Obscure Sorrows: Bichronism

          Obscure Sorrows

          In the style of John Koenig’s “Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”

          Bichronism

          by-crone-izm:

When two futures beckon

          Usually life is easy to predict. In the morning, you know the evening. You schedule routines, events, and even some small surprises, days and months and years in advance. When the unexpected happens, you regain control and get back on track. Time’s flow wiggles a bit, but it stays within the channel that you dug so long ago.

          But sometimes a branch-point looms. You approach a split between two different futures. It’s a choice that you must make, or it’s a decision by others, or it’s a gamble that you will win or lose. You don’t know which way the coin will fall, only that it will fall; and then you will inhabit one timeline, and not the other, from then on.

          Afterwards certainty will return, but until then you don’t know who you will be. Afterwards you will be one again; but until then you are the parent of two future yous. Already you plan, twice; you regret, twice; you are grateful, twice; and for opposite reasons.

          It is agony and ecstasy to be two but one. Temporarily stuck in a gap between the worlds, you witness the light between the worlds. You float, you fly. Soon you’ll be re-born, and soon you will pre-die.

          The agony and ecstasy will end. The coin will fall, the decision will be made, you will float past the branch-point, down one stream and not the other. You will know who you are and what is to come. Even the memory of this strange exaltation will ring false.

          But until then, you are not only you.

Obscure Sorrows: Seeker-Stress

          Obscure Sorrows

          In the style of John Koenig’s “Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”

          Seeker-Stress

          see-cur-stress:

The pain of misplacement

          When a possession goes missing, it leaves behind a void more vivid than the thing itself. The hole glows with bright darkness, in photographic-negative colors. Only the normal light of the lost thing, held in hand, can quench that burning shadow.

          So you run around, in frantic search of your lost possession. You look behind things, and under them. You ransack your pockets and your room and your mind. You review in intricate detail the day’s travels; you picture what you lost, and you wonder how to do without it, if you must.

          And when you do find the thing, it was in the most obvious place, but only in retrospect. With its return, relief flushes through you, and your life makes sense again.

          But not entirely. Now you hold your possession in your hand and you see it with your eyes, yet it still shines with the black light of absence. You tell yourself that it’s yours again; but it reminds you that it was never yours, nor is anything else.

Everything that you own is on loan.

Jack the Giant-Tamer, an Underfable

          Jack the Giant-Tamer

          Once upon a time, Jack the Mighty Hunter chased his quarry into an enormous cavern. The cavern was strange and square; it stank of giant, and was cluttered with weird treasure; but brave Jack continued pursuit. He crept up to his target; he leapt; he grabbed it hard and sharp. The grey-coat squeaked in despair; he severed its spinal cord; it died. Jack ripped it open, and he feasted on its heart and liver.

Then he heard the giant approach. Jack spun around to face it. He held up five knives and he hissed, “I am Jack the Mighty Hunter! I have fifteen more blades as sharp as these, and I have needle-daggers too! I’m a survivor, I’m a bad-ass, I’m a killer! So back off!”

          The giant said, “You are beautiful.” The giant touched the wall, and by giant’s magic, flooded the room with light. “You kill greycoats.”

          “It’s mine!”

          “It’s yours.”

“I love greycoats!”

          “I hate greycoats. So stay. Live here. Kill greycoats.”

          Jack considered this offer. “What’s in it for me?”

          For answer, the giant produced, by giant’s magic, a huge shiny hollow filled with fresh water; and then another shiny hollow filled with ground meat. The giant said, “These are yours.” Then it conjured forth, before Jack’s wide-staring eyes, a bed just his size, and a sandy rest-stop. “These too are yours. So stay. Kill greycoats. Be mine.”

          Jack sampled the water and the meat. They were delicious. Jack told the giant, “I’ll think about it,” and he stalked off.

          He left the giant’s mansion the same way that he came in. Once outside, he sat down in a dandelion grove and considered his options.

          “It’s warm and dry in there. It has prey, and ground meat, and fresh water, and a soft bed, and a pit-stop… everything I need.”

          “But the place stinks of giant. I’d have to live with a giant. It’s bigger than me. And it’s magical. That giant has strange powers. What can it do? What will it do? Danger, danger!”

          “It’s up to something, I can smell it. But what? Think, Jack!”

          Jack’s eyelids drooped. It was late at day, too bright to see and too hot to hunt. He closed his eyes and he slept.

          And as he slept, he dreamed that his mother came to him. By dream-logic, she was his mother, but she was also a giant. He cuddled up close to her, and she said, “First you were Jack the Tiny. Then Jack the Bold, then Jack the Brave, then Jack the Mighty Hunter. Now I give you another name.”

          Jack awoke. The sun was setting; the working night was about to begin. Jack rose and stretched, and suddenly remembered his new name:

          Jack the Giant-Tamer.

          “I will make it mine,” he vowed; and he slipped back into the giant’s mansion.

          Moral: It’s courage that makes the hero.