The Trade-Off
Every couple of days I go to the edge of the property where the forest begins and on a big stone leave one or two items from the house. Simple things—a dry ball point pen, a key to nothing anymore, a dead battery. In exchange I find things left for me that I don’t understand but feel, the way you feel the horizon open its arms when you come out of a mountain pass, or the golden swollen moon at the end of a street, or a lost city rising out of the sand from a few broken teeth. The junk I bring, it’s funny how expensive it was, like noticing how many compromises you’ve really made and how far from where you meant to go you are. For a long time I’ve suspected that I’m an ad campaign for Coca-Cola or Toyota, my birthright traded before I was born for fifteen minutes of plastic and cutting-edge technology long since discarded. Late at night when I know my guard is down I ask what I’m afraid of, what don’t I want to bring to the forest’s edge and leave there? The good wishes of my fellow livestock on the world ranch? Sentences like streets that meet at right angles? My story was long since told on the Twilight Zone—robot or department store mannequin, what do I have to lose and it’s only what was for sale to anyone with the purchase price? No, I’m afraid of what I might gain, what I might find left for me to pick up and become, the ruby metal the hummingbird wears on his forehead, the start of a thought that will catch me as paper catches fire and in an instant is all flame, then white ash, then never stops. I’m okay with having a few trees in the living room but what will happen if I empty my house into the forest and then roll down gravity to its deeper realm. Do I survive, does anyone, even a hermit living alone in the woods? Do I become a deer, whose antlers branch out with each step and then bursting into leaves and acorns become forest and there’s no deer anymore, only canopy, only leaves in a thousand voices no one hears, the floor where what’s shed and dropped becomes soil.
Peter Cashorali
Peter is a queer psychotherapist, previously working in community mental health and HIV/AIDS, now in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles. He is the author of two books, Gay Fairy Tales (Harper San Franciso 1995) and Gay Folk and Fairy Tales (Faber and Faber, 1997). He has lived through addiction, multiple bereavements and the transitions from youth to midlife and midlife to old age. He believes you can too.
Books
- Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men
- Gay Fairy & Folk Tales: More Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men
More: https://petercashorali.com
Comments
Yes, I echo Victor's comments! Impressive and sticky in the best way - will stick with me, you know?
This piece grabs me at a visceral level. It’s such an odd type of exchange in the forest that make me think of what we give up for what we never gain.