The Drawing Room

    “Would anyone care to talk about your experience on Goat Island?

    Don’t everyone volunteer at once. We discussed this before we went. You were to sketch, scribble, whatever way you chose, depending upon talent that you possess, to describe, record, the impact the environment of the island had on you. Anyone like to step up and show us what you experienced?”

    As straightforward as the requested assignment was, they all espoused a similar reluctant response. I believed the exercise to be a way of expanding horizons, give the students and opportunity to focus, and explore an interest that may have been drawn from them by the exposure to an environment different than the one they survived in.

    To my disappointment the reverse has occurred. It is as if the contrast has driven them deeper into themselves. I understand, I grew up in a similar situation surrounded by nothing but concrete, traffic, and garbage. Their horizon a vision of rectangles of varying heights jutting towards a polluted sky. It is what you come expect because you’ve known nothing else. You do not, cannot, imagine there being any place different.

    My hope was to expose them to an environment that would temper the ugliness of what they know and perhaps provide a vision of a horizon that promotes an opportunity to free them from the shackles of a mundane existence without promise.

    Perhaps I’m being naive, perhaps just ignorant of the pervasive affect the environment of a concrete jungle has on the psyche of those subjected to its daily harshness. 

    I know the paralyzing effects of living under the suppression of a lifeless environment. The blank stares of  buildings, the monotony of the streets, the fact you can see the air you have no choice but to breathe, the idealism of escape, relegated to the opportunity the sewers provide. Depressing? More than depressing, it leaves you with a felling of having died, and no one having noticed, even you.

    Because I can remember only too well the downward pressure of negativity the environment translates to your outlook on a future, I realize the necessity of providing, if nothing else, a sliver of exposure to an alternative, a place that screams for possibility, not for human sacrifice.

    Mr. Jacobs, my teacher, he gave me that. Whether he did it intentionally, or whether I saw something I possibly was not meant to see, matters little, because I did see it. I saw the sun unblanched by smokestack effluent, the waves licking the new sand recently renewed by the return of a moons appearance.

    It was possibility that I saw for the first time, that allowed me to forget. Forget, for the first time I could remember. Forget enough that I could remember, I had nothing to remember, for as long as I could recall. That may sound strange, it does to me, but it is so unlikely when you take your first breathe, that it doesn’t feel like someone is kneeling on your chest, or seeing so clearly, you realize for the first time that you do not have to consent to the cataracts of acceptance we are told, is all we should expect.

   That day we went to Goat Island, I had no idea what to expect, how to accept that it was a break in the monotonous unstimulating existence we had been programmed to anticipate, as there was nothing else. The world, our world was defined by the end of lines; subways, buses, and trains. Our world was only as big as the imagination we had been trained to accept and be grateful for.

*

    “Anyone want to go into the Drawing Room? I promise you it will open windows only for you, if that is what you want. It will free you to examine the possibility you’ve been forbidden to experience.

    Haven’t any of you ever wondered what is on the other side of the door that says, KEEP OUT? Is there anyone who wants to know why? What is so perfect that they don’t want you to see, experience. What are they afraid you might find?

    Haven’t you ever wondered about what it would be like to explore a place you’ve been forbidden to go? Is everyone afraid to risk what little you don’t have, for the opportunity of knowing what you might discover?

*

    The questions, the lack of answers, the doubt that stood before me back then, as they stand before me today. The fear of the unknown is always more frightening than the fear insinuated by the reality that surrounds us. That trip on the ferry, the breeze, the waves, the feel of the wind attempting to pull the hair from your head.  The sound of the sea gulls begging for anything, everything, all heading for the edge of a world we believed to be flat, regardless of the guarantees, promises, it was not.

    A day spent from behind the tattooed desk, the day away from bells that called, bells that demanded; demanded what?  That we show up because we were supposed to? Today, the same as tomorrow, yesterday, last week, next year, the merry go round of nothingness that took you nowhere from nowhere, and they wondered why you weren’t excited about the ride.

   The rocks, the sea oats, the beach growing and vanishing with time, a perspective that stops your heart from pumping the monotony of life through your veins. The sky blue, no gray, not brown, but blue; impossible. The birds, sandpipers, gulls, complaining about a life, I would have traded for in a minute.

    The return home to the skyline that blurred possibility with probability. A dock that anchored us to this place where the sky was expected to remain gray, the ground covered with asphalt, concrete devoid of life recording our acts of survival, just in case.

*

    “Francine, how about you. Care to go into the drawing room? Care to share, care to hide, care to take a chance you might find the self you don’t know?”

    I watch as Francine timidly picks her paper from the desk top, her colored pencils, her imagination, and walks fearlessly through the opening. I watch as the doors wave at those left behind. The eyes waiting for them to regurgitate their victim back into the stale environment of acceptance. We listen for the scream that will verify our suspicions, nothing but horror behind the doors that promise a chance of change. But nothing, only giggles.

    Rashaan slips from his desk, his hands grasp the paper, his pencils. His feet drag with apprehension towards the doors that have just settled into the complacency they have grown used too. He turns his back to them, and backs through. We are left with the image of his face, inquisitive, questioning, but not afraid. And then he is gone, swallowed by the blackness. One after one the others in robotic fashion pull themselves free of the present, and wander in search of an unreasoned future.

*

    I remember that day at Goat Island. I remember stepping from the ferry onto the ground that somehow felt softer, not as sterile as it had just hours before. The buildings seemed more manageable, more forgiving, less hard, more understandable that day, as we moved back into the past-present we had relinquished, if only for a short time.

    I sit alone, empty desks but for the discarded spirits left behind to fend for themselves. The sound of laughter slipping beneath the doors, causing the blackboard to wonder if it would once again find purpose, interest. 

    I can only smile at what was, and hopefully what will be. Times change, and so do people, despite what is not expected of them.