So Gelfling, derived from “Ghel-lflainngk” roughly translates to “those who live without knowledge of the future.” (Grant Volker).
That was posted under an article from a year ago about a boy I called Gelfling, Ouf and Mind Fuck.
I always felt like ‘ouf’ was an onomatopoeia for the sound of getting punched in the gut.
He said ouf like it was a good thing. To him it meant guttural/literal sex noises.
He did knock the wind out of me, both coming and going.
That is fucked up.
Seriously.
Both the Muppet and the boy have no knowledge of the future, by choice.
And I cannot shake the past, not by choice.
He did make a choice, they both did. To wander out of the safety of their cave dwellings out into the world for some greater purpose that has yet to be revealed.
So be it.
Oh Gelfling, my Gelflng.
He cannot possibly be my Gelfling.
If he was he would be here. With me, right now. Or at least message on occasion.
Giant messaged me recently and said “My dearest Sarah”. I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn’t wrong. Part of me still lives in his head, his heart and his bed. I wouldn’t know how to take that back if I wanted to. And I don’t. There are threads that bind and alternate timelines that I somehow remember even though they didn’t happen here.
The only way I run is at something, not away.
Wait.
That isn’t exactly it. No straight lines, I spiral out and back in again.
That thing we had for the most fleeting of moments that defied logic and words and could only be described as a magical convergence of entangled particles.
Both of them.
“You tie my tongue. You make my fingers into these clumsy things on the keyboard, like trying to articulate the aurora borealis in a foreign language and the only word I know is ‘yes’.” (I wrote that)
Tangled in timelines that went awry and I still can’t figure out why.
I saw this and things started to make more sense. Think I might get this tattooed on me. My best girl calls me a vampire, she is wrong. I just see time moving in spirals instead of in a straight line and I spiral with it.
At this very moment, as I am writing this there is the clear and present danger that I may run into Gelfling tomorrow.
I kinda want to. Cosmic finger crossing for a cosmic path crossing.
(^that was Thursday)
I saw him.
Truth be told I was terrified. The butterflies in my stomach were worked into a frenzy and their wings felt like sharp cutting things, leaving me slightly shredded inside.
I knew he would be where I was going, because I asked. I needed and heeded the warning. I thought he had wandered off to Tibet, or maybe Sedona, called home by the ley lines and returned to the cave of mystics that he came from.
I was warned that he got exponentially hotter in the last year.
Good god damn. Somethings cannot be prepared for even when you think you know what is coming.
He came to mind every time the sky went red or there were fireworks, literal and sometimes proverbial. I dream about him often, sometimes when I’m awake.
I have the ability to compartmentalize almost everything and everyone.
He never fit into a box, kept slipping out.
Everyone else becomes, after enough time, a page or three in a scrapbook.
Mental photographs, scraps of paper, bits of music and candy wrappers pressed between pages in pretty little vignettes of the good stuff.
When triggered my mind flips to their page I sigh and smile because I have cut out the bad bits, the part where they left. Instead my mind sees a slideshow of their more redeeming moments.
I read an article about our brains having a delete button and I recoiled a bit.
I have yet to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am scared of Jedi mind tricks, the red flashy thing and the glamouring by vampires in True Blood. When Lena tried to save Ethan by wiping herself from his memory my heart hurt and when he remembered anyways it soared.
I am more afraid of forgetting than being forgotten.
I suffered severe memory loss due to a concussion/brain injury from a car wreck that stole the month of December 2008. I also misplaced 35% of my vocabulary which came back with great effort, a giant red dictionary and about a thousand games of scrabble. The word ‘enough’ was the last to return. Still looks funny to me and cause a slight skip in my synapses. Gone also was my ability to make new memories for approximately 90 days (I can’t exactly remember). That was a blessing I believe my temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex were in cahoots, making it so I don’t have to recall that level of suffering.
You see dear readers, my life was shit before the car wreck. Being immobilized with physical pain matching my mental anguish just made it more vivid, or so I can only imagine and blissfully not recall.
I hold onto the memories I have left and the ones I make now pretty tightly, almost compulsively.
Hoarding them like a fat kid and Halloween candy MINE MINE MINE.
You can look but you can’t touch.
I was getting tattooed by Gelfling’s best friend who said something about ‘forgetting’ (meaning what happened between he and I) which, ironically I have forgotten the exact wording of.
But ‘oh honey no’, I said, ‘not remotely, not one tiny bit, not an iota‘. Nothing is forgotten.
I saw him.
I saw him and nothing happened except a few flashed smiles and a little banter. But that want that I had tried to quash or tame came rushing back.
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. (Zen koan)
