Tension

July 4th, 2022

When work wouldn't tug incessantly at the collar that clenched tightly around my neck, I would be spared the burden of labor to enjoy the ritual of Fourth of July at the lake. There, the banners of pride and country danced in the wind that moved up along the shores. On stunted grass littered with geese droppings, families lay sprawled out on blankets and beach towels or seated in unfolded thrones, sipping hidden spirits.

I dimly remembered childhood fears wrapped up in the great bursts of fireworks that created canopies over my young head. I also remembered those early months of blissful love when Sam and I sat with friends now gone, and it seemed there that I was blessed with a brief moment of ignorance in love though unappreciated at the time. Here now, the ritual was maintained, but the circle of friends felt small. It pained me to think of the branching lives of those around me, and the narrow window in which we could have loved and enjoyed the company of one another.

The melancholy of my unarticulated thoughts weighed down on me, and I grew distant amongst my peers whom I stood beside in line to the lake entrance. It would not be the first time the nature of my sadness would escape me and I would be left feeling vague, unable to explain or justify myself to others. As was often the case when I would go out to socialize, an internal debate lashed inside of me that strove to curtail my brooding for the sake of those I loved. This antisocial disposition served only as a bitter reminder that I was indeed a self-obsessed person stripped of the desire for noble humility, and that no amount of self-determination could seem to shake me from my bad habits.

But my personal cross was overshadowed by a more perceptible tension that lay thick in the air. Those of us that gathered together in the late afternoon of this overcast day stood pensive, restrained in our eagerness to be outdoors amongst friends. We stared warily with suspicion at the strangers who stood beside us in line, eyeing their concealed hands. Our bodies tightened as cars slowly skated across the road, searching for parking. We each had many thoughts racing through our minds, all tethered to some terrified connection. This social tension was startled by a sudden loud crack of distant fire poppers in quick succession. A palpable state of fear and panic mingled with impatient excitement was written on the faces of those around me, and it was small comfort to know that my weak anxiety was shared by others. There was no moment of relief before another thunderous boom sounded in the streets, which vibrated the concrete in its brutal strength, shaking us deep in the pits of our stomachs. We made an attempt to recompose ourselves, laughing nervously at our own skittishness as several car alarms sounded off in some unseen street. The roaring siren of a distant fire engine echoed and pitched down corridors of traffic, hunting for rogue kindle that might start a blaze, but the sky itself was already dotted with little puffs of dull-brown smoke in that late afternoon. Nature held its breath in fear and confusion; no bird dared stir in this torrent.

Being beside myself, I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of this moment. Here we were standing in line by tall ringed fences like refugees in denial, fleeing a war zone. The fading sirens seemed like the final hilarious punctuation in this bizarre farce. I thought of the fruitless and unending debates between veterans and neighbors, between those who owned pets and those who held sacred this day. To complain on the Fourth of July was to be met with a courteous pity and a fair bit of resentment for jeopardizing everything like a wet blanket smothering a beautiful bright blaze. Here though, there seemed to be a collective moment of empathy at the realization of its chaos, and that though the celebration may be beautiful, it held a violence caked within the country itself. What did it mean to partake in such a way when hours early on this day of commemoration, others died standing in line such as we were, unaware and unable to distinguish the sound of firework from firearm?

That night, I stared up with my head craned far back watching the massive pillars of fire disperse across the edges of my vision. I failed to see new ways to photograph the same things. In boredom, I aimed my shutter for the moment preceding the explosion, when the trails of light scattered and painted the puffs of clouds in crimson, silver, and emerald hues. At some point, I put the camera down and remembered how many Julys I had let slip through my thoughts as I peered greedily inside that viewfinder. I rested on Sam's blanket so that the lights seemed to face parallel in front of me and I was glued to the sheer face of a grassy cliff. My friends lay beside me, each in their own thoughts; Sam's portable speaker making a pitiful effort to compete with the noise. Each burst of fire grew larger and closer, and I began to pant nervously, scolding myself for being more vulnerable than I was as a child. But no amount of fear was enough to wholly remove the awe of that moment, and I was held transfixed by something that was mightier, somehow less transient than I.

Before long, actually much longer in fact, for the minutes I rested on that dirty lawn unobstructed by my camera felt like ages, we jointly stretched our limbs and packed our things, gazing deeply about the dark grass to search for lost items before shuffling in congestion to the gates. There I watched the busy bodies with their many frames highlighted under the piercing sheen of a multi-armed lantern.

We eventually removed ourselves from the lake to join our friend Evan in his backyard. There we sat in reclined chairs by a still pool that churtled occasionally in its quiet filtration; a warm hearth lapping its flames in the wind, heating us just outside of danger on this chill summer evening. Little Gigi shivered in the nipping night air as it tickled her frail bones, but she reclined obediently at the lap of her preoccupied master. I gazed up at the sharp shrubbery towers that pierced the black sky, the ambient house light crawling up their textured surfaces. I was enjoying this moment of companionship more than the spectacle of the fireworks, and we sat for late hours on that cold night in the warmth of good company, speaking softly of simple things, hard of hearing as we were, before saying goodbye and returning to our gentle beds.

During Packing Time

The Evening of May 28th, 2022

Within the walls of the palace, I felt the heat and confusion of dialogue around me-- an undulation of bodies in an endless debate with each other: parent arguing with child, marriages teetering on divorce, a strange tension of ecstasy that at any moment could overwhelm, spill out into panic. Amongst these people was my love, who stood beside me still unclear but tethered to my affection. She nodded and spoke with gestures I didn't recognize and though her lips moved in the rhythm that I had come to know with tenderness, I could not hear her words. I was unsure if the noise of this great human hive was drowning her fragile speech or if she wasn't speaking at all. For though I had deemed to separate myself and her from this collective, the tension that permeated the others was also in us. I feared that at any moment, she would vanish, and I desperately clung on to the conversation, willing with all my lucidity that she understood me and would stay. But, as if in reaction to my dread, out of spite, her ghostly visage began to vibrate like the harsh pluck of a string, and she was gone.

Panicking, I lept down a flight of stairs leading out from the terrace onto the palace grounds, desperately following the trail that I intuited  would be the procession of her wisp. The lawn ahead of me stretched out into the vast hills that loomed dark and silhouetted against the night sky. Out on those borderlands stood the unoccupied sentries of light that contained me within the dome of the dream. I turned aside and traveled west to the edge of the lawn, which ceased abruptly at the curb of the pavement. Here stood the thick black shroud of unknowing. It hung suspended in the air, draping itself over all things but especially the western sky. The dead beacons stood vigilant at this impenetrable, dense wall of fog and tar, which stood vague and incapable of comprehension. In its strength, I averted my gaze like one who is struck by the sun though no light save the decaying yellow glow of the dead beacons pierced me. I resisted the urge to cower on the cold gravel floor, to squeeze my eyelids tight and cover myself in fear like a child soon to be devoured by a nightmare. The terror of that dark curtain was overwhelming, and slowly at first but soon in a flight of fear I retreated back onto the trimmed grass and ascended up the steps of the palace.

The harsh warmth of the party was somehow more bearable, less terrifying but still lonely. The crowd had dwindled down to a few, and they were faces that I didn't recognize. I deeply missed my love. I would have given anything to hear her whisper. An intuition entered my heart that drove me to the southern hallways. The looping chatter of the crowd and its music receded behind me, its echoes bouncing ahead into the empty chambers until, reaching a corner that turned sharply to the left, it altogether ceased, and I was left alone to wander. Here, the air was tight and the sound of my footsteps fell inaudible on the soft carpet. I cursed myself for not bringing my camera - I fumbled into my bag and pulled out my camera, but it was out of film (the battery had died) - I snapped a shot and the framing was awful - I snapped a shot and the framing was perfect, but I remembered where I was, and I knew that my willpower could not carry these photographs into the waking world.

Eventually the maze of passageways and rooms gave way to a larger hallway that returned to the main ballroom, but this time at its eastern wing. At its end lay two great doors, which opened out onto another terrace. I peered back into the crowd and found a few lone figures so distant and vague that I might have mistaken them for decorations if they weren't so oddly positioned and their voices didn't still faintly carry their way to me. I stepped through the threshold of the great doors and felt the fresh air again on my face.

I was now on the edge of a vast garden, its borders lined with rows of tall shrubbery which surrounded a mighty maple tree, gnarled and twisting in a contrapposto, its flaking bark branches stretching out over the hedges. Hidden at the center, perhaps beneath the canopy of the tree was a cold white light that painted the many arms in azure and cerulean highlights so that the maple's form was striking against the black curtain that wrapped around the landscape of the mansion. Here stood the Great Fairytree of Slumber, existing always in some corner of the dream, now opened to me for just a brief moment in time before it would retract its hand and remain lost in the shroud forever like a memory with no bridge to reach it. Surrounding it on all sides were the Reception Gardens, whose shrubbery peaks were like sharp-tipped daggers tinged white with the glow emanating from within.

I meandered around the borders, veering east directly ahead and then to the north, not daring to proceed south in fear of the curtain. I desired to peer inside, although the hedges stood tall and dense so that only in the sharp angles between their high peaks could I perceive the lower branches and what appeared to be a wooden pergola gazebo. Daring to turn east and then south, I eventually came across an opening among the foliage, outlined by a delicate white wood not dissimilar to the structure I spotted inside.

As I stepped through yet another threshold, my eyes were drawn to a neat stone path that traveled from the entrance to the far end of the shrubbery where the white pergola stood. At its feet was a humble decoration of white flowers. Against its frame on either side were hanging orbs of light, at first warm in their greeting, but slowly cooling as I approached until they were harsh and cold against the scenery. I turned and looked again at the borders: to the south, the light from these orbs danced bright against the black curtain, but to the north, the shrub peaks were distinct in their darkness against a pale blue sky. My mind wandered, and I became so entranced within the bramble of needles in the foliage, the strangeness of the structure itself that I neglected to realize the Fairytree standing yet beyond another layer of dense garden.

I was beginning to lose my grasp of the geography, and indeed the palace was nowhere to be seen in the thick natural labyrinth of hedges. The sounds of the music and dancing which had trailed behind me as I exited the stuffy interiors had quickly faded from thought in my curiosity to explore the garden, and now the compressed green thicket suppressed all sound beyond save the gentle wind occasionally grazing the peaks of packed shrubbery. I would have felt trapped if I had any desire to return to that palace, but removed from my love, I saw no reason to do so apart from the company of those who dwelt inside. My heart told me that the party was quickly evaporating, and if I did return, I would be alone in its halls. The Fairytree then became a point of orientation, and I surveyed the grounds around me for an exit though I found none.

It was then that my desire answered me as it had denied me when my love vanished, and I stood paralyzed as my vision was cloaked in a dim light. I could still feel my body unmoved, my feet rooted in thin soil under trimmed grass, but my mind lay removed on the other side. I was beneath the boughs of the great maple, looking up in awe and fear as its great wooden tendrils stretched out above my head and over the zenith. I could feel the heat of a powerful light radiating just below me. It wrapped itself under my chin and lapped my cheeks before casting itself onto the branches, the lowest of which stood almost stark white before becoming lost in the overwhelming layers of leaf above.

Slowly, drawing itself up out of the soil like the first snowdrop petals of spring was a chorus of voices, gay in their timbre but somehow unfriendly. I imagined squirrels in chatter and reclusive badgers and bird folk though none perched among the twigs. I would have seen them for myself if not for the power of the tree, which held me locked in its gaze. I was in ecstasy more pure than the party before, and yet lonely, for the excitement was not shared with my love. And there was a modicum of hesitancy in my euphoria so that I could not describe it as joyful, for it was tinged with mischief, not wholly malevolent, but untrustworthy.

How long I stood fixed in this strange merriment under the Great Fairytree of Slumber I cannot say. Intoxicated within layers of false joy and dream, like heaps of blanket on my body, I lost all sense of time, drifting into a state of unknowing deeper than a dreamless sleep. At some unrecalled future, I was perhaps in a carpeted living room under a low-hanging ceiling. Dim tungsten lights too faint to overpower the night outside drenched the leather couches and wooden floors. Here also was a maze of passageways with many staircases moving up and down into dark rooms with no doors. I tiptoed about in my dress shoes, fearing to wake the others. A mess of wine glasses lay strewn on kitchen counters.

But the feet can only go so far. I grew tired of the adventure and especially the loneliness, longing to remember her. I sauntered aimlessly along the cracked concrete road knowing that I was approaching the end of the dome. Now the light that was once pale and undefined emanated defiantly from beyond the dark looming oak trees. I ignored the red gleam that followed my trail.