Story of the Moment

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Story of the Moment

The Story of the Moment comes from:

Colter Brown

Texas

I'll think about her again today.

Seventeenth time this week. It's only Tuesday. The date is insignificant. The number is not.

Forty-seven times this month. Nine hundred and one times since the old year will ring in. Don't ask me why I keep track of these things; it's just one of those things. But you already knew that, whoever you are.

I saw it an hour from now, during another stretch in time when the mystic cards held me captive. Eight on nine, flip the blank, cancel out the racist row and BAM - I'll think. I'll think about the stream, the one with the tree bridge and the barbed wire fence and the sandy rocks and the utter silence and the complete silence. She herself won't be in it. Doesn't need to be. She is the stream, and they are one. I'll hold on to the stream for a second longer than needed, and then I'll release my grip - POOF - no more, just seven on eight, knock em topside, tuxedo shuffle, bust the uno, and score the win. Seventy-two seconds this time; not bad, but I've done better later. If not for her, I could do a lot better this time, I'm sure.

I'm a master at SolitairE, did I mention that? I flush the deck more often than not, I won't go over the hundred second mark for more than three months, and as you've noticed, I even have my own lingo for it, which I won't bother to translate as most of it is self-explanatory after a few moments of deliberation. So yes, I am King. I'll even score under a minute on two occasions, so Hail To The King indeed.

SolitairE, you see, is not the game of chance it really is. It isn't even a game, but rather a metaphor, much as chess is a metaphor to war and the eternal struggle and inevitable stalemate and futility. SoltairE, then, is obviously not a symbol for war, but for LIFE. Dwell on this for a few minutes. I'll wait, I don't mind.

It's not like I've anything better to do.

In the likely event that your feeble mind either finds itself incapable of drawing the comparisons, or you simply skipped down to this paragraph in the hopes that I might explain the concept further, thus saving you from making use of that withered material between your greasy sideburns, tough luck. Maybe I'll get around to it earlier; maybe I won't. I don't know if my efforts would even register to you. That is something I will decide at a later date.

Besides, it's getting early. My eye lids have activated the magnetic charge. Nearing the point of no return. I'm coming up for the third time.

I may be the King of Life, but if it wasn't for her, I could be like a god.

Colter Brown's

the

SolitairE

G O D

Everything in this story is 100% true.

I'll empty the Heart Heaven today to crumble the Berlin Wall. Seventy seconds. Today is Wednesday, and I'm not sure why I care. It feels like tomorrow, just as tomorrow felt like yesterday will. The cycle is endless, and for all I know I'm living in that Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. Except I know I'm not. I can't be living in a movie because I'm living in a novel. But that's irrelevant for now. All you need to know is that today the window will turn. Not yet, mind you; these things don't happen in the future, only the past. I'll explain it to you later. I need a hook to keep you here anyway. All you need to know is that the window will turn today.

Oh, and maybe that the cards will talk to me today. Not like the Tarot cards speak, mind you. The Tarot are a limited breed, only telling you your own future. The SolitairE can tell you anything about the world above and beneath the skin. Just next week it predicted a race rally that would be interrupted and conquered by a greater force of the opposite skin. Two days ago an organized protest group got tear-gassed by White House Security. A month ago I got a Red King and two Red Queens. Needless to say, I'm still waiting for my Black Queen.

Today I got a completely immobile deck. Nothing changed from start to finish, and it was all because a Jack was keeping a Black Queen and my Red King apart. I think the implications of this should be obvious.

It's hard playing the lonely hand when all I have is her to think about. Three times today.

Is it yesterday yet? Or is it tomorrow?

What if it's neither? Where does that leave me? For simplicities' sake I'll assume it's yesterday. A bright, new, lovely, again day awaits me. That's okay, I guess. Tomorrow sucked.

You'll have to excuse me if I get my tenses mixed up occasionally. I'm still relatively new and fresh from my revelation. As I understand it, the future has already happened, thus the past tense. Yesterday, then, follows vice versa. Bear with me.

These things would be so much easier if it weren't for the fact that today only exists in the strictly metaphorical sense. I don't even know if it's today only exists, existed, will exist, or what. Maybe I'll understand it someday. It would be easier if I had a mentor to guide me through the process of enlightenment, but alas, it's been me and me alone the whole time. Or rather, it will be me and me alone the whole time. Bear with me.

I'm not sure why, but the idea of communicating telepathically - writing is telepathy, after all - to an entirely anonymous listener, i.e. you, doesn't seem to unsettle me as much as it probably should. I don't know your name, your sex, where you are, what you are thinking of right now, and most importantly, I don't know when you are. I assume that you are receiving me and my thoughts yesterday or earlier. Mayhaps a month earlier, mayhaps a year or a century earlier. But what if someone cracked the time code and you are reading this tomorrow? I won't even have written these words yet. Heck, I might not even be born from death yet. I wish there was a way for me to know for sure. It feels kind of odd to think that I might be writing to someone who hasn't even been taught about the true flow of time. In the event that this is the case, I imagine I should explain the reality to you. But not today. Er, yesterday.

Yesterday's gonna suck too.

I just looked at the calendar, and it is indeed yesterday, Thursday, and I'm not going to win a single hand at the Game of Life, and I still won't understand that completely. But I'm getting behind myself. As you understand Time, I haven't even played a round yet. To you I am about to go to sleep and wake up the next (really the previous) morning, when in fact I've just woken up and am looking backward to another Another ANOTHER yesterday.

More paradoxes today - and yes, I know that `today' doesn't truly exist, but it's too far into yesterday now and I feel that using the word `now' is much more limiting than `today'. Bear with me.

The first of the paradoxes will come, naturally, from the cards. I won a hand, even though tomorrow I prophesied that I wouldn't. A ripple in time, perhaps? Nothing strange with the hand I'll be given. I won't even have to drop anything down from Heaven (a move I'm considering calling `Lucifer', after his famed descent to Earth; not so sure I like adding his undertones to the Game of Life, but the cards will have as they must). So, a totally normal hand, except for the fact that it calls doubt upon the very basis of the True Theory of Time (henceforth to be referred to as 3T). Is it a fluke? If not, then what, pray tell, is the fault in the system?

For perhaps the first (last) time, I find myself as confused as you are, whether or not you have been enlightened. Whether or not you are even a homo sapien.

One more thing before I wake up and end this disturbing Thursday. I will think about her no less than fifty-two times during my victorious round, which I will finish in sixty-seven seconds. Wednesday will be seventy seconds. Tuesday will be seventy-two seconds. SolitairE is not a Game of Life that one gets better at with time. Only the cards dictate whether or not we win, and how fast we do it. Could they be saying something, perhaps? I'll know if yesterday I get sixty-three seconds. I'll explain:

(Let X = yesterday's time

Y = today's time

Z = number of days

X = Y - (Z+1) )

Probably not something that would wow Albert Einstein, even if he hadn't waited to be Born From Death (which I won't bother to use an acronym for due to, you know, synchronicity with another identical acronym) until well after I will Die From Birth (which will also not see its acronym used; what is true of one must likewise be true of its opposite, after all). At least the equation is simple. I doubt even your unenlightened (if that is the case) mind was / is going to be confused.

You know, this was going to be so much easier for both of us if you could be here, with me, now. You could ask your stupid questions, and I won't feel so blasted ALONE.

I hate that word, yet we are one.

If you are a diligent receiver, then you may have noticed that in my equation, I assumed that Tuesday was the beginning (end) of the cycle, the countdown as I am now calling it. I did this (will do this) (dangit!) because Monday will not exist. Oh, it will occur all right. It will come right after Tuesday and before Sunday. But for me, Monday will not exist because it will be a somewhat better than usual day. I might even say great, but I am no optimist. Monday will thus break the cycle of redundancy, so it will not belong here, but in a different universe. Another ripple, if you will. So, if you should reference `yesterday' when Tuesday comes around, I am speaking not of Monday, but Sunday (which, by the way, does not fit into my equation at all, and is thus excluded).

The calendar says it's Friday now, and I have a gloriously mundane day to look back to. Of course, as 3T has yet to catch on here, the calendars have it all wrong. Maybe someday I'll fill the void with my own 3T calendar - one that goes Saturday-Friday-Thursday-Wednesday-Tuesday-Monday-Sunday, December-November-October-etc. As things stand now, though, I must try to balance these two different views of the flow of time. Like I will say, bear with me. It's hard enough that I have to write this backwards so you might understand it.

.this like it writing be should I

Now, I understand that this is all probably very confusing to you. Fear not, for I have already written a quick summary of it for you yesterday, Saturday. But now, I need to wake up and end this day. I only thought of her twice.

Scratch that, I'm still here. I can't seem to wake up, something seems to be amiss, why can't I wake up! What have I forgotten? Nothing happened today, nothing special, only thought of her twice, TWICE for Christ's sake, I played the Game of Life - sixty-three seconds, so the countdown, no, countup theory could be true -, trounced a gay orgy (four Jacks next to each other) in the process, and yes I realize I'm dictating in the improper tense, but blast it WHAT'S GOING ON? I was supposed to wake up at seven a.m., and it's already half past five! I'm tired, that shower wore me out, this isn't supposed to happen, I'm supposed to wake up an hour and a half from now!

Okay, okay, alright. Chilling. Maybe the cards have an answer for me. Be right back.

It's five o'clock now and I can't win a hand for the life of me. Too tired to play. Too much stuff to process, and I thought about her the entire time . . .

Maybe a strong cup of coffee can put me to sleep.

Ah yes, the weekend is upon me. Two glorious days that are identical to the other five except with even less to do. Thus, I must once again entertain myself. The cards had nothing to say when I suggested (will have nothing to say, I will suggest, get it straight already!) that I might explain 3T to you. I am taking their muteness to mean that they do not object. If I am mistaken, may SolitairE have mercy on me in my past.

Are you comfortable? Then I'll begin.

We Are Fish

Please ignore what I have to say;

it is nothing more than a matter of nothing.

when I suggest that time does not exist as a

linear, or bilinear, or any-linear thing.

If anything, it rests as a placid lake,

and we move through it with a full view.

We are born in death, and in that instant,

when our lives are flashing before our eyes,

we know everything the time-lake has to hold,

and then we leave our birth-in-death

and approach our death-in-birth,

and with every passing instant we forget

what has just happened

in what we call the `future.'

And then the time comes

where we know nothing at all

save for the warmth of our mother's womb.

Like it? I wrote it the same day I learned to look back at the stretch of lake I had already swam. This is how I know my own future, but as with all things there is a hitch. By changing my perspectives on the lake, I changed my course across the lake so that now I am moving at a relatively diagonal heading that is changing all the time. I can still see my future, but I can also see all of my futures, and I have no way of knowing for sure where I'll end up. This, I suppose, could explain my winning a round that day when I knew I wouldn't. I simply hadn't seen that future out of the tens of thousands of infinities. This could also explain the girl I've never seen before.

Better hold on; the waves are coming, and fast.

She will have blue eyes, blonde hair, and tan skin. She will, because I have brown eyes, dark hair, and bleached skin. I am the Red King, and she is my Black Queen, so by the cards we must be completely and totally opposite. Where I know isolation, she knows the entire world. Where I know artificial light, she knows the sun. Where I know 3T, she knows linear time. And where I know SolitairE, she knows nothing. So, she will have blue eyes, blond hair, and tan skin. And her name will be Mary, a perfectly ordinary name to counter my own abstraction. And we will meet shortly.

The cards will tell me so.

The stream will be there, too. It will be so because it must.

Fifty-eight seconds this time.

Still Saturday, though not for long. In one hour the alarm will ring and I will wake up, hopefully with less trouble than before. Or rather, less trouble than later. Nothing much new to report. The countup is still in full effect, and I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow saw the end of it. A fifty-two second hand doesn't come along very often, and a forty-five second hand is simply absurd, even for the SolitairE King.

I figure now is as good a time as any to tell you the secrets of the Game of Life. This may take a while, as there are quite a few to cover, and I doubt I'll be able to go over but maybe half of them at most.

Here we go:

Kings are the higher males, typically in a position of power or importance. When there are two or more Kings next to each other, this usually represents the government. Kings are neophytes, by the way. Queens are the Kings' lifeblood; they connect them to the kingdom. When every King has his Queen, there is perfect order. When all but one King has their Queen, the lone card will try to sabotage the other three, or at least the one with his Queen. Jacks are the fools, the neophobes who filter the Kings' decisions into lifeless and powerless acts before they can be seen by the public. These are important people who simply shouldn't be important people. Two Jacks next to each other represents homosexuality (as does two Queens next to each other). Still, they are necessary pieces to the puzzle, as they connect the royalty to the people, cards ten and under, the peasants. If a deck alternates red and black cards in the earth area - the playing field - there is order. If the earth is predominately, or even totally, one skin, then racism is the case. If limbo, purgatory, or whatever you prefer to call it cannot cancel out the racist hand, then we have the equivalent of the KKK. If the earth is mostly members of the royalty, and the peasants from purgatory have nowhere to go, we have an oppression. If we reverse this, with peasants covering the earth, we either have a monarchy (King and Queen, of course), a dictatorship, or anarchy. If the peasants can work together and bring forth royalty, we have democracy. When the cards flow like you need them to, it is a time of prosperity. When they don't, there's a depression. When a card has reached the end of its life, it is sent to the afterlife to be with its god, the Ace, either Jehovah, Buddha, Mohammed, or Re. They can descend back down to earth in the form of prophets, and it is usually them who set things straight. Every cycle of purgatory wields different cards, and even a small change can transform the next cycle. In other words, new options open up all the time, with just a little bit of effort. I think I've covered all that I need to for now.

It's Sunday now, and nothings changed. Haven't played the game yet, as I just went to bed a moment ago. I think I might have dreamed about Mary tonight . . . but I'm not sure. I do know I was thinking about the stream, about what it really means. Writing down that time-lake metaphor will make me start to wonder what would happen if Mary's stream were a part of it. If it is, then I have a problem. A problem with width, of course. You see, in a lake you have enough room to change course and the currents aren't as strong. In a stream, however, the water rushes through a narrow halfpipe of rock and clay, the currents turn to rapids, and no matter where you go it will still spit you out the same end. In short, there is no control. Am I then powerless to change whatever happened between Mary and myself? I think I'm ready to consult the cards.

But oh, to be a salmon!

Fifty-two seconds. The countup is consistent at least. But there's more. The Red King was wedged between a pair of two's; both Red Queens made an appearance, but apparently both Black Queens were hiding in the shadows, all the way up to the end. When they finally did show up, the Queen of Spades gave me a paper cut.

This is trouble.

I don't know how many more games I'll play before that, but I won't win a single one and I will think about Mary the whole time. Another paper cut, too. This time it'll be one of the Jokers. Don't ask me how it will get in there. Perhaps the cards are angry at me for telling about their secret language?

I think I will be smiling when the Joker cuts me.

Sunday is but halfway over and I need a new deck of cards. They keep sticking together at the edges.

I now have no less than fifty-three paper cuts on my hands. I can barely move them. The blood will get on the cards, so they're sticking. I honestly think I might try to keep playing if I could only separate them and stop them from slipping out of my hands (thus cutting me again). And the strange thing is this: I don't mind the cuts, the pain, my blood. It's a sensation I'll not feel in a long time. Then again, I'll not feel much sensation of any sort for quite a long time. The only thing about this that maddens me is that the cards are ruined, and by their own self-mutilation. They brought this - will bring this - upon themselves, just as I now plan to do the same. Self-mutilation is underrated, my friend.

Call me the Red King. Call her Bloody Mary.

Can barely see what I'm writing now. I'm about to discover the joys of bleeding, of pain, of emotion. I am free now; the cards have shown that the path and the truth, that all things ultimately are good.

At least, things are all ultimately good when 3T is applied to them. With time flowing like this, the infliction of pain is in reality a removal of the pain, just as waking up is really going to sleep. The paper cut happened in the future; thus, it doesn't exist. The reverse is true as well: Joy and happiness are really the elimination of joy and happiness. Just dwell on this for a few minutes; I am too ecstatic to think anymore. Besides, I have things to plan. Like remembering that thing with the turning window. Like Mary.

Mary is coming yesterday, and I want her to share in my revelation and my joy.

Everything in this story is 100% false.