Solstice Sunsets
by Dan Belanger
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
I realized, then, that the year of life streaming between those solstice pearls was the string that connected them to each other. All the answers that we needed could be found there if only we could remember the questions.
“Can possibilities become realities at the intersection of hopes and dreams?” I saw you query in the next time bead rolling towards me on the kitchen floor, “and, if so, can realities become dreams?”
“Can the dreams dream the dreamers?” I asked, as if furthering the thought in the next bead that caught my eye.
I remembered, then, that it was between these two moments that the mysterious letter from Fitzgerald appeared, but it was not until after I asked in a subsequent moment if dreams can dream themselves that he actually appeared on our doorstep.
“Father!” he cried when I opened the door, “I’ve come home.”
“Who are you?” I asked, feeling suddenly dizzy.
“What do you mean who am I?” he said, looking hurt. “I am Fitzgerald, your son.”
“I have no son,” I told him.
“But of course you do, Ozzy!” he replied with a nervous little laugh. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
“Are you responsible for writing the letter that caused us so much pain?” I asked.
“Why should my letter cause pain?” he asked.
“Because we don’t have a son,” I told him again, but the hard, cold truth of my words no longer rang true. Something in reality was changing. Answers to the questions asked at the solstice were beginning to take shape in the time in between.
It occurred to me as I stood there looking at this stranger who professed to be our son that the solstice sunsets were time clusters of true existence, while in these in-between moments, we were only marginally aware, saying and doing things without really knowing why. During these in-between states it seemed like we were dreaming, moving about the world in a semi-conscious state.
It was during the in-between time that I began to dream about a post office which handled communications between various incarnations of the brief moment of true existence. In one of these recurring dreams, I wrote a letter to my son who was born into another version of the moment. In a subsequent dream, he wrote back. How Fitzgerald’s letter found its way from my dreams to my mailbox, though, I had no clue.
“Has the line between dream and reality somehow become obscured?” I saw myself asking in the next time bead that captured my attention as it rolled towards me. “Is Fitzgerald the son that we never had? Is he our dream come true?”
I remembered, then, that, for a few minutes following the rapture experienced at solstice, I went through a coming-down period in which my awareness was still somewhat sharpened, though dulling precipitously as I descended into the oblivious state of the in-between. I started to suspect, during the come-down that followed this particular moment, that the solstice questions were infused with a special kind of energy.
It was an energy that seemed to flow from a universal life force, transforming the questions into conductors that generated answers.
All questions are actually answers written backwards, I mused, not noticing that I was rapidly sinking back down into the sea of confusion that dominated the waves of time crashing between each solstice.
The confusion of the moment of first meeting Fitzgerald soon became mixed up with all the other confusing moments there. After a while, I forgot all about it, and it was as if he had always been there in the time in between.
* * *
It was during the coming-down time following my next passage through the door that I realized I was forever passing through the door, forever entering the fish shack, and forever arriving in this moment of coming down.
Time is not passing, I thought, but permanent. It’s just that there are different versions of time with different outcomes in each version.
In one version of time, we had a son named Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald’s letter found its way from my dreams to my mailbox when I knocked over my memory jar, and the time beads hit the floor. They started rolling, some careening off each other, some colliding. As those that collided smashed up together, they mixed realities, creating new versions of the moment from which the future and the past rippled like a stone-plunked pond.
The sudden appearance of Fitzgerald, then, was a recurrent consequence of the mashing together of the solstice time beads.
How trippy is that? The man who made the magic window that made the time beads entered our lives through the time beads that his magic window made.
It was the key question that Fitzgerald himself asked in the next time bead that I saw rolling towards me across the kitchen floor that inspired me to write down everything that has happened since his arrival.
“Is the Earth’s survival predicated upon our demise?” he asked.
My immediate thought was that yes, the earth would be better without us destructive creatures. The more I learned about the multiplicity of time’s permanence, though, the more I started to wonder if we might not somehow eventually find a future in which we humans actually help the planet to survive.
I realized, then, that the glittering beads strewn across the floor before me were not made of time alone. Each bead also contained a place in time, a place that was comprised of this beach, this sky and this ocean.
“Now that Fitzgerald exists,” I said after snapping out of the trance induced by the glittering time beads, which I gathered up, and dropped back into my memory jar, “we should take him for a walk.”
And so we all stepped out through the enchanted doorway, and walked together down to the water’s edge.
“Place makes the moment,” said Fitzgerald, as we stood there watching the waves crash, and recede. “Without place, there’s no presence and, without presence, everything ceases to be.
“Every cloud in the sky, every drop of water in the sea, every grain of sand on the beach is an integral part of our time on the planet. This is our place in time. Our only taste of eternity. This time and this place is here just for us. A time and a place where we can dream.”
We remembered, as we strolled down-beach, all the good times that we never spent together until we found this version of our moment.
We recalled the blueberries that we never picked in Beach Forest and the amazing muffins that you never made with our blue harvest.
There was Fitzgerald’s first day of school, teaching hm how to swim, and playing catch on the beach.
There was adjusting to the knowledge that Fitzgerald identified as a boy even though he’d been born a girl and realizing that it didn’t matter at all.
There was the way that we somehow found to get the funds to send Fitzy, with scholarships, to MIT. There was the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the tech business that Fitzy opened with fellow MIT graduates.
* * *
A few days later, as I was placing the memory jar back on the window sill, it once again fell, spilling the time beads across the floor. When the beads that, with their collision, brought him to us, careened off each other to roll in opposite directions, Fitzgerald was lost for a time.
Our minds re-entered the dimension in which he did not exist. We lived without Fitzy until the fallen jar time beads, bouncing off each other like pool balls, crashed together again, and brought him back to us. This rime, after gathering them up and plopping them back into my memory jar, I screwed the lid tightly onto the jar and successfully placed it back on the window sill.
While the second spill was a major annoyance, I came to understand through this experience that family was not just a matter of biological connection. There were intersections of time connecting us all, not only to each other but whole hog to the multidimensional universe itself.
It was a big family. And Mother Earth was our closest relative.
So we went out again to walk together through the dunes. But with each new day that we walked, we saw the sunsets grow dimmer. The skies clogged up with smoke from distant forest fires, and super-storms lashed our beautiful coast, destroying most of the plant life. As the climate continued to change, whole species of birds, insects, animals and fish ceased to exist. The mighty and majestic whales that once filled our waters were rapidly disappearing
* * *
“Have we been dreaming all these years?” you asked as you stepped over the threshold during a scorching solstice sundown.
“We have,” Fitzgerald solemnly replied, “but our dreams have not been without merit.”
“Maybe not,” you said.
“Of course not,” Fitzgerald said. “Dreams, when operationalized with science, can achieve the most amazing things. Of course those things aren’t always what we would have expected, but that’s okay. It’s the unexpected consequences that keep us dreaming.”
On the next summer solstice, as I walked over the threshold, no questions came to my mind. Instead, the room fell under the spell of a deep silence cast from the glance of my magically opened eyes. We all knew in that moment what we had to do. So, dusting it off after taking it down from the window sill, I opened the memory jar. The glistening jewels that I had gathered over the years shone brightly as I very carefully picked them up between my thumb and index finger, appreciating each one’s radiant beauty before passing it along to you and Fitzgerald.
“It’s time to give back,” Fitzgerald said, breaking the silence as he pulled a rickety kitchen chair over to the door, and, climbing up on it, began gently guiding the time beads back through the transom whale’s spout.
With each bead given back, the environment improved.
Once endangered eagles soared above the yellow beach strand. Osprey and egrets winged over vibrant marsh land. Foxes foxed in the late afternoon. Rabbits hopped through the sandy dunes where the grasses greened and the wild roses bloomed.
The rich biodiversity of the Atlantic Ocean was rejuvenated, generating an abundance of oysters, salmon, clams, and scallops. There was bioluminescent blue tear plankton, brown oar weed, pink jellyfish, and purple sea urchins. Striped bass, lobsters, and bluefish abounded. There were dolphins, squid, swordfish and sealions. And there were whales. Thousands of whales. Right, fin, minke, and humpback whales once again dipping and diving, spouting and splashing, swooshing and sailing through the clean green sea.
Since you’re reading this now, you’ve obviously checked your inner Inbox, and found my little message to you sent special delivery, straight from my heart, through the post office of forgotten dreams. So now when you re-enter the forgetful in-between, you’ll remember, and find peace.
Copyright © 2023 by Dan Belanger
