AMERIKA IN THE SKY (IN MEMORIAM)

 

I remember that day starting off ordinarily enough, there I was playing as usual with some friends in the open field not that far from home, the sky azure with nary a cloud blighting its face…

The lay of the land is so perfectly flat that we can see unencumbered all the way to the horizon. A strange sensation grips me that the sky is a giant snow globe surrounding and enveloping me in its grasp, which makes me feel slightly queasy and claustrophobic. I feel trapped by this impenetrable glass bowl sky and have the strong urge to smash its walls and break free from the eternal imprisonment that it has me and the whole world under.

As the day proceeds, the heavens rotate slowly around their axis and then towards mid-morning something very odd catches my eye on the eastern horizon. It is something that I never have seen in the sky before but there it is before me, slowly arising from beneath the edge of the earth.  By some incomprehensible process, the whole of the continent of North America has somehow become attached to the celestial sphere and it is now being carried along by the turning of the heavens. We can clearly see its unmistakable shape and the features of the land, the whiteness of Alaska, the mighty rivers, the mountain chains, the major cities, the wheat fields, the forests.

If I felt claustrophobic before and hemmed in by the sky above me, now those sensations are so much worse given there's a whole continent hanging right over our heads.

At first, while the continent is still at a shallow angle in the sky, the North American people seem to be enjoying their unique experience, smiling, laughing and some even waving to us down below.

But as the heavens continue their inexorable turning and the continent slowly approaches the celestial zenith, the fun and the mirth turns to panic.

At midday the continent reaches the highest point in the sky, hanging precisely upside down. The people are now in their most precarious position, desperately trying to hold onto anything that is firmly rooted in the ground, any moorings whatsoever, to blades of grass, even to soil itself. Even when they completely lose all grip on land, still they hopelessly attempt to find some protuberance in the fabric of the sky that they can hold onto, to save themselves from this terrible disaster, to give themselves just one more instant of life, just one more instant of stability. Oh the humanity, dropping like ants from their once secure abodes that have now turned treacherously against them. But what can one do when your whole world has literally been turned upside down?

The height from which they fall is so great that we can not even see where they land. Curiously, instead of their bodies looming larger and larger in our field of vision as they approach the ground, they become fainter and smaller still, until disappearing from sight completely. Even more curiously, after a certain stretch of time, they suddenly re-appear, only now they are not their usual corporeal three-dimensional selves but rather they've turned into life-sized two-dimensional monochrome cardboard cutouts of themselves. As we watch these cardboard figures near the ground another incredible metamorphosis takes place and the cutouts change into small snapshot photos of those same people. These photos shower upon us like torrential rain. Even though in a daze, I instinctively pick some of them up and see in these snapshots the lost souls as they appeared in happier times, with their family, friends, pets, the way that they like to be remembered, and not how they looked in their desperate final moments.  

As the continent remains in the apex of the sky, buildings' foundations start to loosen, roots of plants are no longer able to cling to the soil, the once mighty rivers empty their banks in cataclysmic downpour of unprecedented proportions. Finally, the earth itself begins to lose its compactness and adhesiveness, dripping down in small spurts first and then in great lumps. Here and there, the liquid magma substratum is peeking through the locations where all of the continental crust has fallen off.

As the whole continent continues to break up, a colossal downpour of bodies, concrete, trees, mud, water, cars, houses, rock, soil all mixed up together into a terrible blend threatens to engulf the world below and destroy our lives too.

Thankfully, some clouds appear and block these scenes of pure horror but then they quickly disperse and again we are unable to look away, unable to avert our gaze from the largest catastrophe that has ever been witnessed by the human eye. But who am I, a small boy, to watch these scenes of suffering so terrifying that even Death Itself turns its bony face away in fright? Oh the horror, the horror of it all, surely this day will live forever in infamy!

After an interminable span of time, the continent begins to move away from the zenith. We can see that a fortunate few have somehow managed to survive the nearly total destruction of the landscape of North America and they are approaching the horizon and the security of the ground again. Thank goodness they now will be able to descend safely and be lauded as heroes, as survivors of the most terrible journey that any human being has ever had to go through.

Alas, that is not to be, and our hopes are proven to be woefully inaccurate. For when this god-forsaken, ill-fated, star-crossed continent reaches the horizon again, it collides sharply with the stubborn, unyielding ground that is already there and a catastrophe even worse than the one we witnessed earlier in the day begins to unfold before our terrified eyes.

In the far horizon, an inexorable process is taking place as two continents attempt to occupy the same location at the same time and one of them has to lose out. Northern Canada and Alaska are the first to go, bit by bit they are torn apart as the stationary earth refuses to shift and stands firm its ground and those remaining alive that we thought would be the lucky survivors are crushed to dust.   

We cannot help but rush to their aid, to try to save at least some lives. Suddenly we halt as we realize that the horizon is an illusory point in the distance that keeps receding further and further as you walk towards it and so we never would be able to reach those unfortunate few.

By now, more than half the continent has been ground into fine powder as the merciless process continues without ceasing. The major metropolises of the United States, the founts of so much knowledge, art, music, creative energy, are being pulverized into nothingness, never before has there been destruction on such a thoroughly unmitigated scale. Icy pieces of Alaska intermingle with the glassy shards of New York City and with bits of tinsel of Los Angeles. Would it ever be possible to reconstruct America from these clouds of dust?  Civilizations, cities, entire countries have been rebuilt before from ruins, but this is annihilation of an entirely different nature, from which there's surely no coming back.  

"Well, there goes the New World", I think wistfully  "and I never did get to visit it, although just last year I came so close to going there. No longer will we have America in our lives, no more remains of that cultural centre of the world from which we get all of our TV programs. It is all gone in the most cruel and terrible fashion right before our very eyes. And yet, its ashes and dust will settle all over the world, infusing every cell of the remaining world.  Forever more it will provide fertilization for the world to go on growing and progressing the way America once did and we will be able to proudly say that we all now have America in our very souls."

Reviews

[Angel Bird]

Maybe I'm very mistaken, but the first thing that came to mind at the beginning of your story was President Bush's disastrous politics, and slowly it metamorphosed into 9/11 to me til the very end. To me it seems that you here wrote metaphorically speaking about how all continents looked up at the great, and filled with greatness and all possibilities land of America ... and then since Bush came into office, he and his politics literally managed so everything went down the tubes and crumbled down to only a pile of ashes ...
Ok that's my very own way of interpreting your write, if I'm wrong I hope you don't mind?

This is an excellent piece you've created here. All those many fantastic, but cruel images. An absolutely breathtaking fantasy piece. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Brilliant! Kudos!

[Sara]

When I read the featured reveiw I got a little mad because I am a conservative republican and am quite fond of Bush, BUT when i read your story it seemed to me , especially at the end, to be saying that America is giving too much of itself and that soon it will disappear into the rest of the world...maybe economically? with immigration? i dont know. some though provoking stuff, i hope i didnt get it all wrong.

But, if this was negative toward the U.S., then please dont bash my country.

[alternative_be]

I must admit I also thought of 9/11 while reading this mysterious story! Also, I got visions of times when the Earth was still flat, before Copernicus discovered otherwise... The size of our globe is one of the biggest visual illusions ... Being in Europe, and knowing that Australia is on the other side of the globe, confused me a little while reading. Then the climax made it all clear to me.
This is indeed a wonderful story, but not something you should read lightly ...
Politics can make all sorts of things happen. What you write about America, can happen to any continent nowadays. Let us hope that whenever such a disaster happens, the ashes of the unfortunate continent will be feeding/nourishing the other parts of the Earth so the sacrifice of the victims will not be in vain...
Very intriguing and captivating indeed!

[Ken Simm.]

Well written and quite disturbingly real and surreal in turns. A bleak but strangely beautiful vision.

[faith h.]

Boris, I find this a delightful flight of fantasy, and as Mr. Paget points out, perhaps a lingering fantasy of those not in America. I prefer to read it as an interesting allegory and absolutely love the idea of the ashes of Amerika fertilizing the remains of the world.

[David Lewis Paget]

Well, Boris, I'm tempted to ask what your mother put in your porridge that morning? I think the letters LSD might have something to do with it. But seriously, what an imagination!!!!
Personally, I don't share your views on America, rather seeing it as a negative influence on world culture, and infecting, rather than fertilising other cultures. The violence, the racism, the worship of the almighty dollar; the proliferation of guns, school shootings, gang warfare, the greed of corporations, the pitiful treatment of America's poor, all these things incline me to think that the last place on earth I would ever want to end up is America. This view might shock some of our American friends, who have been propagandised into thinking that America is God's own country, but as an outsider I think my view is more objective. As an Australian - (living in God's own country :-) ) - I just hope that most Americans continue to believe in their myth, and don't come here. Australia is the world's best kept secret!!!

[Justin Tobey]

A wonderful piece! I think the idea of a continent sliding up onto the sky is quite wonderful! I am uncomfortable when looking at a perfectly clear sky, especially at night, so the idea of the sky as a globe is nice to me. A nice blend of humor, imagery, catastrophe, and emotion. Well done!

Boris, I always find your writing to have the freedom I always believe writing should have. In its very imagination and description I feel like you have written another bible in prophetic concept of visions. What was more intriguing though, and something that would be a flattering tribute to America, would be how it fertilizes the world with its soul. It has wonderful depth and imaginative concept.

Sorry but I still get the strangest dreams in the world though.

Wonderful form, amazing choice of words, wonderful flow, very well imparted message.

One of my favorite pieces.

[Legion]

Very strange piece. I like the descriptions you have given here, but I wouldn't want to be there if that happened. Disturbing, but a bit prophetic in a way. This can not last much longer as it is going. Kudos.

[Wildfleour]

This is a very frightening vision, Boris. I am an eternal optimist, so I am not sure of what the world will look like in the future, but I hope that America finds a way back to being a place of hope and dreams. In the sky? Strange! :)