Up Close

It was over, finally over. She could hardly believe it, but her slicked-back thoughts and her sliding pulse assured her it was. There was no way back, not running, not crawling, not even begging and pleading. And the truth be told, she was not going to try. Nor cry. She had no more rivers and clouds to give, no more decency and obedience, no inner shifting to offer. Done, finished, everything out and gone. 

The realization of where she was now was not going to numb any remaining tingling or tremors, no zipping of life-bringing bees, no wealth of feelings. It could, nevertheless, be where she needed to be, and so she began. Cautiously, thinking her mind to its place out there.

Out there. Where she was meant to go. She looked, and knew. Her back to the closed doors, she turned to the horizon, the new one, one purchased with the last drops of her, precious and purple, that purple one could confuse with rust and rainwater, but also the one that matches the ending of twilight and the full rush of dawn. She had that color now, and it was good.

As she looked out on all she owned, or at least all she knew, it looked out on her, as if she had become a horizon, too. Except that was impossible. All she did was sit on a comfortable rock, doors behind her and the open before her. And she decided that this was not what she was seeking. The view was too level, too easy, too simple. It hurt seeing it there, so plain, so stoic, as if it could please nobody, not even her. She knew her horizon needed her, and she would need to work hard.

It took her about a year, give or take a few days, to complete the task.

The first thing was to wrinkle it a bit. Not too much, and the wrinkles needed to look wanted, natural, welcome. A bit of soil brought by a pick-up that grumbled in, coughed out its load, retreated. She surveyed what had been deposited there, and decided it was good. Her job was to distribute the good earth in the proper way. She had no plan, because spreading soil around doesn’t need much of a plan, to be honest, but she waded in, perhaps literally, to move the loam and tiny clumps of green into shapes they’d never thought of having.

Thus the view was altered, but all her effort, while worth it, had not achieved what she desired. Texture had blossomed out there, in front, but it was still too timid. She had closed a lot of doors and now needed a lot of horizon. Hers was not jazzed up enough. How could she achieve the right view? The irregular line she was now looking at seemed like a lopsided ocean and if there were a ship sailing atop it, it might slide off to one side. 

She could fix that. She would fix it.

A year later, she had fixed it by installing - perhaps planting is a better word, but they’re all just synonyms and empty, words are - a gigantic birch tree on the steepest slope. An extra measure of balance came from the skillful placement of a laurel shrub to the right of the big birch, and a fragrant myrtle on the far right. Then she stepped back, looked, waited. 

It was another several months, or perhaps more than that, when she decided the addition of the tree and bushes had been a good choice. The dark brown earth, so chestnutty, had warmed to the touch of roots and looked almost giddy, which is obviously not the term most people would use to describe the view. She was satisfied that it had liked the alterations she had made, though. Not satisfied enough to feel giddy, though. After all, there was still more work to do. 

She rested her forehead in her hands, not looking, because sometimes she knew her eyes could get in the way when trying to see things. She closed them and crunched them up into little balls, which turned out to be just the right thing to do. Out from between her lashes dribbled a few tiny images that she knew were the right fit. She thought she should hurry. Time had a way of dribbling, too. So she took the little pictures that had fallen to her palms and added them to the horizon that was looking at her with great expectation.

Now the soil and greenery had blurbs and spurts of color. The hues enhanced the texture and threaded songs among leaves. Such a simple thing, an intuitive thing, but it had worked. Who knew forget-me-knots, lilacs, forsythia knew how to write? These did, had slipped out from under her eyelids and sought their place. Now there were pages and pages of rosy O shapes, spiked Ts, golden triangles enmeshed in the distant branches. They were obviously being powered by the sun. She was quite pleased with this latest alteration, even if producing it had provoked a very painful headache.

Waiting can be such sweet sorrow, but she was the most patient person she knew, and wait she could. She would. That was how at least another year went by. Nobody had noticed the days passing, but the following year it was obvious that the color flecks had taken root and were thriving. She no longer doubted her ability to alter her horizon, and that was important, because it was not complete.

She pondered the view for yet another year, liking it but also thinking that it was really nothing out of the ordinary. Almost anybody could have a garden. She needed something more. Not to impress the neighbors, with whom she rarely spoke, but to repair something still not quite right in it and in her. By now, the comfortable rock had been joined by others, so her viewing spot had increased in size. It almost seemed like there was a wall growing behind her - a wall she had not planted. She was unsure whether she needed it or not, but she would listen to it and would not allow herself to feel afraid.

Her back was resting against the new wall made of ancient stones and her eyes were slitted, adjusting the view before them. The slitted lids seemed to bring everything into focus and a slow idea slid in from the direction of her neck. There was life out on the horizon, but there was not much movement, unless the wind blew. When it didn’t, all was dull, lifeless, lacking. 

That was how the animals happened. She wasn’t exactly clear how that had occurred, but there they were. A complete list would take too long, and it should be made clear that the scene was not an imitation of Eden or Paradise, which are places that are so commonplace as to have lost their meaning. Nobody wants Paradise any more. She revised the new, noise-containing elements in several different ways, but at last realized that they didn’t need her to do that. They were perfectly capable of looking lovely on their own.

But not just lovely. Something else. She decided to remain close until she had figured it out. No need to keep such distance between them. The animals were busy arranging their spaces, negotiating their food sources, speaking what they spoke, teaching their languages to others. She needed to listen, although ears were insufficient. Time would teach her fluency.

A few years later, the tract of land that had stretched out so far from the closed doors had begun to shift. It wasn’t located where she had thought it was, and it didn’t seem anywhere near as vast as when she had first acquired it. A real mystery, and one that frightened her for the first time. It was still her horizon, but it had expanded. She thought she might need to fix that. 

The solution wasn’t hard to find. She didn’t squeeze her eyes shut like two lemons, nor did she look out through squinted lids. No, this time she ran her fingers, three on each hand, up and down her arms, noticing everything they encountered from wrist to elbow. It would not be of great interest to you to hear that they encountered freckles or hair or pores, smooth or rough skin. None of those things are appropriate to horizon construction. Instead, tips met tones, definable as audio and visual. Melodies and paint. Transparent, interlocking, drifting freely, filling and aware. Just as she was aware that her discovery could, should, be moved from her to there. From her to horizon.

It required thought to think that through. So she did.

A year later, if you had looked carefully, you would have seen the migration from arms to garden. Filaments of this and that, reminding her of flotsam and jetsam with a purpose. Except this wasn’t flotsam at all. Nor was it jetsam. It was as if the lightning bugs of her childhood had returned, singing and in technicolor. She welcomed them, hoping they would decide to stay. They did. New lightning bugs, children of the earlier ones, even more beautiful.

There was no more flatness, she saw, years later. The horizon was newer every day and returned her attention with one of its own, the kind of attentions only horizons can give. She knew this. She also knew that her work was not finished. She would still need to work on the project. Because project it was, and that word implies a goal and a process. She was, in fact, still in the beginning stages. She would not give up.

By now the stones behind the comfortable stone - where she’d sat so long, hard, and often to view her work - had clearly become a wall. That didn’t mean they had managed to block out the doors of the house that was beyond the wall. It just meant she felt encased and enjoyed that wall. It was good defense, should one of the doors in the house open again.

It was another few years before she was ready to initiate the next alteration, despite having had to prune a few horizon branches here and there. It was prudent to work slowly, to avoid disrupting the good, to graft new additions to the most receptive surfaces. When she knew what would work well, she moved closer and began. She began with words, unplanned, unpainted, unpronounced. Still, they were words and they were worthy of that place. They asked and listened. The place did, too, and so she was able to create what almost looked like a tapestry but wasn’t, because words only weave air, and use air to weave. So, like a tapestry: solid, bold, certain, traditional. 

Also airy, mystical, questioningly modern. Also like a tapestry, which after all is only where threads meet and mingle before taking us in to become warp and weft. Words that say iris meets goldenrod knows finch and squirrel, lichen loves sunflowers and quince and red clay pots, squeaking bats, sowbugs and snails. Words are satisfied by all the writing that has taken then in its hands and placed them in verses or plots, squeezing drops of satiny ink onto new white pages after plucking them from green leaves.

Words. Was that all she had? Had the horizon built so patiently, painstakingly, been mere words all the time or had it really existed but had come to an end? She did not know, but she was determined to find an answer.

It was probably two years later when she decided it was time to do something. The horizon had been transformed from the original, utterly pancake, style to a place any sane person would want to live forever. There could be nothing wrong with it. There was nothing wrong with it. Nevertheless…

She stood up, instinctively, which is how she had been doing everything for a number of years as she had worked on her horizon project. She leaned over and patted the bubbly surface of her sitting stone, whose surface had always shifted its form in response to her weight. It was like touching the back of a rabbit, gentle and trembling. She wondered if it had always been like that and she just hadn’t know it. Such a kind stone. She wasn’t going to leave it, but there was something that she needed to do.

Standing up straight, although not stiff, she had to readjust her equilibrium, which meant looking out before her and looking back, behind her. Then she went close to the growing wall, which she quite liked for its natural mottled shading, its surface like flowing water, its stony warmth. The wall too would remain and would probably grow, but she was patient and could wait for that to happen. 

She walked around the wall in order to take a look at the house. She no longer recalled if it had been her house, if it might be hers still. It seemed to recognize her and she was wondering why it felt like it did when one back door spread open. Tentative, restless, beckoning? She did not know, but knowing was not key. What was key was knowing what to do with the door, how to respond to it. That was why she did what she had to do.

She approached the door, accepting its invitation. It seemed to nod and smile at her, almost embrace her. None of this was of any concern, and as she slipped inside the house once more, having spent so many years with her back to the door’s house, she turned.

There was the wall that lived, that loved her. There was the stone that was as soft as eiderdown. There was the horizon that had everything she had placed in it and more, because it had taken on a life of its own. It was not Paradise, but then that’s just a fairy tale. Parts of her, many parts, the best ones, were in it. She knew that, and as she passed through opening to enter the door’s house, she whispered:

“I’ll be back soon. I just need to take care of something first, but I’ll be back, I promise.”

The horizon heard her and nodded slowly, gently.