<( * )( * )>

I walk back up to the top of the cement structure, shivering, my fingers so dumb from the cold I can barely manipulate my camera. What do I need? I need to feel alive, to work against my hesitancies, to see myself as part of any scene I stumble onto. Because frankly, often I feel I don’t belong, that I’m better off doing a chore, hiding in the oblivion of service because the prospect of being a true individual brings me face to face with my unique mortality.

As I reach the top, there’s a sticker on some bars that reads, “YOU ARE STILL ALIVE” next to a Dia de los Muertos character, all skeleton but with fleshy hands and a hat with a flower. Even after all the fractions and dividing, trading and bits and pieces of myself, my capacity for death like a trade secret in my back pocket, I’m still very much alive and looking to the world for clues about how to live.

On the way back to my car, I see a black pattern on the cement, like solar rays from a black sun. What emanates from emptiness? And over there, a golden and black bottle of Solar Seal #900: Here are the tools I need to put everything back together.

When I get in my car, buckle up, my friend Toni texts me. “The Brenke Fish Ladder is a place fish go to mate since they can’t mate where the dam is. There’s nothing to see now. At this time of year, it has no purpose.”

I turn the key in the ignition and notice a building in front of me. It’s the equivalent of an ancient elephant, weathered and storied with gray, cracking skin, barred windows. It looks like Jasper John’s painting, “In Memory of My Feelings–Frank O’hara.” I find myself drawn to the yellow rectangles of its windows and glass panels behind the bars. The top left window, some parts of it even look pink, lit up by some brightest part of the sky not visible with the human eye. To me the sky just looks gray and absent, but the pink window is proof that a brightness exists, which can only be observed second-hand, with a scientist’s tool, slivered reflection in this old building, a sign of hope.