Piloting my red space cruiser across the green galaxy, I traveled in rhythmic, separate, repeating lines. Scouring the cosmos with exacting purpose, but it was too large. It continued on and on.
That's what I let my imagination slip into for a little while. The reality was I was cutting my grass with my gas-powered lawnmower. The relativity of my yard is annoying to me. Partly because of the relativity itself, and also how dull and trifling a yard is. When I want to have people over, or throw a ball, or run around with my dog, it's so small. Painfully small, like an animal shelter cage. When I want to mow it, however, it may as well never end. You had to drive the mower slowly and deliberately to cut efficiently. I was barely finished with half the yard, and the second half was hanging over me like the shadow of a raincloud. I stood still for a couple seconds, but didn't want to start the mower again, so I let it run loudly while I gathered myself. The yard may have been small, but somehow it continued on and on.
There is a sense of peace nestled in with the minuscule accomplishment felt when I finish mowing the lawn. The roar of the mower quiets down, my muscles can relax, and the yard has a fresh haircut. My laziness surpasses my work ethic at this point, so the mower tracks clippings across the driveway and into the garage. All to make myself feel less guilty about spending the next hour, or longer, sitting in a lawn chair in my yard. My brain gives me a gold star for the day, and that's enough to convince myself.
It was one of those wonderful summer nights I remember from when I was a kid. The sun was beginning to set, but it would still be bright for a long while yet. The sky was a dull, baby blue, cloudless, stretching below the horizon and mixing up, into the stratosphere. I could hear cars driving a few street away, but couldn't see any. There must be children playing a game, perhaps jumping into a kiddie pool, a few houses down, from the sounds of it. The more distinct memories I have of nights like these involved me with Fourth of July sparklers, or arriving home dirty from sports, or simply sitting, like I am now, but with my mom and dad and my sister. Nostalgia is funny that way, where I am enjoying the moment now, while longing for a similar one from the past. It is it's own emotion entirely. A combination feeling of desire, yearning, and comfort. A new memory is about to be made, that will both encompass and eclipse these.
In the current technological age, I make a concerted effort to not access my phone for long periods of time if I can. I hate myself for making a habit of reaching into my pocket to check my phone for notifications when I have a lapse in activity. Here, I take it out of my pocket and place it on the ground next to me, deliberately dropping it into soft grass without leaning out of my comfortable position in the chair, to reinforce the idea that getting it will disturb my position. The beer I placed in the chair's cup holder earlier is so soaked with condensation that it slips out of my hand and stays down at first grasp. The tab pops the lid open loudly and crisply, and the first freezing gulp whelms my taste buds, but acts as a palate cleanser for my mental state. It signifies the transition from phoned to un-phoned. In a form of meditation I don't even realize I am doing, I take a few deep breaths as I gaze at my surroundings. The old, rotted, wooden fence separating my neighbor's yard and mine. Scattered clumps of dust, rock, some garbage, and what I assume is dirt, skirting the fringes of my lawn, a sort of wave of suburban detritus. I let the thought creep into my head for but a moment that I should clean that sidewalk up before I continue my assessment. The big, empty field catty-corner to my house. I can't glance at it without thinking of all the backyard sports, snowball fights, rock throwing, and laying down I have done there for years growing up. Those moments are a maelstrom of memories that pass by in a flash. What a joy it is, to a child, to have a grassy field. Down the block, a smattering of houses, similar to mine in every way except for the persons living there. Some butted up against one another, some separated by a yard or a fence or a little dividing alleyway, but identical in spirit and purpose. They blend together into a single area, "the houses," and I move on. I can almost see the top of the hill at the end of the street I live on. It creeps up and up and crests at the perfect angle to block my sight. I know there is a small playground and a basketball court up there, even though I can't see it.
The other direction has more houses, with a hospital sitting behind them. From my position, the center, I am home plate and the hospital is the center field stands. The outfield is many homes. I can't see beyond my neighbor's house and fence to the left, so that's my entire sight line. I know there is a train station behind me, and behind that further, a small forest, with giant mounds of rocks, even though I refuse to turn my body to look. The mounds of rocks had always intrigued me. They are not one rock, like your typical mountain. It looks like there are hundreds of thousands of individual rocks piled on top of some black dirt, or silt, or something. I honestly have no clue. I've always wondered what it was back there. When I was a kid, I never questioned it. We just climbed up it and then threw the rocks. Now, I question it, but feel too adult to ask. "Hey what is that stuff back there, like a dirt mine or something?" I've tried once or twice before and nobody seems to care.
I center back on myself and take another sip. I sink down deeper into my chair to get into a more comfortable position. My legs stretch out in front of me, and I cross my ankles over each other. My left arm hangs limp over the armrest, and my right holds my beer firmly in it. I have entered this position many times before, so I know I'll be comfy this way for quite a while. I settle in for a bit of a haul and gaze up at the sky, thoughtlessly.
I don't know exactly when it entered my field of view. Had it been creeping along while I was surveying other things at eye-level, or had it jumped into position suddenly? Was my awareness that low? Was it just so foreign that I could not fathom to take stock of it until it was more apparent? One of many things I learned I will never know.
A large, dark orb floated across the sky. It was massive, large enough to immediately be frightening. It wasn't careening towards us, at least I don't think, because it wasn't getting larger. Once it caught my attention, I stared, mouth agape, for what could have been seconds, minutes, or hours. Completely transfixed, I didn't dare look at anything else, just in case. In case of what? I was never even sure. I wanted to be prepared in case it adjusted course, as if it wasn't fully in control. A "just in case" attitude doesn't work on something so obtuse, so large, so foreign to my senses. Moments like these you cannot prepare for, and you don't realize until it's over that you are nothing more than a helpless observer. I've quickly realized I know nothing and I control even less. I was ready to activate flight, to run, to find some form of protection or defense. Against what? My fear overtook me. Yet the orb felt nothing towards me. As I stared, a husk of a man, I began to realize it was moving. It continued on and on.
It was traveling across the sky. To me, in my perception, at quite a slow rate. I could tell it was moving, but it was going so slowly that I needed a frame of reference to notice.
In these summer nights, another memory, which I didn't perceive until now, was the moon. When you are a child and you see the moon out in the day, it is a wondrous thing. The large, gray ball, hanging delicately in the blue sky, almost translucent, surely majestic. There is an intrinsic and shared joy to seeing the overlord of the night grace us in the daytime. But now, this fortuitous sighting intriguingly became my earthly shackle. As the mysterious black sphere moved in front of the moon, it gave an even greater fear. I now had a reference for it's size, it's shape, it's speed. In a matter of seconds it had blocked out the moon entirely. Now we had a new moon, a dark and ominous one; unfamiliar and unwelcome. As quickly as it blocked out our satellite, it allowed it to appear again. It continued on and on. My grip was tight on both the arm of the chair and my beer. I hadn't even realized I had been squeezing them both for dear life as if I were on a roller coaster. As this massive thing crept across the twilight sky, I forced myself to relax. The power it displayed unfathomable, I acquiesced to it's demands. Hope had left me. For if this thing wanted destruction, I was to become dust myself.
It continued on and on. Then, as eerily and hastily as it has appeared to me, it began to vanish. It wasn't getting smaller, but further away. It was leaving. Without warning, everything and everyone returned to what we were doing, whether we liked it or not, by virtue of the interloper departing. Changed, yet unchanged. Different now, yet not in a quantifiable way. A communal witnessing, and nothing else. It was as if the sky had become a drive-in movie for the entire globe. We watched, jointly captivated, summarily enchanted. All we could do was watch. Then the movie ended abruptly and we were left staring at an empty screen.
Weeks have gone by but there is no more information. Plenty of news about it, all speculation. Months go by and people start to forget, to care a little bit less. A year goes by and time has made fools of us all. Memories are funny that way. There is a deep nostalgia lingering in me. Brought on only by a brief sight, a simple glance. A moment of scent sends a flood of recall in the form of emotions. I relive moments in my past just by being in an area I've been in before. Yet as we distance ourselves from this visitor, and as it becomes more and more distant, it, too, becomes forgotten. The government agencies said they were unable to track it. Not when it was arriving and not after it had gone. It was there, it passed by, then it left. A blink in time. A light bulb flickering off for a moment before maintaining it's shine. Ships in the night and all that. No different than me watching a bird overhead. We pass by each other this way in daily life constantly, but we pay it no mind. And soon, nobody will pay mind to this as well.
Five years pass. It's summer again and I've finished my yard work. I sip a beer, I sit in my chair. I scan the horizon, the blue sky, the zenith. I no longer think of my childhood. My eyes crave the sight of the orb like a desert oasis. Have new memories formed in this area in the meantime? The thought never enters my mind. Life has gone back to normal for everyone, it seems. Yet I have become fanatical. I miss the traveler. The unknown. There is nothing I want more. Upon first seeing it I was struck with fear, held in place by dread. Now I have a form of bravery brought on by my anguished thirst for an answer. A second meeting.
Once, I was in the present, but tied to the past. A vessel for nostalgia. Now I'm gripped by a longing for the anagogic, the abstruse. Either way life was passing me by. It continued on and on.
