Friday, September 20, 2013

something indescribable

The moon is following me through the trees and casting my night shadow against the path. The moonlight is bright enough to show color and the leaves in the trees are still summer green but the autumn air has the careful petting directness of freezing wind. I want to let that wind touch the backs of knees but my clothes are too tight.
I imagine that a soft shoed Soli is walking silently behind me. She is listening to me scrape through the dark, she hates that I cannot walk as silently as she can. She notes my boots and how they are city boots and so not suited to walk lightly. But as she continues to trail me deeper into the trees she starts to admire how I am not afraid to take up the space in the silence.
"I'm walking here!" says the rhythm of my hard footfalls into the night.
In acting class we practiced the different walks of the four temperaments. And it's the phlegmatic who sinks deeply into her hips and her footfalls. A phlegmatic is the sort of queen who will not glide unnoticed past intelligent sanguine foxes. Phlegmatic queens are not afraid of animal attack. Animals whistle at her as she passes but she's lost in thought and doesn't "smile for us honey!" when they ask her to. She doesn't hear their requests.
The thing that separates me from the phlegmatic queen is that she does not listen to her own heavy heartbeat and she does not feel the muscles swing in her back as she swings her hips. She just walks. Like a cow.
The soupy cows are sleeping on the orchard hill under the twisted apple trees which are black claws against the silver blue sky.
I am halfway up the hill when I stop and watch the sky.
The clouds are white and so quick.
They slide over the crown of my head like crashing waves breaking or like someone reaching from behind me to cover my eyes and ask, in a disguised and deep throated voice, for me to guess their name.
The hill is steep and my feet are uneven on the ground, one knee bent, one straight.
The opening shot of my movie cannot be this. This person alone on hill in large expensive scenery taking in the sky. Thats says about a character things that I am not. But this could be the closing shot of my film. The character I will become is one who values above all things, the ability to appreciate what is exhilarating. The character I will become will vanish into exhilaration whenever she wants to and only when the clouds have all raced by and they sky is clear again will she remember the there is anything else anywhere other than the tiny switch board computer behind her eyes which clicks a single binary sequence of "that" "yes!" "that" "yes!" "that" "yes!" "that" "yes!"



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