Part I: Anne
No matter how much we learn about the world – about its big sky, seas and mountains, its people, tall and small, wide, sad, and caring –we can never know it all. I know that Mount Everest exists, but I will never know what the world looks like from its peak. Only a handful of people who ever walk across the great expanse of history will know. But those who have stood at the very top of the world, snow swarming their vision, the air gone from their lungs, will not have seen the smallest amoeba of the ocean, nor the greatest creature to ever have breath. I have watched the birth of a litter of kittens, marveled at the rage of a storm on the Seine, examined an empty robin’s egg, eaten honey straight out of a beehive, listened to the laughter of children and looked out the opened window, observing that even though no one in the patchwork group resembled another, their ringing laughter sounded the same. Though I have witnessed its miracles, I do not know the mysteries of the universe. Bit by bit they are shown to me.
Staring out the window, greeted by the rushing of wind as opposed to the squeals of happy children, I look across a rolling stretch of land, alive in the sun, but pale and shadowed in the moonlight. I do not wonder about the mystery of Earth. I do not wonder if the hovering darkness foretells the rise of Neo-Nazis or religious terrorists. The thread that ties me to my life on Earth, so thick and strong before, has begun to fray.
Everything looks different through this clear glass. Instead of thinking of Chicago or Paris, the two places I have spent most of my life, I think of Skielar, the world that unfolds in the white light of the moon before my eyes. I wonder about its mysteries, about its people. Though I did not scratch the surface of Earth’s hidden wonders and darkest secrets, their promises seem banal to me now. What I had wanted to know, all of the vigor I had to discover every corner of the earth, to meet all of its peoples, began to fade in the face of this new world. I know that France is full of dark-skinned Catholics and light-skinned Muslims. I know that the first skyscraper was built in Chicago. I know scraps of the history of the world, and I know facts about the people who have inhabited it.
Of this world I know nothing. I’m learning. Everything taught to me makes my skin prickle with excitement. The people I meet look just like me, but their hearts and souls are made out of something completely different. Something stronger, more complex. Something I am willing to fall deeper in love with.
Tonight, though, tonight Earth comes and goes in thoughts where its absence has become comfortable. I know where I am now. I think about the weather of Skielar, not that of Earth. The time that I wondered about before, the news, my family, had all disappeared. Tonight they have chosen to resurface.
Who had I been before I came here?
How did I get there, in the field?
Very short, I know! Just tell me if/how it catches your attention. I should be posting some more soon!
Thanks,
Sarah
