Chapter 10
Vision

Sarah started the walk up the steep steps leading to the top of Telegraph Hill. She felt it imperative that she get to the top of Coit Tower, that she might get a better picture of the city and her place in it, even if she was not able to see herself exactly as it would be from up there. Her impulse was a powerful if irrational one and its call would not be disobeyed.

She ascended and felt the air to be perilously thin, although she knew that her meager elevation could not possibly have been enough to seriously affect the atmospheric pressure. Still, she stopped for a moment to catch her breath before walking into the tower.

The lobby opened up before her with its impressive marble benches and a winding spiral staircase up to the top. Famously, the edifice itself was filled with murals, depicting various laborers and inspiring scenes of industry that had captivated her when she was younger. Sarah paid the fee to the quiet attendant and walked slowly up the staircase. She had heard stories about the painting over of those murals that depicted anything which was too socialist in its political bent, but she was unsure of their truth, and wondered if she might catch a glimpse somehow of these old depictions.

Suddenly, it was as though she could see through the wall completely to the hilltop beyond; her eyes took on a strange cast, and she did not understand the things she was seeing. Now her sight focused again, but she was looking underneath the thin outer surface of paint on the wall. Just as she had heard, there was indeed another mural underneath, depicting the struggle of workers to band together and combat those who oppressed them. Yet the figures were not still as she had expected them to be: they appeared as living beings, and began to move about before her, seemingly reaching out to take her hand and lead her into the painting. Alarmed, Sarah began to run up the staircase, and the people receded behind her, disappointed. Their intent had not been malicious, but it seemed she was not ready to accept what they had to communicate.

Having passed by the living mural, Sarah was unsettled but continued her climb to the top. Her pains were well rewarded. As soon as she reached the top, the full vista of San Francisco spread out before her. A bird’s eye view of the narrow, climbing streets that she had been wending her way through not so long ago provided her with a sense of being able to see not only the exteriors of buildings, but the entire layout of the inside and the people inside as they went about their lives, the people on the street being perfectly obvious to her even at this distance. She could pick out the color of their shoelaces, the insignia of their caps and the minutest detail of their expression, no matter which way they faced.

How many stories there must be within this city! Sarah had often thought of the multitudes who rested within the reach of its borders, each one entering and being formed anew in the crucible, brought forth again shining like swords from the forge. The ordinary was revealed in this new sight to be nothing at all like the way it seemed, concealing miracles of strength and vulnerability in the guise of coherent beings, all of which were practiced in hiding these occurrences beneath their everyday skin.

It was hard to imagine how she might be able to reach this conclusion on the basis of a simple glance around the panorama of the tower, but her marvelous vision extended into the minds and hearts of those she witnessed, that she could know their aspect from every angle, even to the point of looking out through their own two eyes. There was nothing which lay outside this penetrating gaze, and it was an observation of such perfect objectivity that everything was reduced into its constituent atoms, the quanta being exchanged demonstrating the precise probability of any event for her perusal. It was as easy to see what was to happen next as what was happening right at that moment, until the series of images turned into a kinetoscope, whirling about before her eyes in discrete steps and betraying the circular motion of reality as she watched everything return to its previous state over the course of a second. Although she knew it was merely an illusion, it pained her to see the trick made so blindingly obvious. Might she not return to the old way of seeing, and avoid the headache of the rotating apparatus? It wore on her mind like a tree branch rasping at the window of a house during a storm, a repetitive motion fraught with discomfiting sound and motion.

She looked until she could not stand it, then shut her eyes. Yet now she was still able to see the same view, merely with herself a part of it. There was a sensation of hovering as she viewed the tip of the curious, almost Gothic sparseness of the architecture of the Art Deco tower, with herself in the window, eyes closed, in a position of quiet supplication though she remained on her feet. There was now nothing binding her vision to one place, and her thoughts floated up to the level of a geosynchronous satellite in orbit. She looked down, examining the view from space with a gaze that cut through clouds and smog readily, this time seeing the city as a two-dimensional plan rather than a model as before. She noted the brilliant reflections of the sun on rooftop pools where were uncommon yet nonetheless eye-catching. Now at last she let herself drift over the water itself, seeing the verdant mass of Treasure Island, the magnificent Golden Gate, and the vibrant surface of the ocean which seemed more than ever to be glinting with untold potency. As she looked more closely, she noticed that one section in particular was full of intense oscillations, on a spot she estimated to be some two and a half miles from shore. What lay there, she could not guess, but she resolved to find out. Willing herself to dive down from her lofty perch into the complex movement of the liquid, she encountered the water and was astounded by the resistance she encountered there, given how easily she had managed to do all else in this state. Undaunted, she explored the source of the obstacle, and found that the surface had assumed the character of solid quartz despite its violent fluctuation, having grown a crystalline skin. Trying again, she hurtled at the crystal repeatedly until a network of cracks began to appear across it, and with one final blow shattered the covering and entered the turmoil below.

Immediately she was buffeted by a sensation of incredible heat as the most powerful current that could be imagined burst forth at her. She surmised that a volcanic vent would be the only possible root of this phenomenon. The furious heat from deep in the earth’s crust was making itself known by turning the waters of the bay into a boiling cauldron, and she had merely experienced one manifestation of this inner forcefulness. Pressing onward, she rushed through the bubbles that were sweeping up from the ocean floor and strove to get closer to the chaos, that she might better understand it.

Her efforts were utterly thwarted. Sarah was able to progress no further towards the supposed vent, because she was held back with even more force as she approached. There was seemingly no way to overcome the power of the current, but she fought onward, struggling to see through the confusion of the waters. Like a salmon trying to return upstream, Sarah felt an instinct deep within which told her that she needed to reach what was on the other side of that wall of water, for it was her birthplace after a fashion, and to understand it would at last grant her the satisfaction she desired.

Valiant though her efforts were, the bubbles of sulfur began at last to sting her eyes, and although she felt no need to breathe, she felt as though she were choking in the heat and pressure of the bay. She begged silently to come just a little closer, to perhaps encounter a stable vantage point from which she might catch a glimpse of what it was that was causing the distress. It was as if all her life, she had wanted to come here, only now to be thwarted by mere inanimate contrariness that might easily have been overcome with more perseverance. Yet she was completely blocked from advancing. Crying out in despair, she propelled herself forward in one exhausted dash to the bottom, prepared to shatter every bone in her body if only to end up below the rushing waters and reach her goal.

The shock of finding no resistance startled her so much that she had no way to stop and ended up hurtling headlong toward the bottom with the waters perfectly calm. Somehow, the heat was completely gone, and there was no sensation of pain when she struck the rock at the bottom. She saw now what had been the source of the current; a curious crack in the ocean floor from which tiny bubbles escaped every so often. Could this really have been responsible for so much strife?

She realized then that it was only at the moment of commitment that she was able to traverse the wall. Only if she was willing to break her body and test the full force of her spirit against it would she have been able to cast herself through it as she did.

Sarah wondered, nevertheless, where the great force and rapidity of the vent had gone. Perhaps she had not been seeing the current state of affairs, but had been deceived by the strange, stop-motion imagery she was still experiencing at intervals. The tumult could easily have happened at any other time, and she would not have known the difference. The release of tension, however, allowed her more time to examine again what precisely it was that she had fought against.

There was no indication now of the quartz skin atop the water, either. Light filtered in through the play of waves far above, and Sarah saw that the entire experience had merely been an illusion stemming from the attempt to rigidize what it was that she saw within some reliable mental model, to be examined and deconstructed at a later time. This trait was both a blessing and a curse, for she had tried too hard to reduce the complexity within her mind so that she might one day create an image of it in a physical form, a respectable goal; yet this very attempt had caused it to rebel against her and made it so difficult for her to capture. She realized the futility of such attempts, but knew also that she would never stop trying; it was the most basic aspect of her persona, and she could no more change it than she could change her parents or the city in which she was born. Nor did she want to, for if she did not try to make some sense of things, all that she knew would slip away from her, and she would be wholly unable to maintain any picture of the reality she could perceive, in memory or otherwise. This would be the true tragedy.

Exhausted, she climbed up onto the shore, and realized that high above her lay a set of concrete edifices that were covered in graffiti and apparently abandoned. Walking up the slope along the many paths that led up, she looked over the bay at the peak of Coit Tower and wondered if she was dreaming or if she had really traversed the water without even leaving the tower, transported by her flight of fancy. The city at her back had a dreaming air about it and she could not discern the reality of the matter.

Climbing until she came upon the concrete buildings at closer range, she walked through a small labyrinth formed by the walls, noting where the turrets of the base remained from the days during which the Marin Headlands were the first line of defense for the Bay, all part of the dismantled war machinery of some 70 years prior.

Coming to the center of the labyrinth, she stopped, intrigued. A pane of glass rested on the ground there, seeming at first to reflect the room around her. Yet as she looked closer, she realized that in fact, it showed the image of a room with glass walls that were cracked and broken, seemingly a short distance underwater. Surprised, she reached out to touch it, then suddenly found herself choking and sputtering. Rising to the surface quickly, she realized that she had once again entered the water, but this time she lay inside the broken shell of a lighthouse among a gathering of rocks, surrounded by the billowing moonlit waves. She clung to the rocks nearest the edge, and despaired of understanding anything that had befallen her as she dragged herself up on them, resting a while as she pondered her options. E-mail: vokuro@adelphia.net