Inga Abele - High Tide

God didnt create words.

In the beginning there was a dream.

And at the end there was again nothing but a dream.

God appeared to a woman in a dream that was like death.

God found the woman within this dream and said to her:

If you agree to live your life in reverse, youll have the power to give life back to your lover, who died young. Just dont get your hopes up your meeting at that crossroads will last about twenty minutes, no more. Then hell continue on toward old age, but you, back to childhood.

The woman agreed immediately.

God said:

How strange. Do you really value your own life and experiences so little that youre willing to undo all of it without a second thought?

The woman said nothing.

She remembered this dream when she awoke.

She doesnt need any more advice models, examples. Maybe shes just on a whole new level, but right now she doesnt need it. She doesnt read books, newspapers, or magazines, doesnt use the internet or watch TV, doesnt go God forbid to the theater. Its like being wrapped in a blanket up to your chin: you see and hear everything, but cant move a muscle. Everything is right there around you, within arms reach. She wanders the house and now and then picks up something, grabs onto something, touches on something. A sentence from a newspaper, a phrase from a Mexican soap opera, an idea from Proust. Theyre all always going to be right.

On her walks, Ieva goes around the forest in circles. Then on her birthday she asks herself a question why do I walk in circles, like a dog chained to a post? Because of my fears? Only because of my harsh, bitter fears? I can walk in a straight line, she tells herself and whenever I want. But when she does finally walk straight she only feels like shes actually getting anywhere. Her surroundings change, but the content doesnt. Big cities are all essentially the same, and every country has farmers wearing plaid, made-in-China shirts. Any new place that she ends up she eventually has a close group of friends a lot like the last. The group will always have a mentor, a lover, someone shell betray, someone wholl betray her, an enemy, and friends she can talk to and with whom she can find spiritual healing, rather than wasting money on therapy.

Once in a while she breaks from the campaigns, the marathons, the expeditions, and returns to the doghouse and sits next to her chain. Sits absolutely still, like a Bedouin gazing into the distance, and then writes. Script writing is usually complicated, but all of her scripts are about the same thing. All very clichd, and when she tries to make excuses to the director he tells her: I need you precisely for the clichs. Because the ending needs to be something predictable.

Her scripts are about how nothing happens because nothing can ever happen. Not a single molecule is lost in the eternal cycle between the earth and the heavens. Only a pure soul can hope to break free from the carousel of life and death, into the cosmos through the tunnel of light and at a speed that makes everything down to the smallest particle feel simultaneously heavy and weightless. Everything shrinks until it disappears, until its erased from the memory of the world along with time. But to live your life until your soul is pure dont laugh, its not that easy you have to become a Buddha, a Christ, or a Mohammed. You have to become light itself, a pure soul. Then you can be on your way. But its a long way and youll be scrubbed, doused, and wrung clean until then. Those few mistakes that will haunt you, jolt you awake at night, and force you to keep going on, these mistakes that you carry with you your entire life in the end theyll destroy you. But keep thinking about them, keep thinking. Its gratifying to keep picking away at them. It will heal you.

Eventually she doesnt even write the scripts herself anymore, just touches up those written by others and sends them in. She takes the finished product and objectively embellishes them. Shes done work like that before adding details to bulletin posters in her school days, a pioneer in the last generation of an aggressive Soviet empire. Her homeroom teacher called it giving life to something. Take it to Ieva, the teacher often said, shell give it some life. And Ieva would take her black marker and give the dull pencil sketches some life, be it Lenin or the Easter Bunny. A wavering shadow in the distance, a gleam in Lenins eye, and the tense muscles in his jaw, something shed seen in her fathers face when he shaved in the morning. And Lenin would come to life. The Easter Bunny would, too.

Everything is proof of it this forced gift of existence even the tired face of a small-town bus driver in the early morning; it speaks of longing, the endless patience you have when scrutinizing good fortune that has unexpectedly dropped into your lap. And what does life offer in return the quiet hum inside the bus where you can warm up, a change from the frozen and bleak winter landscape What does it offer in return? A kiss goodbye from your wife before you head out, and the mildly bitter taste of coffee with cream? The early morning fog and a dead moose on the side of a road? Like an Indian who gets glass beads in exchange for gold, you trade the suffering of existence in return for the smell of baking bread. The feel of a dogs wet nose against your hand. The look in your childrens eyes. A bird feeder. May it all bring you joy, says this opposing, unwanted, huge opportunity Life. Truth everywhere, like rows and rows of weeds that need only a bit of rain to grow: a handful of TV shows, a handful of philosophical essays, a handful of tight-lipped snobs, a handful of bartering vendors.

Her mothers mother, Gran, used to say: Youll never know where youll lose something or where youll find it, and, if you knew where youd fall, youd put a pillow down first. In many ways Gran hadnt outgrown childhood. She had never experienced passion, never been disillusioned, but had remained an innocent; that was her destiny. Her cheerful daily greetings were proof she had never discovered herself, her own anger, or her deeply hidden doubts. Doing so would mean being sent into freedom, out of the Garden of Eden. She had stayed in Eden, playing in rows of sun-ripened, wild strawberries. And among the bustle were all lifes sentences: her parents deaths, her husband and children, the people she loved. But she never said love because she didnt know the word, hadnt evolved to words. Gran had been her parents pride and joy, a helper at the dairy farm with her white apron and silky ash-blonde hair, someone who had never grown to know hatred. More precisely, she was oblivious to any daggers of hatred aimed at her. Instead they went through her like she was nothing, because she didnt believe in bad people just people. Her only sins were her pride and self-reliance. She always had tickets for sugar and bread, but also always had more for extra things. A kind word and a helping hand, the sense to put others before herself She believed it was her choice and responsibility. She didnt need anything from the Lord God, just some nice Lutheran Christmas songs and spiritual peace. She hadnt unlocked that little door in her heart that led to spite. She stayed in her bud, her entire life spent in it and as a child. God and humanity attack these kinds of people more than anyone else because theres something obnoxious about them. But neither God, nor humanity can use their endless recipes for disaster on these people because these people lack any trace of hate and God can take a vacation since theres no one to peddle vices to. Having fulfilled her duty to everyone she loved, Gran quickly retreated to her inner child, back into that bud. A small, polite girl who always walked on the sunny side of the street. And thats how she ended her journey. She was stuck in her helpless innocence, and then all the worlds charges were piled on top of her. Stay helpless as a baby, an animal, a prisoner, a fool, an alcoholic, a one-legged bum in a tunnel and the world will quickly chafe you until you bleed, and youll understand why youve always needed God. You put Heaven on a pedestal while you still have the strength. And when you grow weak you see the devil. Not the one with horns and a tail, but the devil in the hurried compassion of the fast-paced world, the one that will kill you with kindness.