Do you know those times in life when you take a deep breath and realize that you are breathing in the whole world? Those times when you feel a connection with everything else around you, your living and non-living environment, when you feel a pull toward it and it pulls you back? One night a few years ago I was leaving my evening class. I felt the pull of the class on my mind still as I gathered my things to leave. I felt the continuation of the thoughts inspired in that class; it was British Literature III, so we had probably been discussing something tragic and beautiful, as only the Victorians can truly express it. And as with anything I find to be beautiful, there was a sadness throughout. Sadness permeates my skin like a mist, even in my happiness. And at that time of my life, I was allowing more sadness into my soul, becoming a shroud to my own willful discontent. But as with all things, the balance returns. And this night, this night I felt the beauty overwhelm me.
I walked down the old, crooked wooden stairs of the Ad building, the ones I always used, that curved down in the middle from the years of academia pounding up and down, up and down. The ones that creaked like the springs of your lover’s bed. A sound that endears and embraces at the same time. I stept down, trailing my fingertips along the posting as I turned the corner to the door, passing the vent and down the last two steps that make sense to no one, but fit so well. I love the feel of this spot, this building. Love the color and the tone of the wood, the odd curves and high ceilinged walls. Lots of memories here, and I’m a part of some of them. But on this night, I sighed as I pushed on the heavy glass door that led to the back concrete steps, hefting my bag with its heavy Norton weight further upon the bracing of my shoulder. I get red marks upon the skin of my shoulder from those books, but I’d carry a thousand if it meant they’d mark me as I have marked them.
I might have said goodbye to someone headed off in the other direction, or I might have been ignored, or been ignoring, I can’t remember. But I do remember that as I started walking back to East, I felt the chill in the air, and a stillness and fragrance in it that was like an invisible fog. A fog that connects and separates and clings. I hugged my arms as I shivered. It had been raining; the sidewalk had that mottled shade of nearly muddied brown that it gets when wet, and there were small tendrils of steam rising up, like little unfurled ribbons, upside down. I noticed how wet everything smelled, how wet and new and fresh. And I saw the drops of rain, looking like dew, on the branches of the three trees clustered just behind the chapel, and I noticed the grass bent and glorious beneath the wet. The stained glass in the chapel seemed to glow and shift shapes beneath the moon, as only colors melted together can do. And the angles of the chapel roof were suggesting that I look deeper, that I feel. And I took a deep breath in, and kept walking, feeling deeper. I walked along, past Oakwood and the tiny buds of flowers, just starting to show color, other than that glorious green of spring that I always love and never remember how much I’ve missed until I see it again after a long winter. I passed the old tree, carved and shorn, and cherished. The paths of the sidewalk skewed and traced the lines of other days and moments, of pasts and futures and the resonance of feet. I came upon the street, ready to cross and go home, but going home wasn’t where I wanted to be. The sky was a blanket laid out for feast and I felt tears in my eyes as I realized how integral I was to this experience, and this experience to me.
And then I saw the tree. I wish I had the words to describe what only eyes can see. East loomed tall in front of me, and the flood light spread its influence over the area, over the tree. You know those times when you can’t help but feel that the world has hidden something magical from you that is there, just beneath the surface, at the surface, right above your head? This night the magic was in me. This tree…it sparkled and shone, the drops of rain caught in its arms and the light making them transcendent and crystalline and so pure, so held firm, that it stole my breath. I gave it willing, adding my own fog to the still of the air, and I stood not knowing I was still and memorized that light and the way it hit the tree’s essence of being, the way it hit the water and froze it, like a fairy dance that no one mortal is supposed to see. I felt something inside of me tear open, like a sudden gushing wind, or a violent gash along the skin. Like icy fingers reached into my center and pulled out what was me, making it a part of what was it. The sky was misting, and I was misting because of the love I had for this tree. I walked around it, looking at the rounded lines and the nodules of pride. And between the strikes of crystalline-watered brown and brick, I saw the window of my room. The light was there as well, but it was not a welcome light. Through the panes of civilized glass I saw people in my room, as alien to me as this stifling society feels today. And I knew they could not understand. I looked again at the beauty of this tree, at the beauty of it saying gently, you are a part of me. And I looked back to the window, my walled prison and confessional, and mourned the loss of the beauty of that tree. It was still there, but now the sadness was too. But more, the anger that came welling up within me with the understanding that no one would understand me. Me or this tree. But then I thought of a boy I once knew, one that held my heart without my knowing how, and I felt him there, in that tree, too. And because he was in the tree, he was in me. Because I loved him as I loved this tree, I found the strength to go inside again, stealing one last look at the tree from my towered window. I ignored the people in my room; they were not part of me and they did not belong there. And with the futility of a child trying to build a castle in the sand that won’t wash away with the evening tide, I went back outside to try to capture what the tree meant to me.
It has been a few years since that night, but only now do I realize that I never needed to capture something that was already me.
