The Dream of Perpetual Motion This dream keeps recurring in my mangled mind. It seems to spring up every full moon. Just as I am ensnared by the moon’s entrancing glow, I doze off and am transported to a foreboding blackness that evaporates as I zoom in – as if through a telescope – on a book that rests closed on a table in a house identical to the others on its street. The book has no title and yet its worn, leather covers evoke a sense of nostalgia as if I have read its story a thousand times before. I open the book at its exact center. I do not know why I do this, but I always open it to the chapter with the title of my many names, under which it reads “Sired in 1977”. As I flip through the chapter, I find subchapters: Violence, Carnality, Lament, and Choice. I soon notice that it is my life story. I relive my childhood in Violence, and how my father would beat me until I fought back, for he did not allow any mark of weakness from his son. In Carnality, I read about how I would play the part of an experienced hero, tutoring Little Igor in smutty magazines and boasting about my many girls just so I appeared as a premium person. Then I reach Lament. My story retells the momentous last days with Grandfather as if it was only yesterday. I again watch with utter confusion as Grandfather secures Augustine’s hand in his and kisses her. And then follows his death note. I absorb each stinging word but always pause before his last sentence: “I will walk without noise, and I will open the door in the darkness, and I will” (275). The words build in a crescendo, reaching, reaching, reaching towards a climax, but the last note holds on, and I am crushed by the weight of not knowing. Only Choice remains. Will my final chapter be as abrupt as Grandfather’s? Will I ever find closure? From here, my paper-thin future is infinitely heavy (89). I turn the page.
64 Pillars of Salt
