Deus ex machina

In those horrible (or is it horribly) brown eyes, I can see the past, the present, and the future. The past we didn't share, but are beginning to spin out like a spool of cotton candy at the fair. Wrapping our pasts around each other, trying to explain the things that make us the people we are today, and trying to figure out if those two people will ever have a mutual past. Your past, that does not contain any large R romantics like me, and my past that is littered with the graves of far, far too many failed attempts at expressing that Romanticism fluently. The past that is somehow managing to haunt us, even though we haven't fully explored it yet. The map of our past consists mostly of places marked with the designation terra incognito. Undiscovered areas of each other than can only be revealed by asking the proper questions, and the giving of open, honest answers. Honesty, like teamwork, is essential. It allows those blank, scary areas to become vistas that we want to revisit again and again. There will surely be things in both of our pasts that we will be terrified to reveal, but that shouldn't stop either of us. Nothing has stopped us yet, and simple things like "someone we used to know" shouldn't stop us now.

 The present, the day to day conversations that probably go on for far too long, and monopolize our time to the exclusion of others. The excluding of others because when you are in the room, it doesn't matter how many other people are there, you are, for me, the only person in the room. The present that has exploded upon our placid existence like a flight of Savoia bombers blasting Barcelona into submission during the Spanish Civil War. The present that consisted of my awful alarm clock blasting me awake far too early in the morning for this shit, and as I pound the snooze button into submission, my first coherent thought is about you. Wondering what you are doing, wondering how you are, and wondering if you are doing any wondering as well. The present that consists of "all our yesterdays" and is right here in front of us, demanding our attention like a four year old child that really, really has to go to the bathroom. The present where I really want to start one of those overlong conversations with you, but won't because (for me) the last one ended so poorly that I am not sure how to make it better, or even if I can. The present where I want to make things better, but am realizing just how difficult that task is, and how inadequate I am for it.

 The future that we are trying to negotiate like it is the Treaty of Versailles, fraught with all sorts of boundary disputes and obstacles. Some we are making ourselves, some that are seeming insurmountable, some that merely dificile (the French word sums it up much better), some that are tricky, and some that are like "dreams in stone" seemingly hard, but really just constructs of our fevered collective imagination. Daring to dream, but dreaming in stone just to be on the safe side, and tethering those dreams to a glass ring that we keep beside the phone for just such a purpose. The future where I have climbed down from the mountain of seclusion that I was busy scaling to its peak, and turned away from the "five year" plan I had carefully constructed to meet you somewhere in the middle of the plains, where I begin to make new plans that are struggling to include you, and to keep pace with the radical shifts in both our moods. There has to be more than one plan, because there are many possible futures in front of us. The four futures that I have already envisioned, and the multitude of them that I have yet to ascertain. Lacking a TARDIS to project myself into the future, and to see if there is a future that exists where we are together as I think we should be, I have to resort to my rational side, and begin to concoct  the dark plans that involve me killing the large R romantic side of me that got us into this awful, but great, situation in the first place.

The problem that the murderous rational me faces is that he has also looked into those horribly brown eyes as well, and sadly sees the same thing as the foolish large R romantic in me sees. That, as far as we have been able to tell, has maybe happened one other time in our collective, but separate existence. We have yet to find the Deus ex Machina that will allow us to solve what seems to be a unsolvable dilemma, for that what Deus ex Machinas do, they solve the unsolvable problems that people like me create by being a special kind of fool. However, the mad man in this tale doesn't have a box that allows for time travel, all he has is you (for the nonce) and however loose that grasp may be, he is going to try to hold on for just a little bit longer in the hope that past, present, and future come together into one moment of pure luck.