Thoughts on Travel and Guitars

Tonight I was struck with the inklings of a short story as I played my guitar when I should have been wrapping up some English AP homework. Fooling around just seems more fulfilling than analyzing Hemingway. Perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough. I might just be tired. Enjoy.


Part 1

Guitars had changed very little since their conception. Jacob strummed lightly, letting the tips of his fingers brush the metal strings barely touching them, just enough for them to quiver and release a whisper of noise that floated through the air, not even with the countenance of a reverberation but something that qualified as much less, a delicate noise, soft and fragile against the cold, hard surroundings. The true irony of such a noise in such a place struck Jacob but he did not waste the energy to chuckle, even now just letting the slow motions of the ship to draw the hand that was attached to his arm against the strings of his guitar was almost unbearable. The ravaging effects of travel did that to the body, they sucked out whatever energy whatever potent life force inhabited a person and made them so that they longed to find only a place to quietly shut down their bodies and sleep. Jacob had discovered that travel was really the thing that closed off a person to life. He had found himself anxious, staying in one place for too long, but even as he made the arrangements to leave he had known, every time he had planned an escape, he had realized somewhere in some dark, yet achingly overused part of his mind that leaving was at once the best and worst option. He could not afford to stay in one place too long, he did not have the right, nor the ability to. But it was during these long journeys, these expeditions into the unknown he found himself totally at odds with the universe. He found some comfort in knowing where he stood and he had come to terms, many years ago, with the fact that as he ran he was solidifying his place in the grand scheme of things. Such thoughts gave him fearful headaches, to know that he was truly without hope provided some comfort to him, but nowadays he could not even be sure of that.
The state of affairs made all things uncertain, most prominently the existence of hope. Jacob hoped, but he realized that his hopes were of a decidedly lesser caliber. The simple hope to find his ship intact after a restless sleep, or the hope that his destination was coming up as expected. The hope that he would find some food the next day. He hoped for a great many things, and in many cases he felt that his hope was so confined to the strict realities of the world that they went unnoticed by the great demon of fate. Fate had never been kind to Jacob and so he traveled, keeping as close to the ground as possible, making sure he never hoped for anything that was unreasonable or unattainable, for it was the hope of better things that killed a man sooner or later. Jacob had been witness too many times to the destruction of many good people because they had dared to dream. No, Jacob had destroyed any part of him that dared to dream long ago. He had abolished any sense of standard or normality and in doing so had granted his continued survival. For it was from the great demon of fate that he ran from. Jacob plucked a slow tune on the guitar.
It was not a tune he could remember, but it was a tune that his hand knew, plucking it slowly and deliberately, compensating for the lack of dexterity by taking methodical shortcuts, stretching his fingers into awkward chord patterns that he had no knowledge of. He knew that his fingers combined in certain patterns made certain sounds, and these sound stirred within him a swell of emotions that was equivalent to a small bob in the waves of a great lethargic ocean. He could not afford to create tidal waves, or hope for too much in any way. Hope only brought disaster. So the tune he played was not one of hope, but rather one of life. It was not an inspiring tune, it did not strike deep at the core of his humanity. It was simply an account of the day by day living transformed into chords and palm-mutes and the slap of skin against wood. It was a good feeling, skin against wood, he had forgotten what it felt like. Beneath his tired skin he could feel the softness of the wood, oh which he had forgotten the exact species. He knew it was a good wood by the feel and by the smell. Even after many years, the smell of the wood of his guitar provoked in him a flood of memories. He careful allowed them to trickle into his consciousness filtering out the ones that contained too much emotion, too much hope. He could not afford to remember those, not now. Instead he focused on the merely adequate memories, the ones that illustrated a time, a place, an event but did not color the scene with emotion. He illuminated in his mind a picture of a memory that was black and white and lacked animation or color. It was broken and fragmented and in all other respects not much of a memory, but it serves to remind him of a time when he could hope and while he could not hope to hope, he at least could sense the bitter after taste of it, lingering in his mind. These thoughts were far too dangerous, and Jacob reigned them in, stowing and lashing them down to the framework of his subconscious, the same way he secured gear before the next voyage.
Similarly, Jacob stowed the guitar. As he put it back into its proper container, worn thin by years of handling, the instrument still hummed with the remnants of the tune. He closed the lid and secured the latches and placed the case into its proper place, marked by worn grooves. His ship was dotted with worn areas, areas of constant use. The entire ship could be maneuvered by touch alone, Jacob had long ago memorized even the smallest details, and while he could not allow himself to be too proud of this fact, he did allow himself to occasionally explore the ship with his eyes closed, reveling in the way the ship moved, responding to his touch the way he imagined a woman would. He did not remember how a woman felt or what it felt like to be with a woman. He struggled with a memory from long ago, but stopped exhausted from the effort and worried about his proximity to the great demon. The guitar playing had really taken it out of him, and Jacob drifted lazily to the nearest chair, settling into it with a sigh and closing his eyes. For an undefined period of time Jacob sat there with his eyes closed feeling the circulation of air moved around him. It was always cold on the ship, he had long ago realized that he would never get used to it. However, after many years of furtive escape he had come to terms with it, just like so many things. He was cold now but his body had long ago lost its need to be warm. He simply filed his discomfort away as another negligible nuance of his nature. Surely there were larger things at stake then his warmth and if he could survive something as colossal as fate, the concept of physical comfort was almost laughable. Almost.