Jayce is a Jellyfish

Chapter One:

The impossible quiet of mountain air stirs a sort of uneasiness in me. It isn’t fear or anxiety or anything like that. It’s more like a quiet intensity, or a tremble that tells me just how alive I am. It’s like when you’re about to plunge from a diving board into the deep end, or how you felt when you had  your first real kiss. It radiates throughout my body and tingles my nerves like some sort of high.

The night I met her set every fiber of my being on fire, I hadn’t realized how asleep I was until she came into view, and I realized the sheer terror of being unable to read her intentions.

Her eyes hid nothing, looking into mine, unabashed and unwavering. She almost reminded me of a deer caught in the gaze of headlights, until I realized that I was the deer, and she was everything that radiated light.

I wanted to say something, anything to break this stare, but what do you say in moments like this? When you’re at a point in your life that feels like it’s been waiting for you, like a parent waiting for the day their child speaks for the first time.

She told me her name was Abby, and I was afraid the next word to leave my lips would be just that. It was the only sound that reverberated through my body, like the soft echoes left in the walls when a church choir finishes its last verse.

Abby tucked her hair behind her ear and looked back to the rest of the group sitting around the campfire, drinking PBR and talking about something that wasn’t even remotely interesting enough for me to return to planet Earth. I had almost completely forgotten that other people were there…

Some of the others were starting to leave the fire’s warmth and meander toward their tents. I felt Abby’s hand grasp onto mine as she stood up and started to walk toward the treeline. I followed behind her, as if I was entranced by the way the moonlight shone from her hair, pale blue radiating from golden shores. I could disappear to those shores and never wake from their dream.

I remember talking what seemed like all night with her, amongst the quiet trees of those woods. I remember gazing back toward the campsite, where the fire slowly danced away it’s strength until it was just flickering embers, and how it reminded me of the my slowly growing disinterest in the world I knew before meeting this girl.

“Forrest, I’ve never met a boy like you. I’ve never met someone so… real.” Abby spoke in a hushed tone, like we were kids hiding in a pillow fort, pretending we were the only two people left on Earth.

I was snapped out of my reminiscing when a pillow whopped me right in the face.

“Forrest! Are you having a seizure or something?” Charlie jokingly yelled at me,

I looked at him with an expression that told him that I was annoyed. I looked down at the guitar in my hands, and let my fingers start quietly dancing on it’s strings again, a quiet sound like little songbirds in the morning air.

“So, she’s leaving today?” Charlie asked me, trying to sound a little more sincere than usual.

I let a chord ring out and hang into the room,

“Mhm...” Was all I replied, trying not to sound completely pathetic.

Charlie wasn’t one much for romance, or things like that. He was certainly a part of the “Hook-up” generation that people my age were so diligently pioneering.

“Dude, you guys met a week ago and hooked up, now you’re sighing and moaning like she’s your freakin soul mate!”

I threw the pillow back at Charlie,

“It wasn’t like that…”, I couldn’t help but sound fragile when I spoke, my words hanging like icicles that someone like Charlie could run by and break off.

“Whatever, man!” Charlie groaned as he threw up his hands and got up to leave our living room.

“I’ll see you at practice, right?” He asked before stepping out of the front door.

“Yeah, I’ll see you then…” was all I said. Charlie just shook his head while I returned to being lost in mine again. I expected him to say something more, but he just responded with a thud as the door closed behind him.

I let another chord sing into the room. I love this sort of silence, my warm little apartment, cradling my guitar as it fills the room with it’s sound. Listening to the strings decay into the air, like the sound of a sunset. Sometimes I’ll just sit here like this, with my head resting against this guitar, listening to my heartbeat reverberate in it’s chamber.

Suddenly an image of Abby flashes in my mind again, we’re lying in the sweet grass underneath the wood’s canopy. She sits up and kisses me, her silhouette etched against the twilight. I’m a little startled at first, but soon melt into her presence.  

I must be cursed, cursed to know that I’ve met someone like her, a kindred spirit, and to know that only a week later she’s leaving.

Is it possible to enjoy something as much as you did the first time you felt it’s pleasure? Or are we marching toward inevitable disappointment?

I sometimes worry that this is the reason why so many adults do terrible things, like hungry ghosts trying to fill the void.

Children are so much better than adults, everything is new and wonderful. Everything is an adventure, something to be experienced and conquered. I’m only in my young twenties and already I wish that I enjoyed anything half as much as a child enjoys everything.

I like to hope that this is why people chase after love, praying that everyday's an adventure when you find the right companion. After all, humans are social creatures, too stubborn to enjoy life’s wonders on their own.

Why is it that I have to fall into an existential crisis when all I want to do is spend my afternoon trying to write a new song? Recently I’ve learned that bands write some material, play to other humans, then write more music. A shocking discovery, for an introvert.

In highschool I picked up the guitar, I figured with all my teenage angst, surely I’d be the next Kurt Cobain. It seemed so obvious then. Now-a-days, I’m not even sure if I like my friends anymore… It’s like I’m living on this razor edge all the time, swaying side to side. Reckless abandon, or hopeless monotony… Does fate decide these things, or do I? Or is it fate just an illusion that bitter people make up to blame for their regrets?

I strum another guitar chord into the room and let it hang there. The sound fills the room with a certain blueish hue, like my mind wandering into these endless thoughts. Why couldn’t racing thoughts be an Olympic sport? I’d be a gold medalist for sure, USA, USA!

I shake my head and put the guitar down, I need to get out of my room. I grab my keys and helmet and quickly dash downstairs toward the little bike rack area of my apartment complex.

This is a college town, and I’m a guy in an indie band, so naturally I have a vespa instead of a car.

I’m so totally awesome, with my tousled hair, nonchalance, and scooter.

I chuckle at that thought as I strap my helmet to my head. I hopped on my vespa. I like it’s retro look; like something out of a Woody Allen movie, wisping lovers through interesting European cities. I have this weird  love for the sound my keychain makes as it rattles against the plastic interior of the moped when I’m driving. It’s like a soft, plasticky clunking. It sort of reminds me of the sounds I made as a kid, playing drums on my Mom's tupperware with wooden spoons.

As I drove out of my shady apartment complex, I couldn’t help but admire the strands of light that filtered through the trees surrounding the parking lot. Those little strands of light you can somehow see as though you could reach out and touch them, they always seemed so gorgeous, and out of place.

I can’t help but feel guilty about wasting gas like this, driving around just to clear my head. Zoning out, watching this film of the world flying at me, then uneventfully passing by. Do we move through the world, or does the world move around us? Which of these things are fixed, do we get to have a say in the fixed points in our life?

I’ve been thinking a lot about things like this since meeting Abby. It’s an incredibly odd thing to meet a person who’s in transition; as though driving by a beautiful landmark, too quickly to grow familiar with it’s intimate details, telling yourself, “Someday, I’m gonna go back and check that place out”. Or is it like wanting to move somewhere you’ve never been? Like, “Someday I’d like to move to Portland.”, and someone will ask “Have you ever been there?”, you haven’t been, but you it has an allure to you all the same that you can’t explain. Is that the difference between wanting to go somewhere and wanting to end up somewhere?

The city I live in is an attractive little college town in the foothills of Colorado, with cool wind in the summer that seems to come down from the mountains and frisk through your clothes.

The scenery begins to shift as I near the edge of town, the further away from the mountains you go, you start going towards farmland and plains.

Here there is a beauty often skipped in the mountainous travel brochures for Colorado, the expansive openness that follows after the slopes, like a pastoral ocean stretching out into it’s own fielded horizon.

Above I hear the whir of an airplane, streaming across the sky, purple hues swashing into golden embers as the Sun begins to trade shifts with the moon. I wonder where Abby is, and if she’s thinking about me. I wonder if we can be connected by virtue of that alone, to have another in our thoughts?

What is that space between us? The unknowable circumstances that, in the right order, bring us together again? What is the name for that small space between us? or the lengths that sprawl when our lives grow distant? Is it a space that you can visit?

Do we live there when we remember those little details without names that we have come to know like past lovers? Infinite sensations that complete experiences, experiences that exist because of their sensations. The pendulum swings the other way, can I feel it? Can I feel you recalling me? Even when I’m near you, I long for you. Even when we make love, I want to be closer. We are burdened by these bodies that decay so much quicker than our experiences. I want to live in that space, that blurry canvas where our timelines are painted. I want to be named after movements and sounds that truly create the name of this experiment.  

I’ve stopped riding, I’m standing on the side of some country road, just watching the sky and listening to the window rustling through the fieldings surrounding me.

Little bird, I followed you, into the hollow Where the Trees, so proud and charming stood dressed, for splendid rest.

Crimson and gold, last remnants of summers bellow And when I enter, lo and behold They’re ready for slumber

In decay I see a beauty, that comes from wisened years Little bird, sing them a requiem sing them to sleep, sing to me...

Crimson and gold, last remnants of summers bellow When I enter, lo and behold They’re ready for slumber

Proudly we stand, enraptured by the coming winter The unknown,  Beckons again For uncertain slumber

Sleep now

Lying there, the storied oaks above rushed a song into my bones. It’s tangled words, oft-mistaken for rustling leaves Granted breath, for which the coming year heaves.

When the sun falls, and the leaves descend to never rise again. Will I have courage? Enough to know that everything must follow them?

When did you crawl back into your heart? Sometimes you have to learn to let go of those comforts and believe in something other than inevitable pain. Sometimes you have to leave your tears in place to allow the world to shimmer and swirl. The child in you will survive, the endless fascination with the world and the ephemeral moments of perfect beauty.

When did you forget about love? About hope, and loss, and art? Remember your first kiss? Hot, nervous, messy, and most of all: short lived. Do you remember the lingering tingle that told you that your humanity is never going to be in question? How your mind will be filled with ridiculous wonder so that you may rearrange it's color spectrum to create unfiltered beauty?

I love you foremost, mix whatever paints suit you, paint with your hands.

Your hands are trembling, such small hands holding hope up to you. How you glance over that innocence, how you are blind to it's splendor.

I watch the others tear fruit from foreign trees and neglect the seeds they've been given. They're climbing ever higher into branches and limbs of giants to take sweet nectarines and golden crisp apples, not realizing they're racing towards the end, burning up in the sun.

I watch my sapling spring and root and flourish. How it will create sweetness, how melodies will pour from it's veins like rivers into the sea. It will offer it's seed, it's fruit, it's shade.

I love you, foremost, sit in the shade and listen to my lousy musings.

They all have the same haircut, goodness is it a kingdom of mirrors? My breathing is shallow as I try to pass through their ranks without being seen. I couldn't care about thrones, and heirs, and what the vibrations bring to mind. I'm only trying to get through, I want to pass by, I want to make my way. Carve a road, plant my seed, my own volition chaotically coming into view like a self proclaimed God, giving his mantle to the young at heart, and innocent of soul.

The early winter sundown, bereft of apologies Tricks the mind into nocturnal ponderings My tangled sweater langueur, with warmth’s slow decline. Has exposed a single stranded yarn, that now ensnares my mind.

Everything I know of, yes the many things I’ve seen Have a rotten habit, of coming loose upon their seams. And it’s then I caught a memory, from where I am unsure Of the thread that hung between us, and how it never could endure.

Was it our calloused words? That came so naturally. Or our roaring fire, where passion was our entirety? Every conversation, carried bitter sentiments I wanted to believe that was just our temperaments.

Was it the crashing and careening of our personal beliefs? Was it moments of true honesty, that always seemed to brief… I should have seen those cutting words, tearing through the weave unraveling the chord that first brought you here to me.

You want to believe in love. It was force fed into your blood from before you can remember. It was in our stories, in our songs, we hurled our voices into the sky, pronouncing that WE, the youth, knew better. 

I wanted to believe that I at least loved you. That maybe I had been able to read one sentence in the book of life. We’re given such a short and meager existence, like a curse, from somewhere.

How I am obsessed with beauty.

Not in shallow, uninteresting ways like Photoshop files and golden trinkets. I’m interested in beauty in matters of minutes, like wonderful lines written into poetry. Poetry, which is distilled literature. I’m so preoccupied with turning tiny moments of my life into poetry that I become completely blind to the whole story.

Perhaps there is no story, perhaps there is no cause for anything. Whenever someone tells me about the “butterfly effect” I can’t help but imagine being pinned to a board and hung in someones life, to be viewed and enjoyed.

Is that paranoia? I don’t think I’m crazy, but everyday we change our minds about something. Is it simply that we’re fickle? Or our identities aren’t real enough to hold true beliefs.

“Truth” a laughable concept. There is no real truth. Only opinions, only perceptions. 

is that why I couldn’t love you? Or you couldn’t love me? True love is nothing but a desire, a wish for our feelings to be validated.

No expectations, great expectations. I scream your name in parts of my body I wouldn’t ever show anyone.

All I wanted was to love you. Perhaps I foolishly thought you were the first chapter in my “real” life. My real life is already here, it’s something that happens to you.