An Operetta of Stratospheres, Sabbaticals and Time

She is lost within herself, sitting on a bench facing the river. Her eyes glazed over with that far away look. She is a girl with longing in her eyes. She is a girl with purpose in her quest who longs for a city she has never been to and yet she is betrothed with deliberateness to this fleeting spark of memory still burning inside. Although the totality of it all is hidden under layers of lifetimes the morning finds her hovering slightly over that vacancy where the sleeping pieces once vibrant and alive begin to wake and fill up the empty  and all of the spaces in between.

From where she sits life seems to be happening all around her...like a colorful shoot while she is stuck in the black and white…even her clothes belong to another time. She sits for long hours never moving once. Her breathing is shallow and hushed as if one breath taken in would break the spell. It took her all night just to reach this place of multi-consciousness and she’s not about to give it up now. Because what she sees’ through her ageless eyes is not at all what the world around her see’s. To most it’s merely a peaceful morning spent at the river but a slight wrinkling of space and time forms the image of a young girl crammed tightly against a ships hull with hundreds of immigrants searching the horizon and waiting for the first glimpses of Ellis Island. She feels the salty spray upon her face and lives that moment over and over when the weary crowd catches its first glimpse of Lady Liberty beckoning them with her gift of freedom. She vows  to record the moment in a weathered leather-bound Journal…a gift from some nameless face the night she left her old world behind. She was a keeper of words even back then and she counted on them. Those words wrapped in beauty and wit would be all she had to turn into bread and butter on those crowded New York City streets and she was driven to make it happen…even back then she knew it was her home. Her first ride in a yellow cab to the 3rd floor Brooklyn flat she would call home for many years, before the  gentlemen suitors and the Nobles from the. literary world would come   all vying for her time and attention…before the sizeable townhouse in the East Village, before the days of comfort and luxury…she was already in love…in love with it all..The city streets and coffee vendors, the gentlemen buying copies of The Times and the Ladies with their bobbed hair under cloche hats posed beneath the lighted street lamps. She was in love with a city…a love so strong that not even death would wipe it from her memory. And when she found her way once again, back into life on the opposite coast 2 things would remain…she would once again be a keeper of words…and she would once again loose her heart to a city and do whatever it would take to get back there again…still searching the horizon for  her elusive Ellis Island, eyes sweeping the endless skyline for that first glimpse of Lady Liberty beckoning her with her gift of discovery…of opportunity… and priceless freedom                                               

“Are you ok girl?” the sound of a voice jolts her wide awake and pulls her  back with painful urgency to the bench in front of the river. No…she was not ok…she was not ok at all. She was homesick and starving not for food or drink but starving for the luminous something that would fill up the empty…fill up the lonely and the longing for the city so enmeshed within her being

She was sad and definitely afraid…afraid that she might never find her way back again. She was frustrated to the point of tears…often discouraged. She was haunted by memories of another place in another time and she was lost…more than anything else she was just so lost she felt so out of place and misunderstood.

“I’m fine” she said quietly and she tried hard to rest against the lie. To give up her crazy quest for the city and ignore the purpose inside of her struggling to rise up and claim   her tomorrows as it had her  distant past. She tried to say it again but her voice broke inside the moment and the only sound that escaped her was the breathless hush of an aching sigh.

       ~DannyLynne~

Reviews

[f**k you]

There could not be a clearer example of perfect imagery. I clung to every word. The description was exquisite because it did not take away from the story at all. It was a great balance of story telling and imagination that I have never seen on this site before. Absolutely beautiful.

-nicole-was-here-

[roarke]

In a few heart felt words, you've created a lifetime of dreams, expectations and reality. A marvelous bit of magic that.