Cherub or Seraphim
     He had a pair of wings on his back that were slightly ruffled. He quietly dug his toes into the sand. Looking down as a car sped by, I thought, "This must look awfully strange," and I cursed his ackward stance, his nervous cough, and those damned, ridiculous wings. They were white from far away, but up close, the feathers had yellowed slightly and there were traces of brown on the calamii. The barbules were mussed.
     The boy couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 years old, although in the desert sun, traces of age seemed to blend into the sky and road that, ultimately, blended into each other if you looked far enough out on the horizon. Heat waves bathed the pavement in mirrored ice that melted and iced over, repeatedly. It reminded me of a particularly hot summer in '84 when we drove through the Arizona desert. The thermostat in our Plymouth minivan read 111 degrees Fahrenheit, so we stopped for ice-cream, but it melted before we could bring the iced confectionaries to our sweat-soaked lips.
     I crossed my arms. He seemed to take that gesture as an inquisition and looked up at me, squinting slightly, but continued to nervously dig his toes into the sand. He was the modest sort, after all. I looked up for an answer. The sky was silent and impossibly blue. A reluctant breeze ruffled the boys feathers, which barely touched the tops of his dusty Levi 501s. Out of impatience, I reached forward and grabbed the boy's shoulders.
     "I can't help you if you don't talk to me." Trembling, he struggled against my grip, and several feathers came lose in my hand. Startled, I released him suddenly, and his stumbled back, landing hard on the dusty, road shoulder. I offered my hand to help him up, but he ignored me and rose clumsily. Sniffling silently, he gave three powerful sweeps with his wings and disappeared into the sky, leaving a trail of dust and feathers.
     I watched him fly away, and then turned back towards my pickup. Sticking a feather behind my ear, I walked around to the front to examine the damage. A shattered headlamp shouldn't be too expensive to replace, I thought. The basketball-sized dent in my bumper, however, would be another story. It's amazing how much damage such a little body can do to a pickup driving only 35 MPH.

Replies: 4 comments

beautiful.
Was it a dream?
It sure sounds like something straight out of a guilty gay psyche. Like mourning the loss over some type of lost innocence.

Posted by emmanuel @ 03/24/2001 12:18 AM MST

Emmanuel,

Your guess is as good as mine. It's a daydream of sorts, that seemed to represent a struggle I've been having with my own beliefs and spirituality lately. I feel stranded and isolated, spiritually. In my search for proof of life, though, I'm sure the answer is in front of me but I'm too blinded by my own pride to see it. That's usually the case, and it's been a long, trying journey, attempting to fix that.

Posted by Chris @ 03/24/2001 07:11 PM MST

woah. That's pretty deep. Hope you find that inner piece of yourself that you're searching for.
Here's my opinion, and I know I don't know you, and I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings.
Sometimes it sounds like whatever you're going through, you always try to get some type of lesson or answer from your experiences- like you try to rationalize some resolution from everything.

And I think it's great that you want to learn from life. But the fact is, life will never be about absolute truth, or answers. The answer might as well be that there is no answer- or at least no reply. And that we make up the rules to our own life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you can't believe in god, or love or whatever. Faith and truth are two different things; keep them separated. I think you should work at feeling comfortable with uncertainty- but still find some ground which makes you happy. But I don't think I'm making any sense. :) I may just be projecting my own fears and my own feeble attempt to deal with them to your own postings. Good luck on your thesis!
ps I didn't know computer majors had to do a thesis- what's it about?
emmanuel

Posted by emmanuel @ 03/25/2001 04:20 PM MST

Emmanuel,
My "thesis" is actually my senior project, in which I am building a compiler and writing a paper on it. Very tedious, and I will probably never use the skills I am learning from it, but it's a necessary requirement to graduate. As for your theory on life, I agree with you to an extent. I believe that anything in life can be construed to fit one's perception of truth, and that there is no definite, hardened answer to everything. The idea is to find the truth that works for you, and apply it.

Posted by Chris @ 03/26/2001 09:54 PM MST

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