Chapter 4
Aria

Looking toward the glass of a brightly-lit storefront advertising the sale of various Japanese goods, Sarah was struck with a sense of isolation. She noticed, shifting the focus her gaze from her reflection to the people inside the store, that neither one seemed to exist on quite the same plane that she felt a part of in her mind. There was no way to prove such a curious conjecture, but it was quite compelling just the same, given the disconnect she was currently experiencing.

The meeting with the bank teller, rather than clearing her mind, had only succeeded in making her worry more about the state of her mind. If even he could not, or would not, give any commentary on the assessment of her psychological profile and behavioral pattern, it was always possible to argue that she had actually gone mad already and was merely presenting a semblance of sanity to the public eye through her skill in appearing less burdened with pathologies than anyone else. Even if nothing particularly traumatic had happened to her to explain her new behavior, something was clearly going on.

At least she did not feel crazy, as limited as that subjective judgment could be. Overtiredness accounted for the sense of disconnection, she reasoned, and she suffered no particular lapses in discerning reality and dreams. Her imagination had grown more chaotic, however, as the subjects she saw in her mind and attempted to depict became more and more serious and absurd at once. She thought of Frida Kahlo, and the accident which had restricted her to a hospital bed and caused a electrifying transformation in her style as an artist. This sort of sudden revolution in the driving forces behind her work broiled underneath the surface, but it was as yet an unrealized notion, trapped in an underwater cave far from the light. Precisely because of this sense of frustrated potential, the idea that some event just about to happen could bring her into the vaunted realm of true artists was a hope that she latched onto with eagerness.

Along with this notion of true artistry came that most mysterious concept, maturity. Sarah was in the unfortunate position of understanding just enough of maturity to know that she had not yet acquired it, but could not find the breakthrough here any more than in her artwork. The two might even be incited by the same occurrence, but it tauntingly remained within her near future and promised to remain so indefinitely. It was not that she was anxious to have such an experience, since she knew that it would entail an immeasurable loss, but that it had not yet found her was only a half-comfort.

Unable to gain satisfaction from other pursuits, she turned to painting to restore her sense of purpose, however temporarily. For Sarah, there was in painting especially a certain reassurance that others had tread the same path. Many pre-devised techniques and methods existed for her use; it was not like the new, conceptual art which relied entirely on the inventiveness of the creator and offered no certainty, no wayposts to indicate the avenue that one should take towards the goal. Creativity was still inherent in the task, but not having to solve the most basic problems of the medium without prior help meant that it was overall a much easier proposition.

Her current painting was actually a portrait of a friend of hers, Clare. She had long brown hair and found it difficult to sit as a model, but her face was memorable and full of personality enough to obviate the necessity of sitting. The backdrop, often the most important element in Sarah’s paintings, took shape as a decorative floral pattern that might have been wallpaper, but was in fact meant to represent a series of idealized real flowers pinned to the wall behind her subject. Of course, the painting itself collapsed this distinction, but the primacy of the concept overrode this consideration in her mind; others unaware of the implication would not get less from the portrait, merely a different impression. The likeness at least was sound thus far, capturing a vivacity beyond the photographs which the girl frequently avoided; the personal nature of portraiture enabled her to capture eloquently the essence of a person, when she did it right, and her friends were the greatest beneficiaries of this treatment.

Sarah reflected on the quandary of artists forced to depict their subjects on the basis of commercial gain. In a way, she pitied them, not of course for their greater artistic ability, but for their obligation to things in which they did not believe. She remembered how Rodin, faced with a line of aristocrats waiting for him to sculpt their images in his brilliant, incisive style; so many came with money, and he produced for them little masterpieces that surpassed their now-forgotten and irrelevant sitters. Yet was he happy doing this, however beautiful the results? It was difficult to tell, however much enjoyment he seemed to have from the acclaim and the high-society lifestyle.

No question existed in her mind as to whether or not she would compromise herself in that manner. It was wholly contrary to every impulse she had, and nothing could amount to the intangible benefits she would gain from remaining true to her artistic vision. The oddest thing was that this seemingly absolute decision in her mind had been followed by the realization that she might one day be forced to make such a compromise to survive, not simply as a matter of comfort but as a question of the barest provisions necessary for life. While she had a scholarship to art school, this would not last indefinitely, and in the rest of her life, any number of opportunities would come up that had appeal but for some minute characteristic in which they contradicted with her espoused principles. Sarah knew that in the end, nothing was black and white to the extent that she would not change as circumstances demanded. Still, it was frightening to think that what she believed now could one day change so drastically that her former self would appear naive, ignorant, or even willfully contrary depending on the situation.

It was now a question of building up her flexibility and ability to adapt, taking into account criticism from within and without. She had at least moved beyond the stage of taking personally every objection raised about her technique and use of particular subjects in her work, but it was still hard to divest herself entirely from the business. Her friend Lilliana, a poet, had told her that the Latin American writer Alejandra Pizarnik had referred to this situation as “a boat parting from me, carrying myself.” She imagined the melancholy scenario; a sad woman looking out from the pier, waving faintly to her mirror-image beloved on the vessel, as it slowly merged with the horizon and seemed to drown in the water as seen from afar, going to the port of someone else’s heart.

She remembered suddenly a dream she had several nights before, with herself as a dolphin in an underwater cave. Fighting against currents and searching through tunnels, she came upon a room that looked as if it had been carved out of the rock. In the center of the room was a stone table, and on it lay a huge book and a spark hovering over the precise midpoint of the table’s diameter. She tried to read the volume, but the lines were mere scribbles of text that writhed underneath her gaze, and they did not stick in her memory. The spark, however, was a brilliant red-orange mote of light that remained in a state of constant flux, seeming to glimmer and shift while remaining right in place. She nudged it with her nose, and all of a sudden the entire room began to disintegrate and cave in around her. Panicked, she swam about furiously looking for an escape, but found none. She woke up just as a giant stone fell and was about to crush her.

The vast ocean was a source of dull but persistent fear for Sarah. At times, she felt compelled to hurl herself into its saline waters and never surface again, as its vastness had the ability to completely destroy her sense of proportion and throw her into a madness of sorts from which there was no way to escape until it was out of sight. She had never revealed this oceanic lunacy because it was not only irrational, but also unavoidable for someone who lived as she did by the edge of a vast bay governed wholly by the wind and tides. Thinking about it was enough to make her a little anxious, so she quickly returned her attention to the painting before her.

It really had taken shape, she marveled. Even in her state of distraction, she had managed to produce a fair resemblance that was nevertheless very premeditated and controlled from the perspective of composition and similar concerns. It was this tension between the capturing of the personality and the formal aesthetic constraints of the medium that made it so hard to execute such illustrations with any sort of rigor; in addition, she feared that those who did not know her might not interpret the expression correctly. Still, these concerns were present in any example of the genre, and so were not entirely exclusive to her efforts.

Michelle unlocked the door and entered the apartment, gasping when she saw the painting. “Sarah, that’s beautiful!”

“You’re too kind. I’m not quite done, and it’s sloppy, besides.”

But, finally realizing that the image was indeed finished, Sarah resolved to make a presentation of it when Clare’s current show reached the end of its run. It would have been quite unexpected that the other young woman would become an actress to one who had known her earlier in life, but the liveliness in her apparently subdued demeanor had found its public expression in this form. Sarah meant to attend the final show and give it to her at the conclusion of the evening. In the meantime, however, she had a plethora of other projects to work on, but she believed that it was time that she try to recapture some inkling of the source of her night-time visits to the bridge, hoping that by examining the region in her waking hours, she could somehow reach a conclusion about the nature of her wanderings.

Rather than go on foot, she decided this time to use a bicycle. It would be hard returning uphill to the apartment, but she longed to move faster through the scenery, and felt that she might go an unforeseen distance in this quest. She said goodbye to Michelle and descended to the basement to pick up her bike, then climbed the stairs and set off towards the Golden Gate Bridge.

She fairly flew by the massive cables supporting the suspension bridge. Traveling this way was certainly preferable to going about at nighttime on foot, and she was able to finally enjoy the beautiful scenery: the bay stretching around her and the mountains on either side, the wonderfully forested Treasure Island and all the region surrounding both ends of the bridge itself. She paused briefly at around the place she had stopped at that first encounter with the teller, but felt nothing different or significant about it, and moved on in haste.

She continued on the highway through the Marin Headlands, but did not believe they had any significance, and so passed right onward along the road. It was not the safest place to cycle, as the road was not quite intended for bicycle use, but she got along fine. Suddenly, she noticed a sign for the Muir Woods, and her interest was piqued. Sarah had visited a few times as a young girl, but had not taken the time to go back there since she moved out. Her parents had loved the place deeply, being somewhat naturalists themselves, and encouraged her to learn about the flora and fauna of the forest, but these lessons had not made as deep an impression as they hoped. Now that she was older, she too regretted that she had not learned more about the environment which surrounded her, but resolved to make it up in some way by going to visit again.

The road up to the woods was very steep and narrow. It was an almost impossible climb on the bicycle, and Sarah ended up walking for what was probably several miles to reach the starting place of the woods. When finally she arrived, the visitor’s center was not as she remembered it; some changes had been made since she had last been there, and the place seemed more modern. Still, the forest remained unchanged, with the exception of a few dead trees that had collapsed from storms or the like.

She spotted one great tree which had been struck by lightning, splitting it in half and leaving a charred stump behind. There were no shortage of reminders of the awesome power of nature in this place. Sarah peered for a while at the ruined tree and noted that some mushrooms had grown up around the base. At least the nutrients locked inside would not go to waste, she thought. The natural world, far more than any human-made mechanism, had wonderful and all-encompassing feedback mechanisms, such that any state of affairs that contradicted the natural order of the world could not last, but would be replaced by a new equilibrium to which the system would invariably return. It was this that made her love the study of ecology; there was an elegance about it that persistently outshone many other endeavors, although her devotion to art remained strong.

It was curious to think that she had once dreamed of becoming an environmentalist herself. But as she reflected on it more, it was not strange at all; her parents, unwittingly, had influenced her in that direction by sharing with her the experiences they loved, and it was perfectly reasonable to think that their enthusiasm translated to her when her own interests were not as fully formed. The love that they had entrusted to her remained there, but it was tempered by her knowledge of the world outside, and her still inexplicable compulsion to create. Perhaps it was for the best that she had in part deviated from the interests of her parents, as well; every individual had her own direction, and it was only through a great deal of personal struggle that one could discover one’s personal most meaningful task, to be fulfilled by herself alone.

She locked her bike up at the entrance and walked along the trail far into the forest. This natural beauty was without parallel, and she almost immediately wished that she had brought along a sketchbook. Still, her visual memory was very acute, and while she did not have a photographic memory, she could recall enough of the details of nearly any scene to create a depiction of it, recalling it in its Platonic ideal state rather than basing her image on reality. She did not concern herself with the details that marred the pristine aesthetic, such as the many footprints in the mud that destroyed the illusion of being the only person to have traveled this way through the forest. It had occurred to her that there was some problem with this, just as she seemed often to retreat into the life of the mind rather than go out and partake in social activities when absorbed in the process of creation. This had not risen to the level of a truly worrying issue, though, and she was content to stay the same until a new balance had to be struck. Sarah could be confident of knowing the hour at which it would be necessary, for whatever other sense she had or lacked, the awareness of when it was time to change was something that she had always enjoyed.

A gentle droplet of water on her cheek presaged the start of a new rain, though very light. She relished the thought of the coming shower, for a forest in rain was perhaps the most soothing thing she could imagine at this time. Slowly, the trickling increased to a soft but steady rush, and she pulled her jacket tighter around her. She felt the moisture slipping off the coat and smiled as she walked on.

The path was gradually starting to ascend through a circuitous path among the hills. The air felt cooler and almost imperceptibly thinner as she rose, and her vision was colored with a green light that suffused everything as the collecting puddles on the pathway produced a reflection of the canopy on the forest floor. It seemed like she had left the ground entirely, and was in fact treading on the underside of the tree tops on her way through the wood.

Suddenly, she was jolted out of her daydream when she noticed that there was a woman standing directly in her path, peering into her face. Her hair was exceedingly pale, and she bore a cunning grin which was not quite malicious, yet not transparently friendly either.

“Hello,” Sarah ventured.

The woman continued to smile and moved out of her way, gesturing for her to pass. Bemused, Sarah did so. As the precise instant she stepped alongside the woman, an unquantifiable experience that was akin to an electric shock coursed through her body. She gasped for breath, and staggered forward. When she turned around wildly, the woman was gone.

Sarah was incredibly alarmed. What could possibly have just transpired? Sarah did not feel at all harmed, but her composure was severely disrupted. She contemplated hurrying back to the visitor’s center and leaving the wood, but then it occurred to her that there had been no pain, and it was not the first time that she had imagined something wholly out of her own preoccupation with her internal state. It had certainly felt real, but it was entirely possibly that she had simply started to fall asleep on her feet, and that the jolt she felt came from her body’s sudden loss and recuperation of muscle tone. She was simply glad not to have fallen to the muddy ground.

As she walked on, she noticed that the rain began to assume an unusual pattern. It was as though certain segments of her aural space became muted, so that the sound of rainfall seemed to move about her head at random. She dismissed this as a result of her sensitivity to the pressure difference as she climbed higher up the mountain, but then realized that it assumed a regular rhythmic pattern. Still seeking a rational explanation, she supposed that her heartbeat was interfering with her perception due to its continued pounding after her bizarre encounter. Yet this did not satisfy her, as she calmed down and the traveling effect continued.

A few minutes later, she noticed that the rain not only had a rhythmic component, but began to resemble a series of tones, producing a harmonic backdrop to the greenery of the forest. The sounds started off softly, but grew in volume until it sounded as though a bell choir had invaded the forest, its members hiding behind every tree and filling the air with their melodious ringing.

Now convinced that she must be in a dream, Sarah cast aside her fears and strolled serenely along the path. When it seemed that the trees themselves began to resonate along with the sounds, their branches swaying in time like a host of conductors to the atmospheric orchestra, she laughed and continued to stride forward, undaunted. The light, even obscured as it was by the rain, made a similar transformation, beginning to pulse in a cycle lasting four seconds, growing from almost dark to impossibly bright and diminishing again with the intensity of the music in the trees. The greenish cast began to shift into a kaleidoscope of colors, as if a number of light sources moving at impossible speed closer and further from the viewer allowed the relativistic effects of red and blue shift to create a spectral ribbon flowing through the air towards her, forming an aurora borealis of the forest light.

At length, she came to a clearing surrounded by four trees from which the activity seemed to emanate, and stood unafraid in the center of this unimaginable son-et-lumière display. She stood transfixed, watching the flow of light around her in fascination, and did not realize that her feet were in fact fastened in place by unseen bands rising from the earth. Her arms raised out to her sides, and she tilted her head back and let out an exuberant cry. Suddenly she realized she was singing, a wordless descant that hovered over the music of the trees and rain, floating out in a quasi-religious ecstasy. No, she need not shy away from it; a wholly religious experience, right out of some pagan ritual she knew naught of. She was beyond caring as she stretched her hands upward and downward, transmitting energy between the earth and sky in the manner of a Sufi whirler. Her body was bathed completely in light.

The cluster of four trees around her burst into flame. As the conflagration swelled to encompass her, walling the girl in with fire on every side, the first moment of uncertainty and fear sprung into being. Yet it was impossible to stop singing, her body possessed in a rapture that nothing could penetrate. The heat and light became agonizing, and her soul itself was set aflame, bound to the trees which has become vast funereal pyres. Yet she did not relent, until at last the strain of this divine intensity became too great, and she collapsed exhausted into the mud, the fires all extinguished. A darkness flooded toward her to soothe her pains, and she knew nothing more. E-mail: vokuro@adelphia.net