Remembering Heaven and Endless -- Part 2

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Part 2 – The Garden
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And yet it wasn’t Eden.

It was just a garden.

I wondered at my surroundings. Leafy canopies hung down in sweeping valances from branches whose wooden hue was lost in the Green, Jade, Hunter, and Emerald. Cobblestones clicked beneath my feet in resolute stubbornness, refusing to yield to the sprigs of grass growing between them. The whole garden was robed in Life. For all the greenery the place was full of Light. The place glowed and pulsed with a rhythm that try as I might, I could not master the pattern of. Though I tried. My heart matched its tempo, my feet danced to its beat . . . its meter fluttered my stomach, its tattoo tickled my flesh.

I laughed.

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed and then laughed for laughing. And then I sprinted forward, leaping into the air with a mighty, laughing cry of victory. The garden tinkled back at me, birds twittering, four legged furry bush tails creatures chattering from behind their peekaboo screens. The place was full of sound, a symphony, and it was the trees that were singing.

I continued forward, at times skipping, at times tiptoeing, at times hopping, at times racing backwards as fast as I could without falling flat on my back. My eyes were wide and alive, flitting this way and that, afraid to miss the fuschia of the blushing roses, or the cerulean of the lilies dangling like trapeze artists from the high wire of the trees above. As I moved deeper into the garden the stones beneath my feet grew lazy in their pattern, more splayed and less laid to plan. The wide spaces that grew up between them eventually because the path, the cobblestones nothing more than pebbles sprinkled like bread crumbs. Yet the path remained clear, the trees growing together, their arms intertwined like maidens in a country dance. I listened to the song of the daffodils growing and the rabbits nibbling, hoping to hear some clue as to the steps of their dance.

Instead I heard a plucking sound vibrating through the air. Chords echoed off the trees, reverberating through the warmth of the fragrant air, caressing the wakening buds peeking out from beneath the undergrowth. The song pulled at my hands, ushering my feet forward, stirring a shudder of joy in my stomach. I rushed forward, listening intently to the melody of Life stirring the garden to ecstasy, desperate to find the source of beauty. I ducked between the trees, finding myself falling into step with the waltz of the garden, weaving my own ribbon of color into the May festivities.

The trees fell away into a wide glen. The oaks and maples stood in attendance, creating an amphitheater open to the sky. A stream crept through the heart of the glen, and seated beside it was the source of the music. He was not tall, nor was he broad in the shoulders, but he was not slight either. Instead, his muscles seemed in perfect harmony with his modest height. He was dressed in the earth, the colors of his long tunic a mosaic of umber, sienna and russet. His feet were bare. Amber curls cascaded to his shoulders, a mess of twigs peeking out from beneath them. In his hands he held a wooden instrument that dwarfed him, though he was not small. His fingers danced across the strings stretched over its wide body. At first glance I thought it was a large guitar, but as I approached I realized that no guitar would ever possess so many strings. His eyes were closed, though his mouth was parted in song, his voice pouring from him with the richness of caramel or silk. I stopped short upon the sight of him, the beauty of his song stinging my eyes.

At the height of the melody he paused, the fermata pregnant and yearning forward. The vibrato of the strings travelled out into the garden, the air trembling with the pulse of it. He sat motionless, his hands poised over the strings as they fell still.

Every muscle in my body tensed, and shuddering I fell to my knees, my muscles no longer capable of supporting the aching in my soul.

No sound could have seeped from the springy turf that caught me. Perhaps he sensed the motion of my collapse, or perhaps, in the yawning silence left in the wake of his song he could hear my shuddering exhalation. He lowered his hands to his sides and opened his eyes. The light reflected off them, a glint of light breaking into a prism against them. He placed his instrument beside the stream and glided towards me, sinking to his own knees before me. I met his gaze. And then he smiled a grin that caused the universe to ripple with joy.

I laughed in joy. I laughed in sorrow. I laughed in complete absurdity. I laughed in revelation. I laughed release. I laughed at myself. I laughed at the opportunity of an instant to do nothing other than kneel in a garden, tears streaming down your face, laughing like a lunatic before a complete stranger that was more than human.

I sighed in contentment and then I spoke. “I do wish the song hadn’t ended.”

He stood. “It hasn’t ended.”

I too stood. “But you stopped playing.”

He took my hands and spun, propelling me into a wide arc. I stumbled over my own feet, but his grip on my hands kept me from falling. I gave a clipped shriek which ended in a nervous laugh. “Music never stops. Listen.”

I did. And I heard the fading echo of my own laughter spinning around in the amphitheater of the glen, bouncing off itself, sending its own echoes spinning off in new angles only to bounce around the vibrato of my shriek. I stood a moment, listening to the interplay of emotions as the vibrated in the air around us. “How did you do it?” I whispered.

“I don’t.” He smiled again and raced to the instrument he had laid beside the stream. In one motion he swooped the instrument up into his arms and strummed a chord. It joined in the strange swirling vortex of shrieking laughter that surrounded us. He paused a moment and the plucked a few splayed notes which spun off into the loop. He then added a longer, more complex melody. They all fell into place, finding their own pattern in the space of the glen, creating a strange symphonic cacophony. He continued to play, skipping and spinning around the clearing as he played. The sheer mass of the instrument looked absurd in his hands, but though his movements were sporadic he fell into the space of the song with such precision that it took me only a moment to realize that he was playing the earth. The beat of his bare feet on the sod was only another part of the song.

I watched in amazement, unable to take my eyes off him. He danced around me, grinning and strumming and tapping his feet as he moved. I soon found myself following him and then mimicking his strange dance. Around and around I spun. Soon the whole world was full of the blur of the green trees, the plucking melody of the strange wooden instrument, and the loop of my laughter. The sounds pulsed against my skin and seeped down into my bones. I whooped with delight, I let out a booming “ha,” I clapped, I snapped, I made every sound I could think of just to feel the vibration of it in my body. Soon I was no longer trying to control my muscles, but let myself bounce off the sounds around me. I stumbled over my own feet and tumbled to the ground and lay there, relishing the feel of prick of the grass against my bare arms and tattoo of the earth beneath my back. For a moment I watched him whirl in the emptiness of the glen around me, but I soon became so dizzied by it that I closed my eyes. I lay there listening to the music we had made, trying to pick out the different pieces, to pick it apart again to see how many parts we had strung together to create the symphony. But I couldn’t do it. Occasionally I would catch the hint of a laugh, or the honeyed strumming, but then the shriek would cut in, or two notes would land in such a way that I felt the hairs on my arm stand on end with the electric tension of it. I suddenly longed to get up again, to move, but each time I tried it felt like the wrong moment, as if I did it would be in discord with the tattoo of the music. To move felt wrong. To lie there made my soul itch. The prick of the grass beneath me started to pain me, but the weight of sound pinned me to it. I tried to find one strand to focus on, to ground myself in . . . . In the eternally pulsing wave of music I tried to find reality again, but my world had become nothing but sound and I was slave to its intangible grip.