Songs I’ve Been Obsessed With/Evoke Memories 5
“How Can You Refuse Him Now” - Holly Williams
Yet another night my body refuses to surrender to sleep.
I went to see The Passion of The Christ, that would be a surreal thing to say without those capitalizations for cinema title, with my friend, moreso leader of bible study, Kyle, and there was a guy in the back seat, friend of mine, Daniel Diamond. Went Fall semester my freshman year of high school, based on when IMDB says film was released. I sat on my hands and flinched through it while strangers and Kyle and Daniel wept in the darkness. I was ashamed, feared an alien of myself for not being moved to tears. It was hard to breathe around their sobs. The fashion the darkness and light worked, as well twisted my intestines; were the screen full of light I could see better where the sobs were coming from. It popped and flashed as any and every other movie, but I am watching a dramatic representation of a man who people call upon for eternity, for relief, love to hate…his being an existence questioned, the importance heightened much as undermined. I am found unaffected in comparison to those around me, not responding emotionally in a way that seems should be, towards a screen projecting visual representations of this particular life. I feel I do not feel.
Kyle had taken us in his green SUV. We sat silent as he drove us home, their breathing sighs more noticably audible than usual. At that age, often I would become excruciatingly uncomfortable when I heard no music around. Kyle went on crying a little longer, he asked what I thought, I said I didn’t cry. He told me that was alright. I didn’t believe him. Something was wrong with me, I told myself; I don’t love normal, don’t love right, I’ve got it off. Daniel asked me how could I not cry.
My parents saw it eventually. Maybe not my father. I think I remember my mother watching it, going through Kleenex. For a long time it was in the house wrapped in its original plastic here, there, moving about unopened, on its own.
Somehow my father gets a hold of this album of songs inspired by or reinterpreted in regards to the film. He doesn’t like it so he gives it to me. I just liked having albums. I listen to it, it’s not my style either, honestly I am surprised my father did not like it. The one exception was this song.
The sun was bright, taking a formidable portion of the sky up type of bright. I see myself in the backyard, grass green and high. First I’m squinting, searching for clouds, hopefully dark ones because I am longing after a counter-balance to my non-feeling. It is that I am gray and could like stale bread break so many times, a never determinable number of portions. I want to face the sun, let it bring me some blindness, give into cause. I am holding my right hand up, paying hard attention to the sun’s light granting my fingers added definition, opening them and closing them like fish gills. I take ganders at the source of light when observing the silhouette the sunlight gloves my fingers with goes out of focus. I am flipping my hand over a couple times, I realize I can see dust in the air, I stop looking up, start looking around. The air carries substance, for a moment brokenness, I realize this sensation is my retinas creating stars that are inside my eye while projecting themselves onto what I see- I haven’t breathed for long enough a time that I need to breathe in deep to make up for the holdup I wasn’t paying attention to. I inhale through my nostrils when my father steps out and drops our little family dog on the grass. He encourages me to chase him and I do.
Panting after a sip of water, standing over the kitchen sink, I walk to my bed. I put this song on repeat, get under my new big blue comforter; an unnecessary warmth because it is not cold, yet I need to get under something that can engulf me so I cocoon, sweating.
Right before I fall completely I think of an elementary school night mother was driving my sister and I home after a work meeting of hers. The sun gone, there was a harvest moon. We were going over a bridge. My sister was asleep in the back seat. I’d only met my mom’s grandmother once, but I was crying in hysterics, repeatedly wiping my face with my hands, then my hands with my pants, asking mother Why and But where did she go, rolling down the window to get some air. Mother had told me, Mamaw has died, the moon is red tonight because God is crying blood.
