The Opposite of Presence

It's late mid-winter in northwest Ohio, and the wind is achingly cold. The fields are empty even though they are not empty. The silence is a deafening roar. 

Muddy sun sets in grey sky. Cell towers blink on the horizon. At dusk, the belt of Venus appears in the east, but close, so close that it feels that the edge of the earth is near.

The pain in my bones signals my own existence. 

I step into the field to pose for a picture, but already I am disappearing from the landscape. It doesn't know me and won't miss me. My greatest value now is in being gone.

Inside, invisible to see, I recall that it was only a year ago that I watched the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter from the end of my street. Every night the planets drew closer and closer. It seemed to mean something then, it must have meant something; even if I can't remember the way it felt now. I watched and waited and was happy then, until the planets moved apart, the way they always do.

The Clock Tower

It was about 10 minutes 'til midnight, and I had settled into watch Late Night With Conan O'Brien when  I realized the electric bill was due. I didn't have a car in those days, but judging the distance between my doorstep and the utility company, there was just enough time to drop a check into the night deposit before deadline if I walked fast enough. I grabbed my sweater and scampered off down the hill.

Walking through a small town late at night can be a special experience. The quiet streets, empty shops, traffic lights shining in the dark. Even the striped barber shop pole curling upwards into nothing, straight out of a Ray Bradbury story.  It's these kind of things that a night walker treasures. Though at this point I was mainly concerned with getting downtown before the bell struck twelve.

The fastest route would take me past the Protestant church, with its own lighted clock tower, which could be seen from my bedroom window on Winter nights when there were no leaves on the trees. The glow from the gas lamps was soft and comforting and I wasn't at all afraid.

For some reason I don't know  - maybe a windstorm or something like that - several of the frosted panes of glass on the west facing clock (the left side, above) were gone at that time, replaced temporarily with clear ones. So on the night of which I speak, the areas between the 7 and 12 could be seen through, though not much of interest was ever visible - except on that particular night.

It was only natural that I would look at the clock as I approached the church, worried about the time as I was, but I was not expecting to see what appeared to be looking back. A huge, grey, leathery-winged creature leaned on the edge of the window, peering down at me with an affable grin. I was startled, to put it mildly. Not only was it unlikely to see what looked unnervingly like a real, live gargoyle, but even more unlikely to see one in the tower of a Protestant church. It did occur to me, before I sped away, that at the very least it looked friendly.

I've never maintained that what I saw that night was real, and not just a trick of the light, or an instance of  pareidolia, or even some piece of statuary that had been stored in the tower for reasons unknown. Maybe it was a hallucination, inspired by an unconscious whimsy that the local Protestants were sadly lacking in gargoyles. I've never maintained it was real, but on my way back from the utility company, I still took a different route home.

That was a long time ago now, and I suppose I'll never know what I saw in the tower that night. There didn't seem to be any way to find out. Pulling the minister aside and saying "...so, about that winged monster in your clock..." would probably be a real conversation killer.

Sometimes in life, there are questions just better left unasked.