Daybreak to Dusk

Dedicated to Billy Armstrong...

The alarm sang and broke the morning silence. I slid from beneath the warm covers with a mumbling discontent. My feet touched the carpet. My eyes were awkwardly wide, and I could feel the blood begin to flow. Oddly, for four thirty in the morning, I did not feel tired. I was not quite sure what I felt, an urge to move, a restless desire, perhaps presentiment.

The bathroom floor was cold. I thought about days gone bye as warm yellow liquid sloshed about the porcelain bowl. I was careful not to drip. I wondered what I was doing awake at such an hour. I knew what I was going to do, but I still contemplate the reasons.

Ocassionally, I sit beside the river, transfixed by its savage and violent nature, yet it an instant it's ability to surrender itself to agreement, reconciliation, and harmony. Sometimes I shy away in misgiving, apprehension, and agitation. Inexplicably, there are other moments when I suddenly decide to commit myself to the flow of possibility and find myself hurtling through rock, water, and space, trying desperately to keep a long red piece of plastic pointed downstream.

I rolled into the parking lot. I opened the door. The leather interior was cracked, worn, and faded from the sun. The temperature was cold. The heat of my breath created a brief fog. I unstrapped my boat and gripped the textured red plastic. My fingertips were numb to the tip. The moon was full, and cast a bright white light on the cold dark waters of the canal. Bluegrass music played softly in the last shadow of night.

We crossed the canal. Each paddle stroke pierced the surface with delicate precision and artistic persuasion. We hopped out of our boats and shouldered them to the river bank. The wind created an eclectic collection of ripples. I could see the horizon line of the dam.

The river water poured in translucent sheets of fluid glass over the concrete face. Crafted by the hands of man to serve his immediate needs, the dam is no longer necessary, a brief reminder of the futile and impermanent nature of human perception. Our creations are beautiful and offensive in the same instant. Our inability to understand our own motivations is the suffering of our being. We struggle to connect, but cannot understand. True life is only felt, not explained.

I slid over the concrete face. My hands hit the surface of the water, clenched in the steely cold. We drifted toward the beginning of the great drop, the precipice where apparent realties collide with a more meaningful truth.

We clambered over the rocks and down to the brink. The moss covered the rocks in a deep green display of compassion, while the lichens slowly secreted acids breaking the rock into tinier and tinier pieces through scores of time. The water rushed in chaotic contractions, pillowing in piles of aerated white, followed by a moment of brief respite, and then simply disappearing over the edge, marked by a rising mist.

We sat in silence for twenty minutes, perched on the brink, on the edge of the known universe. Colors of pink and purple hues began to fill the sky, painted by unknown hands, in munificent candor. In simple moments time often blurs.

I walked atop the ancient grey rock. I walked toward my piece of red plastic. I climbed inside the shell and picked up my orange blades. I lined her up and let go.

Drifting toward the first squeeze, the pace quickened, the lump began to build, and my heart beat fast inside the cavity of my chest. I was through the crack and tracking toward the safety of still water.

Into the next squeeze, the water began to lash at the sides of my craft with wolfish desire. My orange blades swept to my right, and I kept her on line. Whisked into a giant wall of aerated white, I was tossed sideways into the jaws of its last line of defense. I swept my tattered orange blades to the left. I made it through.

I sat silent in the still black water above the final lip. The mist rose from below, but there was no sign of sanity. I clenched my teeth and began to set up my craft. I swept my blade left and turned her around. I waited as I drifted toward the left rock wall. I counted in my head. Hold the line. Hold the line. Pull! I swept forward with one great stroke, my blade pierced the rock lip, and I was tossed into space.

I landed safely below. I stared back, enveloped in a swirling white mist. The giant laughed in mischevious tones. The folly of my desire to understand left me in silent disbelief once again. I was left with only a vague feeling, a non descript notion of truth.

The morning sun shined. The leafless, paper white sycamores swayed in the wind. We are all looking for something. We all walk the line.

Maybe I am looking.
Maybe there is nothing.
Maybe I was simply being.