I'm lazy and don't blog. Here's an essay I wrote in my personal narrative class during my senior year at James Madison. The instructions were to write an "experimental" essay. Basically, write whatever the hell you want, however the hell you want, about whatever the hell you want. And so I did. Just to answer the obvious question - "in somnis veritas" is a Latin phrase that translates roughly to "trying way too hard to title a piece". Really, though, it translates to "in dreams there is truth".
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In Somnis Veritas
A woman follows a man to the end of town where he abandons his red pick-up in favor of beat-up white tennis shoes. From a neighboring flower garden, she watches as the silhouette against the moon undresses quickly and nervously, revealing itself to her eyes and the stars. His outfit of choice, usually the dark sweatshirt and torn jeans, fits over his rugged body tightly, fabric becoming his skin. She sometimes wishes he wouldn’t cloak the outfit with a black sheet, but knows this will never happen. He must slip among the sleeping undetected. Unseen. Unfelt. But she sees him and she feels him. She wishes it was her window he was sneaking to. And she wishes it was her body he was planning to touch. Maybe one day she will show herself to him. He will pause before crossing the street, look to his right, and as their eyes catch, a small and inviting smirk will call her over, an obvious welcome invitation. Then they will work as a team. Until then, she will watch him from afar and admire his passion for the craft.
The woman watches as the man emerges from the front door of a suburban home, face full of purpose, a goal accomplished. His black cloak appears to be unscathed, but she knows the love that graces its fine flowing fibers. She’s dreamt of being a part of that cloak. On that cloak. Wrapped inside that cloak. The man’s tennis shoes clap against the sidewalk as he disappears to the other side of the street, taking one last glance over his shoulder to appreciate a job well done. The woman smiles from afar, wishing his one last glance would have met her eyes. As she hears the red pick-up begin to speed away, her heart occupies the passenger seat. She misses him when he’s not around.
The boy in the backseat nestles his six year-old head against his father’s arm. As the gears begin to turn, the boy looks to his father for affirmation. Everything’s going to be fine. The boy turns to look at his mother, who waves encouragingly from the other side of the track. The father gives a thumbs-up. They begin to ascend toward the sky, climbing higher and higher toward a wonderful rush of adrenaline. As the interminable twelve seconds elapse, the world becomes larger, more oppressive. Clouds suspend like wisps of cotton on an endless strip of blue felt. The sound of the gears abruptly stops as the moving boxes begin to level out, rolling, almost floating along the giant steel structure. The father looks toward the boy and chuckles. The boy shakes. He grabs the father’s arm tighter as they hang in mid-air, weightless for an eternity of exchanged glances.
The wind rushes toward the boy at one thousand miles an hour, sucking the saline from his eyes and the oxygen from his lungs. But he is not crying. The trees, in a high-speed slideshow, race in green abstractions across the boy’s retinas as his brain fires synapse after synapse at an even faster rate. Excitement. The father shouts. The boy smiles. The boy shouts. The father smiles. Rays of afternoon sunshine kiss the hot metal and light up the faces of a father and son, melting a frozen moment in time. The boy raises his arms as the picture show of trees concludes, declaring his will to repeat the adventure immediately. The father laughs and high-fives the boy. They giggle together as the mother looks on from afar, smiling at her two boys.
A crowd of thousands has gathered this afternoon at the San Diego Zoo. Today, they are expecting the birth of a baby Bengal tiger. The event has garnered endless attention from local and national media outlets alike, and has further excited the owners of the zoo. They stand to make an immense profit from the day’s events. As the crowd gathers around the interlocking iron bars of the mother tiger’s cage, a young man with a mustache peers inside, leaning his head against the cylindrical black pipes. He nervously looks out over the crowd, hidden behind sunglasses and a dark blue windbreaker with its collar turned up. A bee lands on his neck. He swats at his collar, narrowly missing the yellow and black assailant. Turning his attention back to the cage, he checks his watch. After breathing a heavy sigh, he crosses his arms and looks around the crowd once more. Rays of afternoon sunlight kiss the hot metal fence in front of him, reflecting off of his sunglasses and back into the air.
A fat man in a San Diego Chargers jersey takes up a sizeable plot of land in the middle of the crowd. He appears to be an islander of some sort – possibly Hawaiian or even Tongan – with tribal tattoos decorating his exposed lower legs. He repeatedly wipes his nose using his right thumb and middle finger, left hand remaining in the pocket of his tan cargo shorts at all times. His protruding chubby cheeks make it near impossible to see his face from a profile point of view, and his tangling locks of dark, Hawaiian hair make it near impossible to see those protruding chubby cheeks. A grasshopper jumps slowly among his giant white tennis shoes, directing his eyes away from the cage to his humongous feet. He pauses and shifts his weight to his left leg. His left hand slowly exits his cargo shorts pocket and rises into the air. He sneezes, loses his balance, and narrowly misses stepping on the little green creature, which has taken to the air in fright.
I look out over the crowd and as the fat man loses his balance, I catch a short glimpse of a beautiful dark-haired woman. I remove my sunglasses slowly as her starry green eyes meet mine from afar. She smiles. I smile. She laughs. I laugh. I motion for her to come up to the front of the crowd with me. She looks around, frowns, shrugs, then smiles. I smile. I motion her over again, this time bigger, more exaggerated, an obvious welcome invitation. After staring at me for a few seconds, she bites her lip then taps the fat man on the shoulder. She whispers something to him and points toward the cage. The towering, chubby islander chuckles and moves aside, allowing the woman to squeeze through. An interminable twelve seconds elapse until she finally emerges from the crowd, cloaked in a beautiful red sundress with a floral pattern.
“Hey.”
“You made it.”
“Yeah! Ooh, this view is much better.”
“Isn’t it great?”
“Shh, here she comes!”
The mother tiger slowly paces out on her pads, a stalker from the night. All eyes are on her as she emerges from the dark, face full of purpose, a goal accomplished. Behind the mother walks a tiny baby Bengal tiger, still dripping wet from the birth. He stumbles slowly over toward the mother, who is lying down and licking her fur. The orange, white, and black striped beauty has birthed three baby boys. Two identical baby Bengal tigers march out from the darkness, bumbling toward the mother and her first son. They all lie down next to one another and shake, but they are not crying. The crowd collectively smiles at this beautiful display. The man and woman lean up against the cage and stare at one another. He smiles. She smiles. The mother purrs gently as she rubs her giant furry head against her newborns.
The lighthouse keeper sleeps in the dark, a winding staircase between him and a giant golden bulb. The beacon shines across the sea, saving ships of strangers from swallowing water. He dreams of waking up to a shoreline full of wreckage – worn wooden planks graced by nary a ghost of the absent crew. The scent of salt and washed-up sea life pervades his every thought. Still, the bulb shines. He ascends the staircase every morning and speaks his peace. There will come a day when he’ll see the ships. He’ll smell the salt. The crew will not be absent and the ghosts will not appear. The people will be real, alive, longing for companionship after long years at sea. He will invite them in to meet the bulb, their saving grace. They’ll know that the calm grows calmer the further you go. But the ocean’s no lover. It tortures the coast.
Each scenario that enters my mind is absurd. I can’t make sense of them and I can’t sense of this. I just know that it exists. All we know is we exist. Our heads overflow, thoughts seeping out of the cracks in the walls to a world that we’re not in. The architect did not design the room with this intent. You ask me not to leave. I have to. I ask you not to leave. You’re going to. We ask one another to measure the adoration we feel by using the length of our limbs. My wingspan, albeit small, indulges your curiosity. We laugh. You ask if I will visit. I’ll be there. We will watch fireworks on the fourth of July and we will be just fine. As we lie on what was ten minutes ago a made bed, our minds are one machine. The world outside sleeps, a thief with no key. We will never exist in this world. We won’t have to.
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