Short Stories

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The night was dark, wet, and solemn, the windows hazy with risidual water and hard to see out of. I leaned forward, my forehead resting on the cool glass, eyes peering out to the largely vacant parking lot, five stories down. I watched the concentric circles forming from the rain pelting the already drenched pavement and then I watched harder. My phone rang earlier. My friend was tired, you could hear it in his voice. He was a long way from home, bored in a hotel room. "Your assignment," he said, with a contemplative pause, the pitch of his voice inflecting with excitement, "write about something you've never thought about before." I took in his words, open to suggestion, excited by challenge. "Hm," I said, "is it possible to force yourself to think of something that you've never thought about before?" He laughed, offering a few abstract examples, all of things I'd already thought about. "Do you mean something I've never thought about or something I've never thought to write about?" I asked, realizing what he would say before he even replied. "Both," he said. "Of course, I realize that to have never thought of something would make it impossible to have thought about writing about it; but it would be possible to think of something and have never thought to write about it," I asserted. "Of course," he said, "you could just write about how it is impossible to force yourself to think of something you've never thought about before." His voice was a tremor of disappointment and compromise, intermingled, I thought, with sarcasm. I suddenly felt defeated and challenged at the same time. I couldn't give up so easily. I laughed the uncomfortable feeling of doubt away. "I'll do it," I accepted. We eventually hung up, though I'd held the silent phone to my ear for a few moments while I reevaluated the challenge in my mind. "Just start writing," he had said, "it'll come to you."

This is how I came to be standing, forehead on the glass, deep in thought. Back to the raindrops, my eyes were straining to see through the moist glass. Every few seconds the drops would pull together to form a bigger drop which, weighed down, would slip down the glass in front of my eyes like a tear. That is, if tear ducts were over your eyes, and your tears could potentially travel the surface of your eye, rather than welling up in them. "Huh," my pulse quickened, "I've never thought of that before." But my victory was fleeting, and the feeling of defeat again returned, leaving me silent and reflective. I watched the water on the black surface below, reflecting the light. "Where have you been?" I asked the water in my mind. "Were you solid and still back in the Ice Age?" "Were you flowing and jumping over rocks in a river across the country, or perhaps out of the country before?" "Were you present that day when Jesus turned water into wine? Did you feel neglected and jealous that you weren't made into wine yourself? Or perhaps you were." My mind was racing now. I started wondering how fascinating it would be to know just where this water had come from. This idea, although certainly a new one, was as fleeting as the first and my mind began jumping, like it often does, sporadically from topic to topic. Watching the rain still winding its way down the glass, I eventually started thinking about tears again, and recalling a movie I'd watched recently where a doctor was asked why people cry. In the movie she played the typical doctor - educated, confident, sure to have answers to every question. She was perplexed at her own confusion. "We don't know," she said. "Normally tear ducts form tears in order to lubricate the eyes but for some reason those overreact when a person is emotional, and you cry." Suddenly her previous act of pushing a slide of blood under a microscope and explaining blood cells didn't seem so impressive. Then the man who had asked began offering his explanation - simple, poetic, uneducated. It didn't matter that he wasn't trained, his answer made more sense; some things just can't be explained. Later in the movie he would tell her to close her eyes, which she would do, while he lifted her hand and ran his index finger across her palm. "What am I doing?" he would ask. "You're touching me," she'd say, eyes still closed. "How do you know?" he'd ask. "Because I can feel it." "You should trust that more", he'd say. "You don't trust it enough."

I always loved that line. We don't trust "it" enough - that sensation of feeling that should equate to knowing. I guess that is true for all of us, because a feeling can't be proven; knowledge can. Sadly it is most true for the educated and experienced. I know, for me, one of the things I have noticed about myself is a natural and progressive tendency to displace emotion. I like to say that, "if I can't embrace it, I erase it." I think this is true for all of is, conscious or not. The more knowledge we have, the easier it is to let our minds determine what we feel. That's why when I was two and I fell down I cried, the first time I felt love for someone I swore I'd never feel the same thing again, the first time my heart broke I thought it would never heal. But now that I have knowledge and experience, things don't feel as intense. It takes alot more and a lot longer to promote the same reactions. I can choose not to feel now; I can use knowledge to displace feeling. But now, back to the unexplainable, the things we should trust more. I started thinking about things, other than tears, that baffled me and couldn't be explained, not even with all of the technological advances and medical breakthroughs. How about that feeling when your heart physically feels like it is throbbing, aching, warm and fuzzy? We can't explain that with any of our medical jargon. What about the sensation of butterflies in your stomach? We have no definition, no explanation for that one either. What about goose bumps? I always hesitated, in Anatomy and Physiology, to raise my hand and drill my teachers about that one, although I always wanted to. Sure, it's a response, but what do they DO? I did a study on cracking knuckles once, and why parents tell their children that their knuckles will get fat one day, or they'll get arthritis, I'll never know. I did research and all I found was that CO2 is getting expelled out of your synovial fluid, with no evidence of promoting arthritis or knuckle enlargement. It was never proven and the teacher loved it. I realize now that unanswered questions are more interesting than answered ones. Isn't it amazing that we can replicate and transplant stem cells, we can transplant part of a liver now and know that it will regenerate itself, we can give someone a new heart that we've taken out of someone else, but we can't explain why our heart aches or we have butterflies in our stomach?

I've been reading alot of Philosophy stuff lately - Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. It's all about asking the right questions, not answering them. I think that is the answer to my question of relevance pertaining to things that can't be explained. Things like butterflies in your stomach, heart flutters, tears, knuckle cracking, rain, Astrology. Yes, Astrology. Why do people born in the same month have similar traits? If you've never read any Astrology, you should. It is amazing how accurate so much of it is. But does it have anything to do with supernatural power of the cosmos or is it simply one of the unexplainable phenomenons that keep us asking questions? My theory is that God has a good sense of humor and allows such phenomenons. I also think that He knows that in order to win the competition for our affection and trust, there must, in fact, be competition. Why people would worship the stars any more than they'd worship the ground we walk on, is no more obvious to me than why people would worship an inanimate object made of gold. But again, affection must be won in order to be valuable. If I forced someone to love me then it wouldn't be valuable. I believe the same goes for God. So many of our questions about these unexplainable events are probably meant sheerly to keep us searching for a truth that we will never fully know until the end. What would happen if we knew all of the answers while we were still mortals, humbled by ignorance? If knowledge is power, and God is regarded as the most powerful, than isn't it safe to say that knowledge equal to God would threaten our inherent subservient nature to a God that is bigger than ourselves? I shudder at the thought. But I marvel at the answer to my original question of, "can we force ourselves to think of something we have never thought of before?" I think I have proven that the answer is most definitely yes.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.
-Mark Twain

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