Famous Faces, Famous Places and Famous Foods
Nowhere
Time: I don’t know what day it is.
I do know the hour as the round brass ship’s clock on my wall tells me-- when I deign to pay it a moment’s attention.
Other than to check the length of a mercifully dreamless slumber so as not to wake up in the early morning with dark thoughts that go nowhere, time is nothing to me.
I yawn and peer out from behind my circular window to the sea and see that the delicate pomegranate drop of light outside signifies dawn. I study the sharp edged scribble on what could be a giant’s graph paper. I narrow my eyes and peer again: I see mountain peaks, jagged and stark against a sky that imitates the glittering ebony of the mountain.
I reflect that here I am safe away from the human world. I am ruled by nature and untouched by structured time.
My Space: I look over the sea and I recognize the type of landscape, a tumble of white concrete squares, identical, but at angles, tucked into the giant’s graph. They are condos that must have been constructed in the sixties and seventies at great expense as they are up a ribbon of mountain road.
I hear a noise.
It breaks the sea’s serene swish.
My eyes widen. I am witness. Shale from a mountain, tumbling. A black avalanche.
Ebony everywhere – glinting rocks – fast as bullets, then falling, falling, pelting:
Slivers of silver slingshot through the air.
Stones, skip, crash.
The smash of debris stuffs my ears. Exploding bits falling.
Falling until the landscape is silent again except for the yellow birds that still shriek indisgust and fear.
Man made. Blasting, made to hollow out another human palm in the mountain, for condos.
I turn away.
We set sail and leave from… it could be anywhere.
A racing skiff of clouds and the arc of blue horizon speed and color my waking hours.
I must be traveling along the watery edge of our planet.
I want that giant’s paper back as well as a flow of sunlight and a shade of sea so I can be an artist and color it bright again.
Now my existence is set by the shades of night sky: Black. I could be blindfolded with black velvet (though sometimes when there is no cloud cover the night becomes an epiphany lit by a startle of stars).
Tomorrow the sky and sea will be molten with silver. I know, I have cloud day/night/sea for company.
Past: Before, when time and the clock was my enemy; time moved like oil.
Now: There is no country name to the place I am in, just a deep navy sliding place of exquisite nothing, or Surf City, OR scary Carnival ride, or blood red sunset sea: The Atlantic.
But what must I make of this: I will ride out my sadness on this vessel, my private surfboard on the sea. My worries are nothing to the subtle pleasure of being part of the blue/ constant/ water/ sky/clouds. I am myself and ready for life among people again.