Finn L.

PART I: The Companion 

It’s nighttime and the image is still imprinted on my mind as I’m walking down this sloped street alongside a row of lanterns. It has clung on since dusk, when the sun set with a tint of caramel, and has become more intense since then. 
               I’ve become aware of a rhythm now in the course of this nascent night, treading on projections of light that are cast at equal distance from one another on the pavement. I’m walking down this street with a mind that is mired in the interpretation of an image that won’t come off, no matter how hard I wipe at it—it’s rather obstinate in this regard—and thinking back to that unfettered existence, void of morphemes, up there somewhere. 
               I am corroborated by a parallel tap-tap-tapping of feet. 

Before I know it, I’m sharing my path with a garden gnome. He has snuck up on me during the consideration of the image, which coincidentally vanished in the meantime, seemingly blotted out by the gnome, and refuses recollection now as I strain my mind to fetch it again. We’re walking down this sloped street as jet-black limousines pass us by. 
               The garden gnome inquires where I might be going. 
               I fend off the urge to tell him that I’m trying to get to a party that’s supposed to happen in the house at the end of the street. The garden gnome retorts with an air of insouciance and draws, in a foreboding gesture, an imaginary arch with his finger. Upon coming down on the other end with his hand, he lets his finger circle to indicate the treasure. 
               Common courtesy around these parts. 

There is a quick interlude as the gnome wrestles with a dry cough. How do you think you will fare, he asks me. What chances do you think you’ve got? There are numerous things that can go wrong, most certainly will go wrong, all in the blink of an eye. The gnome elaborates on that point... 

Saint George affirms his Christian faith. 
Saint George is tied to a cross. 
Saint George is made to drink poison. 
Saint George is tortured on a table. 
Saint George is put in prison. 
Saint George is suspended between two wheels. 
Saint George is sawn in half while tied between two posts. 
Saint George is placed in a cauldron full of boiling lead. 
Saint George prays. 
Saint George is dragged naked through the streets. 
Saint George is beheaded. 
Saint George fails to make it to the party in time. 

...all I’m saying is, he concludes, the night is young. 


PART II: The Lanterns 

Two silhouettes move across the stage, off to some indiscernible location, passing by lantern after lantern, and haunting the streets with a trickle of forced conversation. Prior to my introduction to the garden gnome, I had always figured myself a bona fide exterminator of pests, scaled or otherwise, but that has, in light of the martyrdoms, lost all credibility as an indicator of success, and so I find myself reevaluating the set of tools that I’ve been given. 

The distance between the lanterns is five strides, which I complete in about five seconds, for a speed of about one stride per second. Only on closer inspection do I see the various limitations that are imposed on each case of light. The post has a couple of cleaves to show for it. Some of the finials, which should resemble golden quills—though it’s hard to tell from below—appear dented. 
Do you ever think we are not really passing by the lanterns as much as we are moving through the intervals in between them? 

The gnome speaks out against the basic constituents of modern logic, goes against the grain, so to speak. It’s about time the stars show their petite, little faces. It’s been three strides, and I haven’t provided an answer. Maybe that’s just me being eager to measure the world, but it does tend to make you wonder what it’s like in that snowcapped world. The one that looks down upon us. 
I mean, how do they fare up there? 

Oh, I don’t have the heart to tell him, and so we waddle onward in that begrudging sort of way, but he keeps on grasping at straws, and I pretend to be stuck in oblivion since it suits me so well. Look how the light projects our shadows, how they are elongated and shortened and elongated again. 
Do you think the shadow changes as we do on the journey, or is it more like skin that we shed along the way and forget about? 

How do you suppose I can fathom the gnome when I can’t even fathom the words that keep pouring out of his mouth? He’s directing the way to some place I could never get to, a place beyond my reach, where the subjects of his monologue are 
drawn in unfathomable detail. I’m rather used to long leaps across powdered crags. This tangent has collected me just in time. He keeps on spouting. How many versions of us do you think each pair of lanterns contains? 
Imagine each grade of shadow length worth measuring suspended in time and catalogued for unborn posterity. Could you arrange them in order from first to last lantern, recall each state you’ve experienced, gone through and triumphed over, and could you, if your life depended on it—your life being the accumulation of those states of being, and remembrance being the curation of those amassed states as artifacts—could you outline each shadow that has been cast, even if it’s just for you? 
Then again, what if each life came to an end upon passing by a lantern? 

Since I have been more involved with the puddles of light directly underneath the lanterns, the gnome’s obsession with our shadows kind of stumped me. 
Though it irks me to admit, he’s made me aware of a strange phenomenon at play, namely the monotony of the cycles that seem to contain us. Not only that, but the fragmentation that we undergo as the cases of light shine at us in equal measure and become the sole marker for our passage through space and time. I’ve told you; there’s no other evidence for movement. 
If it wasn’t for the lanterns, we’d be stuck in time! 

The shadow I am casting doesn’t move smoothly across the pavement but rather realigns with my position in conspicuous jumps. Each shadow belongs to a different version of me; each holds a separate fate because each has the choice of moving anywhere but forward after all. Maybe each version but me stops dead in its tracks. 
               Because of the promise of a party supposed to happen at the house at the end of the street, I, for one, move forward. Well, are we meant to stomach each cycle, counting out the strides entirely, until we are scooped up by the house that will arrive on our doorstep, and not the other way around, even though there hasn’t been a formal invitation to begin with? I wouldn’t bet on it, let alone stake my life on it. I really hope that’s not what we’ve been doing. 
You can bet your bottom dollar we are! 

Though I’m a stranger, the suggestion that the house of all things should deign to come pick us up, relieve us of the damnation that we experience on this street seems unlikely. What did you think was going to happen, that you would arrive on the doorstep in one piece? It always seems that way, doesn’t it? 
What they don’t show you are the cracks that remain. 

The passage through the intervals, formerly understood as a gradual means to get to the house, now rather resembles a game of chance. Should we have been 
praying instead of walking? The notion of the party is in danger of losing its purport. For once, I would like to be an actant who, on its own accord, pushes forth in space and time, resisting all modes of identification save the direction of my course. 
               I look back toward the mountain and see that it’s a long way back. Too late to retreat. I’ve wandered too far into this town of no particularity. 
               I’m at a loss for words. Though my mind is abuzz. 
               With my attention again on the house, now so close to us that I can almost hear the music, it is only after being bereaved of his parallel clocking of feet for a good five strides, as I’m taken aback by the absence of another lantern, that I turn around in search of my friend and spot the gnome, standing there five shadows ago, motionless beneath the final lantern of the row. The sloped street has led us down onto even ground. Hard to believe. 
               There’s no need to call out to him. He steps out from under the light quickly—much faster than I expect from the look on his face—and walks over to me. I want to say there’s no shame in lingering, but he’s already past me by then. 
               Twelve lanterns lie behind us now. 


PART III: The House 

The gnome has bid me adieu and stands upright in the garden, illuminated by the petals of surrounding moonvine. Our eyes would only meet for a split second afterward, during which I finally confided in him the origins of my journey. He blinked and wouldn’t look at me after that. 
Now I’m standing here, all by myself again, on the veranda of the house. Before me is the door that holds the festivities of a lifetime. One more, that’s it. I’ve been told not to mind the closed curtains. The party is happening. 
               I’m determined to get inside this house. 
               There’s an ominous cloud that looms overhead the eaves and lets the house fade into the night, which has gotten pitch-black in the meantime. Who lives in this crooked, old house here at the end of the street, the one that has been foretold to be the setting of the party? Into whose hands has it fallen since I spent my time evading sight, doing what comes naturally, I should say. 

That’s the image. 

It has returned now, on the doorstep of the house of all places! How unfortunate. 
               Nevertheless, there it is, rocked in the soothing hold of remembrance, beyond the snowcaps and the precipitous passages, the bearer of my awareness in times before light ever became a factor, the image of a wild thing. 
Oh, I begin to wipe at it immediately, falling under the exact same spell as before, because, and I’m telling myself this with a stoicism that couldn’t be paralleled, not even by some ceaselessly prying garden gnome, all that matters right now is that I enter this house before the party is over and make my name known. 
               I’m determined now, more than I have ever been, in what can only be described as my darkest hour. You would scoff at that, of course, you would, being a ranger of such deadly terrain, but you are born for no other reason than that. Now, as the image consolidates into a dream, the even ground is more of a spiderweb than anything else, and the house sits there ready to spin me up. I’ve never been inside. I hear it’s beautiful, though. 
               While I’m knocking against the door, I concentrate on your presence somewhere up there, beyond my reach or anyone’s, for that matter. You’ve been toiling away for God knows how long, searching for sustenance and shelter, things that are abundant down here in the world of sore knuckles, yet scarce in yours. Shelter everywhere but behind this door, but that’s beside the point, I murmur in between gasps, still hammering. 
               Intricate patterns keep following me. I must get inside, just to get a look, and then be taken back into the night. So, lead the way, as they say, and twirl me until the facades cease to flicker. Come down for once and lend me a hand. Since it’s you who sent me here. In all fairness. Take the plunge. You can’t. Or you won’t. You are the waltz. I’ve come down to put in a good word. If they don’t let me in. The arrow is broken. You remind me. 
               People have been standing in front of this door since the Neolithic, when the first planned parties were being held. Some have been well prepared for the occasion, and some have been more like me. Behind me, the garden has grown into a rainforest. I don’t see the gnome. He must have gone back to fetch another traveller. It’s absurd to me that he should take this street for a stroll and I am the intrepid traveller after all. 

The lines start to shiver around the house. 

There it comes, a clang, as envy strikes against the dome, and the earth loses its likeness to a peaceful place. It has become unreliable, even to you with your tight afflictions. Sadness pours into me. Someone stir the batter before my mind’s all ossified and, for crying out loud, lend me a hand before I go under. 

(In times when words are hollow and stiff, let me falter on the edge. When I’m unable to bring about the term that pricks me, straight and unforgivingly, at the tip of my tongue. When it’s just pent-up anger, nothing more, that curdles in the early morning sun. It’s these moments that lead the traveller to admire you.) 
Down in the pit, as I’m about to turn my back on the house and the party, with my head hung in resignation, something catches my eye. 
               There’s a cat flap. 
               If there was only a cracked window or something, I’d be through that in no time! Oh, even if I’d be mortified by the effort. Who cares at this point? The desire is branded on me. It has overshadowed my name, just as the cat flap blots out the image once again, and before long, I feel deepening rills in my skin and hold onto myself for fear of fragmentation. Due to the lack of light, time has come to a standstill, and I’m not breaking apart into durational segments but material ones. 
               Like a wire that cuts through a lump of dough. 

There’s just one opening as far as I can tell. 
Duck and crawl through the cat flap. 
What a strange move. 
I couldn’t. 
It’s just not the thing to do. 
Though it tempts me. 
How about just a peek? 
That is torture, though. 
The arrowhead. 
I’ve come a long way. 

On a different street, a version of someone utters a word with a meaning, but the world drowns it out.