It is wan and grey here, not quite cold, but bitter. January in South Carolina rarely means snow, but more often pale lichen clinging to the tree trunks. There are still birds, bold as flowers in the yellowed grass. I arrived with my computer in my bag and IQ84 in my arms, unsure of my destination. For more than an hour I walked around Falls Park accompanied by my music, earphones tucked under a green knit cap.
.
It's really a nice park. Maybe a little too well-manicured for my tastes. It seems very new, like an arboretum. Nothing has had the chance to become overgrown; to accumulate moss or history. The stones that mark the little paths crisscrossing the grass around the waterfall show little wear or dirt. The lawns are immaculate, the flowerbeds all brown with the stench of fresh mulch. The Reedy River that feeds the falls looks so man-made you half expect a log flume to float by, a family fitted in bright yellow ponchos looking out excitedly. The stones over which the waters tumble, quiet as a dream, look as though they might have been cut from foam and painted by the special effects department for some movie scene. But maybe
this cinematic feel doesn't hurt my view of it.
.
My life seems starker here. With my headphones blasting loudly in my ears, the surreal world around me takes on a different aspect. Each song turns my mind like a pebble, shines its light through a different facet of my being. Memories rise and fall in swells. The ducks bob in the current. Little prop dolls. An old man is seated at a table by himself under the bridge. His hair and stubble are grey, his eyebrows two furious slabs of black. He draws in a drag from a cigarette. Exhales. Smoke obscures his face in ominous clouds. I think he looks like a sailor. His heavy jacket and hat seem very old. The guitar strains light the scene. Imagine the weight of so many seasons settling like dust. The clouds spew angry spittle. Above me, they are formless. No individual bursts of charcoal highlighted by slices of a far sun. Just an endless blanket of grey. Smoke from the factory.
.
I'm not sure what I will do. For now, this is enough. Sheltered from the storm in a small tea shop, I'm in another world for sure. Everything here is porcelain. Clean. Lines cut sharply, curves smooth as the face of an apple. Out the window, the skeleton of an abandoned warehouse, strangely beautiful in the winterlight. The brick arches of its windows seem they should frame something important. I imagine the high ceiling strung with paper lanterns and white lights. Clear vases with lilies and a few smooth stones on each table. A band plays some old jazz standard. The people watching wear grubby old clothes, though .
.
But for now it is empty. Around the building the earth is upturned and powdery as a construction project commences around it. They have not touched the building, though. Who knows what they are doing. The sidewalk is clean, by the river is muddy. Some of this may be a reflection of the sky.
.
I love true northern winters, when the night sky grows ruddy right before a heavy snow. My earliest awareness of this phenomena is from my childhood, a night I spent and my grandparent's house in Long Island. We spent the evening in front of their small television, watching the annual PBS broadcast of "Les Miserables." It was the first time I ever watched the play, and the songs sounded hauntingly resonant, like bells echoing in an empty cathedral. Reverberating and making me feel, for the first time, the parts of me that are hollow. Later on, I would discover that my mother had listened to the recording of the original London cast when I was still an infant, and this was why the melodies sounded so achingly familiar. But at the time they held a mysterious power, like I had tapped into the collective unconscious of the human animal, or I had heard the name of a lover from a past life, long before I knew fully what it even meant to have a lover.
.
After the broadcast, we had to drive out to their mall. I cannot remember why. I think we ended up in a sports store. I remember the fuzzy smell of baseball caps, the stitching under my fingers, the ridge of each letter, the catch of individual threads. Grey carpeting covered the small space. Standing at the counter with my grandfather, looking up at everything. The height of the shelves, the teenagers, it was all dizzying.
.
But what I remember best was the sky outside. We went out about an hour before the weather broadcasts promised the snow would begin to fall. The late evening air stung my face with a cold mist of rain. The temperature was plummeting rapidly, my breath was puffing out in heavy smoke. When you are little more than six years old, the mall parking lot seems to stretch on forever. I imagined all the cars as they would soon be, mired in snow. I looked up at the clouds, eager to catch the first snow flake. The clouds were the color of rust on metal. Colossal, they heaved across the sky like a herd of giants. Angry and powerful, cold shining off their backs in sheets. Their terrible weight seemed to drag them closer to the earth. Excitement swelled in my heart. Something magical was coming.
.
Later we watched the snow descend, swift and silent, over the stone angels and shivering trees in my grandparents' backyard. Beyond their fence was a lonely stretch of tall grass broken only by towering metal telephone poles. Tomorrow I would sled down that long slope of powder, I thought as I sipped some spiced apple tea. The piles of pretty rocks my cousins and I usually mined below the metal towers would be covered completely. So too the dead willow where we used to pretend to practice martial arts, after watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Snow erased everything. Good, bad, it didn't matter. Memories gave way the the cold gleam of an infant mind.
.
There was a guest bedroom upstairs where I could sleep, but I ended up staying on the couch watching television, a privilege I didn't enjoy at home. I alternated between watching the weather report and a special on the Discovery Channel about the Mars Rover. The dust-red desolation of Mars, the rusted sky, the telephone wires buzzing with electricity and voices-- these all mixed and danced in my half-sleeping mind until the static of the red red snow lulled me into an intoxicated slumber.
.
It's really a nice park. Maybe a little too well-manicured for my tastes. It seems very new, like an arboretum. Nothing has had the chance to become overgrown; to accumulate moss or history. The stones that mark the little paths crisscrossing the grass around the waterfall show little wear or dirt. The lawns are immaculate, the flowerbeds all brown with the stench of fresh mulch. The Reedy River that feeds the falls looks so man-made you half expect a log flume to float by, a family fitted in bright yellow ponchos looking out excitedly. The stones over which the waters tumble, quiet as a dream, look as though they might have been cut from foam and painted by the special effects department for some movie scene. But maybe
this cinematic feel doesn't hurt my view of it.
.
My life seems starker here. With my headphones blasting loudly in my ears, the surreal world around me takes on a different aspect. Each song turns my mind like a pebble, shines its light through a different facet of my being. Memories rise and fall in swells. The ducks bob in the current. Little prop dolls. An old man is seated at a table by himself under the bridge. His hair and stubble are grey, his eyebrows two furious slabs of black. He draws in a drag from a cigarette. Exhales. Smoke obscures his face in ominous clouds. I think he looks like a sailor. His heavy jacket and hat seem very old. The guitar strains light the scene. Imagine the weight of so many seasons settling like dust. The clouds spew angry spittle. Above me, they are formless. No individual bursts of charcoal highlighted by slices of a far sun. Just an endless blanket of grey. Smoke from the factory.
.
I'm not sure what I will do. For now, this is enough. Sheltered from the storm in a small tea shop, I'm in another world for sure. Everything here is porcelain. Clean. Lines cut sharply, curves smooth as the face of an apple. Out the window, the skeleton of an abandoned warehouse, strangely beautiful in the winterlight. The brick arches of its windows seem they should frame something important. I imagine the high ceiling strung with paper lanterns and white lights. Clear vases with lilies and a few smooth stones on each table. A band plays some old jazz standard. The people watching wear grubby old clothes, though .
.
But for now it is empty. Around the building the earth is upturned and powdery as a construction project commences around it. They have not touched the building, though. Who knows what they are doing. The sidewalk is clean, by the river is muddy. Some of this may be a reflection of the sky.
.
I love true northern winters, when the night sky grows ruddy right before a heavy snow. My earliest awareness of this phenomena is from my childhood, a night I spent and my grandparent's house in Long Island. We spent the evening in front of their small television, watching the annual PBS broadcast of "Les Miserables." It was the first time I ever watched the play, and the songs sounded hauntingly resonant, like bells echoing in an empty cathedral. Reverberating and making me feel, for the first time, the parts of me that are hollow. Later on, I would discover that my mother had listened to the recording of the original London cast when I was still an infant, and this was why the melodies sounded so achingly familiar. But at the time they held a mysterious power, like I had tapped into the collective unconscious of the human animal, or I had heard the name of a lover from a past life, long before I knew fully what it even meant to have a lover.
.
After the broadcast, we had to drive out to their mall. I cannot remember why. I think we ended up in a sports store. I remember the fuzzy smell of baseball caps, the stitching under my fingers, the ridge of each letter, the catch of individual threads. Grey carpeting covered the small space. Standing at the counter with my grandfather, looking up at everything. The height of the shelves, the teenagers, it was all dizzying.
.
But what I remember best was the sky outside. We went out about an hour before the weather broadcasts promised the snow would begin to fall. The late evening air stung my face with a cold mist of rain. The temperature was plummeting rapidly, my breath was puffing out in heavy smoke. When you are little more than six years old, the mall parking lot seems to stretch on forever. I imagined all the cars as they would soon be, mired in snow. I looked up at the clouds, eager to catch the first snow flake. The clouds were the color of rust on metal. Colossal, they heaved across the sky like a herd of giants. Angry and powerful, cold shining off their backs in sheets. Their terrible weight seemed to drag them closer to the earth. Excitement swelled in my heart. Something magical was coming.
.
Later we watched the snow descend, swift and silent, over the stone angels and shivering trees in my grandparents' backyard. Beyond their fence was a lonely stretch of tall grass broken only by towering metal telephone poles. Tomorrow I would sled down that long slope of powder, I thought as I sipped some spiced apple tea. The piles of pretty rocks my cousins and I usually mined below the metal towers would be covered completely. So too the dead willow where we used to pretend to practice martial arts, after watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Snow erased everything. Good, bad, it didn't matter. Memories gave way the the cold gleam of an infant mind.
.
There was a guest bedroom upstairs where I could sleep, but I ended up staying on the couch watching television, a privilege I didn't enjoy at home. I alternated between watching the weather report and a special on the Discovery Channel about the Mars Rover. The dust-red desolation of Mars, the rusted sky, the telephone wires buzzing with electricity and voices-- these all mixed and danced in my half-sleeping mind until the static of the red red snow lulled me into an intoxicated slumber.
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