The Beginning of Time Floyd Skloot (bio) Memento I remember she told me it was a rock taken from the yard of the family home on the day they fled from Bialystok, a reminder of what we have come from. One look, and she could smell the forest air, see distant treetops, hear chickens in their coops, women’s voices in the street, the men at prayer, the time before the coming of the troops. I remember she told me it was a stone taken from the camel path on Mount Sinai, sacred, the color of God’s breath, of bone, an endless blessing on the whole family back to the very beginning of time. I remember she told me it was a pebble from the giant mountain of boulders piled at the edge of my grandfather’s village, rubble the Cossacks left behind. Maybe a piece of the bakery, temple, butcher shop. I remember it was always there but each time it was a different size and shape. The last time I saw it was a week after she died and in dim light through her lace curtains as the afternoon grew darker I thought it looked exactly like her voice. [End Page 398] Jules Verne at Safeco Field —Seattle, spring 2014 On his deathbed Verne vowed to return in a hundred years. That he is nine years late he attributes to the way time skews in the afterlife. That he is in Seattle instead of Amiens he attributes to the uneven rush and spin of Earth among the spheres. The rain he recognizes as a seaport rain, fine and briny in the early afternoon, with the screech of gulls borne on gusty west winds. Foghorns blare in the harbor, as familiar to him as his own lost breath. He savors firm ground beneath his feet. He had foreseen raised roadways curving over other roadways, skyscrapers with their structures fully exposed, aircraft that whirl and hover, that rise straight into the sky. So too the cacophony of giant machines, dense smell of fuels, rubble fields clogging the heart of the city, sleek vessels skimming the water’s rough surface. But to see it all at once, to sense its energy flowing through him, surpasses his wildest imaginings. He is light with the pleasure of it, yet he knows he has come back for more than this, more than confirmation of his vision of a changing world. Pounding music mixed with spoken song cascades around him from somewhere he cannot determine. Voices are everywhere, people talking to the air as they pass through it, gesturing, colliding, eyes focused wholly inward. The atmosphere is alive with pulsing colors. [End Page 399] He stands beneath a double-decked bridge of bright black steel and feels the current of bodies sweeping past. He has missed this movement of a crowd. It carries him inside a vast concrete arena blazing under strange white lights. Maybe five hundred lights stacked almost to the arched roof, far too bright for his eyes to look at, but spellbinding in their steady otherworldly glow. Row after row of seats overlook a bowl of the greenest grass he has ever seen. He tries to remain in place. The wind and rain are dwindling as he looks through walls that are not there, that are nothing but crossed trusses and silvering sky open to the elements, though there is a roof afloat above. Now daylight begins to drift over the field, its progress slow enough to doubt it is happening until he turns his gaze upwards. The roof appears to be folding back into itself like a telescope. This is something he had not foreseen! He falls back into a seat and watches the roof’s progress millimeter by millimeter. He thinks it is like one layer of heaven pulling back to reveal a deeper heaven. As it opens, the sun begins to leave the cover of a cloud, and he is bathed in its slow forgotten warmth. [End Page 400] Life Bird —Wadsworth Wetlands, Lake County, Illinois Two old men at the far edge of the marsh look at us through binoculars as we look at them through binoculars...
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Jan 1, 2017
Takuto Hamano + 2
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