Dare To Turn The Page
The crackle and spit are enough to wake anyone from sleep, let alone someone who has been through this devastation before. He wakes with a start and looks about the room. It is still dark though the beginnings for daylight are underway. He must have slept late. The ribbons of grey arrive to his nose long before his eyes spot them. It is what he feared. The smoke announces above the shouting voices that there is yet another fire. What works of art will be in this one? He walks to the window to see.
Stacks and stacks of paintings, artwork, books and rolled up paper are stoked in the bonfire flames. The people around the heap cheer as each work is placed in the greedy flames fueled by the hate as consuming as the fire itself. Priceless isn’t a term used on this day. This is not about currency as much as it is about fear. There are those in this village that think they can stamp out the fear of the unknown as long as they feed the fire with the works that might even hint at the suggestion.
In ancient days, this sort of thing was common. What would happen was so well known that many committed the contents that could be burned to memory where the flames could not hurt the works. If anything, they were shared and spread at the end of an evenings meal in the form of poem or song. Visuals would could only be described in this mode of memory, painted strokes and chiseled works would suffer never to be born even in this mode only reduced to the descriptions of those who dared remember and thus convey by word of mouth.
Does it matter? Does it matter if hope is spread to each man, woman, and child? Would the gods, one God, golden calves, or burning bushes mind if all of these lovely and perhaps on the surface frivolous things are destroyed by the tongue of a flame? If history is due to repeat itself, then perhaps the good things will also be on the repeat wagon. The intimation of the repeat is usually tongue in cheek considering only the bad or mistakes, but what if on that history cycle where the pen swings at the curve, the art lost, the ideas yet born or snuffed out with hate, would live again in another form, a new time with attitudes that would embrace? Maybe the flames don’t kill then. Perhaps they only put these things to sleep, lay them in bed to slumber until the wheel turns for a new day, a new dawn, and a new understanding that perhaps is not so new anyway. There is hope. Quil in the inkwell, he writes his thoughts down. Starting again. Starting out fresh and clean in the midst of what seems like an end only turned into a beginning. Art is frivolous and from the devil. Posh! There is always more to the story.
She walks the dog early in the dawn with the sun almost up enough to see behind the tall trees. The street sounds of cars going by in their hurry not to be late fill her ears as does the light clink of the dog’s collar with each familiar tug. Something white is seen in the dark of the drainage ditch, a favorite haunt of her pleasant canine companion. It is full sheet of paper half buried in the surrounding leaves. A third of the page is filled with text. Not text that she can see but clearly this is prose of some sort. It looks little like a financial report. There are no spaces or colons that would indicate it to be a play with the character names vividly typed in bold. With another tug of the leash, she walks away from the page to finish her morning walk and start her day.
Half a day’s work done and lunch sandwich in hand, her mind travels back to the sheet of paper. What if the phrases there could take her to wondrous places? She should have rescued the sheet from the ditch. What if it were a special work of art lost to the artist and lost to the busy hustle and bustle of a starved world? Could it be a recipe or anecdote that could help her in her daily life? Is it a prayer that if said would help starving children in a far off land? She resolves to pick up the piece of paper and read its contents on the morrow’s walk.
At dawn’s coming of the day, she walks toward the ditch to see if the page is still caught among the leaves. The moist air proves any page left over night would be damp with dew. If this page had been printed with dots of ink, the message could be blurred beyond recognition. Once the paper is in view, and yes, it is still there, something keeps the young girl from bending down to retrieve it. There must be an invisible force that surrounds the page to keep it from being seen. What if what is written there is a “Dear John” letter that would break the heart of a person who was in love yet to read it. What if what is written there is a notice of loved ones no longer living. What if this page contains letters strung together that would oust a family from their home just when they are struggling to make ends meet and feed their children? The pain of these thoughts surface in the heart of the girl. These are the wires woven of the invisible fence that keep her from picking up the page. She steers the dog on their way past the ditch.
On day three, she can’t help but look to see if the page is still there. The indecipherable letters from afar have not run from the page. This must have been laser printed. Dare she cast the mystery away and shine a light on what it says? The honk of a horn from the street distracts her from her thought as her legs carry her and canine out of harms way and again away from the ditch. The fourth day she leaves the dog at home. She’ll see what this page says. Her courage and spirits set to psyche her up in today’s revelation of the mystery. What is does it say? The phone rings, not today.
Other distractions of life, stress and projects and the hurries of the day’s work keep the girl from the discarded page for many days that could be more than thirty. The page remains in it’s place, slowly becoming part of the earth. The leaves and bugs make it home, dirt and clay slowly claim it their own and the words on the page remain unread by anyone. Would they change her life if she read them? At a calmer time when she is able to pass the same ditch, the fears of reading the page are long since gone. The dampness of the previous day’s rain drench the grass, pinestraw and leaves of the ditch. The page is broken up in pieces and cannot be read as it was meant to be. Words that stick out date the contents of the work. The incomplete “www.co” on the title of the page tell the girl it probably isn’t an ancient writing. The only sentence fragment that can be strung together is “the company is a christian…” Other words that can still be seen in the midst of the leaves, grass, bugs and folded places are United States, Isreal, coast, times, military, and the whole.
As the girl walks down further along the path thinking about the lost page never to be read, she spots another one. This one is face down but still intact. Dare she overcome the fears that kept her from reading the other page or has she learned her lesson? The lines on the paper showing through in its dampness suggest five long lines that span across the width. This one might be music. The page seems to beg to be flipped and read. This could be a long lost composition of music. She has seen hand written notes before. She even took a class years ago where the instructor taught her just such a skill. Instead of waiting, she slowly pulls back the very damp page half figuring that it will break off and not be able to be viewed. In her patience, she is able to flip the whole damp paper over without any disastrous rips.
The notes of flauto traverso come into view. The melody and scales of the practice notes chime in her head in the tones of a flute. Each musical line is numbered with sixty-one being its first measure and fifty-six being it’s last. How can that be? Are the measures not counted sequentially? The melody smiles at the girl taking all the age away from her face and plopping her into a place where timing is only used for melody, not for gravity or sequence of earthly time. Those that have walked past this page without giving it another thought are less enriched. As the last line turns into notes within the girl’s head, she is aware that it is the beginning of another thought entirely. The line above notes measure number one hundred seventeen and the sequence of time returns back as if nothing ever happened. All except the changing of a girl who dared to turn the page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0pm-C1276E&feature=youtube_gdata_player
