Flicker, shadow. While not the most absorbent mind nor a capable regurgitator of academic material digestion, Huckleberry was certainly capably captivated by classes on Shadow Puppetry and Southeast Asia.
When the audience is only receiving black shadow symbols cast from a backlit screen, with what leniency of detail do you entrust to them? One is obligated to put the reigns in the hands of the receiver, and ultimately they decide how to flesh it out. They, in turn, entrust the shadows and shadower with Transmitting. Was that a mechanic to be played with? Sounded awfully dangerous.
There was a green leaf laid out like a wet paper imitation, folding into the contours of the squared recess sidewalk tablets creating a civilized enamel around the roads which now carried the annoyance of water that simply had no choice in the matter of its rerouting.
Huckleberry wondered, how did one set a scene? What was it? He didn´t have many references at hand. He was in a theatric-less island save for a few books, a few scores for music, and a few recipe books.
Opening up one book, he read:
The book you have in your hands is a book of tapas, pinchos and cazuelitas that I inherited from my mom.
Turning to another, :
Mister Miguel Unamuno has requested of me a Prologue to this book which recounts the lamentable story of my dear friend Augusto Pérez and his mysterious death, which I cannot deny Don Miguel, for his desires are for me – in their religiously purest sense – mandates.
Still another, he read:
Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories From Nature, about the primeval forest.
Deeper into the intrigue:
For some time I had been going to bed early.
Lost in beginnings, he read:
When the phone rang, I was heating a pot of spaghetti.
The best ones started without sentences, :
A squat grey building of only thirty-four floors.
These leaves. These blue and orange 9 inch block striped windsuit street cleaner uniformity asssailed leaves. Nearby, power blasting moldy growth with no longer life saving water. Rinsing superficiality anew and refreshed with a “my lack of responsibly active integrity is not my fault” confession. There are no excuses. There are no answers. Only decisions.
Huckleberry looked on to another book, it wasn´t really of the narrative kind. That is, of course, his understanding of this pre-biblic (new testament) enigma. In order to get to it, Huck had to remove three objects: an ocean shell from Cascais, Portugal; a red thread-like ribbon with a small golden bell that once decorated the neck of a gold encased chocolate bunny; and Sabi, his eternaly laughter prone champion of healthy posture internal and external.
Huckleberry´s pocket edition of the Tao Te Ching, translated-improvised-contexturalized by Stephen Mitchell looked like some sort of magic carpet beneath Sabi´s presence. It begins like this:
The Tao that can be told, is not the eternal Tao.
(For a truly rough translation: The tao/way/force that can be Tao-ed/Told/weighed/wayed/forced….is not the eternal Tao/Way/Force.)
Like lighting matches of different scents. Brief psyche penetrations. Brief psyche extractions, as well. Particular was everything. He saw a perfect crimson tear-drop printed on the exoskeleton below. It came from far to near. Sun cooked after rain glazed, it certifiably amplified Icarus´consequent land defining fall. Just the same, this brilliant blaze marking his boot trodden gaze.
It was like setting someone up to accept incoherence. Put simply, reading the newspapers. So, how did one follow through?
Winter violently lioned out of Cáceres early February, and Huck came up to the triangular parking lot behind the pasty yellow trifecta of the apartment “complex”. The lucky fortress goers parked cars like a gang huddling against the walls before a fight. Their target danced wildly amidst the space it was composing with mellifluous turns and unpredictabilities daring them to unpark. This specific green leaf was turgid celled, leathery, and apparently a cornered racoon. The oddly furtive gusts of air inflamed its pussing bravery.
They all seemed to carry on, as if they hadn´t just disrupted, intervened. That is how they followed through the hole in the lock beneath the handle in the door leading to a voyage you never could forget because, though its forging was intentional, its unravelling took courses, slips, leaps, and slides that stretched your potentials by pulsing firmly in resonance with that little fist sized entity thereby putting more hot air into the sails of the ship named, “How ever did we get here?”
A balloon´s fire perspective of the scene. Without a trace or a clue as to how he arrived, Huck was stuck in the present. He could, if he wanted, create a past that more or less had reason within logic. He could, if he wanted, imagine a future to explain the direction. But, really, all he had was a scene. It wasn´t his, of course. And after the shock of co-dependence wore off, he started cutting off the globe above him from its arrogant heat for fear of losing the background altogether. How on earth did that happen so quickly. This certainly wasn´t usual. Books don´t just open up and explode. Best not to let the globe do the same. Suddenly the air filled out breathably.
Putting himself up in essentially a mobile prison cell above foreign winds brought him out of a sticky situation, allowing a world to change beneath him before setting foot back on deck. It was necessary, subjectively. He had quite clearly related to the leaves. Each and every one of them. They all took the opportunity to catch the wind while the world changed about them, and meet whatever came their way.
He felt foolish, trying to ponder it, at the prow of the boat. He didn´t mind rowing instead of toying with potentially explosive air. Near the shore of his departure he noticed, things were indeed different. It was a whole, brave new world. Someone wound up the tictoc bird and unleashed a new springy mechanism from inventive Chronos dreams. The rapid ascent and descent was lunatic, mildly meteoric and almost planetary, but fortuitous. Like the clearing of a foggy, misty field into Swann´s Way, the succulent rivershore path of Proust´s imaginary childhood paseo. Huckleberry had stumbled gently upon that thing. He kneeled down, picked it up. Reclaiming something he had put away for safety, like a trick one plays on oneself: hoping to forget – and then later to enjoy.
The setting was simple. The scenario was bare. The script unwritten. No hoops to jump, no buttons to push. He had tried out just enough hats to be sure that,” no – actually I think I was fine just the way I was, thank you very much”. Coming full circle sometimes has the look of a tangled mess, but given time, space, and a little wind it will naturally unravel to reveal its circular nature.
That´s how a new scene is created. First, the old world, the past reality, and all the dynamics it implies must be temporarily put at bay – just long enough. A slice of ice-olé-cean. Then, pen out several words. There are no rules as to how, just lay them down. Then, from those words a whole new scene is already birthing. It´s beyond your control but not your cooperation.
There is no trick. No subversion. You don´t need much really. If you let it, it´ll happen in and of itself.
Just a flicker, and a shadow.
And suddenly a whole ´nother scene has passed already, and whatever you needed to happen happened, however it happened, and without any notice of its progress. All of a sudden, whatever you took that plane flight for in September, has finished doing whatever it was that it needed to do. I hope this time capsule finds you well, Huckleberry.”
A light flashed, silence.
Huckleberry had, with the help of this continental time capsule, seen a wondorous play of shadows on backlit canvass. So, that was how a scene was created. Now, how in the devil did one get on with transitions?
Quotes taken from the following books, in order of appearance:
TAPAS, by Koldo Roya
Niebla, by Miguel Unamuno
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Swann´s Way, by Marcel Proust
The Wind-Up-Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu and translated by Stephen Mitchell
