Hero

Don't wait.

Reply to Red (1943), Yves Tanguy

The trees are still today, still under still white clouds, and the cicadas have returned. And when they rub their wings together in a swampy chorus, I see that I’ve been guided by discernment and control, withdrawing and reconnoitering, waiting for reinforcements, waiting for clarity, waiting for divine intervention.

But this savage, perfect world waits for no one. Our organs are changing costumes in the dark theater of our bodies, slipping into something outrageous and deadly, trying on a new role that’s sure to get someone’s attention, the performance of a lifetime, go see it before it’s gone. With luck, someone catches a rehearsal and understands exactly what they’ve got planned.

We’re lucky for now. But there’s no time for retrenchment, no time for hesitation, no time to get everything right. When the cicadas crawl out of the soil, they don’t fuck around. Their wings are beating furiously together within four days. Would you hesitate if you spent 17 years as a wingless nymph, sightless, in the dark, underground?

I’ve been underground for too long now, nibbling on whatever I can find, making no sound at all. I’ve been waiting for clearance, waiting for transcendence, waiting to feel less afraid, waiting to become something unrecognizable, waiting to feel the sublime light of the gods on my face again.

Does it seem to you like the gods aren’t coming this time? The trees are still today like they’ve never been before, waiting for more rain, waiting for a heart-stopping storm, a vivid and violent performance to send their limbs flying through the air. The trees are praying that something big is coming soon, a disturbance in the upper atmosphere, a turbulent reimagining of time and space that could temporarily rearrange all priorities within a few square miles. The trees are praying that they’ll soon be terrorized, demeaned, and drenched: ripped bark, lost limbs, fallen nests. It will be worth it, they say, it will be glorious.

And I feel the same way. I’ve played it safe for long enough. I’ve drawn lines and boundaries that meant nothing at all. To everyone I cursed: I forgive you now. To everyone I dismissed: I know you’re still trying hard to become what you really are, to lose these heavy fears and blossom into a vibrant spectacle of love. I know how hard it is, how long it takes. I’m exactly the same as you.

I’m always trying to choose the hero’s journey, the valiant rise from stagnation, from fear, from this holding pattern. A few days ago I told my therapist (ugh) that maybe I can’t be the hero this time. I told my family (Jesus Christ, fuck me) that I’m not the same as I was before, I can’t overcome their disapproval, their rejection, their anger, their misconceptions of me. I can’t talk them through it. I don’t want to convince them to love me in the face of my flaws. I don’t want to hold their hands and say that we can all forgive ourselves, every morning, and accept that we will never be enough.

I just feel sad about it: We will never be enough.

“Maybe I’m not the hero at all,” I said to you yesterday. “Maybe I never was.”

But this savage, perfect world waits for no one. There are chaotic red highways of grief running through all of these forgotten towns inside the dark map of our bodies, bringing much needed supplies to the invading forces we didn’t see until it was almost too late. We don’t want to know more about them, but we don’t have a choice. There’s no time for hesitation, no time to imagine a better country for old men, no time to go back to casually insulting these rivers and fields and gentle hills, these rocky mountain passes and deep lakes that never gave us every single thing we ever asked for, like we dreamed they would some day, finally, in the distant, rapidly evaporating future. Instead we have to fall to our knees and pray to keep what we have. We have to defend this land with everything we’ve got.

I can tell you I’m not a hero and that’s true. But I can still play a hero if the role opens up. I know my lines and I know how to fight. And maybe that’s all anyone does anyway. Our feelings are traitorous even as we grab our guns. Our desires betray us even as we throw ourselves into these fox holes and hope to be spared.

Inaction is the death of romance. I can’t live with that. I won’t wait until you’re dead to tell the world how I feel about you. I won’t wait until I’m almost dead to notice that I got everything I asked for, I had it all along, it’s right here, come back to this forgotten town and feel it all with me. Let’s get on our knees and pray together, the way we did when we were very small and we couldn’t feel the mercy of the tall trees, we didn’t hear our pulses sync up with the cicadas, we didn’t realize that the battlefield was safer than the bunker. I’ve loved you since I was so little and so alone. My love for you is a violent spectacle: ripped bark, lost limbs, fallen nests. It will be worth it. Are you listening? Listen to me. It will be glorious.

***

There was room for poetry at the end of this long war novel I finished the other night. There was so much space for the author to express something sublime and transcendent, about being dragged into hell as a lonely soul and wanting so much more for your life, about waking up one day with no control over the forces that might seal your fate, about being exposed to stray fire and erased and forgotten for no good reason at all, with no victory march and no swelling strings, with no honor and no glory, with no time to reconsider before you’re wiped out of the picture. But the author had worn himself out after the first long chapters and by the end he was just tired.

“I’m no hero,” he told his editor, and that was that. “I’m tired. I’ve done enough.”

Sometimes you just run out of time. You don’t want to fight that hard anymore. You hear the call, but you ignore it. You put it out of your mind and move on.

I understand and I forgive him, but that’s not me. I’ve been pretending it’s me but it’s not. I was built for battle, made for toil and trouble, born ready to scrap my way through the chaos of war. This morning I opened the door to the screened-in porch and let the swamp into my blood, and an orchestra of cicadas flowed like a cresting wave into my ear drums, and I knew that there wasn’t any more time to hesitate. I’ll rush straight to the front line without waiting for my courage to show itself, I’ll throw my body into the fray before my optimism kicks in, I’ll speak in tongues or speak in fucking clichés if that’s what it takes, I’ll keep fighting through the despair even as my eyes fill with tears, even as I realize I’ll only be erased, even as the audience files out, disappointed, and the world moves on without me.

I can show you my heart even when it’s the same old goddamn thing over and over: slick and stupid, beating away like a stubborn frog, determined and undaunted, an ugly, adaptive beast, full of dangerous love for you in spite of everything you’ve ever said to me, in spite of everything you’ve never done, in spite of all the ways you’ve failed me, and yes you have failed me, yes you have let me down, let’s just say it out loud for a change, let’s just admit that you weren’t up for any of it, you heard the call but you ignored it. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that that’s not me. I’ll keep coming back in spite of everything you’ll never understand. A stubborn frog, my heart, a real bastard. A real hero.

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