Young Lady in a Garden (#2)

Young Lady in a Garden

I suppose I should go about this chronologically, in hopes to make my indistinct experiences and emotions of the past year and a half somewhat coherent to human beings… perhaps even to myself. This style of recounting seems a little too elaborate for a blog, yet too casual for an autobiography… however not everything will naturally fall into society’s norms and expectations, as you will soon have demonstrated. Sometimes there are outcasts – obscure and inconvenient bodies with minds like dissonant music, who explore fishbowls shaped like Postmodern sculptures.

The first three or so months after graduating high school were the happiest days I have memory of. I would sleep in and watch the summer nature outside my bedroom window for endless minutes. Both my parents worked the usual nine-to-five hours, and my younger sister attended school weekdays, so during the daylight I had an entire house – no, an entire universe – to myself. I was the empress of my sunny, sunny fishbowl.

If only you could have seen the garden that summertime. The colours and textures and smells and sensations of that vibrant outdoors… as if all the Impressionist painters of art history had flourished their heaven-sent brushes at once. I lay on the garden’s brick pathway with a coffee mug in one hand and a book in the other, soaking in the sunlight and blue skies like a love-drunk hippy.

I had all the time in the world.

One day I did nothing but watch back-to-back science fiction movies. Why, you wonder? Because I could . Because I hadn’t been able to do so before. I was free spirited and in love with life. Gone were the abhorrently decorated classrooms and repetitive lunchbox food. Gone was my friend group of half-hearted co-dependency. I had reclaimed the fishbowl of my simple, nostalgic childhood, and I was not about to let go.

So naturally, when the summer ended and my dad gave me two options: work for him in his home solar energy business or go out and find a part-time job, I chose the former. Not because I was ready or willing to work, but because it was the closest thing to staying home. And oh, how I adored staying home!

You see, I thought that dramatic tension could only occur with more than one character involved, but I was soon to discover that life is perfectly capable of dishing out drama without extra cast members.

Summer slipped away, and I am reminded of a quote from the science fiction movie Blade Runner , of which I watched during this time:

“I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."