Evening of Earth (eponymous piece)
by Douglas Cole
[this is the second in a six part series–
read Evening of Earth from the beginning]
Evening of Earth
More and more the world feels off limits.
Antonin already in T shirt, of course—he works hard tearing up these abandoned homes to strings of wood piled and laced, as he says, a work of art. You have to admire his discipline. He says, you know how many cars I’ve driven with bad transmissions?
How are the panels? I asked.
I picked a few very clean ones out. I’ve got more energy than I need.. So…
I’m good. What’s your next project?
Still finishing the add-on to that one up on Seaview. Have you seen it?
No, but I’ll come check it out.
Do.
Hard to describe his work. I mean, you might look at one house and think it was spotless, but he’d be able to tell you where the fatal flaws were, which was why they’re empty and why he renders them down faster than a school of piranhas. And the others… spiders of brokenness and collapse, barely the shape they were, and he riddles the sticks of that pile and pulls out survivors most of us would miss. He’s an artist. Rubble is his medium.
I kept on walking. The first thing… scent. The apple blossom, the earth coming through four waves of freeze and thaw and other elements in the mixture. I could give you my own private name for this late winter, first spring maybe second after a few bloomers, but here, now, this scent I know my whole life back to first becoming aware of color.
She’s in front of the screen watching the chaos as though there might be a test coming along the way: place names (always changing), people—the principal players, representatives, officers, brigadier chiefs… the old play. Why watch that more closely than the king tide out there coming in like invasions? A line of sand higher than it’s ever been.
Who’s winning?
What do you mean?
Who’s winning?
Nobody. It’s a mess.
Somebody’s got to be winning—that’s always what it’s about.
That moment, awakening. Who am I now? Existential questions crop up in every mind, but this was diagnosed. A doctor says, sometimes you’ll be here, sometimes you won’t. So, I start with concrete things. The architecture of survival and responsibilities was hard-embedded here so I could pretty quickly get up to to some semblance of local speed and make believe my way through the day. These concrete elements were favors I did for myself, a way to stay in the moment, otherwise…That grandfather clock. When did it last ring? A drip in the kitchen sink waiting to fall. A bird looking at me through the window.
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