In the Beginning

First chapter of A God Named K

Chapter 1

 

                        It smelled like ever Easter Sunday morning back home. Cold air hiitting grass and trees causing the mist to quake inside itself, each water droplet shivvering with the impending reality of evaporation. Gray life began to return to its corners, slipping into the cracks in the concrete and into the thin space between leaves hanging heavily on the trees on the other side of the parking lot. Wet asphault, earth, and water. Lots and lots of water. So much water hung in the air we were standing inside clouds.
             My hands clung to the railing, my face growing damp with the air and mist that continuously churned below. The cold metal was slick, reacting to the heat of my hand, growing warm beneath its sheen. I was holding on so tight the space between my hand and the metal left no room for moisture or cold. Trying to look disaffected I would only hold the bar with one hand. One had to appear aloof so no one would see how tightly I grasped the railing.
My heart raced, the weight of my camera bag felt heavy against my hip. Thick brown leather from an earlier time hung there, beaconing. Remember this moment, it said, Open me and record this forever. Looking at the bag, feeling the hair on my arms raise with the realization of how important this must be, how impressive, all I could think was that this, all this, must mean something, but I was too stupid to figure it out.
            I unzipped the heavy zipper removed the camera from the bag. Sighing, I looked around at my mother, brother, and cousin. I reluctantly released the railing and stepped back. None of us were speaking, but none of us had to. Something about this morning was important and defeating. None of it made any sense to me. Two days ago I was standing in my room picking out the best outfit I owned, staring into the mirror trying to pick out the best parts of me to look at and deciding whether or not to wear the glass beads my mother gave me last year or the gold leaf my aunt bought me at the natural history museum. Today I was standing on the Canadian side of Niagara falls, ready to throw everything that ever mattered into it, but afraid of losing myself in the noise too.
           I took the camera and put it to my eye, grazed over the scene, millions of gallons of water moving in a kind of organized wave of destruction from one height into depths unknown. I wanted to find something in this. Significance, an explanation, another clue somewhere on this spiritual scavenger hunt? Something to end the grip of adolescent sorrow that wrapped itself around any explanation I tried to give myself. Thin strings of doubt knotted themselves around every vein, every muscel and gripped them tighter and tighter. If I were older maybe I would have had a healthy dose of cynicism that might have protected me from the blind trust of something as certain as smoke.
           Pointing the lens deep into the falls I focused and took the first picture. Click. I had held off taking any for two days, hoping for a very specific reason to use up all my film, but it seemed completely pointless to save it any longer. Two gray birds emerged from the mist below as I zoomed with my telephoto lens. Fighting for air space, they danced in and out of tufts of mist rolling and dissipating in the emerging morning light. Up, down, circling and releasing, they rose and fell in a complex dance against the churning water. Click. They flew together in a way that mimicked a photo negative of two moths and a very large flame. They flew carefully, challenging the air to move them to a safer place. Click. What was the point of it all? I wondered. Two birds, playing very close to that which is both awe inspiring yet could end them with the right pitch of wind. Is that what I’m supposed to learn? Click.
            God? Do you hear me? What was I supposed to learn? What am I supposed to learn?
            Click. I wanted it to be meaningful. The whole damn thing. The two birds crossing paths with eachother in the giant well of the falls, bobbing in and out of the massive crashing mist, the fact that it was early morning. The fact that it was May 6th.
            So I raised my Pentax MC Super to my eye I tried to catch them. They would be the only two things I would photograph in the last two days. Because I was saving the film for something else. Certainly not two birds swinging themselves together out of the giant basin of Niagra Falls. But now it seemed pertinent to record this, even if I didn't understand. The exceptional place in an otherwise unexceptional weekend. What I was looking at was the greatest movement in the world, but why did I feel like I was standing perfectly still, and gradually falling in?

Author's Note

I have a few writing styles in this initial chapter, what I am looking for is for what you like, what you hate, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I am looking for specific strengths and weeknesses in this. It's true, so often finding an appropriate place to begin is difficult if it's your own story. So, yeah, please don't hold back. Thanks! Hailey