The appearance of things

The girls recline languorously in the large, expensive, mahogany-colored folded futon. Air is leaking out of the speakers, track number eight playing back their favorite tune. They are giddy, but concentrating. The smoke from the hastily-rolled shorty spirals in a lazy arc toward the ceiling, blue-gray against the egg-shell white of the painted walls. The floor-length vertical blinds ripple calmly with the evening currents, chittering and clicking absent-mindedly against their brothers. The basement is permeated with the earthy smells of patchouli and pot. The crickets outside the open doors sing a round, a chorus of ululating chirrups and squeaks that drown out any other night sounds. The girls float along in their bubble of light, sound, and scent. No one else is home.

The girls are dancing with their hands. The younger sways her fingers idly in time with the clear, sweet strains of the electric guitar. The elder is consumed with watching the younger's hands, and futilely tries to emulate the same intricate pattern, earning giggles and snorts from both as a just reward... things are spiraling down into a mellower beat, and the change is confusing, but not altogether unsettling. The two girls snuggle deeper under the light, loose cotton blanket, and begin to talk.

The musical composition that had been playing back over the speakers softly, lingeringly fades away, flowing out the door and following the cracks in the dirt, down the hill to the pond and echoing its last note out beyond the ever-present floating moon. The elder sister's voice slowly slides into the heady rhythm of the forgotten song...

He explained it to me once, and I couldn't fathom, but then he explained again, and I saw it with more clarity, she says. I will do my best to explain it to you, dear sister.

He sat, leaning his muscled lats against the edge of the couch, his seat the rough, carpeted floor, his long, strong, jean-covered legs stretched out and crossed at bare ankles. One arm was flung casually out along the couch cushion, a welcoming invitation to be enfolded in the crook of his elbow. I obliged. In the other hand, resting almost sacredly on his solid thigh, was a pencil and paper laid out over a pocket-sized guitar chord dictionary. He is a talented musician, I believe I told you. His arm burnt a line perpendicular to my spine. I didn't move.

I don't believe in anything, he said. I don't believe in religion, no God, or gods. We don't just end when we die, and we existed before we were born. We always will. I have a reason. I think about things, things I don't know the answer to. I think about them often. It takes time to figure out possible answers, for I am like a bear, slow and methodical in thinking, not quick to come to conclusions. Here is my theory.

He drew three parallel lines, each about four inches long, at the top of the page. He bisected them with a little notch-mark in the middle, and added similar notch-marks to each end of each line. The first, he labeled the left side -10, and the right side, 10. The second, he labeled the left side -100, and the right side, 100. The third, he simply drew one squiggly, sideways figure eight on each end. Pointing at the first line, he began to speak.

Think of this as our immediate lifetime, spanning twenty years. We are here, our awareness is here, in the middle. We are not aware beyond this one fleeting moment. What happens when you faint? Black-out? Do you remember your brain's actions in that time? How about a coma, he says. Does anyone who has ever experienced a comatose state remember anything from that episode? No. When you wake up, your memories are arranged one after the other, with no break to show that what we measure as time has passed. It is the same with death, I believe. You die, your brain stops working, you have no conscious cognition. So, time is endless, infinite, yet this will be but a blip in your memory bank. Essentially, we might very well live "forever", to put it simply.

If you look at this time line, this one here that spans infinite time, you might be daunted. You buy into the feeling and general hysteria that we only exist for a split moment compared to earth or the world or the universe. But bring it down. We are infinite. Life is infinite. So why are we collectively so afraid...?

The girls tug at the frayed corners of the blankets. The eldest loses her train of thought, evident in the sudden, self-conscious snicker she allows to escape her muddled mind. Hey, I tried, she says. We cannot all be clear and concise. The younger sighs dreamily, rolls over, pulling the blanket along with her. A smattering of oily black soot stains the carpet, the center of the blemish a ragged collection of melted and re-hardened rough polyester fibers. A hole in the carpet. The night descends.