its likely that I'll turn around and parody myself
Something I meant to document at the time:
I had been working, hunched over a stack of crumpled pages with a well-gnawed highlighter protruding sideways from my nervous mouth. My legs twinned about the creaking wood of a chair, and when I stood up I thought it might make a noise that alerted the entire soundless room to the fact of my motion. I always forget that my bare feet tread silently here, mutely proceeding, and stirring vague clumps of probably-ancient dust up the coolly marbled staircase to the third floor. The door to the balcony overlooking the chapel is always unlocked, and its interior always unpopulated, and like so many of my favored places in this city it seems to me such a physical embodiment of sanctuary that I tend to envision the word, imprinted in capital lettering, glowing above the stained glass with the cursive words that spell out something ending in “deo”. The church isn’t as old as I like to imagine it is, when I press my hands into the worn railings and stand exactly in the middle and pretend I’m 500 years ago, and this little building is both my life and my salvation. I now do admit the peeling paint, the indiscriminately constructed benches, and the slight grime smothering the surface of each window pane. But- inside it I think I’ve never felt scared of death, maybe because I don’t mind believing that it, the very structure itself, is possessing of some unspecified power and comfort, beyond that of Knowledge, of the classrooms and campus administration halls encircling it. When I open the door I speak the word “God”, outloud, not as a supplication so much as a thoughtless expression of the pleasure of breathing the solidity of church air.
At the sound of my voice echoing in the silence I see movement, and hesitate momentarily, deeply embarrassed to have been caught out in an act of such pathetic and involuntary reverence. A head lifts above a nearby pew, and the man who looks over is Birks Man, the eclectic librarian who belongs downstairs, sorting books at his desk over a flowing white beard and a t-shirt that likely says something both incongruous and inexplicable. Instead I’ve disturbed his slumber, or his revery- because in an instant, with one thin quick gesture, he’s risen to his feet and slides out the door, leaving me half-whispering an apology in a cracked voice that isn’t really my own, not yet (still not) sure what it was I was the most sorry for. A second ago the illicit beauty of creeping up the stairs to a haven hidden so perfectly right within plain view had belonged thoroughly to me, a TaraGesture I could mentally catalogue as being indicative of a personality that was uniquely and impermeably mine. And now, what, were we two expected to share these few feet of dry-aired space? It seemed a truth worth resenting- and far more bewildering was the nature of the bond suddenly forged between myself and the elderly stranger now probably descending the marble staircase. Would we avoid each other’s gaze to deny knowledge of the encounter’s existence? Or nod hello in secret (inadvertent) complicity to protect the holiness, or at the very least the privateness, of that spot?
When finally I leave the fading light and slip back into my seat, awarded with a handful of stressed-out glares for the distraction of my reentrance, I pointedly watch the floor in front of me, so as to avoid the eyes of The Man, now standing, gauntly ephemeral, in his expected pose behind the returns table. And after a few minutes spent in distracted continuance of my quest to chew apart my writing utensils, I messily collect my belongings and exit abruptly, concentrating firmly on my path towards the door, and full of an array of emotions in reaction to a split-second of interaction with a man who was of no significance to me.
After that, and from them on, I’ve functionally pretended that moment never occurred, particularly when stealthily attempting to take inept photos of the chapel’s gleaming windows, or when brushing by Birks Man, always silent and self-contained, laden with a stack of books ready for reshelving. Still, if I were constructing a novel, or even maybe my own autobiography, I think I’d want this episode included, for all its irrelevance and greater insignificance. It seems worth some carefully constructed tribute- a poem, or something. But the best I can do is at least to write these things down, in the hopes that I’ll remember them later and be pleased to recall emotions I’d probably otherwise have long ago forgotten.
Oh and- I decided, either that afternoon or some other lazy and distracted one, that if I lived in a church I would never break its silence for the mundane utterances of daily life, but only to play music- not gospel or classical or anything like that, but songs that to me seemed equal to the challenge of celebrating the sheer importance of being alive- probably some of the same songs I ended up playing on repeat throughout midwinter, in the warm cavern of my apartment.
I had been working, hunched over a stack of crumpled pages with a well-gnawed highlighter protruding sideways from my nervous mouth. My legs twinned about the creaking wood of a chair, and when I stood up I thought it might make a noise that alerted the entire soundless room to the fact of my motion. I always forget that my bare feet tread silently here, mutely proceeding, and stirring vague clumps of probably-ancient dust up the coolly marbled staircase to the third floor. The door to the balcony overlooking the chapel is always unlocked, and its interior always unpopulated, and like so many of my favored places in this city it seems to me such a physical embodiment of sanctuary that I tend to envision the word, imprinted in capital lettering, glowing above the stained glass with the cursive words that spell out something ending in “deo”. The church isn’t as old as I like to imagine it is, when I press my hands into the worn railings and stand exactly in the middle and pretend I’m 500 years ago, and this little building is both my life and my salvation. I now do admit the peeling paint, the indiscriminately constructed benches, and the slight grime smothering the surface of each window pane. But- inside it I think I’ve never felt scared of death, maybe because I don’t mind believing that it, the very structure itself, is possessing of some unspecified power and comfort, beyond that of Knowledge, of the classrooms and campus administration halls encircling it. When I open the door I speak the word “God”, outloud, not as a supplication so much as a thoughtless expression of the pleasure of breathing the solidity of church air.
At the sound of my voice echoing in the silence I see movement, and hesitate momentarily, deeply embarrassed to have been caught out in an act of such pathetic and involuntary reverence. A head lifts above a nearby pew, and the man who looks over is Birks Man, the eclectic librarian who belongs downstairs, sorting books at his desk over a flowing white beard and a t-shirt that likely says something both incongruous and inexplicable. Instead I’ve disturbed his slumber, or his revery- because in an instant, with one thin quick gesture, he’s risen to his feet and slides out the door, leaving me half-whispering an apology in a cracked voice that isn’t really my own, not yet (still not) sure what it was I was the most sorry for. A second ago the illicit beauty of creeping up the stairs to a haven hidden so perfectly right within plain view had belonged thoroughly to me, a TaraGesture I could mentally catalogue as being indicative of a personality that was uniquely and impermeably mine. And now, what, were we two expected to share these few feet of dry-aired space? It seemed a truth worth resenting- and far more bewildering was the nature of the bond suddenly forged between myself and the elderly stranger now probably descending the marble staircase. Would we avoid each other’s gaze to deny knowledge of the encounter’s existence? Or nod hello in secret (inadvertent) complicity to protect the holiness, or at the very least the privateness, of that spot?
When finally I leave the fading light and slip back into my seat, awarded with a handful of stressed-out glares for the distraction of my reentrance, I pointedly watch the floor in front of me, so as to avoid the eyes of The Man, now standing, gauntly ephemeral, in his expected pose behind the returns table. And after a few minutes spent in distracted continuance of my quest to chew apart my writing utensils, I messily collect my belongings and exit abruptly, concentrating firmly on my path towards the door, and full of an array of emotions in reaction to a split-second of interaction with a man who was of no significance to me.
After that, and from them on, I’ve functionally pretended that moment never occurred, particularly when stealthily attempting to take inept photos of the chapel’s gleaming windows, or when brushing by Birks Man, always silent and self-contained, laden with a stack of books ready for reshelving. Still, if I were constructing a novel, or even maybe my own autobiography, I think I’d want this episode included, for all its irrelevance and greater insignificance. It seems worth some carefully constructed tribute- a poem, or something. But the best I can do is at least to write these things down, in the hopes that I’ll remember them later and be pleased to recall emotions I’d probably otherwise have long ago forgotten.
Oh and- I decided, either that afternoon or some other lazy and distracted one, that if I lived in a church I would never break its silence for the mundane utterances of daily life, but only to play music- not gospel or classical or anything like that, but songs that to me seemed equal to the challenge of celebrating the sheer importance of being alive- probably some of the same songs I ended up playing on repeat throughout midwinter, in the warm cavern of my apartment.