Chapter 4

Entranced with the rustic appearance of hard-wooden floors and the berthed hues of an altruistic surface. It is a staring contest, and I am comatose--watching a fire. And welcoming the voices of people around me then looking, back, down at the leaf I continued to draw lines that had been caught bending the page, chronicled words that have little time for structure or linearity. An account rebelling against the margins that are a channel of a portrait. A collaborative design. First illustrating a path, then bushes, a boulder, and a lake--the sun shining brilliantly with rays of, "gratitude" filling the sky. It reflects beautifully the myriad of light. As it gets darker the fading sunlight through the window reflects off of the colorless trees in the park creating a crystalized kaleidoscope verve. I stare. Half-heartedly. Lost in some far-away dream without faces or names. There are people, many people, walking single-file, hand in hand, in bunches--without intention, they wonder through the park in droves; ogling the area with a playful lather and a timid indifference, as if they were sitting somewhere far away watching the city with a subjected panoramic camera. The portrait still being painted on my journal has developed into a wordy likeness of the world around me. The symbolized anatomic composition of stick figures sketched simply as a word--the first word that came to mind as they both entered and left my life, summarily. Thoughtful, carless, arrogant, dogmatic, or helpful, etc., words that have sprouted shadows of extremities, arms and legs with intended direction and fervor. I was too lost now in the conspired design to realize the snow now collecting on the trees outside.

In this design I could, once again, recognize my reflection. The creator returning to the creation as a breadth of this lucid transparent consciousness. And the reflective veil revisited begins to take shape as a studied, constructed conviction. I write them down, as if thoughts, in the order in which they came, and though scattered and incomplete in my head I managed to form some coherent reflection on paper. For many minutes I sat staring down into this piece of art, a light directed exactly, on this design, as seems sponsored by some conscious intent. The image had redirected my thoughts. It was like I had stepped into a world of ecstasy, although to try to describe something as artistic as this desire would be somewhat similar to walking on water. It was like seeing life for how it was meant to be lived, within a presence. There was a feeling that swept into every crevasse instilling, in me, memories and I would be unable to describe it in any way but a reminiscent thought...I was taken aback. The world outside of me and the worlds within me converged in a tiny space that I had forgotten existed. A place that was dark was once again filling with light. Life is taken too seriously. This Life was intended to be challenging, a learning experience, and a growing opportunity; but not at the expense of enjoying oneself. I don't believe that it was about discovering the balance between the two, inasmuch as it is about learning that the two are actually one in the same. I could no longer hear the voices echoing around me, I was left with only the occasional crack of the fire and the flutter of lithe wings. It was dark now. And people whispered more in the dark, it was like we had been hushed somewhere in the past when we were still forging our grace. So we all just sat. Quiet and dreaming, technicolor, howling as Ginsberg sighs beaten and naked on his negro street, crashing. The clouds seem to appear less as forced hallucinations brought on by extreme boredom, worn childhood fantasies, and tinsel day dreams--and more a blinding white acting as floor, wall, and ceiling in a illuminated enclosed box shaped vastness, until the stars could be hermetic no more; and now the radiance of the stars above only swelled the beauty below. They closed the lawn after dark. This place, at night, in the grass, under the stars, helped to remind me of how united everything is; while the midnight clouds contrive to neglect it, they are grasping in vain for consent but are settling, reluctantly, to evanesce. It is not often in the city that the stars will volunteer themselves on us in such a way as this evening. We are profiled; as silhouettes united by the darkness under a pitch black blanket, punctured. Holy. There are whispers next to me. She has blonde hair tied up in a bun. Wide rimmed glasses hiding her green eyes. Fair skin. Only as much was salient under the cheshire moon, and brilliant apertures. I didn't notice her lay down beside me. I was lost completely in the crisp night air and the subtle transient overcast.

 

"love..." she began to whisper, "...is not a feeling at all, it is like whiteness. Love is the harmony of all feelings. Love is what makes reality comprehendible and the universal attainable. Love is God. Love is like water, and we...we are the fish, and fish cannot exist without water. Love is unexplainable, and it is often unbelievable...but, do fish believe in water?"

 

We lay there staring up into the night like it would atone for every regret, disregard or indifference. Praying earnestly in mirth. Several hours past without hesitation and in contempt for our own personal choosing. It wasn't until the clouds returned and the snow, which was now collecting everywhere, became uncomfortable that we quietly started to leave. As we crossed the lawn, having abandoned any object-able truth including that of our own scorn for the park rules, realized, too late, that the lawn, and at this point, the park, had been closed for hours. A pair of headlights that belonged autocratically to the park police in their egoistic golf-cart accolade was headed towards us at an alarming speed. So we did as any self respecting twenty-something would do. We caressed the shadows, just out of sight, making our way to the nearest exist, veiled. These particular officers took their job way too seriously as it generally was made up only of several short naps and the occasional 'perimeter check,' which was usually outlined in disappointment and humdrum, so they often, when given the opportunity, sensationalized their authority. By the time they had recovered sight of us we were running southeast through the shadows past the MET towards conservatory pond, and they followed.

 

They lost us somewhere near Pilgrim Hill and began making their rounds up and around Belvedere Castle. We lost ourselves--climbing in, and throughout, the 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' sculpture by the pond, it was still snowing, and the moon was out luminously attempting to recreate our reality. She curled up, cross-legged, on one of the mushrooms prattling verses of the Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter: "The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes--of ships--of ceiling wax--of cabbages--and kings--or why the seas are boiling hot--and whether pigs have wings!" While I skipped, galumphingly, around the sculpture a ghostly Jabberwock head in hand beamishly cheering: "callooh! callay!," as the moon disappeared, slowly, behind the cloudy precip. "What's your name?" I asked, while crawling, childishly, under the sculpture...interrupting herself, and her rhyme, she cried "call me Alice!" And, I did; with the dream, perhaps, of wonderland long ago; and how she felt with all her simple sorrows, and could still find pleasure in all her simple joys, while she sits, cross-legged, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. She was my Alice. As Alice as any an Alice could be. ©