Chapter 3

I often counted sheep to conclude my days, while laying awake in the middle of the night when most people have been dreaming for hours. If this doesn't work I'll submit to my waking dreams and lose myself in realities different from my own, but that have, in there own right, become more real than anything I have known. I would recreate, sometimes, the image of a girl that had once sat near me on a bench in the park--in the fall. She had a guitar strapped around her shoulder and had smiled at me as she put a pic in her mouth then began rummaging through her bag, not finding anything in particular she pulled the pic out of her mouth and asked how I was, while positioning the guitar in her lap. “I keep forgetting to put focus on my to-do list. I keep forgetting to wander and have fun. I know I’m transparent but my insecurities are in all the right places, so go ahead, have a look,” I said, quietly, she smiled a wink while nodding and then put the pic back in her mouth as she fixed her hair into a pony. She had a very natural beauty, a beauty shared by a spirit only parceled by a few, which is to say that she had a lot of life in her. As she played she would draw a small crowed for a couple of songs as people were passing by. They clapped and would look around for a place to drop a couple of dollars; but she was playing only for herself--and for me--as it would seem, then every couple of songs or so she would look over at me as if asking, again, how I was doing. I smiled at her, letting her know that there is no other place in this world I would rather be. Her hair was as dark as the night and fell a few inches below her shoulders; with dark brown piercing eyes that, along with her laugh, radiated a warmth she tried desperately to keep hidden--at least to most, for one reason or another. She was guarding herself from appearing vulnerable. It could be argued that she was too successful. She played and sang from her soul, it was the only place she could feel completely safe and when she would retreat there, almost entirely, you would see, as I have seen, an unconditionally gratitude for life that many spend their whole lives searching for. I sat next to her as she played covers of songs unfamiliar to me. People would come and go, some would sing. Most would not see what I saw in her but they would, at the very least, leave remembering that girl who played that song in the park. I left that evening, knowing I may never see her again, but content with the memory of the spirit of that girl who had enchanted me.

 

 

It was something beautiful, it had snowed late last night and collected on the ground. I had to sweep it off of the bench before I sat. I considered leaving it for a moment, creating an impression on the bench, in the snow, that would stay after I've left; it might catch the eye of someone walking by, someone who might sit and retrace the imprint, as we would often do, when we were children, with foot or hand prints. They might laugh to themselves while trying to picture a person sitting there just moments before, then continue on their walk. Every few minutes the snow fell from the trees above--it is following people walking through the park--they began to pick up their pace, walking faster, to stay ahead of it. The tree above me is coaxing me. I can hear the wind shaking the branch creating a mist, just the whispers of a snow falling. I breathe in the frozen air and am mystified, lightly until I hear a voice from behind me, one familiar yet foreign, one that forces me to search my memories, but I still cannot place. I turned to see a girl walking towards me, her guitar around her shoulders, smiling as she neared. "Tell me about yourself," she says, as she sat on the bench next to me--not bothering to sweep off the snow.

I stumbled to speak as I was lost somewhere between the dream and waking worlds, "Well...um, I'm about average height, I guess, you know...like 5'8" or 5'9," I keep my hair long and almost always in a pony-tail. It's a dirty blonde. You wouldn't see me often without it. The pony-tail, I mean. I wear glasses, I did try contacts once, though, that didn't work-out. I am usually wearing a hat of some sort, most often some variety of fedora. My eyes are a deep blue muffled by a quiet green, like just beyond the shallows of an ocean reef. My eyes also tend to get hidden behind my glasses. I hear its a shame." She stared at me for a few minuets as if she were waiting for me to finish. "Let me see your eyes," she said. We walked through the snow listening to the scrunch beneath our feet. I don't think either one of us said anything, we just settled for a composed indifference for the time being. We walked on this way for a while. At some point trying to mimic the beat to seven nation army in the snow. It was unintentional, at first. We just kind of realized what was happening, then began matching the song beat for beat. Looking over and nodding at each other hand in hand. It was the song that lead us to MUD. We just looked up, slightly, to a chalkboard that read "This is Water, This is Water. DFW." Her and I both turned into the coffeehouse on 9th Street as if it had been our destination from the beginning. We sat in the back room and eavesdropped nearby conversations, occasionally glancing at one another in casual amusement at the passions of people ardently arguing incredibly trite points almost militantly.

 

"What's your name?" I finally said after several minutes, smiling mirthfully at the fact that it is only now coming up.

 

"Autumn, I mean...my name is Autumn." She seemed unprepared for conversation, as if she were pleased with the organic expression of thought and feeling through happenstance. The reactionary responsive delegation of real life taking the place of the synthetic seemingly progressive flow of the question and answer motif.

 

I told her the story of an evening while I was walking home, in the rain, I had noticed, "walking next to me, a form, like a silhouette created by the rain and I felt, though, as if there were a presence...and to some degree it was my own, only it was one that was foreign to me, like I hadn't met this self before..." Autumn listened quietly, processing everything I was saying and looking more and more intrigued as I progressed through the experience and deeper into my interpretation of the experience.

 

"I felt as if..." I told her, " that I was looking at a expression of myself that I had not yet become, but was being asked to never be. Like, this form was there to invite me to be conscious of this surrounding world. And reminding me that I am both the poetic illusion and the collective consciousness that is thought, experience, and love. You know?"

 

"Yes. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean." She whispered, smiling.

 

"When I was young," she started..."My family would spend a week every summer in Niagra Falls, I grew up in Buffalo, and one afternoon while wading in the shallows above the falls I noticed I was getting closer to them then I was comfortable with, and started thrashing about in the water. Which was only making matters worse and forcing me closer and closer to the edge. I was terrified. I felt Like I was screaming as loud as I could for someone, for anyone, to help and no one could hear me. It was about then that a feeling of complete calm came over me. I heard what sounded like the combined voices of every living thing telling me to stop moving, and to just relax. So I did. I gave away all control of myself and of the situation and I floated there near the edge feeling completely at ease until I knew I needed to pull myself back."

 

"You notice," I said. "That both of our stories have to do with water? That's amazing."

 

"Yeah, that is kind of crazy."

 

"I've never been to Niagra Falls. Several years ago my Mom and Sister went, for a wedding, but didn't think I would be interested. At least That's what they said. I have never given them any reason to believe that I wouldn't want to see Niagra Falls."

 

"Are you familiar with the work of Masaru Emoto?" I asked her. She looked at me questioningly, "He's the guy that photographed water crystals as they unfroze, then being of that eastern mindset wondered what would happen if he..."

 

"...played music to them, and such. To see if the water would react. Yeah!" "Yes. But, it also kind of went further than that. He started talking to the water with affirming or negative words to see if or how the water would react. He even went as far to label the water with certain words or ideas. I think that's pretty incredible, you know. And when you said that when you were "thrashing about in the water," and how that just made it worse until you relaxed and felt at peace and calm...water amplifies our feelings, it channels them and creates as an operation of them..."

 

"That's amazing. That Water is a guide for our positive or negative thoughts and feelings, and when you think about how we are made up of 90 some odd percentage of water it really makes you reconsider how you treat people, and ourselves." She had whispered as she noticed, for the first time, people listening to our conversation.

 

"Right, love. It is amazing! It's like walking in here today, outside, on the chalkboard, did you read it? 'This is Water, This is Water. DFW."

 

"I glanced, yeah. But I didn't really process it. What is DFW?"

 

"David Foster Wallace. Have you heard of him?"

 

"Oh. Yeah. F**k, yeah. He wrote Infinite Jest, and his short stories are incredible."

 

"He was reminding us to be conscious of how we are living, and to recognize our place, with intention, in all of 'this.'"

 

We sat there in MUD for longer than either of us could remember, and did so more comfortably than at any point before. It was a good conversation. Meriting the attention of several eavesdroppers that lost interest in their own colloquy. And we expressed ourselves more clearly and throughly than I could ever remember doing before. While sitting there it began to snow more heavily. The back room at MUD coffee has a clear plastic ceiling, and until the snow collects sheltering the room, we sat watching the snowfall and losing ourselves in a pittance of our waking dreams. After a while someone sitting at a table near us, a tall shaggy blonde haired boy wearing black thick rimmed glasses without lenses, a mustache colored intentionally to be several shades darker than the hair on his head, a plain white deep V neck shirt with a purple and grey stripped hoody zipped half way up, girls jeans rolled up to his knee on one leg and a pair of neon bowling shoes says,

 

"So, Do you think you're better than us? We have been sitting here listening to you talk and can't tell...you two are talking like you've never met before now, but seem to have some deep unspoken connection, whats the story?"

 

Autumn and I looked at each other offering half smiles in one direction, I thought for a few moments about what to say. Autumn it seemed has already decided not to respond, as if the question had been directed to me. I thought of Buddy Wakefield, and smiled...

 

"The truth is I am a perfect part of the exact point at which all individual human beings meet, and the spectrum of voices that weave themselves in between and scream, ‘every quiet moment of reflection you have ever known and every asymmetrical feeling you have ever felt are what make this painting complete..."

 

He just nodded as if he accepted that completely as a response, and one of the girls he was with looked at me with such intensity I'll never forget her face and all she said was, "Touché."

 

The sun began shining through the snow, and plastic ceiling just right to fill the empty space on the coral wall with shadows and silhouettes of the people playing themselves on some illuminated stage show. An act only slightly translucent from our own crystal reality. We all knew each other only in this way. As monotonic shadows on a wall, and we played in sequence showing nothing but gratitude on our contoured faces. Standing up to leave we whispered our thanks and regard to each person, one by one as they sat sipping on their MUD and laughing to themselves. We past through the small square waiting room, and into front seating area, hugged the wall along the long skinny walk from the entrance to the tables, tipped our hats to the barista then through the front door and past the chalkboard propped against the bench that way that leaves very little to question, she stopped and turned, looking first at the chalk board and then at me, pausing for a moment then said, "I could swear that you were singing me a love song, back there...and, that you meant it."... ©