Sunday, September 23, 2012

Orpheus Wounded


So, longer than I would have liked, but another of from 750words project, and another creative entry.

Orpheus Wounded


He was sitting down, cradling his guitar. It was a beautiful instrument, the wood full of intricate swirls, and it sounded better than it looked. He had found it in a pawn shop years ago, shortly before his fifteenth birthday, and fell in love with it immediately. Working nights at a local convince store, he had saved up enough money to purchase it a few months later. When he first took it home, he set it down to admire it for a bit before sitting down and strumming a few chords. He wasn't the best guitarist, but he was dedicated, and the new guitar filled him with the intense to play. He spent a large part of his teenage life, sitting on the edge of his bed, playing along to the radio, or spending hours trying to figure out his favorite songs. But that seemed like an entirely different life now.

He moved the guitar to his side, contemplating the years. He remembered the tears in his mother's eyes as he told her he had enlisted. He remembered the (what seemed like gallons at the time) sweat dripping down his body during training exercises. He remembered the swirl of dust and sand kicked up by the rotors of the helicopter as his squad landed on the ground halfway across the earth from where he grew up. But try as he might, he couldn't remember the blast, or the screeching of bullets as his brothers pulled him to safety, or the flight to a military base in Germany. A defense mechanism he supposed.

He stood, holding the neck of the guitar in his right hand. He remember the days and months afterwards better: the doctor explaining where he was and what had happened. He remembered certain things from the conversation "limited functionality", "newer models in the future", "a balance of form and function". While the technology for prosthetic limbs had been rapidly evolving over the last few years, it hadn't quite reached the levels that medical journals and technology magazines were in a frenzy over - well at least not for the general public. Sure, there were some successful attempts at allowing someone to control the prosthesis with their mind, allowing the person to pick up something as delicate as a grape and eat it without crushing it. But even if he went through the procedures to allow him to use such a prosthesis, well, it was state of the art, but here the art was lacking for what he really desired.  The difference between picking up a grape and fretting a barre b minor chord is significant.  There were models with rudimentary touch sensors, sure, but haptic feedback wasn't close to actual muscle memory or the feeling of the string under your fingertips.  And while he used to be able to tell where his fretting had was based on his arm position, the feeling of his phantom arm complicated that significantly.

Reaching the other side of the room, he leaned his guitar against the wall, sliding open the bottom drawer of the dresser, and removed a shoebox. So much of his life was tied up in music, from the nights he would spend on his girlfriends porch, performing his own cheesy acoustic versions of love songs, to the band he had formed in his junior year.  The music was his soul escaping into the world, his connection to something deeper, something more meaningful, a language that spoke more accurately than any tongue ever spoken by men.

He opened the shoebox, the small metal object inside catching the light.  He was feeling hollow, he knew the words in his mind, but had forgotten how to speak.  He feared that the longer he would have to wait for a suitable prosthetic to play, he wouldn't remember the words.  That the poetry that he wanted to pour out through his music would be flat, a shadow of its former beauty.  That almost hurt more than knowing he would probably never play again, the what could, or should have been.

He raised the object in his hand, feeling the metal, cool against his skin.  He had gone through the counseling, and knew the statistics.  "Just stay positive, it may take some time, but patience will help in reaching 'peace'."  Sure, but he had never been a patient man, and was stubborn enough to find his own way through this.  If he would never play guitar again, then so be it, but he would never let his song be silenced.  In his hands he cradled a microphone.

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