Museum “Eye in the Sky”

“All my life I have been attracted to sunsets. It isn't unusual. It isn't strange to enjoy them, but there has always been something about them that has felt less like something I simply enjoyed, and was instead something that I felt drawn to. I would look up into the sky, and I would watch the sun dip lower and lower. And though this would bring about night, my least favorite time of the day, I would still feel invigorated.

The sun was at its largest, or at least looked that way. The world was cast in the orange yellow light, and the sun would stand triumphant in the sky, bearing down on the world with one final hurrah, before dipping below the horizon.

It is true enough that the world was not losing the sun, that it was simply being hidden for a time, but still there was a symbolism to it, a feeling of strength that drew me to it.

I enjoy sunrise, but sunset feels more defiant.

And sunset was what I thought I saw today.

Today I wasn't feeling very well. I had perhaps pushed myself too hard or was simply feeling a bit too restless. And so I went down for a nap, though I am loath to do so during the day. When I woke up, I looked out my window and saw a line of clouds, with a small break in it that fit the sun just right.

We have all looked upon such a thing, imagined an eye in the sky, and perhaps even seen it as a vision of god. A sort of whispering of intent, letting us know before the night came that they were watching. And such a thought is something I no longer believe in, compelled as I am to dismiss childlike things.

But as I looked upon this particular sunset, the sun blazing in that small gap in the clouds, I realized that some part of me wanted to believe that it really was god looking down upon us, that it wasn't just a sparse, strange, atmospheric state that left things looking mighty and full of judgment.

The arrival of sunset has been something that has been building sooner and sooner in the day, and sometimes I find myself driving home, only to have the sun dipped below the treeline instead of blazing in rich glory. I have been keeping track of it.

And so I looked at my watch.

It read 10:30 PM.

What I saw in the sky wasn't the sun.

But it was bright enough to look like one.

I used to love sunsets.

And maybe I still do.

But not today.

The thing in the sky was glowing.”

I waited for the rain for as long as I could manage, but in the end I had to go to bed.

I had work in the morning.

I thought I heard it as I fell asleep, but some things we experience linger only a little bit, and I needed more than a mentioning, more than an introduction to feel right and sound. I couldn't tell you why the rain matters to me. It isn't just because of my father and our ritual.

That much I am sure.

When I was little, mom and I would go out and jump in puddles or build dams by the storm drain. She was always so excited to do stuff like that, to make it clear that although I didn't have a sibling to act as a playmate, that I always had my mother.

Sometimes I think I hear her, when it is late at night and I am falling off to sleep. It's less a whisper, and more a murmur, a sort of slight promise that things will still be alright in the morning.

And...

I really don't like to think about that morning, but I suppose there is a time for everything, and with everything that has been going on I suppose it is better that you hear about it now, and are not be left surprised when it comes out on its own.

I haven't tried to keep it from you. I hope you understand that. And even though it's been years, I don't think things like that ever really go away.

We get better, even if the situation doesn't change.

That morning, mom and I were supposed to go out for drinks, to celebrate one occasion or another. If you asked me to, I am sure I could remember. But right now, all I can remember is the morning. And like this morning, with the ground still wet and the air crisp and heavy...

Like this morning, it started off with me making coffee, and a sensation that something important was missed or forgotten, but that there was no way to know what.

Until they knocked on the door.

I have told you about the state of her body, about where it had been dumped, but the reality is that the thing that affects me most of the time is the way that information was granted to me, the way that I was left unsure of how exactly I was going to respond, or should respond.

They told me that they had found my mother. Found. Like she had been missing. I had been off at school for a while, and so I had only gotten home the night before. I didn't know she had been missing. When I asked my dad about it, he told me that he hadn't wished to worry me with it.

Even at the time I knew that explanation was bullshit.

“We have found your mother. She was discovered by the sinkhole of the old cemetery.”

In less than an hour I was identifying her body.

Dad never came to pick me up.

Maybe if I had stayed there, at the morgue, watching over her instead of walking home in the rain, maybe then I could have protected her. Maybe I could have let myself get a little better than I have been.

Maybe I could have stopped someone from taking her body.

Now I can't go to her grave to talk to her. Now I don't know how to talk to her. I don't believe in gods, even though I do. I do but I don't, because if there are gods out there they are not good for worship. But I don't really believe in gods, and I don't really believe in ghosts. I know even if my mom's body were where we had placed her, that I still wouldn't be talking to her.

Somehow her body being missing makes a mockery of it all the same.

I've started talking to her in the dark, before I go to sleep.