In the following morning, the sun is so prominent that outside the glass windows of the classroom for the cours the sky and the earth are imbued in a freshening citron hue that heralds a moment of awakening. Not a jot of cloud is to be seen. Leaves between roofs in the near distance exhibit a realisation of the pastel hue; they shimmer and they flutter in unison such as they might in a jet stream up in the heavens. Is not this island in flying sail after all? Yet the walk to class has been glacial enough to leave the eyes streaming. This is some of the caprice that makes this city, this place, this construction, this reality painstakingly versatil. “Every day, be it ever so familiar, is a fresh act in the dramatic voyage of which we are part, of which we at times are keenly conscious, of which we at other times are ignorant in our daily ordered routines.” Vistas of skyscrapers open up from bending freeways and from streets ending in a very blue river, beyond which paler hills keep the company of mini puffed clouds; there is no sense more unique to the eye of the finitude and at the same time the munificence of space, the way in which it accommodates the inhabitants; and even the sense of its frailty as it swoops away to uncover much of itself, making those inhabitants privileged partners in a sailing quest that takes the character of a trip just under the celestial sphere. Perchance beyond that sphere when all is in silence and one is aware that something is moving.
At a crossing an avenue darts away point blank-straight in a manner so visible, so palpable, that nothing is hid to the view; and when the eye beholds a truly magnificent length of the street, there is a clock tower at its termination that seems to be on the street but which has really jumped across the river and planted itself upon a small island. Diagonally across at the crossing, the trees of the Parc ruffle their proud foliage which is nonetheless dwarfed by the brief but intense morning sky, as in a scene from the chequered start of a planetary life. Gracious Street swoops to the left and makes between itself and the street adjoining the Parc two enclaves of grass and tree that offer themselves to the lengthy steps of an ancienne bibliothèque with a lavish number of polished columns in its porch. Within the larger islet disciplined shrubs with buttons of colour encircle a manicured plot of many flowers, their tall leaves fading to the colour of ash in places such that they contrast most sharply with the red of geraniums, though the yellow of daffodils and marigolds and the topping purple spikes of a wort strike out in colour too, in addition to the multitudinous other petals whose names must be found.
When the sun is behind a haze it glows with its suppressed fire, restless to be free of the unctuous web that binds it, but content to rise slowly, throwing a faint rotund rainbow much farther in the firmament, the position to which one day billions of years hence it might expand and remain for a while in searching desperately for more reserves of its fuel. Though the glow makes its warmth known the cold on the ground swirls as the hours pass in the morning, assuming the character of a liquid that dissolves the members of the human body into its own constituent. The clouds invade the whole sky and descend to the earth. From the class, the tour of the stadium is eclipsed and Petit Mont Blanc appears as a faint mirage in a veil. A very black doggie trots with a swing ahead of her master in the path beside the rail tracks. Almost as if in a few moments, the mist begins to dissipate and, from inside looking out, one regards sunshine to the horizon in a clear air; greased urchins of cloud are present far yonder, just two or three, and they might well be the hanging smoke from the funnel of the coasting steamship upon which pioneers are embarked on an odyssey, a ship now arrived upon a vast new world redolent with the tinge of freshness and discovery, green, free, untouched and quiet until suddenly, from among the tree trunks, there appear whooping men with feathers on their heads, paint on their bodies and axes in their hands. “God, behold! This is what our mothers and fathers might have witnessed quite a few centuries ago when they arrived in their pinnaces!”
He believed that every thing partook of the spectacular if he only kept his eyes open; he found confirmation in this belief by the transition before his eyes from one dormered slope to another, each if not changing in form, then transforming in colour and certainly enriching the suggestion of a tale. Then going up an incline in the direction of Gracious Street, indeed trudging slow with shopping purchases, he passed by flowery plots of consummate variety and resplendent short trees blazing in their own colours; there were sun-drenched zinnias, daisies, asters, peonies and more along with bushes that were also vibrant if not royally brazen in purple, although some of the ground was being rolled up as if the season of fruition was already over. The street was empty and as the houses climbed up with the gradient, the sun stood to the left and was on a closer level with the eyes; the sheeting membrane was all apparent in the sky and this time the houses succeeded one another in a cadence lento, with each having a distinct bearing. The pirouetting dangles running along the tops of the dormers truly embellished the contained frames and the almost vertical roofs again held the eye; but it was the house walls with white intersticing lines through sharp bricks in low relief, and walls of sober, salient fieldstones, that now told stories in charitable chocolate, ruby and ash. They retold stories from a long time ago in which one was wondrously alive. “It is here, at such moments, in this city that I have chosen, that I am aware of an invested spirituality of the unique that is personal enough to capture the inmost pith of the happy side of my own spirit.”
Just some days after the reflections that set in motion this narrative, the yellow leaves of the cottonwood poplars that used to burn outside the classroom are browning and withering higher up where no shadow but that of cloud can fall. There is no cloud on this day. The boughs are white. Even before he watches more closely the motion of the leaves, the sense of their spread and colour against the white of the trees and the lustrous blue beyond is enough to wrench a cry. “Crisse! This is what used to set me all a-flutter and here it actually is! May the isolated roofs, clusters, ducts, smoke, yards, paths and fences over all the wide expanse before the eye, as well as the ascending aeroplane in the sky, retain their pounding novelty and never become banal.” The leaves about turn their faces a million dancing times upon the weakening fingers that still link them to their tree. Their dance is merry in a giddy and shrilly way as if farewells never had any sadness. Lower down, in the heart of long shades made by striding egg-shaped foliation and the crisscrossing blades of a broad-green maple, the rich sappy yellow still runs in festal abundance through much of the poplars.
very descriptive