An impressive white wall
stands before me.
Numerous similar walls
compose the remainder
of my surroundings;
onward and outward,
to infinity,
so far as I can tell.
Upon each of these walls,
single, gargantuan frames
hang in the center of
the otherwise blank,
and inflexible,
drywall canvases.
Within the frame
on the wall before me,
a complex scene emerges;
I see my visage,
my likeness,
toward the bottom left corner
of the sprawling frame.
This image
of me
clings to a red thread,
and that thread
runs upward
through the expansive,
cacophonous
imagery.
Mine is the face
of one who is lost
and afraid,
who cannot see
through the crowd
to the performance
playing out
on a stage,
which is too far away,
whose hand so grips
the red thread
that his knuckles
are white
and cracking,
as though this thread
were the lifeline
preventing an infinite fall
into nothing,
and into everything,
and both at the same time:
a paradox of grandeur
paired with triviality;
all the nihilism
of the butterfly effect.
I step back from the wall,
the frame,
and the scene therein.
In so doing
I am able to see
a broader picture, albeit
with less detail.
I can no longer separate
my image
from that of anyone else;
innumerable people,
and all look the same from here.
My eyes follow the red thread,
the contrast of it
leaps from the scene,
demands attention,
draws the eyes,
the mind,
screams
“Look at me!”
and then whispers
“I am important.”
So I capitulate
to this urgency;
I trace the red thread
with my gaze.
It connects disparate images
of people,
characters in a chaotic,
visual narrative.
And as I study what I see,
relentless in my optic appetite,
I am forced to confront
a simple fact:
everything I see
is suffering.
I focus in
on different people,
different groups,
looking for a sense
of comfort,
of assurance that, no,
something good
does, in fact, exist.
But I am wholly
disappointed.
The red thread
leads me to a family
in fragments.
Mom and dad
clamor an attempted assent,
unsuccessfully scaling
a slimy wall in futility.
This wall separates them
from their two children,
one boy, one girl,
both of whose legs are bound
by coiling snakes
eagerly drooling
over their imminent meal.
Unafraid of being tread upon,
these snakes
do as they please
to whom they please,
and no one gets in their way,
even as they suffocate
these children deprived
of their parents;
babes devoured
are acceptable collateral
in holy conquest.
Serpents, after all,
must eat
to live.
Bystanders are plenty,
and close at hand,
but the consensus stands:
a child’s life
is just the price
of a python’s meal.
The thread continues,
guiding me along,
to a pair of brothers
standing on opposite sides
of a line in the sand,
drawn by others
who hide
far off and away,
behind the safety
of their locked doors,
in the comfort of
their finely furnished
living rooms.
Each brother
points a glimmering gun
into the other’s
frightened,
angry
face.
And men,
concealed by unearned,
privileged walls,
whose crossed fingers
and crooked tongues
whisper lies and half-truths
into the brothers’
reddened, throbbing ears
through tin cans
held up to their
respective temples,
attached to white string,
which runs along the ground
to a second pair
of tin cans
held up to the mouths
of these protected,
duplicitous puppet masters.
Each brother hears
whatever poisonous manipulations
will most effectively
contract the finger
on the trigger.
One hand clenching
the can,
one hand aiming
the gun;
bonds of kin
will be tested
soon enough.
Still red thread
leads me further onward
and I see a woman
at the bottom of a well;
fat men glower down
from their perch
at the top.
These men are dressed
in ill-fitting suits,
boisterous, pompous grins
plastered on their faces,
like masks
made of the skin
of other,
prettier people.
They throw pennies
into the cylindrical chasm,
onto the woman;
she has coin sized bruises
all over
her hunched and battered body.
No one hears her cries,
or cares if they do.
Ordinary people mill about
at the top
of the well,
coiled rope in their hands,
content to pass by
the penny flingers
and the pleas for help
without so much as
wondering if maybe
there is something
they can do.
My gaze continues
along that thin red thread.
It reveals lovers
embracing each other,
side by side
on a bed
of rusty nails.
The man on the right
gazes into the teary eyes
of his beloved
as the man on the left
clings to his dearest,
desperately,
while myriad disembodied arms
on either side
pull at them
in an effort
to tear them
asunder.
And a preacher
stands over their bed,
Holy Bible in hand,
eyes bulging
unnaturally
from his grotesque, maniacal face,
screaming,
flinging spittle,
enraged
by the sight
of true love,
of pure affection.
And behind this man of god,
a zombie mob
of decomposing,
hive-minded individuals
with eyes gouged out,
dressed in the tatters
of their former
Sunday best,
wails in similar fashion.
The lovers,
outnumbered,
can but hope
their grasp on each other
is stronger than
the self-righteous horde.
I back away yet further;
it is too much.
The tears in my eyes,
on my cheeks,
bring no comfort
or relief.
In the fuller picture
I see a pattern:
the chaos
connected
by that thin red line,
the thread
tying everything together,
and I begin to see
a human face
comprised of the
collective masses of
the details,
the individuals.
The face neither smiles
nor frowns,
but grimaces,
it is in pain
and only pain.
The face
agonizes,
so completely given
to its torment,
I cannot tell
if its structural integrity
will withstand
the insufferable contortion
of this anguish.
The mosaic skin
appears taut, strained,
as though any additional tension
would tear the face apart,
rending into fragments
of unrecognizable,
irreparable
relics of a past life
that ended,
and consisted only
of carnage.
Retreating a last time,
I see
the big picture,
the entirety
of the frame on the wall.
My tears stop.
The picture
is abstract;
nothing identifiable
remains to be seen.
From this vantage,
all the struggle,
all the misery,
all the abject despair,
is meaningless.
Even the red thread,
painted within the frame,
is no longer
independently discernable.
But atop the wall,
the wall with the big picture
at its center,
a rope
of that same red hue
stretches outward
to other walls,
and from those other walls
to still more walls
as far as the eye can see,
and further,
and each with a similar frame,
a similar picture,
at their centers.
And I spin myself
slowly around,
gazing out on all
the multitude other
big pictures,
presumably,
each with
as much layered detail
as the first,
but each
similarly indecipherable
from where I now stand,
at a distance.
How many infinite faces
exist on these walls,
within these frames;
individual
and aggregate?
And mine is but one of them.
I want to run,
to write the big picture off
as ultimately unimportant,
as the temporal microcosm
it certainly is.
And yet,
I cannot.
I return,
I approach
the big picture once again.
I see the face
of interminable misery
and, moving past,
I see the tortured and beset
souls I saw before.
It pains me,
but I move past them as well,
and focus, instead,
on my own image,
and that which
can be found
in its immediate vicinity.
And I notice,
for the first time:
the red thread
is nonlinear.
It leads nowhere,
not specifically.
If it has a beginning,
such genesis
is intractably, infinitely,
lost to definitive discovery.
And yet, red thread connects me
to everything,
and everything to me,
and by reaching only one,
I reach all others.
My white knuckles
change hue,
the warming pigmentation
now pink;
my confused visage
softens into compassionate
resolve
and my likeness moves,
as a film,
as an image
on a silver screen,
animated,
and alive.
My image releases the thread,
but that thread
does not reciprocate release;
I am bound to it,
whether I like it
or not.
My image turns,
now facing his neighbor.
She is crying,
lying on the ground,
scraped and bruised
and bleeding.
Her clothes are torn
and ragged.
She has been
abandoned;
though the red thread
yet connects her
to the rest of us,
she is
alone.
I kneel beside her;
she ignores me.
I put a hand gently
on her shoulder,
but recoil as she does.
I cry with her.
I only want to help,
but help, to her,
is dangerously close
to the harm
she experienced
before she was left here.
I sit with her, waiting,
saying nothing.
Eventually,
she looks my way
and we each
gaze into the other’s
misty, wounded eyes.
She sits up,
offers a subtle smile,
wipes the tears
from her eyes,
though evidence
of her sorrow
cannot be fully removed.
I help bandage her wounds,
offer my untorn shirt.
Her smile,
uncertain though it is,
widens.
The woman stands
and turns to her neighbor:
a young girl,
bullied
by other boys and girls
with gaping,
vacuous
mouths,
yelling nothing
but baseless, vicious insults,
antagonistic words
that would poison
even the hardest of jaded adults.
The woman steps in.
She knows how it is
to be browbeaten,
harassed and maligned.
She puts a stop
to the lemming herd
of mean-spirited children,
hugs the girl,
and tells her,
“Everything will be okay.”
And the young girl
finds her resolve,
sets her jaw
and plants her feet,
strong against her tormenters;
the gang of children,
brave as a collective,
cowards as individuals,
unused to confrontation,
turn and flee.
The young girl beams,
grinning up
toward the woman
who helped her find
her courage.
The girl
approaches her neighbors:
an elderly couple,
lonely
and discarded
by all of us,
all save this little girl.
She sits with them,
on the floor in front
of their rocking chairs.
She listens to their stories
for hours on end,
and she laughs to hear their joy,
and cries to hear their suffering,
the love they have found,
the loss they have experienced.
And they smile,
they are heard.
The girl continues,
taking with her
the kindness of the woman,
the stories of her elders,
and her own
memory of mistreatment,
and she grows
into her future,
the red thread
connecting her
to everyone;
it sets in motion
ripples
throughout time and space
and countless lives
are changed,
are saved.
From further back,
I look and find that
the collective face
of humanity
smiles;
it is a pained smile,
underwritten by the past,
present,
and likely the future,
the suffering
of its constituent parts.
And still
our indivisible,
communal,
indomitable,
and weary collective face
smiles
of genuine hope.
I continue
my final withdrawal
far enough
that the big picture
is once again
devoid of specificity;
our joy and pain
are ultimately
meaningless,
and fleeting,
a blip in the cosmos,
an infinitesimal spec
on the lens
of the universe.
And we are beautiful.
And we are together.
And we are suffering.
And we are panicked.
And we are hopeful.
And despondent.
And powerful.
And helpless.
But we are,
all of us,
human,
them
you
and
I.