"Who Understands Me When I Say This Is Beautiful?"

Hello, everyone! I'm back ready to upload another story. This one is one that is closest and most precious to me. It was inspired by the poem Who Understands Me But Me? by Jimmy Santiago Baca. This story was created not only through this poem, but through many personal experiences as well. I wanted it to be human and real. I wanted it to be deep and mysterious, but relatable. I wrote it originally as part of my book, but now it has become a story of its own. I hope you all love it as much as I do. With that, enjoy.

*changes made June 28, 2012

"Who Understands Me When I Say This Is Beautiful?"

Sometimes as I look across the sea, I think about before, when the world was dark and time stood still. They say the earth cried out, louder than it ever had, but there was no one there to hear it. They say that we were lost. 

But the light came back.

And ever since I was a boy, I’ve heard that story more times than I can count, and still I wonder if I completely understand.  But I couldn’t forget it even if I wanted to.

And as I watch the waves, the words come back and I see it all again. I close my eyes and suddenly his world becomes mine in the morning dawn.

That day, the sound of rain touched him, but it was different.

It called to him, and he could hear every puddle, every river, every drop that slid from the tin roof to the clay flower pots that sat outside his door. But instead of pitters and patters, he heard whispers.

They called his name quietly as he lay in bed, watching what little light there was play upon the ceiling. He tossed and turned as he tried to ignore the still small voices that echoed from the trees to the tops of the eastern mountains.

   

They called until they sounded like one and he knew as he opened his eyes that he had to obey. He peered out the window and that’s when he saw them—small streamlets of water that gathered in the cracks in the pavement. He watched them and was mesmerized by them; they were headed somewhere.  He craned his head in a desperate attempt to follow them, but it was in vain as they ran down the street and out of his view.

He quickly pulled on his dark green gym shorts and his black running shoes, and walked outside. “Ill listen,” he whispered to himself more than anything. No one heard but no one really needed to. He knew it was time.

As he began to run, raindrops pattered gently on his face and trickled down his chin. He could feel every one. And it made him feel more alive because they made him feel like he was part of something bigger. He began to jog slowly at first but as he gained momentum, the rhythm of his legs and arms pulsed with the beat of his heavy heart until every muscle moved together, in perfect syncopation.

He ran until he found the rivulets of water that trickled down the silent streets and alleyways, past squat wooden lean-tos, cheap metal mail bins, and the brick factory where the sick and wounded were kept. His eyes passed from the shanties to the tattered streets; for some reason, beneath the drops of rain, they had never seemed so broken.

They say it hardly rained back then because of the all the smog. Ever since the war began, the gasses from the bombs had drifted like fog across the country, floating across the tops of ponds and hanging from the shutters of the wooden shacks that lined the empty streets. No one ever took the time to know exactly what it was, but it smelt of sulfur and rotten food. It would creep into the cracks in the walls until you could smell it even when you slept.

When he passed the only living trees that grew within the boundaries of the city, a lone line of peach trees, he watched how each raindrop stuck to their delicate, pink blossoms, and as the water sparkled in the light, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to run forever and find a place where even the sulfur couldn’t reach.

He followed the rivulets to the edge of town where decayed grave stones dotted the ruin that was the Outer Rim of what used to be the greatest city in the western hemisphere. The grave stones watched him silently through fallen buildings with names almost as old and faded as those etched upon the granite tomb stones. The rubble of the past lay strewn about the land, filling in the gaps the concrete no longer could. But he had not come to remember.

The rivulets of rainfall pushed their way through empty streets and forbidden pathways, somehow finding each other until they were not rivulets but small streams that flowed toward the eastern mountains. It was miles away but he wasn’t afraid. He was determined to follow them to the end. So together they pushed past the Outer Rim and into the countryside. He barely noticed as civilization passed away and was replaced by wide, spacious wheat fields. Their golden arms waved slowly, as the wind passed between each one, but nevertheless, they waved as one—like a sea of gold that lapped gently against the road. In front of him loomed mountains, green with lush vegetation. They called to him, and he heard. It was all so beautiful but he wasn’t there to enjoy it—not then. He knew he was running to something. But was it something he had lost or something he had always wanted? A part of him hoped with every part of his being that she was at the top of those mountains waiting for him. Just maybe she had been there all along, knowing he would find her there one day. He smiled at the thought, but he knew better.  He wasn’t sure what he would find, but he knew it was waiting.

An hour went by and the mountains drew closer, growing larger by the minute, and the road began to narrow. He knew he was the one running, but it seemed like he was being drawn in.

As the rain began to fall harder than before, the rhythm of his own feet helped him think as he passed through seemingly unending golden oceans with tiny islands that held brick cottages afloat. He thought of his mother and father, his child hood dreams, the war and its victims. He dreamed of their faces, even those he had never seen, and he gave them details so that they seemed to live inside him. They each had a story, a life, a family, and every night he would find them again just so he could look them each in the eye and say that he was sorry.

He looked up at the clouds and he was sure the sun blazed behind them, threatening to seep through any crack at any given moment. The grey seemed determined to hide every inch of blue, every hint that there was something better behind them.  But he knew that it was only time.

No one seemed to believe that one day the war would end—they didn’t even believe that it could anymore.  But he wanted to believe. He had to.

As he neared the eastern mountains, his thoughts turned back to when he was about eight or so, back to the first time he controlled the light. He wandered away from the family campsite to chase a blue jay; he had never seen one before. It was only for a moment, but when he turned back, both the campsite and his parents were gone. He tried to retrace his steps, but it was to no avail. He was lost. He wandered for days through the forest, starving and thirsty, until he pled with the stars. It was night then—how could I forget?—it was night, and he looked up to them because they were the only lights in the darkness. “If I could only borrow just a part of them,” he thought, “my parents could find me.” So he pled with them with the heart of a child, and as he lifted his hand into the sky, their light rained down upon him, like shooting stars, until he wasn't afraid anymore. The search party found him that same night because they had seen the lights in the sky, and when they came together, they all wondered what it could have been. But he knew and could never forget how the light came to him, warmed him, healed him, just because he asked it to. And from that day on, he would always ask and it would always come.

But not anymore. Not for years. Not since the war.

His thoughts drifted to the mountains as they called to him again. They had grown so that they now towered high above him. As he crossed from field to forest, he ran with hundreds of streamlets up into the mountain. They ran apart now, but still together upward toward the same destination. He followed the trail that led him only up into the forest, deeper into the trees and the life. He was the only thing that moved besides the rain that blanketed the shrubs and brush beside his path. He felt like he had been here before. The trail was ancient but its pathways were unlimited and uncounted, the majority untouched. But somehow he knew where to go. Had he dreamed of this place? He couldn’t quite explain the feeling, but he knew that he was so close.

The tall Tamerron pines began to get closer together as the terrain steepened. Never had he smelled air so sweet—it made him want to breathe deeper. Everything contributed, from the pines to the wet earth to the small crimson snapdragons that watched him as he ran by. Like the rain, even the air made him feel stronger and more alive.

Pressing forward faster than ever, he climbed until finally the trees began to thin. But there they reached to the sky almost as if asking for something. He ran until the trail leveled off right before the top of the mountain, and he watched the path curve through the trees until it was out of sight. He stopped to catch his breath and peered out into the forest. It was almost warmer, but how?

Then slowly, almost cautiously, he followed that trail around the bend and could not help but marvel at the sight.  As he lifted his eyes, the trail became grass, and the grass became the water of a small mountain lake that lay hidden between the giant Tamerrons and the shadow of the peak of the mountain. Grass and trees surrounded the water on all sides, except the farthest on the opposite end. The water was so close to the edge he felt that it could burst out at any moment from the mountainside like soup in a broken bowl.

 “Is this the place?” he thought.  Why here? He craned his neck to clouds that stood ominously above him. The lack of trees allowed the rain to fall unobstructed so that the tiny droplets fell harder and faster than ever onto his clothes and skin. They crawled down his chin and fingers and jumped from his nose to rejoin their comrades down below. Or were they brothers?

He always pictured them as prisoners—prisoners locked in an iron cage until they could be held no longer. But maybe they weren’t prisoners at all, he thought, as he stared at the sky but in a different way than he ever had before. Maybe they were sent for something. He closed his eyes and only felt. He hadn’t felt in so long. Then he heard them. “Look," they whispered. He looked at the lake, but it seemed like every other lake that he had seen. “Closer,” they urged him. He looked again and moved closer to the edge where the water delicately touched the thick carpet of green grass that lined the lake. And as he looked, he saw that it didn’t look like water at all! As the raindrops fell upon the lake, it seemed as though they didn’t sink or stop or disappear; instead they danced and jumped and tugged softly at the small branches and lazy mallard ducks that drifted to and fro above the backs of other busy raindrops. He had never seen so much life. And as he watched them, he was filled with wonder because it didn’t matter whether they tugged or twirled or simply moved—it was always together, always as one.

He looked around and saw the streams come from all sides, some from above and others from below, but all ran with one goal, one purpose. They came from every direction just to be a part of the same mountain pond.  He didn’t understand how they all knew, how they were all born with the same desire to be together. They looked so strong that he was sure that if he stepped upon the surface, they would carry and support him. So he did. He stepped out onto the water and walked because he never doubted that he could. And as he walked, he asked himself a single question: What if we were all like drops of rain—caring for each other, making each other strong, and knowing that we can be a part of something so great it seems like it has no end? Even to these raindrops, this pond must seem infinite to them. Together, he thought, there would be no end to the good mankind could do. He looked beneath him at the beings that pushed him further toward the center of the lake, and wondered if they were happy. He hadn’t seen true happiness nor felt it in so long. Tears mixed with rain as he remembered his hate and fear, his pride and selfishness, his fear and bitter loneliness, the war and the death. He remembered them all. “How could we possibly fix everything that we have ruined?” he thought. When so much was unfixable and broken, how could humanity possibly save itself?

Once again, he looked up to the heavens for answers. “How?” he pleaded.  As he spoke, they whispered to him again. “Look,” they said but he didn't understand. He thought he had already seen everything there was to see, so they whispered it a thousand times in a thousand different ways until he finally looked out across the lake where the trees stopped and the sky began. He saw the sky and earth run until they ran together and looked like one solid seem that went forever, undivided and indivisible. And for the first time since the war began, he saw in the distance, past the steely grey, that there were no dark storm clouds—only blue and white and sunbeams of brilliant yellow that pierced through iron, bursting forth from behind all form and color. They shot across the sky reaching for the horizon.

In that moment, he understood that it was the light he had lost so many years ago that had sent those streams to guide him there. So right then and there in the middle of that lonely mountain pond, he raised his hand like he had done so many times before, but this time wanting and waiting. Pleading and hoping. Willing. And as he closed his eyes, the wall of cloud and grey parted and sunlight dripped from the heavens onto his cheeks until it bathed him. It washed right through him and drove deep into his soul. The light poured onto him, surrounding him in warmth and washing away all the tears the pain had caused. The pain was so deep he didn't think anything could ever reach it. But the light was stronger and deeper, so when he let it in, it went straight through, illuminating even the darkest parts of him.

That day he met his anger and his hate, his sadness and despair, his fear and confusion. He spoke with them and let them go, let them wash into the cool, dark pond. And as the soft light of the sun penetrated the cold of skin and soul, he laughed like a child—so hard and so pure—and for the first time in years, sunlight came out of his mouth like the greatest beacon in the night. If only for a moment, there was no darkness on the earth as the world watched light rain from the heavens like shooting stars and remembered, once again, why no one ever had to be afraid.

The war is over now, and that story has become legend. They say he made it all right again, but I sometimes wonder how they can be so sure. Even now, I listen for the raindrops that called him to the eastern mountains. Perhaps, one day I’ll hear them too so they can take me there.