Page 109 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #4
P. 109
externalizing was distracting. I was struggling fact to capture what I was feeling, I felt myself
to find my way around the camera. slipping away. Words were harder to form.
Initially, I talked about changing lens “I am not here any more......” I remem-
and the emotional experience that brought ber saying. as the POV video camera contin-
me to do so. I “knew” what I felt and I knew ued to record what I was doing and saying.
when the lens on the camera just didn’t allow And I wasn’t. I had ceased to be apart from the
me to compose an image that reflected that moment. All that I was, my own identity, had
experience. But as time went by, I found my- ceased to be. I was inseparable from the bark
self talking not about me and my experience of of the tree, from the redness of the apples, the
the orchard, but of the trees’ experience of the wetness of the grasses who left their tears for
coming of winter. There was an unmistakable me to find, from the wandering of the wind
sadness. I could feel that sadness in the bend- that carried the silent voices of the sadness of
ing of the trees, in the dying of their leaves. I the trees..... I had ceased to be..... My empa-
was being drawn out of myself by what was thy for the trees and their sadness had taken
happening around me. The seasons were me away from myself, away from my separate-
changing and the world of the orchard was ness, and away from time.
mourning the passing of summer. The cold of I had become so much a part of the mo-
the October morning stung the trees and was ment that I ceased to be apart from it. Time
drawing the life out of their fruit. I alone was stopped. Or, perhaps, the moment became so
there to share their sadness. Their sadness be- profoundly consuming that it refused to yield
came mine. to the next. And I remained with it.
Over the far edge of the trees the sun There are photos I created in that mo-
pushed the last shadows of the nyght away. I ment. When I look at them, I can feel what
turned to my left and followed a small ridge to I felt then and I can return to that moment.
a row of trees that all seemed bent and twisted Strangely, there are no words "attached" to
by winds that descended from the hillside. The those images. Just emotions - mine and those
sudden presence of the sun pained me as much of the tress - and experiences - the barkiness
as it seemed to pain the trees. My back turned of the bark, the bitter sweetness of the apples,
to the sun I moved further up the ridge across the dying of the grass - so profound and so
another decayed road. I passed a wooden box consuming that there is nothing that I can say
filled with apple trees that had been cut and about them.
loosely stacked. I ducked under a low hanging As I wandered to the edge of the or-
limb and moved behind another tree. My eyes chard, I found myself returning to a different
drawn to a cluster of apples hanging low, the world. There were voices of other people, and
morning sun breaking around them, I crossed cars, and somehow, I realized, I had crossed
the remains of an old road, climbed up anoth- the edge of the moment. I had stepped out of
er bank of ground covered in rotting apples the moment and back into the human world.
and dying grass, and sat behind the tree. Even As sad as I had been in the orchard, I was even
now I remember the cold wetness of the grass more sad that I had been taken from the mo-
as the sun wrapped its rising around the world ment, that I had returned to the detachment of
before me. As I brought the camera up to my the human world.
Autumn 2013 | 109
