Bombs Bursting In Air

Bombs Bursting In Air

I thought it was the sun. It’s daily formal rehearsal, the horizon silhouetting the mountains to the East, a rooster proclaiming a new day open for business, but it is only 2 AM. Our French doors overlook the valley that flows from the mountains. Our usual sunrise experience occurs, depending upon the time of year of course, somewhere between when it gets light and when I wake up.

This new light is blinding. I look across the room at the clock, two minutes after two. I nudge her. she rolls over, moaning her five o’clock moan. She forces her eyes open, and as if reading the latest editorial in the paper, asks, “What the hell is…?”

We both sit upright, staring at the torch light in the east. The mountains profile, now a definitive Salvador Dali eruption of black, against the illuminated shades of brushed gray and a bruised purple sky. I turn to the radio as if it could somehow explain.

She looks at me as if I’d have an explanation, nothing definitive comes to mind. I slip from the bed and wind my way down the stairs to the living room. I switch on the TV, expecting an immediate justification for the look of a world being adulterated. 

I can hear her upstairs, the door to the balcony opening with its trumpeting screech. The Television remains dark. Nothing, not even its habitual blinking blue light indicating life. I flip the wall switch, anticipating a flood of light that expectantly chases the black from the room.  I look out the window in the kitchen, dark, a lack of any human intervention. The artificial Quick Stop Convenience store’s moon that hangs over the tributary leading to the heart of the city, invisible. A set of vehicle lights noticeable, climbing the switch back road to the area on the mountain where the towers stand above the tree line, like bristling dog hairs.

I hear her steps shuffle on the floor above, and the objections of the stairs as she makes her way carefully to the main floor. I look, but she does not appear. I can’t remember ever being in a place absent of all light. For some reason I think of Jonah’s story, being swallowed by a whale where he remains for three days in the belly of a beast, dark.

I can hear her breath, exaggerated quick gulps as though drowning in air, sounds coming from the vicinity of the stairwell. My ascent to the main floor had been accomplished by involuntary memory alone. I do not remember the darkness being an impediment, until I realize, light is no longer an option. I am not fearful of the dark, the concept of fear lurking in the darkness, seems illogical to me. 

The exterior explosion of light ebbs and flows indiscriminately, like the pulse of beating heart, someplace beyond the mountain. The pulsating light climbs into the sky and then abruptly dissipates. I can see her standing at the bottom of the stairs, her night shirt rumpled, tears sliding down her face. She seems to tolerate the darkness. It was several years of sleeping in the presence of a night light before I was comfortable with the intrusion she needs, to find sleep.

A loud explosion, thunderous sounds send bursts of flaming tear shaped projectiles into the black sky. “A volcano,” she gasps, pointing to the east bank of windows, now a light with star blazing assumptions. 

“I don’t think so.” My words hollow, unconvincing. My uncertainty, slipping once again into the darkness that surrounded us. “Nuclear, I fear,” the words falling from me like lost souls. 

“It’s finally happened. Its been predicted for years. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Russia, the race for the bomb in Iran, North Korea, we have become immune to the fears. We have been reassured for so long, I feel we have begun to believe the rhetoric, not the facts. We have been vaccinated against the truth. 

The world is full of madmen, who somehow believe there can be a winner in a nuclear holocaust. We can’t escape the devastation of climate change; how can we expect to outrun the self-induced ignorance, and the consequence of those in power.”

“What can we do?” Her question, like all questions, the only means capable of combating forces out of our control; looking for reason where there is none, providing answers we can accept. “Where can we go, what can we do?”

There is no place to run or hide. All that can be accomplished is changing the scenery to diminish our mounting impotence. Fill our lives with those we care about, look for and hopefully find our nirvana here on earth, to help us over the threshold of uncertainty, hopefully to our personal projection of peace and happiness.

“What do you think? Is there an answer?”

“I think you are off to the races again with your strange compilation of phrases and words. We are not supposed to be painting a picture of Bambi and the flowered woodlands of everyone’s idea of their perfect happy place. People do not want to see Elmer Fudd mistaking Bambi for a, “wabbit.” The next scene, the gun raises, the cross-eyed swine fires at the unsuspecting fawn, and then…?

We are supposed to be creating a message that will bring the inevitability of destroying our world, into the light of everyday resignation, that bad things happen when we allow them to. The dooms day bell tolls for us.

And now that you’ve broached the subject, why do I have to be the one to stand in the darkness, alone, afraid, weeping. You are the bigger baby when it comes to the dark, imaginary demons, ghosts, goblins, and chipmunks if I remember correctly. You won’t even participate in Halloween. You pretend you honor only, The Day of the Dead and its spiritual mystique. But you won’t even visit a cemetery? NO! You pretend you forgot where they put it.

We need to find a way to communicate the likelihood of nuclear extinction, which means bringing people back from their hibernating state of denial, and entice them to become involved, before it is too late.”

“OK, but I’m not going to wear a night shirt, and there’s nothing wrong with a man crying, if there is a good reason.

I would assume you’d agree, that being incinerated by a humans incompetence, or a madman who pushes the wrong button, is not only likely, but probable, unless we arouse people, get them to believe in the fear that is real.”

“I know what we need, I need, you need. We need to go up into the mountains and forget all about this. Wipe the slate clean, erase all the nomenclature dancing in our heads like sugar plums, and begin fresh, start anew!”

“Where can we go?”

“The lake!”

“It’s two in the morning, remember. Well, two thirty now.” 

“Come here, look out the window towards the valley. What do you see? Can you envision the moon peeking over the snow caped mountain, the lake’s water mirroring its reflection. You, me, both watching from the desolate shore. A campfire spiting sparks into the darkness, watching them disappear into nothingness, becoming the conduit for what’s next, as we remain transfixed on the inevitability.”

“A good place to cross over?”

“The perfect place to cross over. Can we use any of my, our, previous work?”

“No!”