Strike Fiss’ Manifesto
April 2003
Winter.
It is colder here than in the mountains. A strange, silent winter befalls the land as you gaze outside your frosted windows from the false comfort of your bed. Four walls shield you, but from only so much of the thing outside that takes your heat, takes your time, and warps your soul into something distinctly cog-like. The mountains, while I know this to be false due to the science taught to me over the years, lift you up to the sky. Away from the winter, no matter how impossible that may seem. In the middle of ice and snow are pockets of green. Pockets of life. Be it an evergreen older than half your family combined, or just a patch of wild grass creating an impromptu picnic spot, there is always life in these high castles of stone. Men and women were kings and queens, and existed as such in those magical lands, living beautiful, pure lives as every snowflake does. Down here the life I see is slowly cooled in the eyes of the people every day. Cooled and reshaped into something much less.
Here, Winter comes closer each day. A slow, chilling wraith that glides across this world to deliver it’s message to those listening. I consider it both a blessing and a curse to be able to see their dying joys. I know that it means I still have a bit left in me. That the memories I hold protect me from this slow, decaying, clawing cold. But I also realize that my ability to see this tells of a person walking a fine line. They say a man close to death is able to see the dead – am I already such a familiar face to this? Does Winter call me friend? Disciple?
The cog spins precisely despite it’s chipping, gnawing and gnarled teeth. I find myself joining those outside soon enough at the whim of a buzzing demon in my clock. Always late, he tells me. Always late. Never enough time to sleep. Never enough time for warmth. Never enough, and it will never be. As we pass through the still-morning streets, we stride over homeless and stray dogs who claim this cobblestone as their own parts of the cold. Their tiny, sagging kingdoms against the Winter as defiant walled cities of old. How their eyes have not frozen shut, I can only give to the pity, nay, humour of God or Death. Still, while their pride is lessened, they see us as the ones most doomed. If death takes them tonight, they will be infinitely free, while we never have time to die. The demon in my clock tells me this, and I know it to be true. The dogs raise their hackles at me as I pass: friend or foe? Am I one of these winter bound slaves, or am I a stray? They fold back their ears, and yet keep their tails bristled in confusion as I go on.
Something in the way the air moves this morning has my eyes on the mountains again. A sweet, caressing pull. Intangible and tender as if my heart has become addicted without my intervention or permission. The snow up on the sides of the high stone parapets is clean and pure, not like the soot down below. Down where winter lays waste on our cog-like-souls.
The day passes by as a mindless fog. For this I am grateful, though it sparks anger as I walk away from the thief of my daylight. The sun’s brief ray already gone behind those blessed mountains. Walls erected around this tiny speck of cancer so as not to let it spread across the land. Though it’s concrete tendrils lash out, few can conquer the peeks. A stray road and the rails gouged through the rock by fire and steel are the only hidden escapes from this town. The road is one that fools would still not attempt this time of year. I can almost feel the warmth on the other side of them. To the West where the day still exists. I wonder if you can feel it too.
Can your prison of ice be as thick as mine? I move, I see, and yet, I am furthermore lost in a maze of false freedoms and shallow breathes. How many snowflakes lie down across your cheek this lonely winter’s dawn? Without count, I can tell it is not enough to make me forget. Make me cold. Leave me untouched by a strange, familiar warm sensation each morning just after my dreams succumb to reality. I pray that this fellowship is wrought with love, and not just the frost in both our bones, despite the very different sources. Are my bones becoming as brittle? My features becoming still and stoic as one frozen in time? You live on in perfect beauty – timeless – while I decay in the same. This alone shows me the injustice of the day, where the simple pleasure of growing old with you is robbed from my desires.
Meagreness is the theme of the life I live for us. Tiny portions of food. A single bed. Far too few bottles of whiskey and wine to make the year pass as quickly as I wish it to. No excess, in hopes of moving away. All of it in hopes of moving away from this winter. While others long since have given up their dreams to enjoy the few expensive sins in this town, I am unable to leave for a much different reason.
Half of me is still frozen up there in the mountain. It is in a kind light I look at it, though, as it has kept me away from the frost thus this far. It is my blessing and my curse that I must still love you. Every day it gets harder to look upon the sheer mirror cliffs. A small flat on the side away from me marks your grave, and I feel it though I cannot see it.
My feet are nearly frozen as I climb. The chill is more in spirit, though, and I feel a gentle tug washing over me as I rise above the town. Climbing is forbidden in avalanche season ever since your death, and yet, once again, I break this unspoken rule that is even now just barely enforced with terrible stories.
Stories. Tales. How you were ripped apart by the ice. Or crushed into a red mist by the snow-cap. Trapped, dying slowly over the week it took for them to find us and save only myself. All fantasy. The snow took you completely. Instantly. Sad, but painlessly. Just as you look now. The summer and fall before this moment have been kind to you. The snow we fell in makes a crystal coffin for you as beautiful as pure diamond. Hard as diamond too, but a cool air comes off it to refresh my ragged lungs from the climb.
It is the last breath I take before sobbing. Before me is a perfect image of who I was. Who you were. Who we were. Behind me is only soot and winter. Up the mountain face, I see the ever stretching arms of heaven.
The air is warmer here than in the city, even as I lay next to you. My arms reach out to touch your ice coffin. Even as the cold creeps up my spine to fill my blood. It cleanses the soot from me. Crystallizes my mind and breaks the cogs inside. Winter will not take me. I give myself to the mountain, just as you did.
The air in the mountains is so much warmer now that I’m with you.
Strike Fiss, Studio Shinnyo 2003. Khattam-Shud, EOF.
Posted under Manifestoes, Short Stories
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