Apartment Lot, Day 4

Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 8:44pm

It's dark, and cold.  I came to my wild place tonight after twilight, after the birds stopped singing and the movements of civilization in Shadyside began to lull.  The darkness reminds me of negative space--of sitting in front of a large sheet of newsprint paper, charcoaling the spaces between objects, without drawing the objects themselves.  The result is the ghostly, empty white shape and space of an object--a rocking chair, a trumpet--sometimes discernible, sometimes abstract, and always surrounded by darkness, air, nothingness, creeping in between the spaces, the contours.  This is the same, only here there is no whiteness, no knowing for certain what something is, other than guessing, knowing the area, utilizing the senses.

Like I said, it's cold.  I can feel the damp air against my skin, surrounding the shape of me, like negative space.  I could be that white nothingness, here in this dark.  I can hear the hum and chirp of crickets, the rustle of leaves in the cold, invisible breeze.  A cold night can be harsh--it smells like emptiness, tastes like wetness.  If I try to inhale, detect the scent of the air, I am only met with early autumn chill, a sting in the nostrils, the wrong kind of sensing.  If I open my mouth, it is met with what feels like moisture, a taste of wet dirt and rock.  I should smell it, too, but the scent is too subtle, masked by the feeling of cold night air in my nostrils, touch overpowering smell.  The taste is gritty and something like absence, like nature has disappeared into the blackness, been sucked away.

Night has a way of dancing.  In the dark there are particles, and they seem to move, like the way I see tiny shapes of dark filaments when I close my eyes.  I can't even see the moon, the sky surely still overcast from the day's rain clouds, concealing the moon's waxing gibbous, silvery night light.  There's no comfort tonight in the bedroom of nature.  I can only see the outlines of things--the leaves of the maple above me, the way the tree stretches its arms far in front of itself.  In the daylight I've memorized its sprouting hands above me, its torso a twisted, knotted frame a few yards away, on the other side of the short brick wall my palm is now touching, cold and rough like the taste of night.  This tree is so large, and the way it shakes in the breeze suggests that it might uproot itself and lumber toward me, its arms and hands still outstretched, its knuckled branch-fingers reaching.  It sounds nightmarish when I think it, yet I'm calm--there's something peaceful about this tree, even in the dark.  Though it is reaching and clearly wants something, I can tell it's not me, the way it waits in this same pose day and night, week after week, month after month, year after year.  The air is cold, fall settling in, and the tree is shivering with me, waiting for the seasons to change.  If it had a mind, I'd bet it had a mind to wander, to move to a new location where perhaps there are no seasons, searching for its purpose, collecting more than just the same grey sparrows and squirrels, the Pittsburgh snow and sunlight.  It might not find many differences, though, might die from unsupportive habitat, and in the end, it would still be a tree.  It doesn't have the luxuries I do, but tonight we're the same, feeling the same air, breathing in the same darkness, the dancing black cloak of cold and solitude.