Jane and Diana lived just off the point that watched over the cove which formed our developing world each summer. Their cottages neighbored each other on the waterfront facing the open vast expanse of empty lake. A small dirt road ran past their driveways. It left the county road, which bridged the outlet of the lake, at the hillside property of George’s parents and ran along the opposite shore of the cove, past the yawning grounds surrounding the point, continuing on past Jane, past Diana, and towards the entrances of other greater forbidding lakeside properties.
In the day, the road was always in the shadow of trees. At night, it would become exceptionally murky. It was the darkest I had ever experienced, and I appreciated the puddles of moonlight splashing the surrounding atmosphere with shadows of sight on those nights we journeyed upon it. One early evening, David and I walked over to visit with Jane and Diana to watch the movie, Dr. Strangelove, on TV. This was before the advent of pre-recorded video and so the event was considered something awesome and auspicious.
We had waited all week to see it, looking forward to Peter Sellers and his triumvirate of exceptionally diverging roles. So we watched it attentively, laughing at almost every line, and especially the rich pantomime of Strangelove’s uncontrollable extremity—we never even noticed the time passing. After the world had finally ended, and the necessary small talk had come to a close, we said our goodbyes. David and I walked through the light of the driveway to the darkness of the road. It wasn’t long before we realized the stark truth: there was a new moon over New Moon Lake.
I literally could not see my hand before my face. Needless to say, I couldn’t see David at all. It was only the sound of our voices which kept us together. Of course we had no flashlight, and the road was a rambling more-than-a-quarter-mile course running in-between roadsides of brush, bush, tree-stumps, trees, and the occasional stick with sign indicating a driveway leading to an undetectable cottage far below. We bumped many of those things that night.
It was slow going. Step-by-step, we searched out the road like two blind men. I was still a little high from the joint we had smoked outside before the movie. Not that Dr. Strangelove required anything to make it strange, but we thought it might be a good idea to match the consciousness of its particular brand of sanity with something similar ourselves. And now that consciousness was walking in the blackness of a world gone dark. There was nothing there but me, and I was just this bodiless entity stumbling in the emptiness of night. I was free to re-invent the world in any way I saw fit. In fact, there was nothing else I could do.
No comments:
Post a Comment