This is a bit of writing I did last summer about something that really happened to me.
Autumn
15 going on 16. I faced my summer alone, in a foreign world with only a small bit to call my own. I feel comfortable enough in my home, but what of the rest? I know no one, know no place, only know this too-large house. Ironic, isn't it? A tiny island in the middle of nowhere, and it feels too big for me. It tells me that no matter how small an area is and how comfortable we are with it, we can never know it completely. There are always secrets that a house will keep from you.
I'm lonely. Can I go Outside and meet someone new? No, what's the use? After all, I'll only be here for another month, and after that we'll forget about each other. Besides, that's only assuming that someone will be willing to get to know me, which seems like enough of a miracle for one summer. Speaking of miracles, what about this "God" that people keep telling me about? He's All-Powerful, right? Maybe he (Is it He? How the hell should I know? Is talking about God and hell in the same parenthesis blasphemous? How the hell should I know?). Maybe it can help. This entity, this being. I don't care if it's a wrinkly old man or a panel of television producers. If I'm wrong, nobody will know. I'll just talk to it alone, silently, and nobody will hear me. If it really is all-powerful, It will hear me.
So I started praying. Praying may not even be the right word. Asking is more like it. Every night when I remembered, I would say to myself, and whoever else might be listening, "Please let me meet the perfect girl." Hardly the wholesome, altruistic motives one would expect from a prayer. Still, it doesn't matter since I'm the only one listening, unless there really is someone looking into my head. Wouldn't it be weird if there really was Something reading your thoughts and watching your actions? My prayers started as a request for company, but ultimately became also a test of religion. I began to wonder about the presence of God. If something happened as a result of all of this, I would Know.
* * *
I'm on vacation now. It's been a week since I started asking, and it's light in the hotel room. Everything feels so peaceful. I just woke up, but it doesn't feel like it. I feel unbelievably light, and could have floated off to another dream, but I didn't want to. I needed to think. I thought about the dream I had last night/this morning. Was it The One? Is this my Answer? There's really someone looking into my head? You'd think he'd have better things to do. Did you know that we live in a really screwed up place? Maybe the dream, and some of the other people's prayers, is some sort of compensation for His handiwork. Wouldn't it be great if that was the way prayers worked, and God was only nice to those people who came to realize how crazy our world is? I'd laugh. So the dream was compensation, or a reward. He could have at least had the decency to let me remember more of it.
The first thing I remember: I'm sitting in a stone amphitheater, one of those places where the Greeks perform their Greek plays. And all of the tourists who can't understand a word they're saying and probably have no idea what the plot is clap in all the wrong places and look at the person next to them to see when to laugh and when to cry. But this isn't my place to be cynical. After all, it's a dream about the Perfect Girl.
I'm sitting in the amphitheater, and it's a nice day. Isn't the weather wonderful? Oh yes, it makes me want to do jumping jacks and run through sprinklers. It's That Sort Of Day. The amphitheater is filling up. I know some of the people, but I don't pay attention to them. They don't notice me. Will she come? (Aha, so I know she's coming. Does that mean I've already met her? Yes, I have. I know it. That means more Dream came before this, and I can't remember it).
The amphitheater. People milling in and She hasn't arrived yet. The seats are filling up. If she doesn't hurry, we won't be able to sit together. Whew, there she is. She sits next to me. I turn around, and notice how tremendously large the seat is. I'm sitting on the stone so that my feet touch the ground, but my butt hardly takes up any space on the seat. I scoot back and rest my back against the stone wall behind me, and now I'm in the shade. It's really comfortable, all but my legs. The seat stops halfway down my calves, and my legs can't dangle or rest on stone. It's really uncomfortable. Then, all that detail is lost as She leans towards me. She slowly lowers her head to my shoulder, a comfortable gesture that has been done countless times before. I cradle her head with mine, creating a comfortable pocket with an equal ease. She fits like a jigsaw puzzle. (That's very poetic. The double meaning of her head fitting into my space-between-the-head-and-shoulder and her existence fitting into the empty spot in my life. God was probably a Language Arts teacher in a previous life. Poetic, but horribly unorganized. His students constantly suffered from his untidiness).
The only thing I can remember about Her is her hair. If it fell flat, straight down, it might have come down to the bottom of her ears. The same length all around, except there were layers in the length as it went toward the top of the head. Almost like a Christmas tree. But it didn't fall straight down, nor did it stick out like a Christmas tree. There was an unnatural lightness about it, almost like it wasn't affected by gravity. If a normal girl jumped, Newton's Inertia would make her hair keep going up even as she started falling back down. For just an instant her hair would be completely free from her body and Newton's Gravity, and would achieve a perfect ease in its weightless splendor. Her hair was always like this. She was always at the height of her jump, waiting to fall, but never falling. Floating in the middle of Heaven and Earth, free of binds and burdens, she presents the ideal example of a Free Spirit.
To place all of Heaven and Earth in a nutshell together, her hair was a reddish orange color. But that's not allowed. It would confuse the hell out of the people (which is why it wasn't included in the nutshell), force the angels to deal with the confused people, and make everything really crowded. To tell a closer truth, her hair wasn't A Color. It was Colors. Everything from red to orange was included. Two images came to mind: Gracefully dancing fire more playful than harmful, and the trees in the Rocky Mountains as they are changing colors from summer to winter. Her hair reminded me of Autumn. Carefully balancing the heat of fire and the playfulness of dance, its color was the perfect unity of red and orange. Bridging the gap between the dry heat of summer and the Christmas trees of winter, it maintained an in-between state, neither rising nor falling. Showing the duality of summer's fiery passion and winter's tranquility, it both roused and calmed me with its presence. Perfect harmonies of red and orange, summer and winter, and passion and calm all come together in this season, only truly lasting for an instant, and that is what I chose to name her.
Autumn.
Autumn
15 going on 16. I faced my summer alone, in a foreign world with only a small bit to call my own. I feel comfortable enough in my home, but what of the rest? I know no one, know no place, only know this too-large house. Ironic, isn't it? A tiny island in the middle of nowhere, and it feels too big for me. It tells me that no matter how small an area is and how comfortable we are with it, we can never know it completely. There are always secrets that a house will keep from you.
I'm lonely. Can I go Outside and meet someone new? No, what's the use? After all, I'll only be here for another month, and after that we'll forget about each other. Besides, that's only assuming that someone will be willing to get to know me, which seems like enough of a miracle for one summer. Speaking of miracles, what about this "God" that people keep telling me about? He's All-Powerful, right? Maybe he (Is it He? How the hell should I know? Is talking about God and hell in the same parenthesis blasphemous? How the hell should I know?). Maybe it can help. This entity, this being. I don't care if it's a wrinkly old man or a panel of television producers. If I'm wrong, nobody will know. I'll just talk to it alone, silently, and nobody will hear me. If it really is all-powerful, It will hear me.
So I started praying. Praying may not even be the right word. Asking is more like it. Every night when I remembered, I would say to myself, and whoever else might be listening, "Please let me meet the perfect girl." Hardly the wholesome, altruistic motives one would expect from a prayer. Still, it doesn't matter since I'm the only one listening, unless there really is someone looking into my head. Wouldn't it be weird if there really was Something reading your thoughts and watching your actions? My prayers started as a request for company, but ultimately became also a test of religion. I began to wonder about the presence of God. If something happened as a result of all of this, I would Know.
* * *
I'm on vacation now. It's been a week since I started asking, and it's light in the hotel room. Everything feels so peaceful. I just woke up, but it doesn't feel like it. I feel unbelievably light, and could have floated off to another dream, but I didn't want to. I needed to think. I thought about the dream I had last night/this morning. Was it The One? Is this my Answer? There's really someone looking into my head? You'd think he'd have better things to do. Did you know that we live in a really screwed up place? Maybe the dream, and some of the other people's prayers, is some sort of compensation for His handiwork. Wouldn't it be great if that was the way prayers worked, and God was only nice to those people who came to realize how crazy our world is? I'd laugh. So the dream was compensation, or a reward. He could have at least had the decency to let me remember more of it.
The first thing I remember: I'm sitting in a stone amphitheater, one of those places where the Greeks perform their Greek plays. And all of the tourists who can't understand a word they're saying and probably have no idea what the plot is clap in all the wrong places and look at the person next to them to see when to laugh and when to cry. But this isn't my place to be cynical. After all, it's a dream about the Perfect Girl.
I'm sitting in the amphitheater, and it's a nice day. Isn't the weather wonderful? Oh yes, it makes me want to do jumping jacks and run through sprinklers. It's That Sort Of Day. The amphitheater is filling up. I know some of the people, but I don't pay attention to them. They don't notice me. Will she come? (Aha, so I know she's coming. Does that mean I've already met her? Yes, I have. I know it. That means more Dream came before this, and I can't remember it).
The amphitheater. People milling in and She hasn't arrived yet. The seats are filling up. If she doesn't hurry, we won't be able to sit together. Whew, there she is. She sits next to me. I turn around, and notice how tremendously large the seat is. I'm sitting on the stone so that my feet touch the ground, but my butt hardly takes up any space on the seat. I scoot back and rest my back against the stone wall behind me, and now I'm in the shade. It's really comfortable, all but my legs. The seat stops halfway down my calves, and my legs can't dangle or rest on stone. It's really uncomfortable. Then, all that detail is lost as She leans towards me. She slowly lowers her head to my shoulder, a comfortable gesture that has been done countless times before. I cradle her head with mine, creating a comfortable pocket with an equal ease. She fits like a jigsaw puzzle. (That's very poetic. The double meaning of her head fitting into my space-between-the-head-and-shoulder and her existence fitting into the empty spot in my life. God was probably a Language Arts teacher in a previous life. Poetic, but horribly unorganized. His students constantly suffered from his untidiness).
The only thing I can remember about Her is her hair. If it fell flat, straight down, it might have come down to the bottom of her ears. The same length all around, except there were layers in the length as it went toward the top of the head. Almost like a Christmas tree. But it didn't fall straight down, nor did it stick out like a Christmas tree. There was an unnatural lightness about it, almost like it wasn't affected by gravity. If a normal girl jumped, Newton's Inertia would make her hair keep going up even as she started falling back down. For just an instant her hair would be completely free from her body and Newton's Gravity, and would achieve a perfect ease in its weightless splendor. Her hair was always like this. She was always at the height of her jump, waiting to fall, but never falling. Floating in the middle of Heaven and Earth, free of binds and burdens, she presents the ideal example of a Free Spirit.
To place all of Heaven and Earth in a nutshell together, her hair was a reddish orange color. But that's not allowed. It would confuse the hell out of the people (which is why it wasn't included in the nutshell), force the angels to deal with the confused people, and make everything really crowded. To tell a closer truth, her hair wasn't A Color. It was Colors. Everything from red to orange was included. Two images came to mind: Gracefully dancing fire more playful than harmful, and the trees in the Rocky Mountains as they are changing colors from summer to winter. Her hair reminded me of Autumn. Carefully balancing the heat of fire and the playfulness of dance, its color was the perfect unity of red and orange. Bridging the gap between the dry heat of summer and the Christmas trees of winter, it maintained an in-between state, neither rising nor falling. Showing the duality of summer's fiery passion and winter's tranquility, it both roused and calmed me with its presence. Perfect harmonies of red and orange, summer and winter, and passion and calm all come together in this season, only truly lasting for an instant, and that is what I chose to name her.
Autumn.
