“No, that’s not the mystery. The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself?…Look out there. A fall afternoon…with the peculiar gold light that fills the sky when the first wedge of Canadian cold air slides like a crystal prism under the Gulf…Look at the golden light.”—Walker Percy, Lancelot
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He said he wished to help her with her stories, her writing, but how? Annie wondered without arrival of an answer but in her absence of knowing, she held open to possibility and inspiration.
In the change of sun from morning gold to mid-day height and on in fall of arc in return to world and departure beneath its western line when night and stars were given turn to light, show, and shine.
Annie sat on a bench overlooking neighborhood street as cars and pedestrians passed, the sun hinting over rooflines of homes and through trees still cast in summer’s green.
In rest, Annie reached for a book she had carried with for her rest and time alone. It was an old book, old in the way only modern books in a post-modern age can be.
Post-modern, what was that? Can anything that follows modern—state of the living present—have life? Is such—post-modern—really a sophisticated synonym for death? Maybe that was the reason they always seemed lifeless and depressed. Sure, modern art and literature held plenty of the same, but there were still vestigial signs of life and spirit and beauty of an arcane order.
Annie contemplated to herself on labels and eras, past and present, and futures unlived and unseen, then returned again her attention to book.
It had a cellophane wrap over book sleeve cover and a white tag on the spine with printed letters and numbers, designator and label for place and demarcation upon public shelf. It’s pages were yellowed, even in years of rest and obscurity. Light and time work on everything, even bodies and entities left mostly alone and forgotten.
On first opened page, there was a card of black and blue and even green stamped dates on lined and orderly card. It was a due date card for when such was the modern means of tracking books.
The card was a story in itself, the life of a book; and Annie lamented in some absurd way of sentiment that the post-modern, technologic reign, of literature and records had lost use and practice of this accenting and artistic means. The post-modern, in its desire to be beyond the modern and living, lost expressions of life; and isn’t that the purpose and encompassment of art, especially in story?
She looked on the card, lamenting the little and simple loss of life’s expression in modern day; then a change became.
While looking on the card, its colors and dates, months then years, then a young lifetime of abandonments between, inspiration appeared and a story wrote in mind.
She imagined a story, lovers in later years, and an anniversary gift that spoke in means of a love language that they shared.
The gift was a card, just as one on which she gazed and mused, and stamped—lovely and colorful, smeared with ink touched too soon in moment of eagerness and living energies—were dates that marked as defining moments and memories to a life written and made together: their first date, first kiss, engagement, marriage, children, children’s weddings, grandchildren, and more; and at its bottom remained blank lines for moments still to live.
As she envisioned encompassment and way of the story, a levity came upon her spirit. She vowed, one day, to write the story well and true.
In her daydreaming from bench with book in hand and opened over lap, an elderly couple passed in the becoming golden light of eve. Annie smiled, waving with sign of civility and engagement—not even modern, classical, in a post-modern world—and she was answered in reciprocated gentility, urbanity in an urban world; romance of a way it all once had been, at least in the ideal.
Annie smiled on the elderly couple as they passed on and away under golden light of eve. Watching, Annie wondered on her own future: how it would be and with whom she would walk when her own golden eves of life arrived.
It was another romance, feeling of life, to consider; that she would write one day in act of her own living.
She thought again to the story of the card, a warmth in her heart to the touch of thought in mind; and she smiled at the way inspiration so often touched and showed when one held open to its possibility.
It was a beautiful story even if, then, it was only starting of a seed planted in mind and waiting for time and condition to root and rise and bear its fruit to show.
She stared on the colored ink, stamped lines and open space, touched in inspiration and a hope.
In the gold of eve and beauty of thought, levity turned to joy.