The Summer of Irrevocable Change

 

It is here. 

Blue Redux/Chapter 24

Tuesday, the 27th of June. Again, the brightness of the sky draws me outside. The heat this time is stunning.

It's a little more than a month since the day of the blue paint and crescent moon, though the sense of layered time remains. Even if the air feels on fire, the sunlit grass and the shadows are the same. 

Out front though, the yard is empty. Around back, everything is still. In this space is absence, as solid as the heat. There is no longer any sign of laughter or murmured conversation. Cicada drone is the only sound. 

I sit down on the same rock as I'd done before, feeling as curiously old/young as I had in May. The emptiness of the place runs though me now, draining into the hollow ground. It's that sensation you get when the party is over, the guests have left, the visitors have had to go. I know this absence is the price I pay for moving on. My mother has said she never wants to see me again, and the current me, the chronological one, is resigned to this, knowing there was nothing else to be expected, though I worry a bit about child me, who was always so desperate to please. Child me is surprisingly stoic, however. It turns out, like the limestone and the prickly pear and the twisted chapote persimmon, she already knew the score. 

The sun is searing, blisteringly hot. It's the hottest June on record, they say. I get up, seek some cover among the trees. I pluck flowers from the whitebrush and desert willow to save, because they don't have them where I'm going. I occurs to me that I am trying to fold Texas away, put it in a box like a keepsake, knowing that in a years' time it might mean something more to me, but it just as likely won't mean a thing. 

Over top the clothesline again I see the daylight moon. It has grown from the thin crescent of 25th May, dwindled and grown again into a fat waxing gibbous. In recent days the boys have been increasingly restless, the grown-up ones wanting to get on with the rest of their lives, the younger one impatient to be somewhere else. After years of stasis, things had suddenly begun to move. Action brings good fortune, so the I Ching and Pink Floyd say, and perhaps this is true; in fact, I'd say it almost certainly is, as inaction has done us the exact opposite. But for every action taken there is a world left behind, and this, I think, is what I am looking at now. 

Absence of presence as presentiment. The empty space where we used to be.

It's a melancholy feeling, to be sure. 

䷗

But let us allow hexagram 24 to have its say. It is advantageous to have a direction to go. 

Unhexing the Resonance

Places Only Remembered In Dreams

1.

Sometimes I dream of a small building, perfectly square, made of cinderblocks painted azure blue. Inside is a dark space, meant for unknown purposes - unknown to me, that is - at least, there is never anyone around to explain. Sometimes I find things there. Printed pages of stories I can't remember writing. Pictures that disappear when I look too long. Messages from people I've never known.

I'd forgotten that this was a real place, a real building, anyway, until I happened upon it on my recent trip to Victoria. There it was, blue and inscrutable as ever, broadcasting no hint as to its use. I remembered then that back in those times of my restless night driving, it used to have a moon-shaped light at the door. 

2. 

Sometimes I dream of a place that is an impossible combination of English lowland and Gulf coast rice field, the glint of wetland reflecting the grey-grained sky. Ghostly egrets stalk like emissaries from other worlds. Clouds of murmurating starlings glimmer like white noise. Far away in the distance, I see the beacon blinking. I imagine the wisps of fog, the salt air at your windows, the warped wood at your door. 

Bluer Than Blue

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon on the 25th of May. I was walking down the hall when I'd turned to glance at the eastern window, through which you can see the shadow of the earth at dusk. Whatever it was that had caught my eye, there was no sign of evening yet. The sun was still high and bright, the sky was clear, and I realized I would rather be outside. I change my trajectory, turn around and go. 

Out in front, the older boys are washing their car, faint radio thrum as they each polish a side. Around the back, fleecy clouds are just beginning to rise. My youngest, in his last spring as a pre-teen, is occupying himself with characteristic self-possession. He experimentally spins in circles because he's just learned that, quote, "dizziness is fab." 

I make my way to the sunlit grass at the very back of the yard and pause for a moment. There is nothing unusual to see here, it's the same as it's always been, but then the feeling comes over me, the layering of time. It's a most remarkable effect. I take a seat on one of the ancient rocks that jut out of the ground, and notice. If I wasn't chatting with my own child and managed to overlook my aches and pains, I could easily convince myself that it was 40 years ago. Something about the air, the scent of the grass, the quality of light lifts the years away, leaving me free of the weight of age and knowledge. And yet, I know it is there. In that space between is something else, and I ponder it, despite not having the words.

My son, satisfactorily dizzy now, is singing a heartfelt song to the cat, because it's just that sort of day. We've all of us got a touch of spring fever, I guess. I turn my attention to the aged wooden posts holding up the clothesline - they might not be quite as old as the rock I'm sitting on, but getting up there. I notice one of them has a smear of blue paint on it, a smudged handprint maybe, even though there is nothing else here painted that shade. A story that I'd likely never know. The smudge resembled a map of an unknown place, and did not quite match the sky, even though they were both very, very blue. I sat there and let the feelings run through me, the weight of time and also the non-weight of it. 

Up above the paint-smudged post and the cross-piece where the rain-gauge has lived all my life, I can see the faint crescent of the daylight moon. Her horns are tilted downward, the way my great auntie used to say would spill out the rain. And she was right, of course, but at this moment, the clarity of the sky is striking. 

I think, life without you is gonna be bluer than blue, and I feel the sorrow that is the silent partner of time, the counterweight of earthly happiness. I never really imagined leaving Texas, but the feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me it's already past time to go. I tell the limestone and the prickly pear and the twisted chapote persimmon that I'm sorry, but the landscape only shrugs a little. It already knows the score. 

My youngest, done with his song now, skips back to the house. The older boys put up their polishing gear and murmur to each other as they walk away. The sun sinks just a bit lower. The wind begins to sigh. This moment - this one - in the sunlit grass will never come again. This moment is gone forever. 

If anyone else notices its passing, they give no indication. Like the tale of the blue map smudge on the clothesline post, only these traces remain.

Watch Them Glow

This is going to be one of those posts that probably means nothing to anyone but me, but that's all right. Maybe one day someone will stumble across it and recognize what I'm going to describe, and will be relieved that someone else knows what it's like. Even if they don't...well, it doesn't really matter, I suppose, because it's also about trying to convert a feeling into imagery. 

So, please. . . bear with me. 

It was the end of April, and my collaborator and companion (in the Doctor Who sense, as I've come to think of us) had come down to go to Psych Fest. He wore a 13th Floor Elevators shirt and a blue metallic plaid jacket, I wore a psychedelic dress and enormous shoes. It was sunny but not hot, the crowd was amiable, the bands were good, and aside from the lock jamming on the bathroom door and having to be rescued by a bunch of hippies (high fives, y'all!) everything went off without a hitch. 

I don't recall feeling haunted. It wasn't a very haunted sort of day. Everything felt very warm and present in the sunshine, I didn't even have that feeling like I've had in the past, as if part of me had been left behind somewhere. No, there wasn't a trace of any haunting, as far as I could tell. 

It was only a couple of days later that things turned strange. 

At the very beginning of May, each having gone our separate ways home, we set about sorting through the photos and videos we'd taken with an eye toward future projects. We'd got some really good stuff, although the audio capabilities of my little point 'n' shoot camera couldn't really handle the sound at a rock show. Monsieur Pseud (as I like to call him) sent me one he'd taken with his phone, panning the crowd while the Raveonettes played in the background. Nothing unusual about it, really, not technically. It was a perfectly serviceable video and an accurate representation of the scene. I remembered him filming it even, while I lounged on a tree stump drinking Dr Pepper. No, what was unusual was my reaction to it. 

It hit me like a ton of bricks, that feeling of being haunted. It was like deja vu, but not deja vu of the actual event. It felt like the memory of something that had happened many years ago, a record of something of grave importance that had been missed and had only just now returned. What the hey? It didn't make sense, but that was the only way to describe it. The closest term to the feeling, besides haunted, might be hiraeth.

I needed a second, third, fourth opinion. Naturally, I dragged each of my family members in to watch it, asking if they noticed anything odd. Anything about the picture, atmosphere, the music, the mood? Did it make them feel some sort of way? Nope - aside from saying they might feel a bit anxious in such a packed setting, to their eyes it was exactly what it appeared to be, a typical rock fest crowd. It was just me who was being weird. 

Well, okay. There was no obvious explanation. And there still isn't, for the way it gives me a shiver every time. Just an ordinary video. As proof, I present it here, courtesy of Mr. Pseud. A crowd watching the Raveonettes tear it up as the sun is going down. 

But, surely you know by now that these things don't let me go so easily. I couldn't explain it; I could barely describe it. However, if I'm going to call myself an artist, I should at least be able to make something that looks like it made me feel. Perhaps it would help me understand. I got down to work.

My video editing skills are rudimentary at best, and I learned as much from what didn't work as what did. Not that it's perfect, mind you, but my husband, bless him, said it's about as good a visualization of deja vu as he's ever seen. Here is the finished product:

There you have it. Not how the clip looks to me, but how it feels. As if everything is doubled, every person accompanied by their own shade. Like some other, parallel world is close by, just over our shoulders and out of sight. And maybe it is. Who knows?  

Maybe part of collaboration is learning to see through someone else's eyes. Collective eyes of a sort. Again, who knows? Maybe I really am just weird. 

Whatever the case, it's yet another mystery to explore. 

An Everyday Sort of Strangeness, A Quality of Momentary Light

 

Sideways glances at the changing seasons, mercurial weather, mysteries in plain sight. Blinding shimmer, winged shadows, electricity hum, fireflies.

Title quote source

Eyes Open

"As if something out there seemed to take notice"

It's been a year since the Mothwing Collective came into the world, and our explorations of the bright side of the eerie are still going strong. To say more about what the bright eerie is, and what it means, is an ongoing project that will come in time, but for now, here (hopefully, for your pleasure) are more pictures. Never fear, our eyes are open and watching the horizon.

Spectral speculations.

"I dreamt I called you from the past."  

(And I did dream it, via some secret line from 1988 into now, and I told the story of all that happened between the times of your birth and mine, but when I woke up, I couldn't remember a word.)

Rearranging geometries and breaking invisible sightlines.

Fate hums along wires

Eyes Open

Beacon, signal, silent invisible

Lunar lucidity

Hidden turnings. 

Lens flare as Aldebaran, striding across the star map. 

More mothwingy images next post. Count on it. 

The Sopping Tuesday/No Longer, Not Yet/ The Past and Pending

 (With apologies to Edward Gorey...)

It's a dismal anniversary, damp and melancholy, not unlike the day it commemorates. It was the 8th of May, 11 years ago now, when a low rumble of thunder got my attention. The heavy sky outside my window brought on a vague panic; I'd forgotten how dark the hill country could be when it rained. 

I shuddered, a bone-deep sort of spasm. I wanted to wail out loud, because how could I hide from the weather? But there was nothing for it. Instead of wailing, I got in the car and drove to the elementary school where I registered one of my children for classes; the next day at the junior high I would register another. The littlest one, I could still carry on my hip, just barely. I remember pulling into the parking lot and having to sit for a moment to catch my breath, because it had been so long since I'd done anything without my husband that I wondered if I'd forgotten how. I remember seeing the gold-green live oak catkins scattered on the damp asphalt like runes. I was not versed in reading them, but I already knew they said, "you don't want to be here." 

The next day, it was still pouring as I sat at the glassed-in office at the junior high on the hill, filling out paperwork while the pledge of allegiance echoed down the hall. It felt so strange, looking out on the silvery world on the other side of the glass. Vertiginous, like I might fall. Last month, last week, even, we'd been living our old lives somewhere else, and now we were here. 

My black ballet flats were soaked through from the run-off, so after I'd left my teen to his classes, I'd gathered my toddler and gone to Walgreen's for a cheap pair of sandals and a bottle of Excedrin Migraine. I remember our reflections in the doorway glass, the sky behind us, the rainwater rushing down the gutters even as the clouds were beginning to break. I remember how I sought comfort in the drugstore's sameness, how it reminded me of Victoria, soothing my homesickness for moment, even though I knew I was fooling myself. I even remember feeling a little weird about buying the sandals, too, as if by purchasing new shoes, it would mean I was somehow betraying my old self, that it would be the beginning of the end of who I was before I came. But when the sandals were worn out by the end of the summer, I found I hesitated just as much when it came time to throw them away. 

I went to back to Victoria for a visit a couple of months ago. I hadn't been there in a long time. It was equal parts more decrepit and yet also somehow revitalized. My family never had much interest in returning, so it was my friend who drove me south. He wanted to see the place I'd written about, the inspiration for the name at the top of this page. He wanted to know the "infernal geometry of the streets", the unnaturally silent corners, the haunting sense of being in a place that felt like no place much at all.

We sat on a bench downtown and drew sketches in our notebooks and listened to the clicking of the crosswalk lights. We watched the eerie shimmer in the intersection of N. Main and Santa Rosa while the palm fronds rattled in the silence.

We explored the places on the map I'd once made, climbed to the top of an abandoned parking garage where we found mysterious signs and wonders. We rested, hot and tired, as we watched cloud shapes drifting by. 

And all along I had the unnerving sense that I could just go home, as if I'd only gone for a long walk in the sunny afternoon, or just popped out to pick up lunch, like I'd done so often. As if the landscape of my life had not irrevocably changed. As if I could just walk back to the gold house (now painted blue), as if my children would be there, still children, and not nearly all of them grown up now. 

That's when I knew for sure that - in my mind, anyway - I'd never really left. That part of me (my heart, soul, psyche?) had remained there all along. Life on pause, transition incomplete. Those worn-out shoes I didn't want to toss. Unlike the rest of my family, I'd never really made the leap. 

Maybe that was my way of surviving. Perhaps, perhaps. But it's way past time now to collect those parts of myself and go. The life I lived in Victoria and the quasi-suspended-in-transition existence that came after. I'm tired of dismal Tuesdays and dread at the sound of thunder. Finally, at last, I have a new key.

The hex of the past is unwoven. Maybe one day I'll even remember it fondly. For now, though, I must turn my attention to that which is pending, and for the time when not yet is no longer. 

"I am an other, and I always was."

"There is no inside except as a folding of the outside" said Mark Fisher in The Weird and The Eerie, but recently I've come to wonder if that's entirely true. 

It was a February afternoon, when a bird flitting low across the road in the pale light brought, in a sudden flash of wings, an incursion of silence, as if the world (and my consciousness, too, being part of the world) had stopped for a moment to acknowledge this ordinary, extraordinary happening. 

Since then, I've begun to wonder if it's not so much a folding, but more of an alignment, a reminder in that flash of wings that the inside and the outside were always the same - we just forget to notice sometimes.

Be Your Own Ghost

Did you ever think that maybe (just maybe) those moments when you get a little shiver might be your future remembering the present?

Exercise Your Inner Eye

 Always good advice. 

Trees Sway, Walking in the Wind is Difficult

A windstorm swept across the hill country the other night, leading me to prowl the yard listening to each tree. My youngest child tells me he knows all their sounds in the wind; the high whistle made by the desert willows, the low moans from the Texas mulberry. 

When it became too strong, I hid in a dark alcove and made this recording. Faint sounds of wild geese navigating the storm. 

Title is from the Beaufort wind scale, 7. Moderate gale. 

"Sunbursts can appear in photographs when taking a picture of the sun through the diaphragm of a lens set to a narrow aperture due to diffraction; the effect is often called a sunstar."

Sunburst - Wikipedia

February morning, just after sunrise. Steam rising from the night-time drizzle, sun glint between cedar pickets. Astra, the kitten, is chasing a beetle as black and shiny as she is. Existential dread gathers in the sodden wood, but I tell myself to let it rise and disappear like the steam from the rain. It will be alright, I said.

And it was. 

Between Aldebaran and Pleiades

Thursday, 7:30 PM. 68 degrees, winds SSE at 9. The sky is clear, and all is quiet except for the windchimes in the trees. I'm standing under the garden archway, which is a little worse for wear after the recent freeze. I have one hand on the fence, balancing. I am keeping watch. For what? Oh, I don't know. Something I can't see yet, for this is always the way. You don't see it until it arrives. 

Through the branches of the juniper tree, I see a bright light in the northern sky. A plane heading south. It's distant yet, and I can hear no sound, only see the light growing larger as it approaches. Soon I can see that even though the sky looks clear, there must be a layer of mist higher up, as the lights from the plane make a halo as it comes. I lean on the fence and watch it flying, and for a moment everything feels so cozy, just the juniper and the plane and me. 

In a few more seconds I can hear the engine's hum, and the plane flies low overhead, cutting a path between Aldebaran and Pleiades. Soon it is out of sight, and now it's just me and the juniper, and the high layer of mist that I know is there but can no longer see. I wait a moment, and then it is time for me to go, too. 

Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. As ever. As always. 

I suppose the word must have spread on the astral...

Somehow I'd forgotten to post this earlier, but this is the art notebook I kept during 2021-2022. I don't know if it's good at all, but I do know I finished it, and that must count for something.

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