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Faulking Around - Nov 7, 2004 - Printable Version
- In the Realm of Impossible Things.....
by Russell Tharp
It's three in the morning, and I'm driving down Interstate 49 in Louisiana, looking for Lily. Even though she is inside me every second, and walks beside me step by step, the lonliness is excruciating. No one to talk to but the radio, nothing to comfort me but the sound of my own voice bouncing off of the dashboard of my car at 80 miles an hour. I am on a quest. A mission from God. The search for the Holy Grail. I just heard on the radio that George Dubya Bush has been re-elected, and for a brief moment, I wish I was at my computer banging out an article admonishing America for being so gullible and blind that it allowed itself to be robbed by a bunch of con men using sleight of hand as their only weapon. I wish I could jump onto a soap box and yell to all of America: "You've been had! This is nothing more than a shell game, and it doesn't matter which one you pick, you'll lose every damn time. The game was rigged from the very start!"
But, like most of America, although I truly want to make a difference, I feel helpless to do anything to change the harsh realities of life, and what happens to my country seems to always be overshadowed by the personal obsessions that are rolling around my head at any given moment. While America weeps, I am thinking of only one thing: Lily. She is always there, above the cacaphony and din, like a huge emotional neon sign flashing a single message across my brain- Lily. . . Lily. . . Lily. . . Lily. . . Like a mantra, it repeats continuously, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour, sixty seconds a minute, one billion nanoseconds a second, one thousand picoseconds a nanosecond, and on and on. It adjusts it's cadence to match whatever rhythm is handy (for instance, windshield wipers sound like this: Lil-lee. . . Lil-lee. . . Lil-lee. . . Lil-lee), but even when I drive alone in complete silence, it simply pounds in time to my heartbeat.
Understand this: most of us would just a soon leave the politicking to the politicians, and concentrate instead on our day-to-day existence, pursuing whatever obsession we have chosen as our own personal "mission from God". My obsession is named "Lily", but it might just as well be "money", "religion", "art", or yes, even politics, or any of an endless number of things that trigger the passion gene in our psyches. It doesn't matter what your passion is, as long as you have one. It is the energy that moves us forward, it is the thing that sustains us as we trudge through our daily routine. Without it, life seems pointless.
It's late, and as I pull off of the highway into Natchitoches, I glance into my rearview mirror one last time. It's a side effect of the inner paranoia that grips me from time to time, a reflex reaction tiggered by something I can't quite put my finger on. Guilt? That's part of it, but there's something else. An unsettling feeling that somehow reality will catch up to me and overtake me, and that this irrational fantasy will come crashing down around me. It's as if I have to keep moving in order to outrun my own sense of impending doom. I don't want this to end. At that moment, I can understand why some lovers spend their lives running, as if somehow by keeping the entire world in their rearview mirrors they can escape the fate of so many other doomed lovers that have passed before them. It only heightens my sense of urgency, making me want her even more.
I stop and fill my gas tank once more, and pour myself one more cup of coffee in order to steel my nerves. At the register, I nonchalantly ask the cashier how the town's name is pronounced - Is it Natch-chi-toe-ches, like it's spelled, or maybe Nash-shi-toe-shis, with a softer emphasis?
"Neither one", she said, "we say it like this - Natch-chesssssss".
Taken aback, I ask her, "where are the other syllables?"
"We don't bother with those. Too much trouble, I guess."
I'm gonna like this town, I think to myself, and get into my car to drive to my destination: the house of Lily Mae Allen. I found her name on a Google search, she's just one of the countless Lilys on my list. I already stalked...I mean, followed Lily Muese of Waterbury, Oklahoma, but she turned out to be older than my Grandmother - nothing like the image of purity and unparalled beauty I have in my head. After "connecting" with Lily on the Faulking Truth website, she came to me as if in a dream, using words like an aphrodisiac to melt my entire being. Her perfect image is imbedded permanently in my heart, her face floats before me like a heavenly hologram, twenty four hours a day.
So how do I know that this Lily is the one? Oh, I have clues, like the fact that this Lily attended a school built by nuns, and I wrote an article where I pretended like I first met her in a play about, you guessed it, nuns. And, the same school had a student years ago by the name of "Edgar Tharp". Coincidences? I think not. Granted, it's not much to go on, but as long as I'm searching for her, my life has meaning, and as long as I feel like I'm one day closer to being with her forever, then that day is worth waking up to.
It's hard to say just what it is that drives me in my quest. It is undoubtedly passion, but there's more to it than that. It's as if she is my winning ticket in the lottery, my fairy tale ending, my one chance to "live happily ever after". It's what we all strive for, that vision, however distant, that we might someday "hit it rich". My mind wanders for a brief moment to my home state of Oklahoma, where they just passed their own lottery, and I miss it, but only for a second (or should that be a "nanosecond"?). It occurs to me that that is the reason we buy a lottery ticket, or bet on a horse, or invest all of our money into a long shot company in the stock market. Our day-to-day lives are mostly boring, monotonous, and redundant, but if we can keep that feeling tucked away somewhere in the corner of our minds, that fantasy, however real or imagined, that one in a million chance that something will happen to magically change our entire lives, then all is not lost. Forget about a house in the suburbs, two cars, and a successful career, most of us would trade it all just to feel "rich" in the emotional sense. Lily is my lottery ticket, and the hope, however unrealistic and seemingly impossible, that I might one day make her mine forever, is what sustains me in my daily routine.
As I reach the end of the block where she lives, I read the numbers on her house, 713, and wonder if they could be my winning numbers, if tonight could be the night that I finally "strike it rich". I wait outside for what seems like hours, afraid to approach her directly, partially because I'm afraid I might be wrong, but also because I don't want a repeat of my misadventure in Waterbury, where I narrowly escaped with my life. The editor wrote about it in "Demise of the Writer" ( www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/FaulkingAround/1012.html ), and although he seems to delight in making me out to be a total lunatic, he at least acknowledged that what I feel for Lily is real.
The thoughts keep rolling though my mind like waves in the ocean, crashing rhythmically against the edges of my imagination, clouding my judgement. I begin to have doubts, doubts about whether I'm doing the right thing, doubts about whether she even feels the same about me as I do about her. Is she really as I've envisioned her for all these months? Is she real at all, or is she just a figment of my starved imagination? Am I, like almost every human being, running away from a reality that leaves me empty and hollow, and running towards a fantasy that is neither realistic or even possible? Should I just accept that this is life, and that we all have to make sacrifices, give up our hopes and dreams, and "settle" for comfort and security at the expense of passion and love in the end? For the millionth time in my chaotic life, waves of depression begin to sweep over me, making me want to run back to the comfort of my mundane life and away from it, both at the same time. And, as is always the case, I'm instead left paralyzed with fear, unable to make even the most elementary of decisions. It occurs to me that half of the world is probably frozen in their tracks at this very moment, comsumed by the same feelings of indecision and self doubt that I'm experiencing, but that knowledge does little to comfort me. Sadly, misery might love company, but in reality, it usually hides in solitude, wallowing in it's own.....misery.
Just as I am about to drive off in my emotional daze, "she" appears, as if by magic. From a distance, I'm certain that it is her, she is exactly as I pictured her in my dreams. She is, in a word, perfect. She walks, no, glides, slowly towards me through the soft glare of the street light, and then she turns away just before I can see her clearly.
"Lily", I speak her name softly, so as not to startle her, and she turns around, and then, our eyes meet. "Lily", I say again, "is that you? It's me, Russell." As soon as I say the words, I realize that something is terribly wrong. Her image is changing before my very eyes, and I wonder if I've made a mistake.
"Russell who?" She looks confused, and begins to back away, slowly at first, then she turns and runs towards the house. Without even realizing it, I'm running after her, when suddenly, her husband comes to the front door, calling her name. It is then that I realize that this is not my Lily, that somehow, I've misread the clues, and that my instincts were somehow wrong. I turn and flee back to my car, jumping in and driving off just in time.
Later, sitting in my hotel room in "Natch-chesssssss", I reflect on the evening's events. Am I disappointed that this was not "my" Lily? Every second without her is a second lost forever, and every time I fail, I am reminded of an endless chain of failures that span the entire galaxy of my life. If this were any other crusade, I would simply give up, just as I have given up on my dreams so many times before.
But this is one mission I won't give up on, one lottery that I'll keep buying a ticket for week after week, until I finally do win. And even if I never find her, even if it's only the idea of winning her heart and spending eternity with her that sustains me in my quest for true passion and happiness, in my search for Lily, than that's enough. I'll carry that with me....and face another day with hope in my heart, and with her love forever burned in my soul.
I sit on the edge of the bed, open my laptop, log on, pull up "Google search", and type in: Lily. 5,240,000 matches. Two down, 5,239,998 to go. This could take awhile. Oh, well, I have my entire life before me. Lily, I'll see you soon.
"Vous êtes mon destinée."
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