On the way to the bus stop, Bill saw somebody he recognized
walking towards him, but he couldn't remember his name.
He began to think of things to say when they'd be
close enough to acknowledge each other.
As they drew nearer, their eyes locked,
uncertain if the other was gonna stop to talk.
The person greeted Bill as Bill mixed up the phrases
"What's up" with "How's it going?"
Confused, the person blurted out "Thanks"
before he knew what he was saying.
Words caught in Bill's throat and he replied, "Weh."
They did a sort of awkward half turn,
and then continued on now confident
that the other was not gonna stop to talk.
They never saw each other again,
and a day later had each forgotten the whole thing.
Later that night, Bill sat down and put on a big sweater,
but it only made him sleepy.
In the supermarket, Bill was always very careful
to select fruit from only the back of the produce piles,
as the fruit in the front was at crotch level
to the other customers.
d
An old man who smelled of gasoline held up an onion
and said, "Big onion," to no one in particular.
He smiled at Bill and Bill looked at his socks.
At the checkout counter, Bill found himself
behind a big guy whose T-shirt read,
"Second Place is the First Loser."
The checkout girl said, "How are you doing today?"
Bill said, "Fine, thanks, how are you?"
She didn't answer.
Bill felt used.
As he waited for his next bus,
Bill stared at a torn shopping bag
that was blowing in the wind on the end of a broken pole
and anxiously sucked blood out of a sore
in the corner of his mouth.
(men singing opera)
d
Bill dropped his keys on the counter
and stood there staring at them,
suddenly thinking about all the times
he'd thrown his keys there before
and how many days of his life were wasted
repeating the same tasks and rituals in his apartment
over and over again.
But then he wondered if, realistically,
this was his life,
and the unusual part was his time spent doing other things.
(scrubbing)
d
Bill sat down and read a celebrity interview.
Then he watched the ants crawl around in his sink.
(fluttering noise)
That night, Bill dreamt of a monstrous fish head
that fed upon his skull.
(eerie exhale)
(low guttural sound)
In the morning, Bill felt really tired
even though he'd just been sleeping.
His calendar had a photo of a manatee on it for the month.
It always seemed as though the manatee was staring at him.
Bill sat in the living room with a giant box of crackers.
He thought some food might help him get going,
but felt kind of strange eating in front of the television
without having it on.
Pretty soon he was watching a boxing match
on a Mexican channel.
He'd been watching a lot of boxing lately,
but didn't really know why.
In the fourth round, there was an accidental head butt
that split open one of the fighter's heads pretty badly.
They showed it over and over again in slow motion.
Before he knew it, Bill had eaten
the entire box of crackers.
He felt really lousy and didn't want to get up.
He had a sudden urge to talk to somebody,
so Bill phoned his ex-girlfriend
and told her about the manatee on his calendar.
"Did you ever see the movie about the giant manatee
that attacked a city?" she asked.
"I think you mean giant mantis," said Bill.
"Oh yeah," she said.
"Giant mantis."
(groaning)
The next morning, Bill felt even worse.
Downtown, the hot smell of manure
blew past him as he walked.
Bill soon came upon three dead horses in the road,
apparently struck down by a large moving vehicle.
"Well," he thought, "That would explain the smell then."
d
He met his ex-girlfriend during her lunch break
and they took a walk to the park.
He noticed that every time he was near her,
she sort of moved away with a tight-lipped smile on her face
as though everything were okay.
Mostly they talked about death.
They agreed that being buried seemed too claustrophobic,
and Bill didn't want to be cremated
after he'd read that the intense heat
boils fluids in the skull
until your head explodes.
He decided that he'd want his body shot off into space
in a rocket ship.
He figured it'd be too expensive
to launch the weight of his entire body,
but maybe just sending his head into space would be good enough,
preferably in front of a little window.
His ex-girlfriend said she'd be really creeped out
if she knew Bill's severed head was floating around
above her in space.
Bill was given a new booklet at the clinic
discussing potential memory loss in his treatment.
Inside was a cartoon character saying,
"I don't know about you folks,
but I could lose my keys eatin' breakfast."
His neighbor, trying to be helpful but failing,
cornered Bill in the parking lot to explain
how cryogenic scientists could freeze his brain in ice
until a point in the future
when microscopic robots could repair it.
Bill daydreamed about all the brains in jars
he used to see at school,
how he used to wonder whether there were still
somehow pieces of individuals inside,
scattered fragments of partial dreams or lost memories
lodged deep within that dead tissue,
or whether this entire archive is immediately erased
the moment that the body fails.
He began to think of people in a new light,
how everyone's just little more
than that frightened, fragile brain stem
surrounded by meat and physics,
too terrified to recognize the sum of their parts,
insulated in the shells of their skulls
and lower middle class houses,
afraid of change, afraid of decisions,
afraid of pain,
stuck in traffic listening to terrible music.
(cheesy disco music)
His neighbor stared at him and said,
"Last night I dreamt all my toes fell off."
On the way to his front door, Bill's other neighbor said,
"Sup," as in "what's up?"
Inside, he noticed a weird wet spot on his mattress
that he didn't remember being there before.
Bill watched part of a documentary program
about a 5,000-year-old ice man that was found in Italy.
Scientists explored its colon and everything
on live television.
d
Bill wondered if the ice man could have ever imagined
this would one day have happened to him.
(projector being turned off)
d
That night, Bill dreamt he was at the seaside,
desperately throwing dead bodies off of a little boat.
(splash)
(seagulls cawing)
Bill took a walk in the park to try and get some fresh air.
He noticed somebody had written
"I Love You" in the playground sand,
and he thought that was really beautiful.
As he continued on, a sudden dribble of urine
shot down his pant leg.
That was unexpected.
Then some little fat kid with a deformed foot
tried to sell him a magazine subscription.
Bill looked at the list of magazines for sale
and angrily wondered why they didn't offer any Asian porn.
Then he wondered why he wondered that.
On his way to the clinic, he found he had a little trouble
understanding people.
(loud discordant sounds)
Even his pamphlet seemed different.
The guy next to him at the bus stop
had the head of a cow,
but Bill pretended not to notice.
His doctor said he had some discouraging news.
The latest tests ruled out
the possibility of further surgeries,
and his current treatment didn't seem to be making
any progress.
He wanted to start Bill on something new.
He couldn't think of any reason
why Bill should be seeing things, though,
and asked him a series of questions.
(loud, discordant sounds)
(soft ambient noise)
(distant footsteps)
(birds chirping)
Bill picked up his new medication,
went home, and masturbated for seven hours.
d
He woke up the following morning
and thought his room seemed different.
(loud discordant sounds)
d
His mouth was bleeding.
Four of his teeth had fallen out in the night.
They looked sort of like dog teeth.
Everyone in the supermarket looked like some sort of demon,
and they all had gigantic bacteria-ridden crotches
buried in all the god damn produce.
(flies buzzing)
It felt like his whole body was sparkling,
his shoes felt as though they were filling with blood,
and his hands smelled like copper.
(men singing opera)
(zapping)
d
When he got home, he found a pair of Lion King slippers
in his closet, but had no idea whose they were
or how they got in there.
(crickets chirping)
(distant horn honking)
d
The pipe is leaking!
d
The pipe is leaking!
Bill could read the thoughts of his waitress,
who wore too much eye makeup and had no self esteem.
Outside, horribly deformed birds checked their voicemail.
I am made nervous by a clone...
I'm a little princess, I sure am.
(voices layering)
The effects of tranquilizers on ant health
at higher altitudes are unpredictable.
Why don't you come over here and sit on my lap?
After lunch, Bill put on the Lion King slippers
and flew to the bus stop.
(discordant sounds)
Bill dropped his keys and stood there staring...
suddenly thinking about all the times
he'd thrown his keys there before,
and how many days of his life were wasted,
but then he wondered if, realistically,
this was his life...
(narrator's voice layering)
This was his life.
("This was his life" layers)
(audio slows down)
d
(whispering voice)
(robotic voice)
(maniacal laughter)
(static)
d
(screaming)
(discordant sounds)
(slowed down audio)
(woman singing opera)
(laser fire sound effect)
The power of Christ compels you!
(slowed down roar)
(roaring)
d
(distant heartbeat)
(persistent high-pitched noise)
(heartbeat speeds up)
(street noise)
His mother came to take care of him all the way from Omaha.
She was a waitress and often smelled of baby powder
and cheese.
They spent a lot of time together doing puzzles
and watching television.
(jubilant shrieking)
One morning, as Bill was staring at the patterns in the carpet,
she noticed a loose thread in his collar.
d
(hisses)
(clattering)
"How could you think I'd ever want to hurt you?"
she said, and crumpled to the floor.
In that moment, Bill thought she looked really old.
Sometimes the fluids in the IV put a funny taste in his mouth.
Bill awoke to beautiful sunlight streaming through his window.
He tried to climb through it
but didn't have the strength to stand.
d
(beeping)
d
(beeping)
d
(gentle breeze blowing)
The next morning, Bill actually felt pretty good.
The day after that, he felt even better.
Then he felt a lot worse.
But the following day, Bill felt just fine.
"I'm sorry, I just don't know what to make of it,"
his doctor said.
"Maybe Bill's body is simply rallying
before finally giving up."
His uncle, whom Bill had not even noticed in the room,
had taken a lot of time off work to fly in
all the way from Tulsa.
He looked vaguely annoyed.
(birds chirping)
After another two days,
they concluded Bill was not going to die,
so his mother had all the flowers removed from his room.
She also had to have his casket returned at great expense
and inconvenience.
(traffic sounds)
d
Bill had to go back to work the following Tuesday.
It rained for the entire bus ride.
d
(bus idling)
(bus driving)
(sounds of the ocean)
Last week, Bill's class took a field trip to the beach.
His half brother Randall came along,
a little boy in the special class with aluminum hook arms
whose mind was as misshapen as his legs.
(metallic clattering)
No one at school really knew him
because he always rode a separate bus
and was taught to stand within the confines
of a tetherball circle every recess.
In the late afternoon, Randall was over with the adults
when he spotted a gull overhead.
His eyes burst with emotion
and he suddenly took off stumbling after it.
Tears streaming down his little face,
he stretched his aluminum hooks
as wide as he could towards the sun,
howling, "Boon, boon,"
and disappeared into the deep blue sea.
d
The other kids were surprised he could even run that fast.
d
Bill's mother put a heavy coat over him
whenever he left the house
for fear that he might fall victim
to something called "walking pneumonia."
She started doing this the winter after losing Randall,
but then made him wear it every day for the next five years.
In the summers, he also had to wear a helmet
and asbestos safety gloves.
These were the days she rarely left the house
and shaved the cat on weekends.
On his sixth birthday, his mother gave him
a postage stamp and a piece of yarn
and hugged him for five minutes.
d
His parents argued again that night
and she threw meat.
His stepfather stormed to the door
where he turned his face up towards a hole in the ceiling
and yelled, "I just can't handle this god damned woman,"
and left.
(door slams)
She stared at the front door and rocked there in place
saying, "Aaa, aaa, aaa, aaa, aaa, aaa, aaa."
Every now and then at school,
he'd find a note from her in his lunch box.
d
(water running)
His hair was finally growing back.
After completing the clinic's daily memory quiz,
Bill went to the city and saw ants take apart a dead bird.
(footsteps)
Yesterday, he spent 30 seconds trying to open his front door
with his mailbox key.
It's been over a year now since his diagnosis,
when they'd stayed up late drinking
and Bill slept on the couch.
In the morning, he sat on the toilet seat
and quietly watched her put on her makeup.
That afternoon, she told him it was over.
In the hardware store, a nice kid with a skin condition
helps Bill find the right battery for his wall clock.
He had taken a walk to the park
but didn't really know what to do with his day there.
At home, he makes toast but changes his mind.
He's been having trouble sleeping again,
and realizes he's lying in the dark with his eyes open.
(tool powering up)
d
(leaf blower power increases)
(power increasing and decreasing)
d
When Grandma would visit and he'd show her his drawings,
she'd often imagine how easily she could toss little Bill
into the fireplace,
or even through a thin window,
for he was still young and quite small and floppy,
and she reckoned light enough
for a woman of her size and strength
to hurl across the room several yards or more.
d
In the middle of the night, she opens the drawer
to find the preserved cat head from last week.
She can feel the fish smothering her brain,
and the magic scrubbing of their furry little heads
across her skin is doing less and less good.
(voice layering)
And she decides this is because the little heads
are of low quality, and she needs more of them.
She needs more of them from higher pedigree cats,
little heads with better hairdos and cleaner little ears
and clearer eyes.
(static)
d
They said she had a tumor and was suffering from seizures
and dementia.
Bill didn't know what those words meant,
but he had ideas.
d
Grandma was born in Bootblack, Wyoming,
two years after the great mud storms drowned all the hogs.
Her father serviced electric machines
and once strangled a rock in a fit of religious excitement.
d
He enjoyed wood
and telling the children late night stories
of how his own papa used to tame the wilderness.
d
He was a quiet, unassuming man who was eating an onion one day
when he was cut in half by a train.
(train horn blaring)
d
Grandma's older brother became a preacher
who grew his mole hairs long to purify his soul.
In his early years, he secretly fathered
an illegitimate child and smothered it one night
in the abandoned stable.
d
As he aged, he became plagued with fire bugs,
and once claimed to have seen an aquatic creature
make off with the sheriff's prized cow.
d
He was eventually crippled with lead poisoning and polio
and was killed by a train.
d
Grandma's little sister Polly had beautiful golden hair
and pounded at imaginary animals with a hammer.
She died at the age of eight after contracting yellow fever
and catching on fire.
d
After Polly's death, Grandma's mother cut out her tongue
and vigorously enjoyed taking health tonics
and prescription medications.
(wind blowing)
(slowed down screaming)
A wild man wandered into town that summer
and beat the church organist with a shovel.
He defecated what looked like a pile of blueberries
on the family porch and disappeared,
howling into the marsh.
Nobody knew that this wild man
was in fact Grandma's great uncle,
a forgotten, unwanted child who'd been fed carbolic acid
and abandoned in the northern woods 52 years prior.
He ate mud and sticks
and knew only how to say the word "Bible."
d
"Bah ball!"
d
He died alone in the field one summer morning
while dreaming of the moon.
Six weeks later, a sunflower grew out of his head.
In their later years, Grandma's family
moved to the big city
where her mother lived out the rest of her days
making jam
and persecuting Jews.
(clinking)
There was a bush in front of their building
in the shape of a heart that made her cry
every time she saw it.
She died alone while Grandma was away at boarding school,
surrounded by visions of phantoms.
(eerie sounds)
Grandpa died 11 years before Grandma did.
He used to sit next to her every Sunday,
but now she plays his bingo card for him.
d
Last night, Bill dreamt he was young again
in a field with friends at the seaside.
A big, happy seal barked at them
and bounded from the water to play soccer.
He was pretty good.
It was like an animal movie.
Then the seal hit the ball a little too excited
and it flew over everyone's heads
and struck a little boy in an adjacent field
really hard in the chest.
It seemed like maybe he had a heart condition or something
because he wasn't moving.
Everyone sort of froze.
The seal retreated to the sea.
Nobody knew what to do.
(birds chirping)
He'd slept on his arm funny
and it felt sort of numb.
(whispering voices)
Sometimes it sounds like there's voices in the water.
He's been putting some weight back on
and his doctor had said that was good news.
At the bus stop, his left testicle ached
for no apparent reason,
and it almost made him feel dizzy.
Not much happened at work.
Bill made a pyramid out of three staplers,
and the new guy swallowed a paperclip
and was rushed out in a wheelchair.
The guy in the next cubicle over
told Bill about a thing he saw on TV
about identical twins who were separated at birth
but had individually grown up to be serial killers.
It was as though they didn't have any choice
in what they turned into.
"Genetics is pretty messed up," he said
as his chewing gum flung itself from his mouth.
At lunch he told Bill about a physics book he was reading
about time,
how the passing of time is just an illusion
because all of eternity is actually taking place at once.
d
The past never vanishes away,
and the future has already happened.
All of history is fixed and laid out
like an infinite landscape of simultaneous events
that we simply happen to travel through in one direction.
d
Bill made a joke that he could have sworn
he'd been told that somewhere before,
but the guy just stared at him like he didn't get it.
At home, Bill watched the microwave spin his food
and daydreamed about the Galapagos Islands.
He'd purchased the new brand of paper towels
that had hundreds of little raised bumps across every sheet.
(microwave running)
(microwave beeps)
He found a message on the answering machine
that was sorry to inform him his mother had just died
that morning.
They said she'd launched into a fit of senile hysterics
after skipping her medication
and was hit by a train.
She'd reserved her own funeral plot years in advance
in order to be buried alongside her parents,
but due to a clerical error had to be placed 50 yards away
between a coffin full of rocks
and a rich woman's golden retriever.
After the funeral, Bill went through her old storage boxes
and was surprised to find a hundred-year-old photo album.
Among the many pictures of relatives
and people he never knew
were several photographs of bacon and lumber.
He also found an old series of strange portraits
that had been neatly labeled for unknown future reference.
d
Scattered throughout the box were forgotten photos
of himself as a young boy.
He'd read once how each cell in the body replaces itself
and dies as the years pass;
how everyone is slowly reconstructed
out of continuously changing pieces.
It depressed him how foreign the pictures seemed to him now,
how his ridiculous ingrown cells had long ago stolen
this happy dead kid's identity
and with his own life
made a complete mess of it.
Beneath the album was a folder
of his mother's medical records.
Attached to her initial diagnosis
was a physician's note that strongly recommended
she never have a child.
(passing traffic)
d
He pictures himself having trouble breathing
and waking to a room full of concerned faces.
He'd been terrified of dying his entire life,
and as much as he tried not to think about it,
death was always in the back of his head,
around every corner, and hovering on each horizon.
He'd brushed shoulders with death on a few occasions,
but in his carefree youth, it had almost seemed
like an abstract, impossible thing to ever happen to him.
But with each passing decade, he began to gauge the time
he probably had left, and by his 40s,
what he considered his halfway point, at best,
he had come to know just one thing:
you will only get older.
d
The next thing you know, you're looking back
instead of forward,
and now, at the climax of all those years of worry,
sleepless nights, and denials,
Bill finally finds himself staring his death in the face
surrounded by people he no longer recognizes
and feels no closer attachment to
than the thousands of relatives who'd come before.
And as the sun continues to set,
he finally comes to realize the dumb irony
in how he'd been waiting for this moment his entire life,
this stupid, awkward moment of death
that had invaded and distracted so many days
with stress and wasted time.
If only he could travel back and impart some wisdom
to his younger self;
if only he could at least tell the young people in this room.
He lifts an arm to speak but inexplicably says,
"It smells like dust and moonlight."
d
He'd forgotten years ago to replace the battery
in the cheap wall clock in his kitchen,
and it was forever stuck on 11:57.
He couldn't remember why he'd put a clock there
in the first place,
since it was sort of in an awkward nook
around a corner where he'd never wonder what time it was.
d
Near the bottom of the storage box,
Bill found an old notebook he'd never seen before.
Filling the pages inside,
his mother had repeatedly practiced her handwriting
so she could send him off to school
with the best-looking notes.
d
He calls his ex-girlfriend and arranges to meet for lunch
after his checkup.
d
(opens and closes drawer)
This morning, he couldn't remember where he'd put
the clinic's daily memory quizzes.
(zapping)
d
(hum of vacuum)
He decides to make toast,
but for a long moment can't think of how it's done.
There's only a brown stain now where that bird had been.
His doctor has nothing but good news.
Bill has continued to make terrific progress,
and he can no longer find anything out of the ordinary.
He tells Bill that if he'd not known his medical history,
he would probably give him a clean bill of health today.
(otherworldly ambient noise)
(birds chirping)
(wings flapping)
On his way to lunch, Bill smiles
and thinks for the first time
that maybe everything will be o--
(zap)
(zapping)
d
Bill was born late Tuesday morning
into a world of orange and red.
d
He likes the way the aquamarine rug feels across his hands.
(wings flapping)
d
He likes sunbeams and rockets
and the smell of the backyard in the early morning.
(dog barking)
He likes tigers and trees
and melted chocolate ice cream
and watching the lights while falling asleep
in the backseat.
(cars rushing by)
d
(wind howling)
(zapping)
Someone sits on the shore and tells him
how the waves have been there long before Bill existed,
and that they'd still be there long after he's gone.
Bill looks out at the water
and thinks of all the wonderful things
he will do with his life.
d
(thunder rumbling)
(sharp inhale)
d
(zapping)
d
(thunder rumbling)
d
(zap)
(low buzzing sound)
Bill.
Can you hear me, Bill?
Look at me, Bill.
Look at me.
140/90.
Bill, can you hear me?
-Bill? -Bill?
Can you hear me?
d
(static)
d
(roaring)
d
(wind blowing)
d
(bell ringing)
The last thing Bill can remember
is speaking to his ex-girlfriend...
(film exploding)
(whooshing sound)
...bird wings,
and the smell of black licorice.
d
(water dripping)
d
He watches dust float across the sunbeam above his head.
d
And then he goes back to sleep.
d
His roommate's name is Matthew,
a paralyzed young man hidden by curtains
who communicates to the nursing staff
through a row of buttons that can play
five different electronic sentences,
but more often than not, he only presses one of them.
"I am in pain."
Every afternoon, the reflections of sunlight
from the traffic below
cast colorful patterns across their ceiling.
In the mornings, the sunlight illuminates
Matthew's curtain and makes it look beautiful
even though it's just gray.
His ex-girlfriend's been visiting lately,
and they talk for hours about current events.
Sometimes they eat ice cream bars.
d
It's the happiest he's been in a long time.
d
(thunder rumbling)
d
(rain falling)
Bill is introduced to a new doctor
and given a short interview.
He doesn't know what month it is,
but he's aware he's in a hospital.
He can't remember his address,
so he supposes he must have always lived here.
His vision's a little blurry
and he no longer has strength in the grip of his left hand.
Bill is asked to describe a series of photographs.
He's able to put words to many of these objects
but is very confused by some of the others.
(rain falling)
He also has difficulty distinguishing the faces
of people he knows.
All of these people really just look the same,
and though he can recognize his ex-girlfriend
because of her long hair,
he can't remember her name.
He tells the doctor he has a fish
living inside of his head,
possibly a trout.
It'll be another night before it dawns on him
that something seems missing.
All the memories the doctor asked him to recall today
are suddenly out of his grasp.
So many years of faces and moments
are mostly just a vague feeling now.
The years are slipping out of his head.
Yesterday, a gardener with a hose
blasted all the sparrow nests from the second story awning
of the building next door,
raining mud and little broken eggs into the parking lot.
(medical equipment hissing)
Another test has been arranged
and Bill is taken to a white room.
A radiologist makes an incision and pushes a catheter
into his femoral artery.
The catheter is carefully pushed
through his stomach to his heart,
up through his chest and into his head,
where a special dye is introduced
to flood the blood vessels in his brain for x-rays.
Bill is then asked to raise his arms and count to 20.
A powerful anesthetic is introduced
to temporarily shut down the left hemisphere of his brain,
and for the remaining half of Bill, the test begi--
Bill, can you hear me?
Bill, can you look up here for me?
Can you tell me what these objects are?
Bill, can you tell me what this is?
Bill, can you add up these numbers for me?
You're doing great, Bill.
Okay, and what do these numbers add up to?
Look at me, Bill.
Look at me. Bill, look at me.
Okay, Bill, can you tell me who this is?
It's okay, Bill, you're doing great.
And can you tell me who this is?
Bill, can you tell me who this is?
Do you remember her?
Today she's joined by her boyfriend,
a young man named Steve
who spends most of the afternoon in the corner
quietly staring at Matthew's curtain.
"I am in pain."
The doctor explains to her that Bill may be having trouble
understanding past tense and present tense.
It may also be difficult for Bill to understand
which of his memories are real
and which are imagined.
When the brain is confronted with major memory loss,
it often fills in the blanks with confabulated stories,
false memories, people who never existed;
invented conclusions to make everyday life less confusing
and to somehow rationalize what's happening to him.
Today, they will chat awkwardly.
Bill's been unable to stay on one subject
for more than a few moments
and seems to get easily frustrated.
She will say she didn't know
why she'd brought Steve along yesterday
and admits he'd been so shaken by the experience
that he quietly cried in the car on the way home.
The sparrows have already begun to rebuild,
but he's not sure if he feels happy or sad for them.
He dreams he's part of a rocket crew
reentering the earth's atmosphere.
As they rapidly descend, it's believed that
eating ice cream bars will help prevent them
from having strokes.
As the heat intensifies, Bill eats his ice cream bar
and secretly hopes that if something bad had to happen,
the ship wouldn't explode,
but just that everyone else would have strokes.
A final battery of tests are ordered
to positively rule out the chance of surgery.
Highly drugged, Bill will have no memory of these tests
other than a terrible noise to his right
and a brief vision of a seahorse
and a falling tree.
(medical equipment running)
d
This morning, he can't remember the last time
his ex-girlfriend had come to visit.
It could be hours, or maybe it's been weeks.
His uncle, whom Bill had not even noticed in the room,
looks out the window and talks about Bill's mother.
Then he says, "It's too bad people don't say how they feel
until it's already too late."
And then he says nothing.
The TV in the room is always on mute,
and behind his uncle's head,
Bill watches a superhero
quietly melt a monster's face.
His doctor visits and asks if Bill might be more comfortable
at home for a few days under family care
until the final results come in.
(door opening)
(keys clanking)
A neighbor must have put these groceries
in his apartment for him,
which was a very nice gesture.
It's kind of a really nice day.
He decides to walk around the block.
On the side of the road, he sees
a woman's tennis shoe filled with leaves
and it fills him with inexplicable sadness.
He walks down his side street,
alongside the bridge past the farmers' market,
and back up the main thoroughfare.
(birds chirping)
It's kind of a really nice day.
He decides to take a walk around the block.
On the side of the road, he sees
a woman's tennis shoe filled with leaves
and it fills him with inexplicable sadness.
He walks down his side street,
alongside the bridge past the farmers' market,
and back up the main thoroughfare.
(birds chirping)
It's kind of a really nice day.
He decides to take a walk around the bl--
(door opening)
(keys clanging)
d
That hand is dropping everything.
d
Wasn't he supposed to call somebody?
d
What was her name?
d
What in the hell is wrong with this mug?
(keys clanging)
Does he really need this much food?
There's a doctor on his answering machine.
(beeps)
d
Has he been sick?
d
A doctor carefully explains test results with him.
He goes over numbers and information
that Bill doesn't understand,
and reiterates things that Bill doesn't remember.
He's momentarily quiet
and then tells Bill
he doesn't have very long to live.
It's kind of a really nice day.
He decides to walk around the block.
On the side of the road, he sees
a woman's tennis shoe filled with leaves
and it fills him with inexplicable sadness.
He walks down his side street and sees striking colors
in the faces of the people around him,
details in these beautiful brick walls and weeds
that he must have passed every day but never noticed.
The air smells different, brighter somehow,
and the currents under the bridge look strange and vivid,
and the sun is warming his face
and the world is clumsy and beautiful and new.
And it's as though he's been sleepwalking
for God knows how long,
and something has violently shaken him awake.
His bathmats are gorgeous.
d
The grain patterns in his cheap wood cabinets
vibrate something deep within him.
He's fascinated by the way his paper towels drink water.
He's never really appreciated these things.
All this detail he's never noticed.
Detail he's never noticed. He's alive, he's alive.
He's alive, he's alive.
Never noticed. He's alive.
The stars rattled him to the core.
All these lights have traveled for tens of millions of years
to reach him at this moment. How somehow far away,
our own sun looks just like one of these.
How many of the stars no longer even exist,
but whose ancient light is just reaching him now.
An impression from a ghost,
an amazing infinite time machine every night above his head
that he's ignored for most of his life.
He wants to stop people in the street and say,
"Isn't this amazing?
Isn't everything amazing?"
He runs to the car rental place
and finds himself a freeway and drives all night,
following directions in his head
to a place he can't remember,
absorbing everything he can
before it all fades again with the morning.
d
He's got the keys to this car.
d
He also has keys to a motel room,
but he can't remember the last time he slept.
He's sitting in the sun outside of a laundromat.
An older guy in a baseball cap stands at a payphone
and nervously lifts and hangs up the receiver.
He asks to borrow Bill's pencil
and then places a call to his daughter.
He tells her he loves her and he's proud of her,
and that "one day soon, we'll finally have our day."
Then he says, "Fantastic, fantastic,"
and hangs up the phone.
Although it looks like the wind had been knocked out of him,
he presents the pencil back to Bill with a little flourish,
as though proud no harm had come to it
while in his possession.
He dreams of fog on the dark edge of a cliff
where hundreds of feet below
the deep sea swells up against the rocks.
And if you lean over the edge and squint your eyes just right,
you can barely make out the gray shapes of all the cars
that had driven off the cliff over the years
sunken deep beneath the surface.
And as each wave washes slowly over them,
the undertow quietly pulls their headlights on and off,
on and off on an endless loop
growing slowly dimmer over the years
until the day comes that they fade completely.
d
He's at a house now.
When he was little, he would run through a house just like this
with a flashlight pointed at the ceiling,
pretending he was an astronaut soaring over the moon.
A familiar person's here.
He's not sure how he found him, maybe he's been followed,
but they're talking now and Bill is given an address,
an address his mother never wanted him to have, he says.
But it's important Bill have it now,
an address where he can find his father, Bill's real father,
a man who was gone before he was born,
a man he'd only met once but was too young to know it.
d
And he's driving again now,
for several hours, he's not sure,
and with every mile, he loses a few more memories.
And he finds another motel,
and that night he eats a lot of ice cream
and doesn't remember his dreams at all...
doesn't remember his dreams at all...
...remember his dreams at all, his dreams at all.
He's in a nursing home.
Is he old?
A room full of windows.
And he gives a name on a paper that's not in his handwriting
to the front counter,
and a frail old man is being wheeled to see him now,
a man who's been here for over ten years
but rarely had a visitor.
d
Neither of these two people remember why they're there
or who exactly this other person is,
but they sit and they watch a game show together.
d
And when it's time for Bill to leave,
he stands and says something beautiful to him.
d
And neither of them understand what he means exactly,
but the old man begins to cry anyway,
and they will never see each other again.
d
He's driving a car,
and every time he realizes he's driving a car,
he figures he should just keep driving the car,
and sometimes he sings and sometimes he cries,
and the left side of his body
is beginning to grow slack and numb,
and all he wants to do is just keep driving,
somehow to keep on driving.
He has no more directions to follow,
but he fills the car with gas again and again
and keeps going into the night.
He wants to keep going.
He wants to go forever.
(wind howling)
(birds chirping)
It's such a beautiful day.
Wait a minute, he's not gonna die here?
But he doesn't die here. No, no, no, Bill, get up.
Get up, Bill. Bill, get up.
He can't die here. He's not gonna die.
He can't ever die.
Bill?
d
He will spend hundreds of years traveling the world,
learning all there is to know.
He will learn every language.
He will read every book.
He will know every land.
(soft pop)
He will spend thousand of years
creating stunning works of art.
He will learn to meditate to control all pain.
As wars will be fought
and great loves found...
...and lost...
and found.
Lost...
and found.
And found.
And memories built upon memories
until life runs on an endless loop.
He will father hundreds of thousands of children
whose own exponential offspring
he'll slowly lose track of through the years,
whose millions of beautiful lives
will all eventually be swept again from the earth.
And still, Bill will continue.
He will learn more about life
than any being in history,
but death will forever be a stranger to him.
People will come and go until names lose all meaning,
until people lose all meaning
and vanish entirely from the world.
And still, Bill will live on.
He will befriend the next inhabitants of the earth,
beings of light who revere him as a god.
And Bill will outlive them all...
...for millions and millions of years...
...exploring, learning, living,
until the earth is swallowed beneath his feet.
Until the sun is long since gone.
Until time loses all meaning and the moment comes
that he knows only the positions of the stars
and sees them whether his eyes are closed or open.
Until he forgets his name
and the place where he'd once come from.
He lives and he lives
until all of the lights go out.
(quiet nature sounds)