from this side (personal narrative as illustration of H.T.I. Theory)

some years ago

 

…a very small child in Chicago when

I first saw it.

…dark outside, winter perhaps. A

wind whistled hush: dancing stickmen sculptures of

leafless trees bowing in the night as we

left Uncle Sam's and Aunt Felicia's house. We

being myself, literally a baby, my brother Robert, half mine from

a previous marriage, my

Mom and my Dad: on our way home. Then,

all of the sudden as my Mom held me in

a blue blanket I

looked up and saw

the Mercury orange glowing spheres of grayish

yellow light street lamps outside our car

as we picked

up speed, my Dad easing the Ford into gear. Each sphere

succeeding the other. Faster and faster until we slowed

down and the hanging balls of light hovered there in air,

fixed in the sky:

a series of rising and setting suns

until we

started again and the single image blurred into a tear in

the cold dark night where light leaked through from

a cascade

crying down a mountain while

everything around it remained as it was,

not concerned with what

I saw. And as I squirmed my way from

my blanket up my Mom's breast for

a better view I

saw there the overhang of similar waterfalls reaching out over the road

ahead and behind lined up ripples in

a tub of windy water.

This

was the first time I saw the difference between darkness and light

and I remember thinking:

"Everywhere…it's all the same!"

 

 

 

 

EMU

Winter 2008

Thomas Krawford.