Memory and False Luminaries

    I was living a bifurcated existence, like most everyone in those debilitating, degenerate days, divided myself from the world, with one foot on the upward path and one foot on the pitch, on the city streets at night, walking in the flickering, projected light of digital advert displays. It was best to avoid looking at those lights. They are false luminaries. And to beware of the shifting shadows as well. They are whispering spirits.

    All the moist elements of murder were there: a woman with stolen money and a hole torn in her thin white blouse, her lover starting fires in the stairwell, her ex-husband, and a gun. It is commonplace, but untrue to say that there was no motive for the crime; some things just resist explanation. Some wounds never heal.

    The words blurred like an everflowing river.

    I was dreaming of a place with no memory and had no memory of my dreams, of a life of authentic choices made by the principles of determination.

    Meanwhile he was screaming outside their apartment, trying to get in, screaming from the stop and go streets. It might have been two or three weeks. Maybe six months to a year. It’s hard to remember now after so long. And the currents of time are unstable.

    He saw her kissing in the park. He saw the fire. He saw her walking hand in hand down the sidewalk. He saw the river. He saw her in a parked car with a stranger.

    I remember hearing about it – though I was very young at the time. I remember seeing the bloody photos. Why did my parents allow that? I didn’t understand it then and only later, much later, realized what had happened.

    He had unresolved issues, problems of aggression behind a cherub’s face, burning pitch behind a Boy’s Life smile. No one believed it. No one believed him. Even when he confessed to the fires.

    I remember the images on television: a woman, face down on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, a message scrawled beside her. “We are deeply distressed by the brutality of this age.” Was that irony or confession? But I do not remember the midnight gunshots just before the hour. I don’t remember hearing them. As I said, I was very young then. Only a boy, but I read about the blood and the glass. And how he was screaming outside the apartment, trying to get in to see her.