A Thousand Pink and Orange Horizons

Originally written 4-10-09 Edited 5-25-09

Jerome is a young man, just 18 years old, and tonight he is leaving home for the first time. He is ready. He has been waiting for this moment for all of his life. From these words alone, he probably sounds like the typical offspring, but it’s much more complicated than that. Not only is he physically leaving the house where he spent his childhood, but he is leaving mentally and spiritually as well. So although the rest of the world will watch him walk away from the boring town where he grew up, Jerome has his own reasons for leaving.

He’s leaving society. He is leaving humanity. He is walking away from civilization as we have come to know it. He is retreating from an oppressive world, filled with oppressive and oppressed people. A world he cannot identify with anymore.

Jerome is sitting by the kitchen sink, a pen poised over a pad of paper. He is thinking. He is wondering how to explain to his father that he will never see his son again. He is trying to find the words that can convey his mindset to his 52-year-old dad whose hair is thinning and grey and who only wants to watch television in his free time. The sturdy man with a million laugh lines who rarely laughs, or even smiles. The man who renounced his religion and hates his job and “can’t understand how anyone in their right mind could be a Democrat”.

Jerome doesn’t know how to tell his father, or anyone for that matter, exactly how strongly he feels about this. He reads the hastily scrawled note over, imagining his father discovering it the next morning, putting down his cup of coffee and tearing his eyes away from the morning news for those few brief moments.

Dad—

I’m moving out a little sooner than we expected.

You always knew I was a little different, didn’t you? Mom knew it, too. The thing is, Dad, I’m not college-bound like Torrie. I was terrible at football, and had no aptitude for math.

I’m going to Arizona. I don’t exactly have an address or a number yet. Don’t worry about me, I’ll take care of myself.

I’m going because I need to get away from the city for awhile. It’s what’s right for me. I’m going crazy here. Really, all I have left to say is thanks for keeping a roof over my head these past eighteen years. Give my love to Torrie.

Your son,

Jerome

He leaves the note by the phone. He knows it doesn’t explain anything, but he doesn’t know how else to say goodbye. He looks down at the note, propped up against a portrait of his older brother. Now 22, Torrie is away at medical school, and he’s going to become a neurosurgeon. His father supports him more than anyone else.

“That’s the kind of goal you ought to set for yourself, son. You should be an engineer, or something.” Or something. Truthfully, Jerome wants none of these things, but his father remains clueless. Which is why Jerome knows the short note he scribbled a few minutes ago is the best he can do. Deep down, he knows that Torrie’s accomplishments will be enough for his father.

Jerome is sick of people trying to press him into a mold. He thinks of the college and job applications sitting in his desk drawer upstairs. He thinks of all the wasted graduation announcements. He thinks of all the yearbooks and cliché crying classmates, and he imagines each and every one of his large graduating class asleep in their suburban beds, dreaming of their future, giddy with the excitement of walking across the stage to receive their diploma, exchanging hugs and memories with their peers. And thinking about all of this, Jerome only affirms it to himself that he cannot relate to even one of these sentiments.

He places the note on the counter and goes upstairs to collect the few belongings he is taking with him tonight.

Ten minutes later, he is sitting on his bed, staring out his bedroom window. Tonight is a new moon. Somehow it seems fitting to him. He anticipates anxiously the night that he will gaze at the moon through his own eyes and not through a window or some other filter. You would think he’d be sitting with an open suitcase, but to his own surprise, Jerome realizes he doesn’t even have one. In his hands, there is a small stack of books, soft drawing pencils, a sketchbook, and a notebook.

Now he is standing in the middle of his dimly-lit bedroom with its bare walls and lifeless furnishings, feeling slightly ambivalent. Should he make the bed and take out the garbage? Or leave everything as it is? After a moment’s hesitation, he decides to leave it as it has been most of his life—which, in all honesty, is a little askew.

Biting his lip, Jerome hopes that his father and brother do not view his leaving as if he is dying or running away. He asserts to himself that, on the contrary, he feels as though he is about to be reborn. This makes his heart flutter with reassurance and expectation. Still, Jerome knows that his family won’t make sense of his actions, which is why the goodbye is waiting on the kitchen counter downstairs.

So at 2 a.m., Jerome gives a little pat to his disheveled bed sheets, and closes his bedroom door for the last time. His sketchpad feels heavy in his arms. He is well-aware that artists don’t make much money, if any at all, but he doesn’t care very much. Besides, it’s all he has at the moment. Tucked away into the spiral-bound notebook under his arm is the beginning of a story about a man who escapes from a society that does not know it is oppressive. And for now, that is enough for Jerome. 

Taking a moment to make sure his note to his father is accessible and in plain sight, Jerome soon slips out the front door quietly and down the driveway. It is dark save for a few flickering streetlamps. He takes a deep breath, shattering the stagnant air, and listens to the quiet shuffle of his shoes on the cement. He likes the feel of the summer breeze on his face and his eyes and his lips, and the idea of his feet making contact with the solid ground over and over until he made it to Arizona, of wherever it is he’ll really end up. In short, he is more invigorated than he has ever been.

Jerome lets his instinct lead him, and although sense would have him go northwards, he is automatically heading south, deeper into town. He passes several cars and a few 24-hour bars whose neon lights still blink, but otherwise he feels relatively alone. The farther he travels, the more he senses that he isn’t quite ready to leave, that he has unfinished business he has yet to take care of.

And as he approaches the city cemetery, Jerome knows immediately what his subconscious is trying to tell him by bringing him to this place. Surprised and somewhat tentative, he pushes open the gate and roams through the graveyard, trying to submerge feelings of remorse and pain.

Finally, he comes to a very familiar grassy plot with a meagerly-sized tombstone, engraved with his mother’s full name, preceded by the words Back Into His Arms, though most people would point out that people who kill themselves don’t usually get sent to heaven.

Below his mother’s name is her favorite quote.

“Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”

And as Jerome stands in front of the grave, his knees begin to shake and his eyes fill with tears, and he remembers his mother.

She was a short woman, who always looked worn. Dark purple crescents lurked constantly under her eyes. She had dark hair, speckled with grey.

At least, that was how she looked most of the time. Sometimes, she smiled and read books and taught Jerome things he didn’t know, about space and philosophy and religion.

The doctor told his father that Jerome’s mother suffered from depression. Only it was so much more than that.

When Jerome was ten, he started reading all the time, anything he could get his hands on. He later discovered his particular favorite genres, fantasy and science fiction, which always seemed more real to him than reality. Noting his interest, his mother lent him copies of Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Jerome recalls a conversation with his parents, one day after having read these books.

“Thank God the world isn’t actually like that,” remarked his father. He was half-absorbed in the sports section of the newspaper. His mother stood, folding laundry, and said nothing.

His father peeked around the corner of the paper, and added, “Right honey?” She shared a meaningful look with Jerome before answering in a monotone, “Yes, honey. Thank God the world isn’t actually like that.” Jerome had said nothing in return, knowing that his father would never understand the world the way his mother did, and the way his son was beginning to.

Three months later, his mother committed suicide. And while Jerome was angry with her for leaving him behind, and sad to lose her, there was something inside him that had always known what was coming. He was in sixth grade, but it was almost as if he knew subconsciously that no matter how many times a day she forced a smile, his mother had never been happy being a part of society. The only thing that ever kept her there were her children, and in the end, even they weren’t enough.

Jerome is lying on top of his mother’s grave, facedown, crying into the cold green grass. He stays like this for a time, sifting through the old memories, until his comes to his oldest and favorite one of all.

It was one of those unforgettably sunny, hot days, and Jerome was no older than three. He, his brother and their mother were sitting in the shade of the tree out front. A game of tag soon ensued, and Jerome chased his brother across the sidewalk. He soon learned that the cement became very hot on such summer days, and immediately cried out. His mother came to the rescue, pulling him into the safety of the shade. “It hurted me!” he had exclaimed.

She just smiled and said, “What, the ground? That’s just the sun, sending his love down to Earth, Jerome.”

Jerome wipes a stray tear that slides down to his jaw, and picks himself up. He retrieves his belongings, fingering the weathered copies of his mother’s favorite books. Suddenly, he has an urge to take off his constricting sneakers. He kicks them off next to his mother’s grave, as a parting token. Silently, he walks away barefoot through the cemetery gate.

Newly cleansed, Jerome heads towards the edge of the city. And in the silence of the night time, Jerome thinks more about his past, present, and future life. He wonders where he’ll be in a week, a year, or thirty years. He can see himself now, in the middle of a grassy field or somewhere in the woods, all alone. And yet, this notion does not scare him. Smiling, he thinks to himself that he should not be unhappy if he is the last man on Earth.

He’s always imagined a place where there weren’t many people, away from all the cities and all of the towns. Sometimes he just wants to live in the desert in a tent and read, or look at the stars and decide for himself if there is a heaven or a hell, and if there is, where he’ll end up.

He accepts that his future is more unclear than ever, and it only propels him to walk a little faster through the outskirts of the city, towards his own undetermined destiny.

Jerome reasons that maybe it isn’t rational to go in search of such a vague paradise without a map or any guidance or experience in the world. But it’s what he wants for himself, and it might be the only thing that will ever make him feel fulfilled. He has given up on rationality, sensibility, and all normality, at least in the eyes of the rest of the world.

When the question “why?” comes into Jerome’s mind, at first he can’t find an answer. He looks down at his bare, exposed toes and thinks.

He decides what he’s really trying to do is find himself before he gets so totally swallowed by the world that he can’t distinguish himself from anyone else anymore. He wonders how to vocalize this. Then he wonders why he feels the need to verify his emotions.

When Jerome looks up above during the day, and he watches the clouds roll by, he doesn’t see shapes and faces in them. He just sees beautiful clouds. When he looks up above at night, and watches the stars shine, he doesn’t see constellations. He sees a blanket of hope and mystery wrapping all around his body.

And when he looks out ahead at the mountains, he finds himself wanting to be in them. Jerome just wants to be a part of everything. The trees, the sun, the ground. Sometimes he wishes he could embrace the stars or be surrounded by a cloud, enveloped in its soon-to-be precipitation. And while he knows this doesn’t sound intelligible, he knows he won’t be able to sleep at night, until he has figured these things out for himself.

Tonight his journey begins. Is it a journey towards answers, or just new questions he’s never thought of? He isn’t sure. He thinks about the life he could have led, but nothing can tempt him to return home, crawl into his familiar bed, and go to his graduation tomorrow.

Why should I believe that the sun rises and sets every day and every night until I’ve seen a thousand of them? Why should I believe that the ocean isn’t endless until I’ve swam to its opposite shore and back? Why should I believe that God knows all until I’ve discovered everything? Why should I limit myself to a life like any other when I have the ability and the freedom to find out for myself how many stars there really are in the night sky and how far I’d have to travel to reach them?  

Yes, the future is uncertain. But all that Jerome knows is that he must survive. He must do what his mother never had the courage to do. Thinking of both the notebook and sketchbook held close to his body, he knows that he must leave a piece of himself behind, in his drawings or his writings or just his faded footprints in the sand, in case the world doesn’t change in his lifetime. Then again, maybe his own birth has already changed the world, in one small and irrevocable way. It does not vex him to know that he may never know the answer to this enigma.

Underneath the streetlamps, everything seems too bright for Jerome, and he can barely make out the stars. He is dreaming of the time when the stars will become his streetlamps, guiding him out of the darkness. Then again, maybe it’s the stars that are guiding him into the darkness. And maybe the darkness isn’t such a bad thing, after all.

By now, Jerome has reached the outermost limits of the city. The clumps of civilization glow strangely in the distance. From here, the houses appear to Jerome differently than they have before. Each dwelling is like a little box, the people sleeping inside them trapped within their walls. Millions of tiny boxes, it seems, are scattered throughout the world tonight. But what puzzles Jerome the most is why no one would want to get out of these confining boxes. After a moment’s contemplation, he confirms the most likely and undesirable truth—that, perchance, no one even knows they are in a box.

With perhaps a small twinge of sadness for the human race, Jerome wonders briefly if there are more people out there like him. He wonders if they have their own secret world where they tell stories, and talk about space and philosophy. But he dismisses the thought—the hope, really—as quickly as it pops into his head.

Standing on the edge of the city, Jerome puts his journey on hold a final time. For the first time tonight, he speaks aloud. It’s a whisper, so isolated and soft that he knows he is the only one who will ever hear it, excepting the heavens. If the heavens are even listening.

“Goodbye,” he says.

He turns toward the darkness bravely, and suddenly he is sprinting, barefoot, running faster than he ever has before. He is not running away, but rather running towards something else entirely. Towards a place not marked on any map, Jerome runs, without the thought of ever looking back.