But at night, when he dreams, or when he closes his eyes and tries to summon sleep from the crevices into which it has fled, the memory of a different scent fills his nostrils, crawls across his skin, lives in the occasional breeze that ruffles his hair. And shadowed blue eyes, electric, vivid, imprint his consciousness, displace the leaf-green eyes that have lived there for what seems like always.
The first time, he left to gain control, to find the key to mastering the wolf that howls through his soul. Now he's running because he knows it all to be lies, all that control that he thought he'd found with a few months of chanting and meditating. So he squanders days, evenings, nights at bars, at pool-sides in the sun, in Vegas, at no-name last-ditch towns on dusty backroads that wind through America's heartland, calling to him to forget, to become as colorless and dusty as they are. Wouldn't it be nice to just stop there, and stay?
He's almost tempted, wants to pretend like the wolf was never there, like Willow was never there, like . . . he can't even think her name, these days. So he heads back to civilization, or what passes for it, bright neon lights, shiny glass and metal, all cold and black. It suppresses the instinct to run, to throw back his head in the moonlight and open his jaws with a ululating scream. He becomes small, nameless, anonymous and forgotten.
When he can't stand that anymore, either, and needs to eat, he picks up his guitar, steps onto stages in front of audiences that blur together, faceless. His fancy picks up a brush, paints over their features; and in his dreams, they are replaced by one burning pair of eyes. They've got no human grace or pity, and they scar his conscience; he doesn't know if she's there because he loved her or killed her.
He gathers his belongings, heads he doesn't know where. To a coast, an airport, a shipyard. This time, when he returns to Tibet, he's going to ask how to become one with the wolf. Because wolves never remember.
END
Eyes Without A Face
by Billy Idol
I'm all out of hope
One more bad dream could bring a fall
When I'm far from home
Don't call me on the phone
To tell me you're alone
It's easy to deceive
It's easy to tease
But hard to get release
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face.
I spend so much time
Believing all the lies
To keep the dream alive
Now it makes me sad
It makes me mad at truth
For loving what was you
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face.
When you hear the music you make a dip
Into someone else's pocket then make a slip.
Steal a car and go to Las Vegas oh, the gigolo pool.
I'm on a bus on a psychedelic trip
Reading murder books tryin' to stay hip.
I'm thinkin' of you you're out there so
Say your prayers.
Say your prayers.
Say your prayers.
Now I close my eyes
And I wonder why
I don't despise
Now all I can do
Is love what was once
So alive and new
But it's gone from your eyes
I'd better realise
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face.
Such a human waste your eyes without a face
And now it's getting worse.