face in the crowd; my face is as invisible as if I weren’t there at all. 

My family knows better than to keep me in the fold. They know their status will become tarnished and their lives will take on a heaviness they won’t be able to endure. My former friends shun me knowing that in the end that to deplore me is to love themselves. And it is good for all of us to each do what is best; to live in our choices is a most noble act. How could I fault any of them for that? 

Whatever sadness I feel is quickly abated by the much stronger feeling of agency I experience when passing a store window and seeing my reflection becoming slightly less discernible than the last time I passed. It is occurring to me that my image becomes public only insofar as I allow it to be shaped by others. If I do not give them access, I will go unseen. What would any of us trade for this freedom? 

At two pm I leave my tiny apartment. I am aware that this is the one concession I must make—that I must be diligent in not letting my home slip away from me, I have made it impossible to acquire another and even my own mother would be under unbearable pressure to turn me away as an undesirable tenant. While I happily light  fire to every other aspect of my life I have not yet reached the point of liberation to set fire to my own bed. Perhaps I am being hypocritical but I think it’s only natural to set goals for ourselves that are not currently not beyond our reach. 

At two pm I leave my tiny apartment. I walk along the sidewalk then come to the busy street that runs perpendicular to the street I live on. This is the most compelling decision of the day—whether to proceed to the right or to the left. Each day, after this decision is made I let go of all intention and allow the day to play out as a result of that one conscious decision I allow  myself. From that point on, I simply react. I respond to stimuli without preference or agenda. I am practicing the ultimate freedom, unbound by principle or judgment, unburdened by morality, intent, or outcome. But this is no self-indulgence. It is an acknowledgment of what could be no other way. I am simply reacting, as I said, to a world that is not in line with mine. They want something from me that I just can’t give. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t, and I only want to be left alone, which they can’t seem to do either. I feel bad, really. I understand what it is to be afflicted with a condition you can do nothing about, there is no choice, we are driven to act the way we are made. 

I do have a job though, and this is the least interesting thing I can imagine. But it is another thing I can’t set fire to. It is directly linked with my first imperative—to not imperil my home. Things are complicated, complex, and I think about this now as I walk (I chose left). Everything is linked, connected in one long vein, or nerve. Where do we cut when we want to escape, what part of our body (ourselves) can we do without. And I certainly don't know what part of me can’t live without another thing, or another part, tending to it. This is how it is and I don’t really like to think about it. I would prefer things were simple, separate—that I didn’t have to tend to anything at all. I think every tie we cut, every bridge we burn is like diffusing a bomb the way they do in the movies. You stand there with open clippers, the red wire or the yellow wire poised to be snipped, but you can only think or hesitate so long, you think about what you know but mostly it comes down to instinct. You wipe the sweat from your face, you increase the pressure of your fingers on the blades. You decide, you act. You feel the resistance, then snap! There is a brief moment, so brief that in any other situation we wouldn’t even notice, in which we can wonder if we’ve made the right choice. If we have, then we live for another day of anguished choices, and if we haven’t, then bang! everything goes black, even before the sound of the end can even reach our ears. 

I’d rather just walk and erase my life behind me. I walk the sidewalk like a zipper; the chasm left in my wake disappears in a soft and pleasant whooshing sound…

When I arrive back at my apartment I find two letters in my box. One is addressed to a former tenant and the other to me. I put them on the kitchen counter and stare thoughtfully at both. It is really as if I do not exist in this place (as far as the sender is concerned) until I open the letter, and for that matter, if I open the one addressed to the former tenant am I becoming him at least in one variation of what is possible? 

I think about this for a moment.

I think about assuming this other identity. How would this change my life? I am wondering so many odd things at the moment, I am swimming in possibility and am feeling somewhat more alive than I have in some time. Suddenly I am thinking about my mother and feeling a stressful remorse for what I’ve taken from her. I have made her mourn my passing without the benefit a body to bury, without any chance for reconciliation. What a horrible thing this must be for a mother! But I think it was still her choice—to choose an acceptable life over her own son. But these thoughts once again retreat into the shadows. I am consumed with the possibility of transfer—from my world to his. I saw him once, as he was moving the last of his things out of the apartment before it became mine. We are already linked through this common experience. The space we occupy shapes us, it leaves a permanent imprint on the experience of who we are and who will come after. I think there is an unspoken bond, an invitation. I think it would not be too great a trespass to accept wherever this invitation takes me.

So what am I to do? Can I (do I, will I) disappear by appearing as another? And if so, what becomes of him? I am not sure I am ready to take that next step, what if, in doing this I am also taking on the role of executioner? What is the moral and ethical thing to do? I have been urged to believe that I have already dived deep into the moral and ethical abyss, that my disregard for what the implied agreement of my birth required of me made any further attempts at redemption impossible and even pointless. So where does my fidelity lie? I am inclined to think it lies only with me. I must be ok with my decisions, and isn’t that already how I have been living?

I am not sleeping well, I am troubled by my ambivalence. These distractions of my conscience are remnants from my childhood, from a time when I stood on the thin line that separated the inevitable from the possible. I was too young to know what to do then but I am no longer a child—though something about this choice has me still hesitant, has me distrusting my instincts. There are some things in us that are chronic, some things that stay with us long after the initial infection has subsided. My conscience is like that—a small ache when the weather is bad or an inflammation of unknown origin. We all have our weaknesses though I thought mine were mostly limited to minor things like sleeping in late. But I’m struggling here. Why? Is there something I regret, something unfinished or still calling to me from my forsworn past? I have discarded nearly everything—photos, books, all the collected things that accumulate over a lifetime of ambivalent progress. I have no unfinished business that I know of, no lost loves or dreams of any kind. I have no ties or appointments to keep and yet, I hesitate to finally let it all go for good. Maybe I am sentimental. I  do feel things after all.

And this has been a sacrifice too—to become someone who is only known by his disregard of  others, his disregard of normal things. But what is normal is unsettling. It assaults me and rattles me until I can do nothing else but disavow it. Tell me, how is this not your reaction too? Still, I am open to argument, I am not so lost that I could not see the error in my thinking if it were convincingly pointed out to me. But I have asked so many times, I had pleaded in the past for some sort of guidance, and long before I walked away, my pleading was met with nothing but ridicule and resistance. How can I even ask such a thing, you said. You have no gratitude, others told me. And I was practically forced into my decision, banished from any possibility of reform.

But so it goes and there is really no turning back. I hold the letter in my hand, read the contents over and over until I feel as if I am reading it with his eyes. I restuff the envelope, pull out the pages again and flatten the creases. I imagine how his voice sounds, how the feel of this paper beneath his fingertips might be slightly different than mine. How do we perceive all of our senses in ways that are unique to us, how do I understand how anything would be perceived by him? 

What if there are things we just can’t say, a secret, a burden—something we simply know would be impossible for anyone else to understand? What would we do with such a thing? How could we live among others for even a moment longer?

How many words would it take to irrevocably change  our life? What actions are unforgivable? What choices  can we never take back?  

I am part of nothing, I don’t belong. While others built and fortified their foundations with the cooperative cement of others, while they built upon this foundation structures which further enhanced the complexity of their connections and reliance on others, I rubbed together every stick I could, poured gasoline on every rudimentary support, skipping along while everything burned, until every inch of me was covered in soot and I simply faded away like smoke from a chimney into the black, starless, ambivalent, night. 

We don’t exist if others don’t keep us actively in their memories. We exist once removed and can only tend to others’ existence and hope someone does the same for us. I may still exist somewhere in someone’s mind—ta faint wisp of memory, hough I can’t imagine who’s. I am still here, enough at least to be ignored. But to be ignored is to still be seen and that is not freedom, at least not how I imagine it. 

But…

I am lost in my thinking, my logic is flawed. I just had a thought: that freedom is impossible if it needs to be sought, that freedom is impossible if it is carved from something else, that freedom is impossible if we can or have to name it, that freedom, like love, is most potent in the longing for it. 

I look out the window and see something else. I look out the window and imagine that I can simply gaze out upon the world and be stunned by the beauty of it all. I look out the window and want to be saved, I look out the window and want to be told by someone who loves me that everything will be alright, even if I can’t see it, even if it seems like the most impossible thing. 

I put the letter back in its envelope as if it is laced with poison. I tape it shut, write “not at this address” in big black letters. I put it back in the box, I erase those thoughts from my mind. I look out the window, open it, close it again. What small thing can change our lives? I leave my apartment, go looking for something. My reflection grows more opaque again in the  store windows as I pass. I have an inkling that my seriousness is a prison. I have a feeling that I am no different from the others. I stop to look at my reflection. Beyond my reflection I see others standing inside. I can superimpose myself upon each of them by changing my position slightly. 

Sometimes I just want to step outside of myself and say, “I am done with this one”. Sometimes to be in my body, in my life, seems so foreign and perplexing, like waking up in someone else’s apartment after a night of too much drinking.

I decide I won’t become someone else. I decide that to become more myself is probably actually the most efficient way to escape.

So how many times do we go through this in a life? This desire, or even desperation to exchange this prison/body we’re in for another? But maybe it is more the mind we want to escape, or the soul? Is it too much to ask to start over? This is what I want. Why have I not stated this so clearly before now? 

There is a big blue house across the street from where I am sitting. As I wait for my coffee to cool it becomes too cold to drink and I wonder who lives in the blue house. I wonder how it can be that so many perspectives can exist at once, how many individual points of view crowd the earth at any given point in history? Can anything escape being seen? This is overwhelming. We are captured into other people’s experiences. We become props for their perceptions, part of their history, part of the backdrop and incidental fodder that is forever stored within the warehouse of their memory. We are taken bit by bit, without our consent. But we do not disappear as these pieces of us are devoured, on the contrary, we are encrypted and dispersed and carried away so that we will never own what becomes of us. 

There are 273 holes in each ceiling tile at the public library. This is a constant, an eternal truth. The number of holes and the relational distance between each hole to the others has not changed since I first counted them in elementary school, 23 years ago. I look up at the stars now, just as I looked up at the library ceiling. There are innumerable points of light, some of which may no longer even still exist by the time their light reaches me. And even as I lie here shrouded by night and stars, they are racing away from each other and I from them. Nothing is fixed or constant. Nothing is eternal, nothing is true. 

We cannot tolerate what we are superior to. The universe is superior to everything, the universe cannot tolerate us. We each in turn amplify to those beneath us the wrath and pain we feel from those above us. So it is that the most vulnerable endure the most and in time will become stronger for it, and in time will find themselves on top and in time will remember and want revenge and in time will engage in the same cycle, and on and on and on. We are saved by the subconscious lineage of our species, we are saved because we believe we are part of something without end. 

Are we not relentlessly objectified? Even by our own thoughts? I am trying to break this cycle too. I am always subject, any attempt to cast me otherwise is a lie even if that objectification of me is my own. Early in my life, I thought this objectification was a powerful and desirable right that was passed to me by society—by my parents, my teachers, my peers. We all had the power to keep ourselves in line and be role models for others to emulate. I thought this was such a significant right of passage: to be given the responsibility of monitoring and shaping my place in the world. But this is a false agency. I was simply a tool used to  dismantle and reprogram my own nature. 

I am thinking again about my place. Who might write me a letter and what might they want to say? It should be common knowledge by now to anyone who might want to solicit me that I am in no position to buy anything, either outright or by credit. What else would anyone want with me? 

If I received a letter from a friend (this is purely theoretical) I would happily write back that “I am doing fine and wouldn’t it be great to get together sometime!” To be honest, this does have some appeal. The few friends I did have, before I realized that friendships too were a prison, were solid and it generally made me happy to have them around. I think I was an asset to them as well until my actions and decisions created more peril for them than benefit. My reluctance to perform even the most perfunctory acts of citizenry or even friendship not only disturbed my friends but also created some discomfort for those whose job it was to monitor these social mores. I would decline all invitations to meet them publicly, preferring to have a bottle of beer or two while sitting on the back porch of my apartment. Here we could all watch the moon in silence—or perhaps talk about some book we read or thought we might. I had no desire to be seen and even these private meetings became too much just as my acquaintances' need for more public performances became more and more enticing to them.

It wasn’t hard for me to adjust to my dwindling circle. I found that having fewer obligations, fewer things to remember or keep track of, suited me well.  But it is as if I simply vanished. One day I sent them away, the faint buzz of alcohol still lingering in our heads. One day I sent them away and they never returned, and I was erased, just like that, not even a drunken dream but rather every instance of my presence plucked from their memory. We all become multitudes, copies of ourselves occupying the memories and experiences of others. We perform in their recollections, we are spread over time and distance and become diluted and fragmented. All my selves, all these copies are being isolated and returned to me. Do they realize what they are doing? Do they realize what they are giving back? 

I leave my apartment and walk to where the busy boulevard intersects my street. I stand and wait to decide if I will walk right or left. I stand there for a long time, much longer than usual, I think. I don’t seem to be deciding, my subconscious has most likely moved on to other things and I stand there, not moving until I begin to feel the chill of long shadows once again proclaiming the victory of night over day. I start to understand that it was never my public self deciding anything. So instead of walking I just stand and decide that I will call this a choice.  I think I am becoming whole and I think too, that in their own way, all those around me, from my mother to my friends, to the callers on the other end of the phone emploring me to show some sort of good faith and effort to reestablish my standing, also believe they are championing my wholeness. They want me to be loved, I think, and part of something bigger than myself. 

I stand here forever, I stand here subdued. What if I am wrong?

The cars pass. Light from street lamps cast shadows bathed in sulfur. There are helicopters circling in the distance. The moon drifts in and out behind illuminated clouds. 

I try to focus on my senses. I feel that I am lifting off  the sidewalk, hovering maybe an inch from the ground. 

I stood on that corner for hours until the cars stopped passing and even the criminals had turned in for the night and the helicopters sit motionless on the tarmac. When I wake I think again about the possibility I am wrong about everything. Through my bedroom window I watch the clouds race across the sky; brilliant orange-yellow against cornflower blue. The jays are making awful noises. My stomach is a tight coil. I reachI  for my phone on the table next to the bed, absentmindedly scroll pages of unfathomable news. There is nothing I understand, but the clouds are so overwhelmingly beautiful. I lie here unable to decide.  There is no resolution.

I rely so heavily on my ability to deny.

So I don’t know, precisely, how to proceed upon this path.

It is an interesting thought.

But there is no resolution.

I close my eyes,

Unable to return.