Looking Up

by saralef

May 1, 2014

As a child, I used to look up.

I gazed at the treetops; I marveled at the way they seemed to

Envelope the world

Closed by eyes and breathed the air

Inhaled the scent

Of purity.

Up, to me, was where the world was.

The ceiling of my school auditorium was so high,

I wondered how they could possibly have built it

Wondered how many times I

Would have to stand on top of myself

To be able to touch those distant dots

Dots that covered the ceiling like stars in a far-off universe;

I swung though the air and wondered if I could ever swing

Backwards over the bar at the top of the swingset

And down to the other side

And how many times I'd be able to do that

And still have enough room left on the ropes to keep on swinging.

And even though that never happened

I'd still swing as high as my aching legs allowed me to pump them

And imgine I was flying free

Imagine my gaze could penetrate the surrounding blue depth and found

That if I looked hard enough,

I could see the darkness of endless space beyond the blue glare

Space filled

With the tiny dots

Of huge stars

Spread in every direction and draped

Over the world -

And was space really endless?

What

Did eternity look like?

Did it break off at some point -

And if it did,

What lay beyond?

When my kindergarten teacher taught us to sing, "It's a Small World After All",

I threw a tantrum in protest

Of her debasal of my awe

In the hugeness

Of the universe.

And whenever I woke,

Little hands still trying to rub the dreams from my sticky, sleep-filled eyes,

And discovered myself taller than I'd been the night before,

I rejoiced at whatever new opportunities this presented

Like being able to reach the kitchen sink

Without having to stand on a chair.

Oceans and mountains

We'd visit on the occasional vacation

Were a treat

A chance to feel humbled

Dwarfed by the aroma

Of endless.

At some point, I was able to reach the sink

Without even having to stand on tiptoes

And I didn't have to stretch my arm til halfway out of its socket

To be able to turn the knob

Of time and cause water to flow

Rinsing me of childhood;

Now, the world was at eye-level:

People, ovens, cabinets, chalkboards;

I no longer had to climb on top of the counter

To be able to find the chocolate my mother had futilely hidden from my

Ever-prying eyes -

But even as a new world had been opened up before me

A different world had been closed:

My neck

No longer felt the strain of

Looking up and up and up

And wondering where tv skyscraper would end

Wondering when I would (walk far enough to) reach the bend in the sky at the edge of the prairie

I had stopped imagining;

The prairie

That made a mountain

Look forty feet away but that you

Could walk on endlessly toward and

Maybe reach in a thousand years

Stopped seeing the stars, like tears

In a distant sky

Glinting beauties

Beckoning

Portals to another world

I world I'd left behind when I crossed the bridge and grew taller.

They faded, those stars,

Faded with the lights of a bright new city

As if insulted that I had chosen it

Over them;

Faded

Til I could hardly see them anymore.

I got glasses

But they didn't restore my subdued vision

Sweaty films of foggy plastic

They shut me out; like a cage

Cut me off

I could no longer have contact

With the world of grass and air and leaves and trees and

NATURE;

I lost touch

With the little girl I used to be

The little girl

Who would see a funny-shaped piece of bark

In between the panels of a fence

And think it a squirrel

Who had seen the acorn on the other side but got stuck on the way

Trapped between two worlds;

Locked

In a permanent waver -

And I would pretend to be its savior

I would pull that piece of bark out of the fence -

I would take walks by myself

Sing songs I never finished making up

Dream up stories I could always continue

Live lives that weren't mine.

I haven't thought about that little girl in a while.

I'm sunk

In the shallow concrete of a barren New York City sidewalk;

Stuck

In the hard echoes of a beat without a tune;

Tuning in to vain imitations,

Hallucinations of depth;

Breathing in the scent of a mist

Made not by the clouds come down to meet the earth

But by emanations from the backs of cars,

The pungent odor of smoked cigars

Filling my nostrils

Debilitating my senses

Bathing the city in their sickening fog -

I haven’t looked up in a while.

Until one day, I take the alleyway.

The place is littered with trash, brightly sunlit, and deserted;

The cemented roadway is worn thin in some places -

In others, it’s already pebbles -

And a pattern of cracks appear where nature has been allowed to poke its way through

Forming/Weaving what look like waves in the pavement

Much like the intertwined vines: purple, yellow, green, some brown

Enmeshed in the fence of interlinked metal diamonds;

The silence is calming behind Empire Kosher.

In a moment, I am there again:

Imagining myself in a forest

Pretending to be someone else

My heart is expanding

I am liberated

I’m about to start talking to the trees in my elation

At finally meeting my childhood self again

Finally coming face to face, heart to heart, with the little girl who used to be me -

But I catch myself

At the sound of a motor.

I’m back in what they call “the real world”

Stuff my hands in my pockets

Turn

And trudge onward

So whoever it is in that car that just entered the alleyway

Won’t think I’m like some crazy lunatic or something

Won’t see the transformation that just happened in this alleyway

The brush with innocence, the encounter with purity

Reminding me, letting me know

It’s still here.

And even though I never did end up telling those vines whatever it was I’d wanted to tell them,

Those vines told me something

Told me something deep

Told me to look at the sky again

Told me to look

And never stop looking

Because as endless as that sky is

The stars that lie beyond it

And the trees that rest beneath it

Are as vast and as endless as I ever believed them to be

But even they

Are nothing

To the Eternity that lies within and beyond them all.

Now, I take the alleyway more often.

Now, I look up

Up to the dots on the ceiling

Up to the trees

To the sky

To beyond.

And I haven’t stopped looking.

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