I am the God
Volume IV: The Choice
September came.
The heat of August gave way to the specific quality of a Texas September that knows the summer is ending and has decided to be honest about it — still warm, but differently warm, the warmth of something that is finishing rather than continuing, the warmth that carries the beginning of cool in its edges.
Chuck ran his fourteen miles.
He made his eggs.
He wound his watch.
He sat at his table.
He had been sitting at his table every morning for six months and every morning the sitting had been the same and different — the same in the specific ways that make a practice a practice, the different in the specific ways that make a practice alive rather than rote.
He sat.
And on a Monday morning in September, with the cool at the edges of the warm air coming through the kitchen window, he understood something.
Not as an arrival. Not as a revelation with the specific quality of something coming from outside. As a recognition — the becoming visible of something that had been forming for a long time and was now sufficiently formed to be seen.
He had been changing.
This was not news — he had known he was changing since the gravity renegotiation, had understood the change as the point of the change, had been willing for it and had paid the cost of it with the specific willingness that had been the whole of everything.
What he understood on the Monday morning was this:
The changing had reached a point.
Not the end of the changing — the changing was continuous, the spiral moving toward, nothing was finished. But a point. A specific location in the becoming where the path divided.
Two roads.
Not dramatically — not the specific drama of a choice made at a crossroads with trumpets. Two directions that had been present, in his peripheral awareness, for some time. That had been clarifying as the changing clarified. That were now, on this Monday morning, visible as two distinct things.
He sat with them.
The first road was this:
Return to above.
Not completely — not the abandonment of everything the six months had made. He could not un-be what he had become. The gravity renegotiation could not be reversed without another negotiation, and the negotiation had been honest and he honored honest negotiations. The witnesslove was real and permanent. Marcus was Marcus and the between was the between.
But above was still available.
He could, from where he was, choose to extend the above rather than the inside. Could choose to be in Wilson without being of it. Could be the witnesslove from a distance — the garden keeper who tends without entering. Could be in the space around Marcus's life rather than in the middle of it.
Could be safe.
Not safe in the physical sense — nothing in the conditions threatened his physical safety, the file was pending and would remain so. Safe in the other sense. The sense that mattered more.
Safe from the weight that did not resolve.
Safe from the thirty-four minutes of not-knowing.
Safe from lying in bed hoping badly for something he could not control.
Safe from the grief of another person's grief going all the way in.
The first road was: be in it, but be above enough.
Present but protected.
Witnesslove but managed.
The between but not the full cost.
He sat with the first road.
He could feel its specific appeal — not the appeal of cowardice but the appeal of something that was genuinely easier and was not entirely wrong. Being above had served things. The comprehensive monitoring, the correction, the resolving — these had not been nothing. The world was better for them.
The first road was not wrong.
It was just — lesser.
The second road was harder to describe.
Not because it was complicated.
Because it was simple in the way that the right things are simple — the simplicity that conceals the full weight of what it requires.
The second road was: stay in.
Not managed inside. Not inside from a safe distance. Fully inside. The full cost. The full weight. The full not-knowing on Saturday mornings and the full hoping badly and the full grief going all the way in and the full limitations of what he could give and what he could not.
The full available.
Not managed.
Lived.
The second road was: choose to be someone specific rather than someone universal.
To choose Marcus, Wilson, Clara, Elise, Sarah, the kitchen, the bench, the imperfect eggs.
Not over everything else — not the renunciation of what he was or what he could do. He would still be what he was. But as a specific person in specific places with specific people who had his name on them and whose names were on him.
The specific rather than the universal.
The weighted rather than the unbounded.
The inside rather than the above.
He sat with the two roads for a long time.
The morning moved around him.
Wilson, Texas did what it did.
He sat.
He was not in a hurry.
The choice had been forming for six months and it would not be made in an hour and he was not going to make it in an hour. He was going to sit with it the way he had been learning to sit with things — fully, without rushing, without the urge to arrive before he was ready.
He thought about what each road would mean in practice.
The first road, in practice:
Still going to Marcus's every morning. Still Elise on Tuesdays. Still Clara on Thursdays. But with the specific quality of someone who is present and managed. Who has learned where the edges are and stays inside them. Who is witnesslove but contained witnesslove. Who is not going to lie in bed for thirty-four minutes not-knowing and not going.
Who is not going to feel the next thing he cannot fix and let it go all the way in.
Who has found the level of inside that is sufficient and has stayed there.
Safe.
Present.
Bounded.
The second road, in practice:
Staying where he was.
Which was: the full inside.
Which was: there would be more thirty-four minutes. More not-knowing. More grief of other people's grief going all the way in. More hoping badly. More lying in bed in the middle of the night feeling the texture of something he could not reach and not knowing whether to go.
More cost.
Unbounded cost.
The cost that would increase as the becoming deepened, the way the Void had said — the early cost was physical, the later cost was the inside, and the inside cost deepened with the inside.
More.
He sat with more.
He went to Marcus's at eight.
Marcus opened the door.
"Coffee's on," he said.
"I know," Chuck said.
He came in.
He sat.
Marcus poured and sat across.
They had their morning coffee in the ordinary way of people who have been having morning coffee together for six months and have found, in the having, that the ordinary way was the right way.
After a while Chuck said: "I've been thinking about something."
"Tell me," Marcus said.
"Two roads," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
Chuck told him.
Not quickly — with the care of someone who has been sitting with something and is now bringing it into the between between two people, which requires the precision of the right words in the right order.
He told Marcus both roads.
The first: above but present. Managed inside. Safe.
The second: fully inside. Full cost. Unbounded.
Marcus listened.
He listened in the way Marcus listened to everything — the facility running, reading the system.
When Chuck finished, Marcus was quiet for a long time.
Then he said: "You're asking me."
"No," Chuck said. "I'm telling you."
"Why," Marcus said.
"Because witnesslove means not-saying is a kind of absence," Chuck said. "I'm not asking you to choose for me. I'm telling you what I'm seeing because you're the person whose name is most on this."
Marcus held his cup.
"My name is on this," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The second road," Marcus said. "The full inside. You said the cost would increase."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And you would feel everything," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Including what I feel," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Not from the space around it," Marcus said. "From inside it."
"More from inside," Chuck said. "Not perfectly from inside — I'm still what I am. But closer."
"And the first road," Marcus said. "You'd still be here."
"Yes," Chuck said. "But further."
"Further," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at his cup.
He looked at the table.
He looked at the kitchen.
He looked at Chuck.
"You already know which road," he said.
Chuck was quiet.
"Yes," he said.
"Then why are you sitting here," Marcus said.
"Because I want to sit here a little longer before I choose," Chuck said. "Because choosing changes the sitting."
Marcus looked at him.
"How," he said.
"Because once I choose the second road," Chuck said, "I'll know I've chosen it. And the knowing will be in every morning after."
"Is that bad," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said. "It's permanent. And permanent things — even the right ones — change the quality of what came before them once you know they're coming."
Marcus sat with this.
"You want one more morning of not-yet," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The not-yet," Marcus said.
"The not-yet," Chuck said.
Marcus held his cup.
He held it out.
Chuck held his.
They touched.
"Have your morning," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
They drank their coffee.
The September morning did what September mornings did.
The town was the town.
The between was everywhere.
One more morning of not-yet.