Thursday, November 15, 2007

Houston, We Are Go.

For those of you who are still following, I have not tried to crochet again. Just so you know. I’m looking for a specific book to help me out, which is probably still in a box. I’ll find it. When I do, I’ll try to crochet again. But for now, well, I’ll do other things.

I find myself at a crossroads of some sort. In fact, I sit there most of the day. I’m able to function in my everyday activities and go through the motions of work and food-making and sleeping and talking to other Human Beings, but in my mind, I am sitting on a gravel road, in the middle of nowhere. And I’m not even scared.

The peculiar thing about this place, if you’ll bear with me, is the incredibly blue sky and – more importantly - the grass. It’s so lush and green! I’m wearing my jeans, the ones I just bought that fit really nicely. And I’m wearing my sister’s t-shirt. I don’t know why, I just like it. So I’m wearing it. The blue one that says Valiquette. I am alone. Somewhere close to me, behind me, there is the sound of running water, a creek, I think.

I am sitting right in the middle of the gravel road, with my legs straight in front of me, slightly apart. My feet are bare. I am leaning on my arms behind me. My palms, flat on the road, are starting to hurt because of the small pebbles digging into them. But I stay. There is a long, thin shadow in front of me, and my eyes run the length of it very often. Over and over again. I do not know where the shadow originates from. Why is it there? What does it mean? Should I try to get there?

Today, I keep my eyes open a little longer. I feel rested, and I am able to follow the shadow for a longer period of time. It’s really, really long. I feel like I’m sitting at one end of Space, looking at the other end. It stretches right to the limit of what I can physically see, somehow. And at the end, I can see there is something, but I can’t make it out. I’ve been working on trying to stand up to get closer to it faster. It takes a long time just to think of getting up: my will is somehow warped. I decide to crawl. Getting up seems impossible at this time. Maybe somewhere along the way, I’ll find something to help me up. I can’t see anything from here – the landscape is perfectly flat and featureless. But you never know.

I’ve taken the habit of lining up the thin shadow to the side of my leg and I push myself forward with my hands toward its starting point, slowly. I will not lose my direction this way. It shifts, swerves, curbs the light and plays tricks on my eyes. So I’ve tamed it and it seems to be behaving now. Every time I come back, I sit back down and shift around until I line up the shadow perfectly on the side of my right leg. It moves a couple of times, I readjust. I start pushing myself forward. I’ve ripped the bottom of my jeans, the sand is sliding in between the fabric and my skin and it’s chapped.

This time, I’ve gotten so close to the top of the shadow I can see what casts it.

There is a post. It bears many signs, which point in different directions. I can’t read any of them, because they are all written in a language I do not recognize, with symbols I have never seen. All but one. I wish I could get up to make sure what I see is right: I can barely read it, for the sun is my eyes. But when I narrow my eyes and concentrate, I can make it out.

This Way.

1 comment:

Thank you for your words. They feed my words, hence everybody's happy.