She smiled as she leaned back to stretch her body out in the still night air and continued on her seaward path. A gentle roll over onto her stomach allowed her to look down upon the city below to examine the happenings of the night. The city seemed dead at first, the streets vacant and lifeless, but as she began to cross over the city’s center the scene below became illuminated with various colors and shapes around the sculpture in the town square. Small swirls of yellow and orange colors showed where the streetlights emitted their effervescence. Blurred dark shapes moved about in rhythmic harmony to some fast paced music that was out of audible range.
In the glow of the lights she could see the movement of laughter from the people below; though she couldn’t make out any of their features. She had now become enveloped in the great impressionist painting she had been viewing from her window. When she escaped the city and looked down again, she was over the ocean and could see her reflection in the dark water below. More shocking than all the events she had been experiencing and witnessing was that she appeared to be part of this masterpiece as well. Her features had softened and the contours of her body became just groupings of shape and color. She could no longer make out the expression on her face, all she saw was dark spots where her eyes and mouth were, and bright specks of light in the middle of her eyes where the brilliant moonlight reflected back out. The absurdity of her appearance made her laugh to herself, but that same time she couldn’t help but feel taken aback by the beauty of it. It was as if when all the details were removed from the images she saw, she could finally see them as they were meant to be.
Now she finally realized that, though the fine details do much to accentuate the things she saw, the colors and shapes underneath those details are what make them beautiful. In some ways the detailed edges of refinement of this raw paint scheme hinder its ability to express itself. They confine the colors into concentric shapes and trap them inside walls not allowing them to affect their surroundings, to blend seamlessly into the background. What an atrocity it is to confine the artwork of the cosmos! To limit the expression of billions of billions of billions of sub-atomic particles swirling about at incredible speeds because of the will of the strings that guide them on their course, what kind of creature could think of such a thing! Yet there in lies the problem. It is the human mind that builds these ramparts. The brain searches for edges to every shape, a beginning and an end, without these limits a human brain would cease to function.
The water was as smooth as glass beneath her, and she could make out the entire scene above her in the illustrated sky. As she stared deeply at her reflection, she could feel herself descending closer towards the sea. Lower and lower she fell, until she closed her eyes and curled up to brace for the impact in the water, but when nothing happened she opened her eyes again and saw that she was now inches above the water. She stretched herself back out again and dragged her fingers through the water, which was surprisingly warm. There was hardly a sensation of temperature change between the water and the air surrounding. The only real noticeable affect was that her fingers met with some resistance in the water. Looking back in the direction she had come from, she could see the ripples caused by her fingers spreading out causing tiny distortions in the reflection of the sky. This made the image come alive with movement, and the stars began dancing in tiny circular movements like pirouetting ballet dancers.
Turning over onto her back to examine the sky once again she noticed that the stars above her were moving in sync with the ones she had seen in the reflection. She shut her eyes and rubbed them to make certain that she wasn’t being deceived, but when she opened them again the stars were still twirling about an invisible point. To test her now formed hypothesis she lowered her hand back into the water and watched to see if there was any effect. Sure enough a subtle movement began to drag across the sky making the movement of the stars more violent, but no less graceful. This made her smile, to see this kind of Godlike impact she had on the fabric of the cosmos and to be able to manipulate the movement of the heavens to suit her fancy. At this point she became curious as to the extent of her effect on the sky.
Laying her hand flat just above the water, she jostled it side to side to create a blur of the image above. The violence above her was surprising, but not disheartening. Stars blurred and spread out; striking one another, their colors blending together in odd shapes and hues, and the ripple effect was so severe that the stars looked as if they were collapsing in on themselves with the crashing of the tiny waves. Perhaps this is just the way God felt in creating the Universe, standing on a pedestal of nothing but imagination, pallet in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Spontaneously creating an explosion of color without shape, then slowly and methodically shaping it into strings, quarks, nucleic particles, atoms, and on up to galaxies to fill the black void of nothingness, so that he wouldn’t have to be lonely anymore.
Some philosophers have questioned the existence of the world, and all that exists within it, with exception of the person thinking such things. In the process of such a maneuver one denies the splendor and beauty of the world and at the same time absolves themselves from being responsible for living. Not the sort of living that the average person does, but actually living. Filling themselves with the breath of all living things that surround them, taking in all of their surroundings, and deciding that life isn’t about just making ends meet, but is filled with riches of experience. Some of these philosophers deny that anything of substance can be gained through experience. What an absurd claim! The fulfillment of experience provides the brilliance with which one gives meaning to himself.
For the young swimmer and painter of the skies, her experience is the only thing that makes her days bright. Being locked inside of her own thoughts only draws out painful memories and weighs down on her like the cross upon the martyr. How can one possibly hope to gain any knowledge of meaning and existence having never truly existed? George Berkeley said, “To exist is to be perceived,” this statement says much about those who would deny experience. At the same time it also demonstrates the necessity of experience. One cannot know anything of the world without first going out and seeing it. As if the entire world doesn’t even exist for those who enclose themselves within their own blinded point of view on the world. Maybe that’s why something suddenly snapped and the car whipped around away from those strangling city lights across the ocean from the swimming girl; the realization that time continues forward, whether or not it is used in any meaningful way, and the distant feeling that someone was yearning and feeling the same way. To give up everything is to gain everything. Like reading a Kerouac novel there was nothing, but possibilities in the glow of the high beams.
Stopping off when the gas tank was reading below the bold “E” a brightly lit truck stop provided the necessities. Before refueling the car certain abdominal pains needed to be relieved with nourishment. After placing an order with the tired looking waitress named Dorothy, a deep sigh emitted from her as she turned to walk away. She was not that old, but the years of working in such an environment and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day had leathered her face. The deep grooves on her face and the eternal frown that she wore showed her desire for escape from this life she’d been given. Each line is a reminder of where she was and what she had become. The youthful beauty she once proudly wore had faded and become distorted through years of abuse.
Her life must have taken a downward spiral early on as she must have been working at this place since she graduated high school. Every night she points her finger, passing blame on whatever is around her trying to avoid depression by turning it into scorn. She blames her children, saying that if she hadn’t become pregnant right after graduation her life would have been better. She blames their father, who disappeared shortly after finding out that she was with child. Tears provided her only comfort late at night when she was all alone in her small trailer a few miles from the truck stop. When she was working she tried to put on a smile for the truckers and was usually successful, but to those who can see beyond the surface there is nothing except sadness in her eyes. No matter how much she tries to blame others, she knows that her life was her own doing and her own decisions.
She said yes to the boy with the pretty smile in the car that night, she decided to give up on her hopes of going to college and becoming a lawyer, and she stopped trying to overcome the obstacles that came her way to take the easy path of acceptance. Of course, none of this may be true, but that is the story that her face told. The weight of an entire ocean of sadness isn’t a mistakable quality in the frail human form.
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