reckoner

It wasn't every day, or every month, for that matter, that Chloe found some new music that she liked. And only very rarely did she happen upon a piece that felt transcendental, at which point she would listen to it over and over, eventually beating it till its poor melodious death, only to be resurrected once again upon a chance encounter many months later. Such was the case, once again, with a song she heard by an artist from whom she would not have expected such a reaction.
But this one was more complex, expanding and contracting in deliberate forward movement in melodic waves, like Arvo Part's Frartes. Like all the others before it, she would play it in permanent repeat mode in the darkness of her bedroom, and, flowing in and out of her, the sounds caressed her to sleep. And when she awoke in the morning its echoes would greet her with good morning wishes.
Chloe thought it fitting, then, as she listened to the song in the afternoon, that it reminded her of her favorite film, called Sunrise from 1927. She remembered that right after she saw the film for the first time, in the haze of the emotional catharsis in which she had indulged for the past 95 minutes, she called her best friend Jana to inform her that she wished to show the film at her own funeral, whenever that may be, that she felt so strongly that it was almost an expression of her own self. The film, complex and layered, yet visually beautiful, had affected her like none other, much the same way this new song had. Each work of art was the sonic and visual expression of the same feeling, the same experience.

cycles

Jules: What is it?
Catherine: Sulfuric acid, for the eyes of men who tell lies.

Jules et Jim (1962)


She always fell hard for them. Like a schoolgirl with a crush, she always thought. But then they would always fall harder in return. And, sometimes after weeks, sometimes after years, Chloe would suddenly get rid of whatever unfortunate male specimen happened to be around...so that she could finally spend a Friday night alone in her apartment drinking wine and her weekends riding her bike aimlessly around Brooklyn.
Forever attaching, unattaching, and reattaching herself, she was doomed to a vicious cycle. And Chloe knew that eventually, when the wrinkles appeared and when her hair began decorating itself with bright silver strands, she was further doomed to a life of nine cats and twenty-three houseplants. And these, eventually, she would not be able to get rid of so easily.