I was never to have an intimate moment with Selene again, for she became the strange elusive one, hurrying to and from things which appeared to make her miserable, slipping away from all things in between. Eli made jokes and they went clear through her, ghost-like. From my perspective she had lost all interest in what was in my mind, in my heart, and so I dared not share. One day I asked her, “why don’t you meet me in the middle?” and she stared at me like I was a second cousin she hadn’t seen since childhood, one she was never close with, not even a little bit. “Forget it,” I said. And she went on her way. There were many Selenes in life, waiting to drown or waiting to be saved completely, but there was no in between; the in between was their own soul moving and taking part; and they no longer had faith in something like that; the beautiful had become ordinary. Sometimes on lonely nights I half expected her to be somewhere I was, and the fact that she never was made the stars stretch even further apart. Thus, resilience became a vice, for we could put up with what kept us from things greater; we could put up with the darkness, when the stars were waiting for us to leap. And I was the same, waiting for the paramount, reaching for the miracle. The difference between me and the Selenes of the world was I still believed it was possible. The stars had not blurred into the rest of the night, nor had the moon, not for me. I wouldn’t allow the blur to claim me, as the others had given it permission to slow dance them into oblivion. For my life was rife with rude reminders, and I knew what followed a cursing of the moon, a cursing of thine own hands, a cursing of someone else’s. The best I could do for myself and the Selenes was pursue the cure: a beautiful truth so potent that it would shake the drowning cinderella from her slumber, the heartsick little prince from his isolation. In the worlds where the sublime flattens, the peculiar ones must reach again for their apples. There were planets waving at me that no one else could see. When Milky Way Joe called again, I was eager to begin. “Who’s this Tom Gettysburg?” I asked. “How do you know about Gettysburg?” “What are you nuts? You told me about him.” “How do you know it’s a him?” “Because you said, ‘I found him’, you called him that.” “Oh, okay, well I don’t know man. Gettysburg is a complicated subject.” It wasn’t going as I thought it would and my hopes began to deflate, but then he said it. “Roc, this Gettysburg guy, Tom Gettysburg…if we lose him…it’s over.” “What do you mean, over? Why?” “Because he’s supposed to fall in love. Not just that, he has to pursue that love. And he must succeed. Don’t you understand? He must succeed. If Tom Gettysburg does not love, then none of us will.” I didn’t know what to say. I said nothing. It was confusing from my place on the ground, but I believed in the sky enough to give it the time of day. “Roc, Gettysburg is where the angels have drawn the line, okay?” “Okay,” I said, “okay. But I don’t understand what we do.” “Well first things first, we gotta get on the same page here, you know? We’ve gotta be ironing the same suit, you see what I’m saying?” “No, I don’t.” “Roc, I’m in Portland. Where are you?” “Oregon?” “Yeah, Oregon. Are you still in Colorado?” “Yeah. What the heck are you doing on the west coast?” “I’ve been looking for Gettysburg man! I’m serious about this. Now listen, I’m going to catch a flight to Denver. Do you still have your car?” “Yeah.” “All right, I can be out there next week. Can you play guitar?” “What?” “Never mind. I’ll fill you in when the time comes.” And he hung up. Three days later, Milky sent me a letter. This is what it said. “Roc, Here’s the honest to God truth. I was bed-ridden for quite some time. It felt like forever to me. It felt like a hazy, cold hell, and sometimes it was hot, sometimes it was panic and ants crawling all over the place. But then that coldness, that numbness, that was the scariest part of it all when I look back, because I didn’t care, I couldn’t care, about anything, not anything at all, because my head, skull and brain, was a damn wrecked skyscraper, abandoned, time-worn, overgrown, windows shattered, wildlife living in the offices, ocean water flooding out the living room and kitchen. It was no good, my friend. Somehow, someway, as life will have it always, I got back. I’m back now, and I’ll never let what happened to me happen again, and I believe I was there for a reason. I don’t want anyone to ever have to go there, and to those who haven’t gotten out, I want to lift them by their better dreams, right on out of that cold unforgiving place, that they may reach for that good peace, that good loving. There was this vision I had, and the vision was of you. It was a dream and you were its subject. I saw you playing an instrument, a fusion of a piano and a harmonica and you were also making love to a beautiful space woman, her skin was a light purple and you made her make sounds like a harp makes. It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard, that anyone had ever heard in the cosmos, not because it was technically proficient, but because you dared climb out of the darkness, because you dared believe on the cosmos itself, beyond the cosmos, to that place lovers go to make music. I am bringing you a guitar. I don’t know if you’ve ever played, but I know you can write. You must write some songs. And we must drive back to the east coast, and you must play your songs for the people we meet along the way. It must happen. This is how we find Tom Gettysburg. You must play our way to him. You must sing our way to Gettysburg, and he must realize his love, that the world may go free once more. Earnestly Among It All, Milky Way Joe” It was an odd letter, of course. It spoke of visions and of dreams. Of outlandish plans and ideas. But it was better than the dull. And it was better than the standstill. And it asked of me something, and asked of him something. It even asked of the world something. Something rising. I began to write poetry in my journal. And I began to hum melodies in my head.