ADAM: Oh sure. That’s just another figment of your eye-level imagination running its ho-hum-partial course. No. That’s not it. You know what it was though? Ha. It was that tree outside your bedroom window. The one with those spindly branches, like crooked, gnarled, wart-ridden, wicked-witch-of-the-east fingers. That’s what made me think of you again.
EVE:
ADAM: Of course. I mean, come on. I’m not completely conceptualizing through guilt and bitterness here.
EVE:
ADAM: That’s not, per se, an affront though. I mean, not that you’re completely off kilter there. But there’s always more to it than we think. And of course, yeah, there’s a whole lot more to it than we say too. That goes without saying.
EVE:
ADAM: Not really. I’d probably agree with that if more time had elapsed from the initial commotion. That traumatic ceasing of the way things in general were tending to go.
EVE:
ADAM: I know. I’ll try to refrain from it in the future. I’ll give it the old college try.
EVE:
ADAM: Okay. Sure. Whatever. The real problem here, as it always seems to be with us, is that the lines of communication are stunted. They flicker and spark like voices trying to whisper through downed phone lines. It’s always a massive attempt at the talking around of things. There is no place for the “we” of “us” to wander in.
EVE:
ADAM: I don’t know either. It’s just a specific jellyroll way of expressing the convoluted quagmire that’s passing for our two severed lives these days. The apartness. The separation. The placating of mutually understood “off-limits” desires for the express purpose of easing the distance, that is if it cannot be spanned, which we both have come to the extricated conclusion that it cannot.
EVE:
ADAM: Extricate. You know, like a disentangling. An untying of the laces on the shoes we used to live in together.
EVE:
ADAM: I know. I know. It’s just another way of saying. But that’s really all we have now. Ways of saying things. Pertinence notwithstanding, the ways of saying seem to matter much more than what is said. Even if you’ve got the Revenue Man Blues.
EVE:
ADAM: Oh. Just something to do with Charley Patton I guess. Anyway. It’s just deckle to frame the tempestuous nature of withdrawal and stubbornness and clue-hipped peons of chance. We don’t make time. Time makes us.
EVE:
ADAM: Do you want the easy answer?
EVE:
ADAM: You know. Like Occam’s razor. Something simple.
EVE:
ADAM: That’s true. I’d like to give it a shot though.
EVE:
ADAM: Okay. So. There has to be much more there in the first place. A “something” must exist in the proverbial nut-sac of the heavens. There must be a “here” to have a “now” in. I don’t want to quantify things too much…
EVE:
ADAM: Thank you. I think. But any way you look at it, well, things just turned out bad for everybody. Was there something that could’ve been done? Should one of us have tried harder to hold on to what we had? I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck to think sometimes. There’s just this way of doing that I’ve got, and of course you’ve got yours, and together we created another…but…fuck. I don’t know. Maybe it was all just some hallucination that we both created because it was what we needed at the time to get by. Manifestations of guilt might’ve been riding high on the wind of our thoughts, for example, or we just wanted a reason to be happy for a while. Like we needed a reason. Sometimes just the lush breath of fall will do that to you. Nobody needs anybody, when it comes down to it. We just want. And we want to be wanted. We’re like salt-water fish swimming around in a fresh water tank. We don’t even know what it is we’re lacking until somebody comes along and pours some salt in the water. We become addicted to our loneliness. We stray and wander off course. We pander to the basest ways to be loved.
EVE:
ADAM: Not really. Not anymore.
EVE:
ADAM: Oh come on. It’s not that. I still care. I care a whole hell of a lot. I’m not just going to stop…
EVE:
ADAM: I know. SMPTE color bars to match the moods of our lives between the wimpy stations of the cross we keep practicing. We can just make things sound any which way we like. That doesn’t make them so.
EVE:
ADAM: True. But still. I think there’s grace floundering around out there somewhere in the blundering arms of forgiveness. I’d like to think there’s more than a snowball’s chance in hell of something like that happening too, but come on. We both know how these things go. Lessening becomes too much. We drift. We float aimlessly in despair. We get happy over small meaningless things.
EVE:
ADAM: By looking for it everywhere. Of course I’m just speaking from another “of course” which takes for granted yet another “of course” along the way. Like looking at the rainbow slick of oil in a puddle of rainwater. We have things that defy expectations too. We strap on tool belts of distractions. I guess it’s more troubling now that everything feels like it’s dead. You know?
EVE:
ADAM: Maybe. In a Kiss-Me-Deadly kind of way I guess. That’s like saying what pertains to the pitched silence of high ideals maintains its own breaking ball of courage…or outrage.
EVE:
ADAM: No. It still does. I’m not going to deny it. A hurt that persistently harms, you know?
EVE:
ADAM: If it does, well, I’ve never heard talk of it.
EVE:
ADAM: So what? That’s the same kind of crappy circulus in probando that makes the proposition of weather seem like a tough out. And you know me. I’m a pretty tough customer when it comes to roundabout thoughts. Still, let’s throw some leavening in the mix and see if something arises.
EVE:
ADAM: Why not? The oven’s already on. What’ve we got to lose?
EVE:
ADAM: Sure. Sure. I know. I know that. It’s…not that either. We’ve got distinct differences in the basic material processing of information. And if the ceiling caves in? Well, there is always more “in the meantime” to have.
EVE:
ADAM: There are. Like blackboards of hankering erased with yearning against the grain. A besting of gradualness. A mohair toupee. A room without a view.
EVE:
ADAM: That’s funny. I don’t know either. Just a plop. A mushy weird insubstantial decay. Seeing without wanting to look. Cheap haircuts. A bow-legged prayer.
EVE:
ADAM: Battlements. Fortifications. Redoubts. Those type of things.
EVE:
ADAM: Hacking at the wind.
EVE:
ADAM: No.
EVE:
ADAM: No. I don’t think that’s got anything to do with it. You can say, “I will. I will,” all you want. It doesn’t matter. In the end it’s only what you do that matters. The rest is eyewash.
EVE:
ADAM: No. Celine. Close though. Same league. Different ballpark. We’ve got delineations and delinquencies too, and it all just surrounds our guarded misconceptions of who we are.
EVE:
ADAM: I’m not. I’m being anything but unkind. Let’s face it. Nothing is left. It’s all busted and ruined, and what we’ll remember…well, that’s just flyweight romantically tinged idealism. It does nothing but render us maladjusted to the currency of life going by. We still live it, but nothing’s quite ever going to be the same again, is it?
EVE:
ADAM: I don’t think you really believe that.
EVE:
ADAM: It doesn’t. It just doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is too different to ever be the same again.
EVE:
ADAM: Really? That’s surprising. Well, Sacco and Vanzetti would be proud. Or at least William Zantzinger.
EVE:
ADAM: I kid. I kid. Calm down. Youuuuu. Whoooo. Philosooooophize. Deeeesgrace.
EVE:
ADAM: I will. You too. You as well. You also. You…you.
EVE:
ADAM: The chains of the sea will have busted in the night.
EVE:
ADAM:
EVE: Fuck off.
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