#11 A Love Story

There is a love story out there. It starts and ends with a girl and a boy. It’s a very grand, romantic love story, so let’s say that they didn’t know their parts in it yet. It is a story that owns many characters, each fulfilling their own benign, unique roles, unaware of what they were apart of. They are the same as you and me.

It’s a good love story, so it had a hook, a pillar which united them all. In this love story of ours, a Ferris wheel took on the role of fastening lives together. It is a monument.

But, there’s a twist. There isn’t a Ferris wheel. In the little town of Salisbury, there is not a Ferris wheel. Perhaps stranger than that, there was a Ferris wheel in Salisbury. It was a great deal.

People loved Salisbury. It was a novelty town, built right on the beach. People came from far and wide. They went to Joe’s Arcade Playland, they went to the fortune teller right on the corner of the circuit, they went to the open lot dedicated to one sole Ferris wheel. The little people, they went to Salisbury.

However, people stopped feeling that Salisbury verve. They no longer felt Salisbury was a part of them, and they a part of Salisbury. This is not a story of a conglomerate invading and pervading a small town, this is a love story. So it can be said family business failed not because of greedy nature, but of fickle nature. Time went on. A spirit is not corroded in one day.

The decay, of course, was gradual.

Gossip of the town had it that poor tide made summer homes disposable. Life and liberty allow the pursuit of happiness, but without an idle happiness, one does not have much use for liberty, nor does one witness life. One man bemoans his poor fishing season to their neighbor, the neighbor reevaluates their own relative prosperity as insufficient, and so the cycle becomes self-perpetuating. True discontent and complacency are mutually exclusive.

It would be dishonest to simplify it so, however. The bond between a man and his heart is complex. In this love story, one does not make the claim, “the fish are sparse,” and has done their job. There is more to be seen.

As Salisbury became more homely and less like home, the collective subconscious of those who had to live there during the good and the bad became self-aware. It was not of looking in a mirror and being cognizant of what is, it was absentmindedly chewing a pencil because it needed to be sharpened. The people who fully invested themselves in Salisbury, the resilient ones, passively adopted a pack mentality. If one were to make a value judgment on this hiving, one would also make a liar; hindsight ruins everything.

Vague, ambiguous generalizations do not inform the soul, so the love story has individuals as well. There is Kate, a Salisbury native; when you ask her what nationality she is, she answers, “Salisbyte.” She manages to rise above the humdrum of being just a local, though. Kate loves heights. She does not know this, though. She has never been higher than the top of the water tower, but even that is not much. Regardless, Kate is pretty sure that a height would be fun.

During a key moment in this love story, Kate stands in a large, abandoned parking lot for no other reason than to satisfy the linearity of life, though she thinks she is standing there to wait for her father to pick her up. She gets a suspicion that everything happens for a reason. Kate looks up and sees nothing. She knows this to be true.

Important events happen in threes, but an exception can be made when the second of two is especially important. A boy named Dan and his family move into Salisbury, right at the very moment of Kate’s revelation.

Dan is misty-eyed and mystified by what he sees, as he watches the town's exoskeleton shudder before him. The success and heartiness of life rots radially from the center of town. The town limits are defined by different kinds of borders; some are formal, and some are imaginary. The Now Entering sign is followed by an Out of Business banner, but that is only after several miles of one star motels and novelty shops. Dan reconciles his childhood dreams with reality. He had left childhood behind in his little cul-de-sac without realizing it. The final thing Dan notices before he makes the turn onto Chapel Street is a large, dilapidated parking lot.

The love story progresses at a slow pace, gathering its materials into the right spots for ready access, just as the computer readies itself during bootup. A computer takes seconds to do this; a love story takes years. The computer reaches its login screen; Kate and Dan meet.

“Hi I’m Kate and I love. What do you do?”

“I’m Dan. I suppose I just do.”

The initial spark is there; the computer mouse jitters to action as it decides what gateway is in want of exploration.

“Oh, well that’s neat, I guess. I don’t know really what to say to that. So, I’m not gunna say anything at all. Bye!” And so Kate ran off to the other side of the playground; the computer mouse lingers on the recycling bin to make sure it is empty, and satisfied, hovers on to the next task.

This love story is a digital alarm clock; it progresses at a linear pace, and contents itself on doing so. And if somebody comes along and interferes with its path, it is not aware, and is fine with whatever the outcome. Thus, it can be said that it is content with ignorance.

Dan has a relationship with his father, in so far as that a relationship is defined by its own existence. His bond with his father is not of note, nor is it negligible. It simply existed. In our love story, Dan’s father is the one who brings the Ferris wheel. The thought is not more important than the action, but it is important.

“Hey, Dan. Do you remember the Ferris wheel” - “in Stanley’s lot?” - “yeah that one. When you were a boy?”

Even though the alarm clock goes off earlier than anticipated, sometimes, it must be met with and received, no matter how ill the state of those who set it in motion; the Ferris wheel’s return was conceived much too soon. That night, Dan had a dream of construction and tragedy.

The love story that is out there, that is being dreamed of and experienced always, continues its course by seeing Dan and Kate have a chance meeting while walking down the strip.

“Hey, Kate? Do you remember a Ferris wheel being here?”

Love is a dialog of the heart finding itself in two separate bodies. The soliloquies in between are that which feed it, and the apostrophes are that which temper it. Dan and Kate build a Ferris wheel in the empty lot.

It is a fantastical goal, and they know it. They are building the Ferris wheel for the same reason Shakespeare wrote. They do not know what they would do if they didn’t, so they did.

The Ferris wheel was built from plywood and rocks and gears and various machinations that the couple were only just sure might work. It did not matter. If it succeeded, then Kate could find out if she liked heights or not, just to make absolute sure, and Dan would have the approval of his father. If it failed, they still had each other. And if nothing comes of it at all, stories of their feats will be passed on for many years, becoming so versatile as to teach any desired moral. In many, many, many generations, it would become known “as old as the English language itself,” as the word love is known now.

As it was made clear before, it shall be made lucid now. This is a good love story.

Once upon a time, there was a girl and a boy, Kate and Dan. They were content just to have each other around; they did not want anything more, or expect anything out of each other. They were sitting on carriage number four of their Ferris wheel, which was half built, and made entirely by their hands. It was such a sight to see, that it attracted people far and wide to little Salisbury. Salisbury was prospering, once again as it rightly should be, because of the ambitions of the girl and the boy. And they lived happily ever after.

Yet, once upon this time, in the day as it is right now, there is a girl and a boy, Kate and Dan. Dan did not feel valued or loved by Kate, and he asked too much of her. He fortified his insecurities in himself with his neediness and attachment to Kate. Kate genuinely loved Dan, but she did not know how to express it. Kate wanted to reciprocate in any way she could, but all she could do was treat him coldly. She did not mean to. It hurt her as much as it hurt him.

They were sitting in the second carriage of their complete hand-built Ferris wheel in the middle of a wholly abandoned parking lot.

They looked at each other, and they were not sure what they saw in the other’s eyes; did Kate see disgust; did Dan see pity? It does not matter. At least they had each other.

Kate looked out beyond the seat of the carriage. She did not see much else than desolation, except for the blue ocean a few hundred yards away. As she looked out to it, she heard Dan mumbling, “…this is like a love story…”