Night of Freedom

awake & linking : Orion Magazine | posted by Shaun O

The latest Orion Magazine has a splendid article sitting at the Coda - A Window, by Hank Lentfer.
He writes,

"If I were imprisoned in a windowless cell and allowed out for just one week a year I'd choose seven days centered in September.  I'd come home to my Alaska-cabin-in-the-woods and clean a few pounds of spruce needles out of my neglected kayak, oil up a fishing reel, pack a three-day lunch, and paddle upriver.  I'd float to the top of the tide, tie the boat to an alder, and follow the bear-shit-splattered trail up stream.  I'd sit on the wet grass, listen to the rain tap away on my sou'wester, and watch for the deep flash of coho in a dark pool.  I'd then pray for luck, unwrap a sandwich and wait. 
The luck I'd pray for and the answer I await is the voice of cranes.  ..."

And he goes on to tell the beauty that the cranes impart to his life - opening windows in dark cells.

Tonight I've simply thought, what place and time would I want to be released to for a week?  Where does freedom from a cell take me?
I'm disappointed that my own experience doesn't lend me to foretell of careening up streams in my kayak, following wild bear tracks ... And, honestly, I'm hoping that my answer might be different in the next five years.
Tonight my answer wades back to high school days at church, and specifically to one night.  (I'd be interested to read other's answers in comments!)

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It is a Sunday evening in October in Irving, TX.  I am part of a worship service called the "Union" at IBC, and somewhere in the closing set of worship songs (there would be a ton!) ... I slip out and down the dark hallways of the rest of the empty church and out the doors to the kids' playground.  It is dark, streetlights in the distance, and after walking the grounds of the playground a couple times I finally sit on the small picnic bench at the edge of the environment.  I pick up the tiny pebbles at my feet, dismantling pieces of the playground floor, and I talk to God. 
I really talk - cause God is really there; I am not praying.  I aim a fiery monologue at the starry sky, and though the expanse is huge - planets and firmament, clouds, airplanes, rooftops and trees - I still know (beyond knowing) that I am heard. 
I have a moment.
At some point later (because time simply has no meaning at all now) I say goodbye.  I drop, toss, and fling the gravel and pace slowly back inside and back to the rest of life.  The group heads to Braums, or Nate's, or everyone simply goes home.
And I  spend the week trying to live up to what I dreamed and promised (and was promised) on that night. 

That would be my week free from windowless prison.  Free for that open night of back and forth and meaning and change on the dark playground. 

Comments

[Richard Carpenter]

Shaun, your release from the cell is ironic. You escape from the church service in order to gain the freedom to talk to God. Not surprising.

My escape from the dark cell would lead me to a certain rock in Oregon. I can't recall the name of the lake, and I didn't have any deep thoughts or epiphanies there. I was just there. I was completely there. I laid back on the rock with my feet in the water. Looking up at the clouds I listened to their stories. I even laughed at their funny faces and felt a sense of foreboding when they turned sinister–but only for a brief moment.

Time was powerless in that place and in that moment–powerless because I paid it no attention. I wanted nothing, needed nothing, cared about nothing. It's not a place to live in, but the perfect place for a quick escape from the dark cell.

[Reagan Pugh]

If I could will it,
I’d have seven days of
subsequent mornings.
Each one I’d take in a different place,
time slows down that way.
I’d have my dog with me,
he’s quiet and in the waking dawn he knows
that we both need to think alone. Him about
the importance of securing an
invisible territory with his urine
and me about the man I’d be if I could only get up earlier.

I’d think about things and hope to remember
where I thought about them. So that
someday when I re-trace my morning places-
car-seat heavy- I can point my kids’ bobbling heads
to the right and say, ‘That’s where your dad
decided to take his first job’ and point to
the left and recall, ‘One morning I talked out
loud to myself from that fire hydrant, all the way to
the end of the street.’

Then maybe I’d slow to a stop and put
the car in park and turn back to
them and say, ‘Whatever you do,
wake up before the sun. Wake up to see
the morning bruises on the sky. Hear the
first bird song and smell the night-water
heavy in the air.’

[Richard Carpenter]

"the night-water" Brilliant Reagan. As usual.