The Element of Transformation

The first time I remember, I was floating.

When the inevitable happened, there was a sudden rush and everything swooped downward. The float and all its peace were replaced with other things, some soft and some hard, all of them cold and exposed. The infinite comfort from before was gone; the messy reality replacing it got everywhere and I felt chills in places that normally don’t exist. I don’t remember much else, merely the overall feeling that I had arrived without knowing what had been agreed to. Once, it happened when my mother was in the kitchen making dinner. I wanted to know what was going on above me, to see where the fun bubbly noises were coming from; but then there was a scream and a crash and a strange odorless smoke that filled the air. Then came the pain that moved along with the hard pumping in my chest. It radiated from my arm like it was trying to bust out.I thought it would be there forever and though mother assured me it was only an accident, eventually what remained was a large blotchy mark that told me not to go into that room whenever I looked at it.

One time I saw it falling from the sky; I thought it looked angry because it tried to swallow up the sun. It came with more loud crashing noises that obliterated what I had heard that time in the kitchen and big flashes of light that could never quite seem to find its target . I thought it was going to break all the windows and carry off the toys I had left in the yard, foolish and impatient the afternoon I had neglected them. When I woke up in the morning, the sun was still gone. Many other things had changed and I couldn’t see through the windows anymore, though their panes remained intact. Against my protests, my father opened the door and disappeared into a blinding light that froze the air in my lungs; a quiet that muffled all sounds of the world. My questions then were numerous.

How could a light be cold? Where could the light come from if there was no sun? Why wasn’t he as scared as I was? What had this thing done to the world while I slept? What would it all look like if I dared to sleep again?

On and on these fears raced through my mind, even when he came back inside. Eventually, the mystery light faded and things began to make noise. Birds began to chirp and I could see the sun again. The windows were clear, and my toys were in the yard as I had left them, if a tad soggy. I was still afraid when the sun went to sleep at night, but my parents told me that it was always going to come back no matter how many times the sky got angry at it.

The sun was really bright one day in the summer so we decided to go out for a picnic. When we got there we were surrounded by clumpy brown sand that felt hot against my feet. I remembered that time in the kitchen, but the thumping in my chest stayed put this time and there wasn’t any pain. The sand was surrounding it too, wide and dark in its expanse. Except it didn’t look angry this time, it didn’t threaten to break the world around us. My dad walked me out on a long stretch of wood that hovered over it, so I could get a good look without having to touch it. The slats creaked while we walked and beneath our feet and I could hear it lap against the wood from every angle, anxiety spiking as I was utterly unable to see anything.

When we reached the end of the dock, I remember looking down and feeling bewildered. I saw myself, I saw my dad, I saw the entire world above me, perfect and still; but I was looking down. I tried to exclaim that this was not the way of things and my dad laughed. He grabbed a stick, abandoned by another previously curious child, and dropped it on the image of himself below. The image shattered. The stick disappeared along with all those other perfect images, and everything I was looking down at changed. It became distorted and moved in ways I didn’t understand. The stick had broken something on the surface, disturbed all that lay beneath, and instantly I began to worry that it would become angry as the sky had done before. A few moments went by and all was as it had been. I still didn’t understand. I threw a few more sticks into the perfect pictures that day, inserting my whims into the delicate space where the sky meets the earth and trying to piece together how it can all come apart while remaining solid. Every stick disappeared just like the first one, taking their secrets of the world with them. I never saw them again.

Years went by and I slowly began to grasp the reaches of this phenomenon. It can be cold and it can be hot. Both solid and liquid. Transparent and blinding. You can take it into you if you like, and it will leave you whether you are happy or sad. It lives in the sky and in the earth, even in me though I try hard not to think about it. It can bring destruction and relief. It is the most powerful force I have ever encountered, and I spent so much time appropriating the amount of respect it deserves, though it remained a daunting task.

There was one more day, much later, when I was not so afraid. In a place like the one where we went for our picnic. But this place was bigger, louder, and what stretched out far beyond the sand seemed infinite and felt entirely consuming if you looked at it for too long. It was not calm and perfect this time. It was thriving and full of life; it moved freely with a force that could dissuade any argument, and a part of me swore it was begging me to join it. It danced and sang all on its own, and it was putting on a show just for me. Perhaps finally, after all this time, we could reach an understanding. For the first time in my life, in the face of this thing I had long feared and never understood, I did not hesitate. It welcomed me persistently forward, its fingers in long crooks that folded in on themselves only to be instantly replaced by more of its welcoming brothers. I walked to its embrace and it rushed to my feet, as if relieved I had not stood it up for the evening and eager to make up for past mistakes.

It ushered me forward and worked its touch up my legs, wrapping itself around my hips, and clinging to my torso as if it had always meant to be there. An odd sense of security was enveloping me with it, and I began to feel something I had long forgotten. In trying to place the memory, I didn’t immediately notice when my feet left the ground and was swept further and further from the sand I had contemplated this decision from. It was now wholly supporting me within itself and offered a power I could not combat. The funny bit about it was that I didn’t feel the urge to try. Where there had once been panic and utter dread at the thought of its wrath was a sudden calm in the midst of its comfort. Thoughts of a devoured world and a sun held captive were back on the sand, replaced instead by an ineffable sense of peace and certainty as I fell back and allowed the crooked fingers to crash over my head. To carry me away from what I’d always known and feared. To cleanse me to the very bottom of everything. To wash away all the things I’d never need. All it asked was one thing in return. I gave it the air in my lungs and in return it gave me the universe. The price to pay for the one thing I had always wanted to understand that seemed the most unfathomable. Transformation. Then, just like that, and all at once:

I was the stick my dad had thrown into the picture, assimilated once I broke the surface.

I was the toy left out in the yard, wrapped secure in its embrace.

I was the sun that it had swallowed, awed by its might.

I was floating.