Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-03-04- 6:20 p.m.

Mote

It is the lilac time now; all our bulbs have come to fruition. Summer plays idly in the yard, a small child who must be chided to stop pulling her dress over her head. She sits me down in the grass and I feel the blades against my naked thighs.
“It is a peculiar time for you,” she speaks to me, “and this is a peculiar dream that you are having.” I nod. What else can I do? I wonder if it is considered gauche to apologize for my subconscious to a figment thereof. So instead, I ask her what makes this time so strange. She laughs, and her laughter is like the tinkle of wind chimes.
“Come on up the hill with me,” she says, “and I’ll show you.”
I scramble up the hill, running as I did as a child, tipping myself over until I’m often crawling on my hands and knees. I look over at her, and see her making her way up the hill with patience and care; the look on her face one of disdain for my unseemly haste. Chagrinned, I brush off the dirt and grass from my knees. “We’re eight years old now,” she tells me. “It’s time to act like grownups.”
From the top of the hill, we stand overlooking a beautiful valley. There are fields of orchids, and I see the man from the county fair selling hot buttered corn on the cob out of a pushcart, along the side of which I can read the Arabic letters spelling out “Halal”. I look over at her, and I see the liquid of forming tears in her brown eyes. I reach over, and take her small hand in mine. I squeeze it, and feel pervading warmth spreading from her interlocked fingers to mine. The water clears from her eyes, like clouds blown away by a northern wind.
I love you, I say to her. She says, “I love you too.”
Suddenly the sun is no longer in my eyes; I look up, and we are sheltered under the embrace of a towering weeping willow. The shadow falls over her face, and as soon as her eyes disappear I know she knows all my secrets. I am as terrified and as happy as I can ever remember feeling.
We should build a treehouse here, I tell her. I’d like us to be able to stay.
“Shhhh,” she says to me. “Just be.”
I close my eyes. I breathe. I stand at ease.
“King of the mountain,” she calls out from behind me, and before I can react, I feel her hands shoved against my back, knocking me over. Top over bottom, rolling down the hill. I roll and roll and roll, never forgetting how natural all this rock and dirt and grass feels as it rushes by me.
I come to rest at the foot of the hill; upside down, my legs slanted upward along the gentle slope. I breathe, and it mists in the air. My spring is ending, and autumn is near. Suddenly, she stands over me, straddling my chest.
“Are you trying to look up my dress?”
Yes, I admit, I am.
“No need,” she says, and shucks it off. “There’s something you missed, while you were on the hill.”
Something I didn’t see?
“Something you couldn’t see, dear. It’s there, all the time, but you never see it.”
Perhaps I have something in my eye.
The wind chimes again, sounding tickled. “Perhaps,” she laughs, “perhaps you do.”
She stands over me for a moment, naked and bare in the sun, and then she reaches down, taps me, and calls out:
“Tag! You’re it!”
She runs off, and by the time I can sit up, I can see I’m at recess with hundreds of other kids, and I can’t tell which ones of them are playing. I begin to move, and the other kids all freeze, and in one voice shout out:
“Olleyolleyoxenfree!”
I awake. This is today.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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