Watching

Here I am with my friend: he's on the right and I'm on the left. Seeing this image reminded me of how time initially feels linear and progressive but, later, shatters into shards and splinters when you reflect on it. A night like this one, where we reached the beautiful city of Irithyll together in Dark Souls 3, was probably just a night like any other. I valued it at the time, sure, but it was another night in a series of nights.

Now, in my current situation, I see this image and it feels like one knot in a long rope full of very big and very important knots. Without my friend, the knot that has held me on this rope so many times, I know I wouldn't be here. Like I said, I was just living back then. It was a night like any other. Now, I look down and I see how he was holding me and helping me to stay up, gently finding me in the pit I was in and telling me it was time to go. This rope, the one he made for me with all the knots, is one object in the room that represents this time in my life. It is one of a select few objects that feel supportive there. For the most part, the other objects are shards of glass, and many of them are stained with my blood, unable to be seen through. I sometimes revisit these pieces to try and wash away the crusty marks but the red hue just spreads as it fades, never fully diluting.

Similarly, I look at these shards occasionally and think: "Perhaps I should put them together, even with the blood infused, just to see what they depict." This is possible, yes, but it merely builds a mirror. Depending on the day, it either reflects me, or I see myself sitting on the window sill behind me, my back turned as I stare out at the night sky and shake with hesitation. It's probably healthy to think about that feeling, but it doesn't make me happy. Although, in another way, I think it *did*.

In that memory, the one where I'm sitting on the window sill, I remember feeling something behind me. It wasn't tangible, physical, or perhaps even actual. However, during the 30 minutes or so that I sat, breathing heavily and making my considerations, the sensation behind me didn't falter. It was as certain as the sunrise, and as subtle as the smell of one of those slightly uninteresting flowers - the ones that are kind but unobtrusive. I'll tell you now that I only went back inside because of this feeling, and I still don't know how else to conceptualise it. It was orange, and it was still, and it was warm, but it had nothing to say. Perhaps, now that I'm here, I could say it was "tomorrow."

Tomorrow, depending on where you are and who you are and why, can be many things. At that time, it certainly wasn't orange or still or warm, just this bulging blood vessel permanently threatening to pop. It was the fatted tic crushed beneath your shoe, the metallic taste of a self-inflicted sore throat, the seizing muscles in a cramping calf. Tomorrow was dread and dismay, and it was unforgiving. Therefore, with this in mind, we must ignore my retrospection. The sensation was not tomorrow at all.

Unless, of course, tomorrow is the permanent tomorrow, the endless future, a thing that can never become "yesterday." In this sense, the feeling we discuss is and always will be tomorrow. In this sense, I am tomorrow. As I sit and stare at the reconstructed mirror, that which shows me this scene again and again from outside of my body, I am the closest thing to tomorrow that there can be. He, the one within, can never reach me and I, the one always gazing back, can only reach him with the sudden and fleeting suggestion of: "But can you not imagine what could be?" He struggles and shakes and wonders, and he stares through me, but I am there, and I will always be there, and he will always and forever be wondering who I am, but I will always and forever be the unknowable warm glow of tomorrow.

Then, one day, I will be sitting in front of this mirror and an orange feeling will appear behind me once again, just as it did back then.