The Briarclock

The Briarclock

 

          The basketball hoop in front of my house was a gift from my neighbors. It doesn’t look like much, but the hoop is an artifact more sacred to me than anyone could imagine. It watched me grow. When I was in 7^{th grade I would put on my mom’s checkered brown jacket and play basketball in the rain. My hands would get muddy with slime and grimy asphalt, but the sound of the ball splashing through the chain net made everything worth it. It would send up a shower of rusty raindrops infused with the pulpy residue of autumn leaves. The memory of that minor spectacle was enough to recall the smell of the wind and the sound of the rain. I remember the lazy days I would spend with Jason just shooting hoops; now whenever somebody air balls a shot and hits my Dad’s car, I can’t help but think of the way he would awkwardly hurl the ball at the backboard and miss completely. And of course I remember my Dad. Don’t even think for a second that I could forget my Dad.}

          The hoop stands up on the ground using a water tank as a stabilizer. Two small poles attach to the main pole itself for support. Coincidentally, this convenient configuration made for perfect armrests and the tank doubled nicely as a couch. It definitely wasn’t the hammock that I had wanted since kindergarten, to be sure, but on those nights when I was feeling particularly contemplative, my basketball hoop served as a doorway to the heavens above me. After a while, I made it a nightly routine of mine to grab a blueberry nutrigran bar from the pantry and shuffle out to my spot in a shabby pair of sandals with my fluffy bathrobe on. I think binoculars and telescopes are neat instruments, but they disturb the serenity of the celestial framework. Inspiration comes from the way the heavens pulse and move. To scrutinize and become painfully familiar with a star is a science, but to see the stars in their cosmic wholes is poetry. Despite all the irritations brought about by streetlights and the passing of cars, that blue light from above outshined all and engendered a divine state of focus in me. Every night I watched the world breathe. The trees would whisper to me in the same way that reeds coo soothingly with the mild undulations of the sea, with silent voices yearning to confide in me. There could be nothing more calming than the muted glow of those eternal souls, drifting in the ocean above.

          It was a Friday night and I was worried. Earlier in the day Dad had burst out into tears because he knew our time was short. Once I was off to college, we wouldn’t be seeing each other much anymore. I looked to the stars. I had just purchased the Memento Soundtrack on Amazon, and even though most of the tracks turned out to be lame there were two orchestral pieces that inspired deep emotion within me. As I faced South from my makeshift seat, I observed the image of Cygnus rising up from the horizon. The wings of the swan taking flight in the sky glimmered with familiarity, and I sat silent for a moment as the warm outlines of a memory materialized in my mind. I began to reminisce about November.

          The moon was only half full, but it was enough to wash out the sky with white light. I remember pausing on a bench and lifting my hand to the horizon, where glowing Cygnus was just beginning to stretch its wings out over the silent hills. The heavens continued to swirl through the ether as the swan dipped its head through a rose colored cloud; the final memory of a setting sun. Jason and I spotted a pond further down the path. A sign indicated that the little pool was called Frog Lake. I had dreamt of this lake before. In my sleep I had seen a little hole in the ground that shimmered with the gleam of fallen stars. It was as if a portion of the Milky Way had simply given up on the sky and dropped into the water to form a lake full of glowing pebbles. Frog Lake was just a reflection of the moon, but it was still beautiful. We dipped our hands into the puddle of muted white light. I stroked the ethereal down of that celestial swan. It rippled and trembled at my touch, as if alive.

          Two years later, I was staring at the swan again. I closed my eyes and strained to hear it beating its wings from the heart of the Galaxy. I was afraid for my Dad. Right at that moment, my Dad walked out from the front door. For 10 minutes we sat on the curb without exchanging a single word. I put my arm around him. In my life, I have been victim to more uncomfortable silences than anyone that I’m aware of. With my Dad, there was no such thing as an uncomfortable silence. Just a beautiful quietness. They expect people like my father and I to talk to diffuse social tension. Perhaps they’ll never understand that we are different. We sat on the curb together and listened to the universe contract. We could appreciate the purity brought about by the stillness.

          I’m really going to miss the way things were. I just hope that Dad’s not in pain anymore. I’d like to think that he’s become a part of the sky. I want to see him in the bands of the Milky Way, among the warm mist of stars that congregate like glowing fireflies. I want to turn my head up towards the clouds and be reminded of him by the way a seagull wheels over the ocean. I want to think of him when I see a young seedling stretching up to the sun; a tiny green wish rising to wash its face in the light. I want to hear him in the wind splashing over the walls of a painted canyon. The question of human purpose has always puzzled me. I had always thought that I wanted to be someone important. I’d spend days despairing over the complete absence of any semblance of self-confidence within me, and the implications that my weaknesses would have on my struggle for significance. I think maybe now I can stop worrying so much. All the anguish just seems so pointless in retrospect. The only thing I can be certain of about my life right now is that I want to see beautiful things. As long as I have the ability to perceive and ponder, I want to seek out spectacles and see how they remind me of the people that I love. That would be enough. A lifetime spent searching for sacred objects, with forms resembling my memories in shape, color and magnitude.

          My sister and I used to be obsessed with this game called Tales of Symphonia. Every Friday after school, we’d rush to finish piano scales and repetitions and move on to frenetic dishwashing. From that point, we’d set the dinner table and begin bragging about our week’s achievements to mom over a bowl of chicken soup cooked with dates. The whole idea was to coax her into an agreeable mood If we had satisfied all necessary conditions, Viv and I would engage in a brief but important rock-paper-scissors duel (best of three, of course) under the table. It was the loser’s responsibility to put on an air of nonchalance and pose the question to Mom in as casual a fashion as possible. If the answer were an affirmative one, we’d convene at the bottom of the stairs and rush out to the garage. We’d only have an hour before mom would start getting irritated, so efficacy was of the highest importance. Friday night Symphonia sessions meant a lot to Viv and I. We immersed ourselves in the continent of Sylvarant and followed the actions of every character with enthusiasm. At the time, playing the game really was a substantial emotional investment. Together, we navigated through temples and enchanted forests. We traveled through charming mountain villages and desert oases, making occasional stops to stock up on weapons, healing ointments, and charms. When a level’s boss proved to be too much to handle, I’d have Viv run upstairs to grab the laptop so that we could exploit the boss’s weaknesses more easily. After well over 80 hours of gameplay, we concluded our adventure by restoring manna to the planet. I’ve tried a few times since then to play Tales of Symphonia, with almost tragic results. The magic of the mind-blowing plot-twists had been reduced to cheesy, predictable nonsense by my coming of age. The characters moved choppily from one side of the screen to the other in battle sequences. They had lost that organic quality that had made them so believable and endearing. I had suddenly become cognizant of the complete depletion of my childhood imagination. All of those holes and flaws that I had corrected with the wonderful miracles of youthful belief and creativity became blaringly obvious. After my brief attempt to restore those childhood impressions, I stopped altogether in order to prevent any more damage that would inevitably come with an adult’s cynical outlook on life. I tried to store those Tales of Symphonia memories in my mind to protect them from the blemishes of time, and to keep them sacred. Vivian and I will never play Tales of Symphonia ever again.

          I rate the quality of a memory on its distinctness and its ability to mimic past emotional impulses. Tales of Symphonia offered amusing insights into my 10-year-old psyche, but the original appeal of the game wore off miserably easily. There was another video game, though, that captured my mind at a time when I was feeling the widest and deepest range of emotions. My playthrough of Baten Kaitos coincided with an era of my life in which I could feel the agony of loss on one day and the ecstasy of friendship on the next. I beat the game with Jason over Thanksgiving Break. Our typical nights would usually start out at Sweet Tomatoes. The soup-drinking contest would be first on the agenda. In most cases, we’d get to eight bowls of chunky chicken noodle apiece before agreeing that we were both awesome. Then we’d move on to pizza, at which point Jason would commence ridiculing me for eating all the burnt pieces with charred and crispy edges. From there, we’d eat until Mom, Dad, and Viv got bored and bloated just watching us. After dinner, we’d drive home. On a couple occasions we’d roast smores in our fireplace as a family, but in most cases Jason and I went straight to Baten Kaitos. We spent hours and hours in that painted land. The game takes place on continents in the sky, where everyone has wings. I won’t go into any plot details, but the game engrossed me in such a way that would be impossible to describe. The swirling colors of those beautiful worlds turned mythology into my reality. I would look up at the sky from my basketball hoop and images of those secret places would flicker and evaporate spontaneously in my head. All of the places in Baten Kaitos were named after stars and constellations. There is a faint, insignificant star in the constellation of Taurus called Hassaleh. It forms the point of one of the Bull’s horns. The hero in Baten Kaitos comes from a continent by the same name. I knew Hassaleh was what I had imagined Heaven to be as soon as I saw it. I fell in love with a digital place.

           I love traveling. But I can only fully appreciate the beauty of places if I have my iPod with me. One of the things that I absolutely can’t stand is people that don’t like the Smashing Pumpkins. Moments spent listening to their music are guaranteed to be automatically stored in my long-term memory. Listening to a song like "Mayonaise" invokes a nostalgia of staggering power. I remember all of those insignificant moments. In the winter, I would always listen to "Obscured" on my way to English class. Pools of stagnant water seeped through my worn green chukalows as I walked in rhythm to the bongo drums. I’d adjust my collar to face the wind as it washed over me in gusts of cold exhilaration. Swirling leaves, grass, birds, and wind chimes were all little parts contributing to the ecstasy of those moments. Was it the wind or my love for these fragile memories that sent chilly reverberations throughout my body?

          But the Baten Kaitos Soundtrack was something different to me. The music became synonymous with Jason. On 11/23/08 I was off vacationing with my family at Zion National Park. I must have listened to the soundtrack 50 times on that trip. The highway to Zion was beautiful. Great Red gods nudged their stone heads out of the Earth to produce brilliant yellow sparks of Autumnal grace. The world erupted with color, and I watched it all happen breathlessly without ever once unplugging myself from my iPod. One night, we hiked all the way up to Angel’s Landing. A sliver of Earthshine coaxed the flaming indignance of the canyons around us into a blue hush. Dad and I walked out to an isolated ledge. I found a relatively stable patch of red gravel and planted my tripod on it. I began screwing my camera onto the tripod with numb fingers. Dad was watching me. He knelt down and placed my hands in his, guiding the camera around the tripod screw. The lull of the starry ocean was tranquilizing. I aimed my camera at Orion. I told my Dad that I was photographing the Hunter, but really I was trying to capture Hassaleh. I crouched down even further and twisted my neck to spot the star through the camera’s viewfinder. How strange it was, to stare at that star as if it were my best friend’s face. To be forced by nature to substitute eyes, glasses and a goofy smile for the strange invigoration of dim starlight. I told the star that it had been too long. I clicked the shutter release and continued to look up while Dad sat on the ground behind me, tracing the arc to Arcturus with his finger and dreaming of the Summer Triangle.

          It’s 11/23/09. I’m growing some plants in an aquarium inside my sister’s room. The tank used to sit on a desk near the window in my own bedroom, but the pear tree outside blocked most of the sun from reaching the leaves. They get more direct light from this location. Silene Capensis is a moisture-hungry plant native to the tropical rainforests of South Africa. The roots of the plant have entheogenic properties. Members of the Xhosa tribe of South Africa harvest the root and use it to make tea. The concoction induces prophetic dreaming in vivid color. It is a plant sacred beyond measure. It was easy enough to order the seeds online. The roots take two years to reach full maturity, so I imagined that the project would probably take a considerable amount of patience. When the seeds arrived in the mail, I took a jar and filled it with soil, gravel, sand and perlite. I cast three seeds into the jar and covered the top with ceram-wrap. The seeds have all germinated now, and have their own separate spaces inside the aquarium.

          Viv is sleeping in Mom’s room, so I’m sitting at her desk with the door closed and lights turned out. The blinds are open. I stare at the plants with fascination as they soak in the muted thoughts of the moon. I trace my finger along the frigid glass. The plants breathe inside the aquarium, their breath creating galaxies of moisture as they sleep. The shining dewdrops ooze slowly down the side of the tank as if in orbit around my plants. The lid is covered in massive globes of water that tremble with the involuntary twitches of my body. They look like pearls. Outside my window, familiar winter constellations hang in divine suspension in the freezing air.

          My favorite town in Hassaleh had a huge clock in the town square called the Briarclock. It was embedded inside a massive oak trunk ensnared by vines. The branches stretched in every direction, tapering into delicate twigs that ended with bursts of fiery orange leaves. The Briarclock was a gateway into the past. Standing in front of it for long enough sent your character to the same location 1,000 years back in time. It was a beautiful and sacred thing.

          Sitting in my sister’s room on that autumn evening, I began thinking of the Briarclock. I replayed all the events of the past two years in my head, starting with that night at Henry Coe State Park. I thought of the last time I said goodbye to Jason, and the last words I ever said to him. I thought of all my friends and what they meant to me, and all the things we had done together. I thought of my Dad’s face as I held him bleeding in my arms. I thought of the boy that sat for hours on top of the stone slide at Del Prado Park with an empty notebook. He wanted to let go. He yearned to be engaged in that dynamic cycle of casual scribbling and erasing that can be all at once both frustrating and invigorating. But he was ashamed of his thoughts, and he lacked the confidence necessary to even attempt to mold something concrete out of his fleeting ideas. Being aware of his cowardice without the tools required to take action made everything even worse. The young were never meant to feel so frozen and feeble. The world whirled with such cruel velocity--could you really blame the boy for clinging to his swing cables and sandboxes? Was it not necessary to protect himself from the violent inertia of a life that seemed less recognizable and more devoid of stability with every passing day?

          It would take the roots two full years to reach maturity. It was astounding to think of the ways in which just two years can morph a human being. Two years from today, on 11./23/11, I will harvest my three Silene Capensis plants. Then I will chew their gnarled roots and dream after tasting the froth of my past experiences. Perhaps I’ll reminisce on the turbulence of these last couple years. If J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, then I'll do mine in 11/23s. There will surely be dreams of desolation, filled with unsettling images and tinted with the hazy orange glow of empty Vicodin bottles. But I’m confident that there will also be dreams of genuine optimism and love for this strange life of mine. Maybe I’ll be riding through the park on my sister’s bike. A soft rain will have cleansed the atmosphere, and I’ll sit on a bench to find inspiration in the tingling electricity of a blue sky. I’ll sit down and write, and I’ll enjoy watching my thoughts drift gently across the page.

          I’m imagining my Briarclock right now. Every object and fragmented memory that I have forms a part in the twisted network of roots of the colossal oak. Every minor impression and impulse intertwines with the next until the roots break the surface and a substantial trunk materializes. Thoughts of video games, crumbling piles of Zion rocks, Basketball hoops, and hundreds of voices all converge in a breathtaking crescendo. It is a massive tree that rises out of the ground. It stands on a hill amidst the fine dust of crushed calcium carbonate shells that form beautiful white stars. Their tranquil waltz across the sky recalls memories of a vast ocean filled with sounds from a chorus of humpback whales. Each star sings a haunting and distinct song. I’m immersed in an ocean of memories and nostalgia. The leaves of the Briarclock are drifting embers of the Milky Way. I watch them burn on in their celestial jubilation. The Briarclock is my overwhelmingly emotional connection to all things past. Maybe I’ve seen a glimpse of Heaven. But I’d like to think that it’s called Hassaleh.

Author's Note

the point of the story is to assemble a bunch of loosely-related thoughts into something that at least sort of makes sense...does it work? or do a lot of things just seem irrelevant?

Too many cliches? Is the story too drawn out?

Did you enjoy overall?

Reviews

[An owl on the moon]

Your bring a depth and insight into the characters with your details... Vividly described, and it certainly has a telling flow... You might set up some paragraph styles to make it a little easier to read. Inset paragraphs and such like a short story. Loved lines like this: "Every night I watched the world breathe..." Overall, so very well done...

[The Water Queen]

I enjoyed this story. Good read.

--The Angel of the Earth--

[Star Wolf]

Not too drawn out nor too many cliches. I think the story is perfect and I enjoyed it a lot. I think it all flows together nicely.

[Coyote Poetry]

The story is amazing. You could make the story longer with chapters. Your life had been good. Tales of your Father and Sister made me laugh and sad. A well written story. I enjoyed the complete story. You can write. Thank you.
Coyote

[Therene]

Ah. Memories. :D

You did a fine attempt in stringing lots of things to make sense. There are sentences that could be pulled out but it also looks good on it.

Cliches are...realities. At some point, it'll get boring and unpredictable. You need to give it a fresh take. Drawn out? Somewhat.

To what I enjoy is the voice you use to tell out the story. Without looking at previous reviews, the voice is undeniably your greatest asset.

Great write! :D

[Emily B]

oh, wow, you have a lovely voice, the story was some kind of wonderful

[Wicahpi]

Sometimes I talk in that way, "an assemblage of loosely-related thoughts" as my mind is always racing here n there. I absorb everything around me and my mouth can't keep up. So this writing is just fine by me. It's relatively sad, touching on the topic of suicide. I'm left wanting to know more of the hows and whys; less about the stars in the galaxy, though I love the expanse of the sky at night. Nature is tranquil; displayed well here. The Briarclock sounds fascinating. I'd like to view it's image. I, too, would like to see the story broke up into paragraphs for an easier read; I did read the entire story, regardless. Someone mentioned tiny font; seems fine to me, today.

I think a continuation of this story is called for. Maybe two of them. One for the father; one for the friend. Good job on this one!

Welcome to the Cafe.

Peace n Light,
Wicahpi Iyozaza

[Millionth Muse]

Okay...I don't think the story is drawn out at all, in fact, I think that some things need to be tied together a little more before I would be able to make sense of them. I'm getting a sense that Jason is dead, and the father too, though I'm not sure how. I'm also getting a sense that the narrator is losing focus of his reality in terms of childhood and where he is now...which is something that we all do.

With that said...I really LOVE your voice in this story. It was tragic, beautiful, and it made me want to weep for you, reach out and put my arms around you, so you maaged to create something very emotional. There was also a magic in what you wrote...and the last two lines are stunning!

My suggestion would be to clean it up a little in terms of form. I think that maybe breaking it into sections where you have the date additions would be good, that way we can see the progression of time a little more. Also, add in a few more details about some of the incidents.

[Millionth Muse]

For some reason, the story comes out in a TINY font that's pretty much unreadable...see if you can go in and fix that and I'd be happy to come back and read.