The Palms' Panorama

Head forward. Now do a 360°. Unless possessed, you’re better off using your feet, not neck. But whether or not you’re of this earth, do your spin slow. Don’t think about it, your eyes can move on their own…

Did you get a good shot?

On a “normal” day, I spin around a thousand times. Usually I’m hasty about it, like a wound up doll: quarter spins, half spins, counter and clock, jolts, trips, never a full braked stop. There’s nothing rhythmic about this three-legged dance, done on the daily by everyone I know. If we were cameramen, we’d never catch a solid shot, every detail nothing but periphery fuzzies and flashes.

Then there’s that picture above, taken with feet planted firmly on the ground. Though the pride of my camera roll, it screams nothing special. It’s a photo in a deck of dozens far more exciting and happening. It’s what you reach for when you need something to scribble down a phone number. It’s the view outside my window, removed from the corner of my eye to center stage.

Captured is the Californian sky that hovers over Disneyland town. You can even see the fireworks from here, that’s how we know it’s 9:30. When I was little, I’d even plop on the hood of a car and watch the whole show for free.

Funny that I’d work there years later. Funny that’s where my last “normal,” spinning day took place -

March 13th, a Friday. Not exactly lucky, not exactly unlucky, rather some in-between called meant- to-be. It’s the day we let out for work due to Covid. Ever since, I’ve been catching a few more Z’s and with that came the freaky dreams. The most vivid of all being of the big blue void that takes up 80% of the landscape pictured above.

I was outside my house at around 5’o’clock, dreamtime. I don’t know why these golden afternoons have so deeply imprinted themselves within my subconscious. Perhaps it’s the peak warmth of the sun that I felt so physically as a child, and so exclusively in my eye as a grownup. It was a familiar hour.

Up until that point, the frames of the night’s dream were cut so jaggedly, so hysterically, it was as if I was choking on some gluttonous nightmare. So when it cut to the image of my mother, clear and still and lifelike, I was awake in knowing I wasn’t awake.

She was across the street, in front of the rustic red-roofed houses. She smiled, as if in treasure of a good secret, and then pointed to my right. I had a crisp view of the palm trees, just like in the photo. That’s when the wind picked up, and this fleet of birds zoomed in. Powerline pigeons, probably. Talented ones at that. The finesse with which they twirled is the envy of all jet pilots. They welcomed evening with this air show, the sky then turning its moon-ready blue. Oceanic almost. Maybe that’s what made the birds decide to transform.

Into fish.

With one last dive, the birds splashed into the sky and disappeared. In their place, mammoth dolphins and whales flung out as serene as their counterparts. Perhaps a symptom of this cosmic glitch, the wind then rumbled. The palm trees, violently playful with their branchy, wildman wigs, whipped the hard breezes directly to my face.

They say joy is met with a glimmer in the eye, and before this, I thought that was nothing but a metaphor. Have you ever felt these glimmers form physically? My unconsciousness managed to fabricate a good likeness - it felt like tears, but instead of dropping, they burst into vapor like fireworks. A few breaths of all this, and then I woke up.

My room’s under renovation, so I’d been bunking on the couch right underneath the windowsill. I sat up and got a good shot. Whenever I stare straight outside, good focus in both eyes, I’m always shocked at two things:

First, the clouds move. A simple fact, so simple I guess it’s forgettable. Secondly and more importantly, I’m stunned by the little beads of light bouncing everywhere. They look like the dust and scratches that appear in old film reels, rupturing in and out of picture. Simple sunlight refraction, or maybe a sign of poor eyesight, but my real fascination lies beyond any diagnosis. You see, this phenomenon makes the sky, and everything in it - the houses, powerlines, palms - seem much, much closer. Actually, it eradicates all notion of distance. The view outside my window becomes just as real a reflection than any mirror can provide.