As I stand looking down at the past. I see a great wave approaching. It is a dark wave, something made of black and blues. It seems to grow within and without itself as if to speak with age old tones and simple harmonies. With an outstretched arm I attempt to feel the cold air. It is damp and crisp, yet humid. My hair is short but it collects spats of water cooling my hot skin. I try to pull away from the wave, as if to rip apart from the universe itself. But I am already overtaken by the black water. Thinking I would be swimming and sloshed upon the deluge, I am surprised to find that the wave has passed…only to fill the air with its sound. I look up and see the tail of the wave. It is like a great comet or serpent, splashing upon the sky with fervor and grace. As I close my hand and retract my arm, I unwittingly grab space and time and pull it like a sheet up toward my chest. Stars shine through the night sky in adoration. They know that something true and worthy has happened. For accidents of innocent fate are the key to impressing and arousing the curiosity and adoration of the heavens. So they watch. Time moves like a song, with ebbs and flow. The cold air is replaced by a warm wind. I can feel pockets of pressure like a topographic map shows elevation. They are explaining themselves to me. How arrogant was I…to expect that they existed like I do. To think that they had similar bodies or minds. “Let us teach you, let us watch you…” So I close my eyes, and feel the wind. It rushes past my fingers, and I sense intensity and expedience. It slows and whistles and I sense decay and eventual death. But as the emptiness of sound and touch weighs upon my consciousness, time begins to lose its grasp. I begin to question how long I have been under. I look to the stars and they seem to have moved. I look closer and they blink and shimmer, toying me for trying to directly scrutinize or understand them. “We are not here to help you.” I feel anger in my stomach and I arch my back to get a closer look in defiance, only to slip on the cliff that I was standing on. I fall to the rocky ground, painfully. But in that instant of pain I feel security. For I have felt something. In the absence of external sensation and anchors of reality, I had created my own beacon to cling to. So I laid there for a while laughing in a small way, a chuckle of sorts. Then as the wind began to flow over me again, clouds past by the stars making them pulse and blink. I took a relaxed breath through my nose and filled my chest with air. There was no escape. There was no reprieve. There was only the now. So since I had all the time in the world, I decided to stand up. Maybe I’ll walk in a straight line until the universe sends me back where I started. The wind gently helped me stand. And since I felt cold, I wrapped the sheet of the wave around my body like a cape. I felt proud. The wind filled the cloak of time and made my walk have something human, something special to it, that I couldn’t describe unless I was mad man trying to argue with the gods about purposefulness. So I went forward and kept my back toward the wind. And the stars blinked when I looked up and hid when I looked down. And we were silent companions in the night.
Tyler Stansfield Jaggers
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
1:33 AM
