Description
Today I saw something strange:
by Paul Thorsteinson (PT56)
Today I saw something strange.
All dressed up in a fancy orange suit, with silver handcuffs. My usual jewelry for days like this. I was handcuffed and shackled in the back of a transport van. In the front of seat, two officers in blue bullet proof vests, heavy utility belts, and loaded side arms. Tasked with guarding me. The most dangerous task of the day. We talk, but only briefly. “How are you? Are you ready? The weather is blah…” It’s always briefly. Mainly because we both know we’re not really friends.
I don’t get to see the outside world much. Not as much as I used to. So when I am out on transport, I take the time to soak in as much as I can see. Compared to prison, it’s an explosion of color and unique sights. Today was muted by an unusually chilly morning. Because I live off the coast, even in the summer time Grays Harbor remains much cooler than the rest of the state. The crisp weather had managed to create a much greater struggle for the trees in our county. As we drive by, their branches twist and curve against the sky’s backdrop, as if shaped by the wind. Even the ground is past the phase where you see leaves littering the surface.
Whenever I see people, walking along the sidewalk or across the Aberdeen bridge, they always look immensely burdened with sadness. Their faces rough and weathered like old junk yard cars. It seems the chill of the season and the current Corona lockdown has seeped into their rusty weather beaten souls. That look is not just reserved for people. Even the animals look like they have a coldness in their bones.
As my eyes travelled along the grey landscape of Kurt Cobain’s hometown, the road twisted along a greyish river. The water’s not blue here. But instead the muted color of cats at night. A murky grey like all the paints on the palette have been mixed together. I still strain my eyes to see it. However, in between me and the river rises intruding bushes, tall wispy grass and rows of starving emaciated trees. If I focus hard enough through all the foliage, I can see the waters of Aberdeen.
A particularly dense patch of branches vied to hide even the water from me. So thick I could only see a few feet through them. Gnarled and twisted, thick brown branches as tall as a man and bare as the moon, obscured my sight. I felt their emptiness. A remnant of purpose, like animal bones or an empty broken bowl, there was nothing left but a memory of life.
Deep in the branches, there was something else. something that shouldn’t have been there. A plume of vibrant life. A lighthouse to a lost sailor. A cluster of small flowers, as big as two hands put together, in the shape of a heart.
Time travelled in slow motion as we passed the heart. A heart that shouldn’t have been there, but was none the less. I pondered the meaning of such a strange sight. Was the heart caged within the branches, captured and trapped within the walls closing in, like Luke and Leia in the Empire’s trash compactor? The flowers clinging to life, forever imprisoned inside an impenetrable wooden womb.
Or was it something different. Did the little heart choose to be there? Safe from instability of the outside world? Protected by a wall of impenetrable debris. A place where the heart could never be hurt or broken. The heart had made it’s choice. Better to be within the branches than without their protection. The heart had chosen to be there.
But that’s not what I saw. I saw that the heart had grown despite the branches around it. Thriving, in a place that should be inhospitable to any form of life, the heart burst into a cluster of flowers. In that Siberian flowerbed, it grew out of defiance to the world around it. It grew because it couldn’t imagine not existing. It grew because it was determined to show the world that love existed, no matter what the circumstance. That love mattered.
I saw the flowers, and they saw through me. As our car drove away, I craned my neck to watch it out the back window. My flowered heart in a wooden cage, shrinking to a mere mote of hope. In that moment, I smiled to myself. I smiled because I knew the world was a better place when hearts defy the branches.
