The sun sets. I wonder if she enjoys these overcast days like I do. What does she look like? Does she sleep well every night, dreaming of her valiant prince?
It's evenings like these that catch my imagination wandering and seem to put a perfect freeze-frame on them, to let me capture the millions of butterflies floating around inside me. I'll capture them, look into their penetrating, intricate designs, but eventually let them fly back into the space they came from, because I can't keep them contained forever. It's the nostalgia that catches me off guard, much like I catch the butterflies. One by one the memories drift through my mind as I sit and smell the fresh earth. It's not every day I can count the stars in my own eyes, but the clean air seems to amplify my vision. In my mind's eye I see everything. Everything that was. Everything that is. Everything I hope to be.
I wonder if she lies awake at night. Maybe as she just catches the wake of long-awaited sleep, the brisk night air awakens her once again. As she gets up to close the window, she sees the curtains blowing and she becomes afraid. Does anybody cross her mind as a protection to her own imagination? What is he like? Maybe as she closes the window, and the breeze leaves her room, she just stands there, unsure of herself. She looks around her room. What does she decorate it with? Are there posters of celebrities? Role models? Song lyrics? She goes back to her bed, but doesn't lay down. She calmly sits there, motionless, with nothing and everything traveling light-years too slowly across her mind.
Maybe somewhere a boy can't sleep either. The window is open, but he likes the breeze. He doesn't want to close it. The blinds are too heavy to be blown around silently, but the steady, soft clanking soothes him. It's 1:03 AM and he gets out of bed for some water. No lights are on in the house, but he can get around like a bat. He knows the hallways like the back of his hand, and soon he's in the bathroom. He doesn't want to turn on the light for fear that he'll find reality. He wants to stay hidden away in his mind. Night is like a blanket that shields him from life. Whether he wants it or not, he needs it to keep him warm when he feels cold. And he doesn't know right now if he will ever be able to take it off, because the chill of reality will surely wake him up once more.
I wonder what she does as she sits there. Perhaps she keeps a journal by her bed, or maybe she prefers the term "diary." She reaches over and opens it, but doesn't flip to her most recent entry. Too bitter. Too real. Instead she flips to the front page where her mother wrote,
Diary of my Little Girl
She reads those words at least once a week, solely for comfort. She leafs through the pages and gets lost in her childhood memories. She laughs out loud as she reads about the time her friend pulled the head off her doll accidentally, though she was furious about it when it happened. Finally she gets to the entry she wrote only a few days earlier. She hesitates to read the first word.
The boy now just stands there, wide awake, but blinded by the darkness. The mirror is only a foot or two away from his face, but he can't see past his open eyelids. As he silently walks back to his room, he begins to remember what transpired that day. He slowly closes the door behind him as he gently slides down it to sit on the carpeted floor. He may have fallen asleep for a moment or two, because when he opens his damp eyes, the hazy clock reads 1:42 AM. He wishes he could go back and remake past decisions, warn himself of oncoming danger, comfort his younger mind. He wishes many things, but, he realizes with a faint smile, he missed 11:11 a little under three hours ago. He can't go back to sleep.
She closes her diary, teary eyed. What has she done to deserve this? She stumbles to her closet and slips on her slippers, then walks to the kitchen. How old is she? Old enough to drive, I would think. She takes the car keys off the hook and opens the garage door. As she gets into the car, she sits there for just a moment with the car keys in the ignition. Thinking, but not thinking. Hoping, but not hoping. Dreaming, but not sleeping. She turns the key and backs out of the driveway into the light drizzle.
The boy has a similar idea. He can't sleep, but he can't face reality. His only escape is the night, but the breeze in his room isn't helping him. He is wide awake, but his mind is blocked off, not accepting the senses his body gives him. All that runs through his mind is a park he used to go to with his mom, and so, barefoot, he gets into the old car and off he drives.
The few cars on the road ease his stagnant mind as the headlights blur past. He plugs in his iPod and scrolls to an old album his parents would play for him when he was young. The peaceful music relaxes his heart, and he pulls off the road into the park. He turns off the ignition and listens to the engine make its' quiet pops, with the soft pitter-patter of the rain running down the windows.
The girl doesn't know where she's going. All she knows is that she's escaping. Her body is numb with goosebumps, but not from the sharp night air. She decides that she could do without a heart. When the blurring street stripes become unbearable, she takes a sharp right into a small road lined with young trees. She comes across a small parking lot with an abandoned car, and pulls into it. She takes up three parking spots as she comes to a stop, but she doesn't care. As she puts the car into park, she sits there silently with the engine still running. After a couple minutes she realizes that she never turned it off, and when she twists the key, the silence stuns her. She reaches into the back seat and grabs the old violin she always keeps in her car, and opens the door. She gets out of the car and closes the door behind her, but doesn't bother locking it. She just wants to sit somewhere and be alone. She spots a dry bench hidden under some aged oak trees, and walks toward it.
Maybe it was the nightmares he was having, or maybe it was the dim headlights that grazed his car that woke him up. He watches as an old, noisy car bumps over the curb and comes to a stop in the most inconvenient spot. It crosses his mind that the driver may be drunk, and so he sits quietly, and shrinks a little lower in his seat, just in case the driver had seen someone inside of the car. He sits and waits, but the car doesn't turn off its' engine or lights, and so he continues to awkwardly shrink lower and lower in his seat. Just as he's about to start his own car and make a speedy getaway, the lights in the other car turn off, and the engine stops. He holds his breath as someone opens the car's door with something in their hand, slams it shut, and begins walking into the park. He lets out his breath as a girl walks past his car, apparently unaware it was even there. In the dim moonlight, the first thing he notices is that she is wearing slippers. Slippers, he also noted, that were getting soaked in the small rain puddles she would carelessly walk through. He still wondered if she was drunk, but he brushed the idea aside. As he watched the silhouette walk, head down, he also noticed how long her hair was. It went down to at least mid back, and he thought it looked a very light brown. But then, it was only the moonlight. He watched as she went and sat down in the bench that his mother would always tell him stories on. Then, to his surprise, she pulled something out of the case she was carrying, and put it up to her chin. He could dimly tell that she was swaying gently back and forth, but he couldn't hear anything from inside the car, with the rain still drizzling outside.
Maybe the girl keeps an old violin in her car for the orchestra she performs in at school. It was probably her grandmother's, but her mother doesn't play, and so it's hers now. As she sits under the oak trees, she pulls out her violin and plays a song she hasn't practiced in a long time. It's not perfect, but she can still recollect the right positions and bow draws. As she lets the music carry her away, she closes her eyes, and can barely hear the rain pattering down on the leaves above her. Much less the barefooted boy slowly walking toward her in the dark, as if afraid to frighten the music away.
The music is lovely to him. It's the same kind of music that he was listening to as he drove here. He doesn't want to startle the girl, and so he takes a round-about path to the bench. Soon he is close enough to reach out and touch the tip of her violin, but he just stands there, just on the outer rim of the treeline. The leaves drip more water on him than the clouds do, but he doesn't mind. The girl still has her eyes closed, but he can tell that he was right about her hair color. It looks smooth and silky, and he's sure that if lightning flashed across the sky, he would be able to watch her hair glow for just a second. Her face is as smooth as the stones he would skip up the creek in the canyon near his home. But he can't see her eyes.
The girl continues to play until the end of the song. She lets her fingers glide up and down the weathered strings - they know where to go. As she comes to the final note of the song, she holds it longer than usual, and it slowly fades back into the sounds of the night. She sighs and puts the violin down next to her, and then looks up. She sees a boy standing there in the drip coming off of the trees, watching her, but she isn't as afraid as she knows she should be. The boy mumbles out an awkward hello, and the girl coughs and does the same. The girl puts her head down, and combs her hair behind her ears.
Neither of them know what to say, but they both know they want to say something. Neither of them know what the other is doing at a park out this late in the rain, but both of them know they don't want to be anywhere else.
Maybe the girl moves her violin and invites the wet boy to sit. Maybe as he sits down he mumbles a dumb comment about her sopping slippers. Maybe she lets out a nervous laugh and says it doesn't matter. Maybe the boy starts to realize what's going on and looks up and gives her a compliment about her music. Maybe that's what makes her look up to see the dim face of this boy.
Maybe that's when he sees her eyes.
Well, the sun has been down for a while now, and it's that time again where most of the neighborhood is going to bed, but here I am writing a long blog post. I bet it's still overcast outside because I can still smell the air wafting through the house to the computer where I'm sitting and writing.
I guess these are the kind of things I find when I listen to the silence of my mind. It's been kind of fun to sit and imagine. I wonder if things like this really do happen to people, or if it's only in people's imaginations, dreamed up with imagery like this. It would be kind of bittersweet.
But I think this is where I have to leave. Goodbye friends, until next time!
