Friday, February 5, 2010

LXXVIII: Susan VII


Friday, January 8th, 2010.

"Yeah, what was that?" Susan asked when we talked about our New Year's Day encounter with the Trees for the first time. It was a week after the event and we were sitting at her kitchen table working our way through a bottle of red wine after supper.

"Did you really hear anything?" I asked. The words seemed to resist leaving my mouth. A little.

"I don't know. I think so," replied Susan. "I'm pretty sure, yeah. Didn't you?" I think she was feeling the resistance too. She looked at me as if to say, 'Are you really asking this?'

I could respond only to her words. "Well, not in a reliable way. But yeah, I heard -or sorta saw- something. And you were a part of it. A part of the thing I saw."

"It was like I was inside a feeling," she said. "A feeling and a sound." She looked excited and sympathetic, but still unsure. As if an expressed skepticism might blow down her paper walls.

The whole situation was getting to me. I put my head in my hands, overcome by a feeling as vague as the one Susan was describing. Something like a holding back, a blocking, a backwards-downwards motion. "This is too much." I looked at her and knew she understood.

She said, "maybe we shouldn't be talking about it."

"Okay." I rose from the chair. "Let's just go out there again. To the Trees."

"You should bring your video camera."

Nothing happened. Just us, cold, looking at some trees. Trees. All I shot was the snow.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good brief and this mail helped me alot in my college assignement. Gratefulness you as your information.

Anonymous said...

"And you were a part of it. A part of the thing I saw."

Jon Coutts said...

This chapter, for me, fills in all the others, the same way the video of snow falling on a black sky is a video of everything.

Anonymous said...

"As if an expressed skepticism might blow down her paper walls."

s$s said...

It fills in all the others for you Jon? I wish it did for me. I'm as confused as ever.

Jon Coutts said...

Well, you know, in the way that a well-put question sums up all the other ones.

Jon Coutts said...

I'm not kidding either. I've come back to read each word of this chapter.

Anonymous said...

I would just like to say that I agree with JOn's statement. "The video of the snow is a video of everything"