The narrow path was breathtakingly beautiful. Not an in-your-face playboy bunny kind of beautiful, but a gracious old-worldly beautiful. Deep pink cherry blossoms shone through veils of lighter pink and white. The black car that stood there looked alien and yet, somehow, it seemed to belong. Perhaps I remember that afternoon pastoral scene so vividly years later only because it seemed so perilous at that moment.
The car didn't move. Did it have inhabitants? Possibly. The butterflies seemed to avoid sitting on its bonnet even though they fluttered all around it. The world around it seemed hushed as if bracing for an explosion that has been long awaited but did not seem forthcoming. The world tiptoed around the car and sometimes seemed to swirl around it quite brazenly, like a gambler who bet it all on 22 black, twice! Expecting disaster to follow and somehow almost surprised that it hasn't. And the world around the big black car possibly felt the same.
Possibly maybe. The train lumbered on and left that glade with the narrow path behind. By the next time it returned, the big black car would be gone. The world around it would have been changed. Would it unfold with violence like a scene orchestrated by Takashi Miike or dissolve away slowly into dreamscapes reminiscent of Terence Malick's films? That it would be unchanged seemed unthinkable. There was just too much tension in the air - the hint of that all too still air just before a terrific storm hits!
The car didn't move. Did it have inhabitants? Possibly. The butterflies seemed to avoid sitting on its bonnet even though they fluttered all around it. The world around it seemed hushed as if bracing for an explosion that has been long awaited but did not seem forthcoming. The world tiptoed around the car and sometimes seemed to swirl around it quite brazenly, like a gambler who bet it all on 22 black, twice! Expecting disaster to follow and somehow almost surprised that it hasn't. And the world around the big black car possibly felt the same.
Possibly maybe. The train lumbered on and left that glade with the narrow path behind. By the next time it returned, the big black car would be gone. The world around it would have been changed. Would it unfold with violence like a scene orchestrated by Takashi Miike or dissolve away slowly into dreamscapes reminiscent of Terence Malick's films? That it would be unchanged seemed unthinkable. There was just too much tension in the air - the hint of that all too still air just before a terrific storm hits!
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