The sky haunts me. I am not afraid of it or disturbed by it or have nightmares about it. Who said that haunting manifests itself only in a ghostly, ghastly fashion? A beautiful moment – like the flickering of a lone, dying candle set within a glass jar – can also haunt you, no? Of course it can, I am sure.
And so, the sky haunts me. Because sometimes, when I look at it too much, it vanishes. Yes, I can make the sky disappear. Well, I am not sure if I do it myself or the sky simply becomes too shy with all my looking and decides to hide behind itself, but when I look at it too long, within a few moments, it is no longer there.
Maybe you have noticed it disappear too and know what I mean. What color is the sky? Yes, it is sky blue, of course. And it covers the entire dome of the above the ground, from horizon to horizon, it a radiating hue of blue. But look up at the exact spot an hour after sunset, and do you see any blue at all? No, the sky, the sky blue sky, is nowhere in sight. Instead, all you see is black or gray or nothing, but you do not see any sky blue. Where has the sky gone?
But this is for beginners. It never occurs to you that the sky actually starts its exodus as soon as the sun makes up its mind to set for the day, does it? That’s because it happens so smoothly and with such distracting fanfare that you do not even notice it happening. When the sun drags itself to its daily rendezvous with the faraway lands, the sky starts to gradually step backward. I suspect that the sun does it on purpose, the sluggishness with which it drags itself across the dome all day until it touches the horizon gives the sky ample opportunity to recede. All the while, as we romanticize this burning orb and the bursts of amber and purple and orange and green shadows it casts toward the heavens, the sky is gradually, smoothly taking steps back. And you do not notice, because you’re too busy enjoying the show. And once the sun does touch the horizon, it speeds up insanely and is gone within seconds. Before you reorient to seek the sky blue, it is no longer there, the sky is halfway gone… until the levitating moon and the diamond stars appear on the dome, as if having entered from behind the veil of the sky blue, just to entertain you and to allow the sky the final chance to slip by unnoticed. It is a trick that the conspiring stars and the planets and the moon play on us humans, one that has gone unspoken for too long.
As a matter of fact, you know how when you have not seen someone for a long time, and then you see them and blurt out an unsolicited “My, how much you’ve changed!” But if you had been with them always, you would not have noticed them change because the transition would have been so effortless, so minute, so unimposing? That is the tactic the sky employs when it submerges itself into the blanket of the night.
As much as I would have loved to say that is how the sky disappears for me, it is not. No, the sky haunts me, and it does so during the light of day, not at the twist of night. What I just shared with you above is just to tell you that you, too, have seen it, but maybe have never noticed it. For me, the sky disappears when I look at it too intently, whether or not it is resting on buildings or grass or asphalt or mountains in my frame of vision. I see it when I look up first, I admire it, but I must be careful if I look at it too carefully, because if I do, a few moments later it will disappear.
It happens, I just proved to you it does. But it has to be a certain kind of sky. A sky that has no clouds and is entirely in one hue of blue or just about. It can happen at any time of day, and at sunrise and sunset too because that is when you are too busy flirting with the sun’s ways. And when the sky exposes itself so innocently, goes completely bare and monotone and honest, that is when it vanishes from sight as if ashamed for being naked. It blends in with whatever it finds holding it up, even the balconies, or the hilltops, or the freeway, or palm trees. Yes, especially the palm trees.
Today, as I threw myself on the green of the Americana, I joined my hands underneath my head, felt the moist grass cool the back of my shirt, and started examining the dome. It was 7:54pm, and the sky was on its way out of the dome, I could tell. It was clear and virgin and simmering in gray-blue. My eyes started searching the vast expanse of slowly receding blue, swimming its warm aerial waters, unobstructed other than by the tree tops, the architecture, and the columns of water that would shoot up unannounced. The more I looked, the more sky poured into my eyes. I glided over the half-moon that had pinned itself onto the zenith of the dome and had become flush with the endless ocean surrounding it.
I must have looked too long, because when I looked a bit longer, the sky was gone.
Chronicles 