Mouth Going and Arms Waving

Ta-ta, Carlos!  Ta-ta!”  We’re waving hankies.  We’re giggling.  We’re skipping in from the balcony, closing the doors, shutting you (and the universe) out.
My fantasy giddies-up toward a jump, then bolts, from which I land hard, with the wind knocked out of me.  You mean it’s not real?

[This is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here for the first episode, or here  for the previous one.]

Then what is?  The mother shop?  The numerous spin-offs?  The nightly meetings, daily chocolate drizzlings and bread kneadings? 

All my feats and flights before an audience feel old and fake by now.  To portray lofty insights, all I have to do is get my mouth going and my arms waving.  Only afterwards is it clear:  Nothing has changed.  Nothing is ever enough.

And yet all I ask is that Tyler come to me of his own accord.  The way I see it:  If my heart never wavers, if I devote myself to him entirely—no doubts or errant, ulterior motives—he will naturally, eventually, make his way to my arms.

But, but, but—I’m banging my head against the wall!  Because my purest, most constant prayer—that someday he be drawn to me—is wrong.  Praying that Tyler seek me is coercive in itself.  I want him to want me, when it should be enough that he exists!

Just as:  it should be enough that Colin existed once.  We had six magical months together, and now after all these years, a miracle:  A supernatural impression of Colin as the boy Tyler has appeared before me.  My unexpected glimpse of that luminous face should sustain me the rest of my days.  Except the moment I think the vision can—and will—I am lost.  Once I am saved—I am not saved!  It’s as if:  He lives on.  And I am dead.

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