Glass House

part 1: My Bodyguard, My Love

Here at the inlet, where the jungle river gives way to the lake, the water turns almost to mud. We pedal the boat under the canopy of trees and wildlife, pushing the oar through what seems to be blackened oatmeal.

The sky is a still, dense grey and it always seems too quiet out here. Nothing lives in these waters. Well almost nothing.

Its a continuous struggle to pull the boat thru the thick brack, but the closer we get to the little island in the middle, the more anxious we grow to get out of this boat, this haunted awful lake.

The island is a skeleton of rotting a wood, the remains of an ancient oil derrick. The wood has become smoke colored and slimy from the fog that rises from the lake. Everything is slippery, and the higher you climb, the slippery it gets.

We tie the boat to one of the four main posts, climb across a makeshift stair case that used to be a ladder, and set upward along the skeletal remains of this old wooded structure. This is where I have built my glass house.

This is where she came to me as a martial arts expert, a ninja you might even say.

I was roaming along the inner hallway, around and around the pillar of televisions, each of them tuned to a different station. I don't know what I was looking for, I think I may have been afraid to leave the house and confront that black awful lake. A few times that I had tried to go out, I had slipped on some of the more precarious limbs of the oil derrick. I slid until at the last moment I could grab onto something, but found myself teetering over the water, hanging on for life. Looking directly down I could see it bubbling under the surface, just waiting for me to fall.

So I roamed, stuck. Around and around with a pad of paper in hand to jot anything down, and a list of things I had to do.

The televisions, all wrapped around the middle of the house, began to synchronize. It happened slowly and it took a while before I really noticed. They weren't all playing the same show on each set individually, but one continuous program that wrapped around and flowed from set to set. I walked slower, noticing how the broadcast seemed to evolve with my movement. I knew which show it was going to be.

I turned paced around the sets, the background became a landscape of grass and hills, and then there it was.

The small purple rodent-like incarnation of the one supreme being of the universe. It emerged from under some of the bush, quietly and almost imperceptible at first. I was standing still now, watching as it crept out sleepily and started to sing its sad, sad song.

Long strained notes, lilting, yearning and nearly silent. The beings eyes rolled heavy in its head, as its body began to transform. Its outline began to appear a glowing, rainbow of neon as the being became cartoon like, and then appearing to shed its entire skin, exposing a new shimmering skin underneath. It continued to transpose and metamorphasize as the song grew in volume. Ever sadder and yearning. The background around the being blurred and stuttered in flash cut animation. I stood before the vision with my arms reaching toward it, hands up turned catching tears in my palms. I realized I was crying.

From elsewhere in the house, there is a crashing sound. The vision suddenly stops, all the televisions are showing separate programs again. I compose myself and set off in the direction of the crash.

In one of the side rooms, she is standing there, looking excited yet pensive. Smiling, but hopping from foot to foot, arms in a readied stance. Like she was eager to see me, but ready to attack if need be.

"Hi", she said, still hopping. "I noticed how easily someone could break in here."

I look at her, perplexed and dumbfounded. I survey the room, the floor is littered with broken glass and for some reason- pills and pill containers. Odd. I wonder about this for a few seconds, distracted momentarily away from the girl.

"You should keep me around," she draws herself back to my attention. I notice the radiance of her face, a brilliant joy under the short, bobbing back hair. Her eyes dark but kind. "I could keep you safe here. You might need some protection."

My bodyguard, my love.

She relaxes her stance. "I saw you watching the small purple being. Im sorry I interrupted it. Have you seen it often?"

"No", I reply, shaking my head. "And I think that was the first time I've seen the beginning of its song"

"Its so beautiful," she seems to speak from far away now,"I wish I could hear the whole story. I seem to only catch it im glimpses."

"I have some of it." I tell her. I cross the room to a glass doored cabinet, inside are stacks and piles of video tapes and discs and various sorts of recordable media. I rummage through a bit, glance at a label here and there, trying to discern the contents. "Its so hard to capture, its seems almost endless, ever changing".

"We should go to a party", she says to me suddenly, "There is a band playing on the other side of the oil rig."

We decide it safer to cross by boat than to try to navigate the terrain of the ancient structure, with its cat walk of planks, and sea-sawing beams, dead and decaying at certain parts, sure to crumble under foot, or lichen covered and impossible to grasp at others.

On the opposite side of the derrick was a platform, I believe it was once a dock for ships. It was mostly intact and was beginning to fill with people.

There was a large boat on the lake, just far enough away from the platform to discourage people from trying to swim to it. On board, a band was setting up equipment and trying to get a sound check.

Above the platform, the gigantic wooden statue of an oil rig rose high to where it became obscured in the clouds. It seemed almost living, a grotesque and mangled organism which sprouted random limbs, blackened dead wood jutting out here and there, rising in the sky.

Some of the branches seemed to reach out over the lake, almost over the boat and the band. As the first notes began to crystallize into music, and the sound check slowly gave way, grew into a song, a few excited fans were trying their luck, inching precariously along some of the farther reaching branches in an attempt to get closer to the band.

A few of the less fortunate would lose their grips, or find themselves clutching to a weak branch which would suddenly snap. They hurtle down toward the water and hit its surface like fruit striking the black oatmeal. Boats were positioned adjacent to the party, scurrying about to gather these poor souls from the lake and whisk them back to the platform. After one fall, they would stay put in the safety of the crowd. No one wanting to be alone on the lake for very long.

We stood there, she and I, and listened to the band for a while. It was not so much a song they were playing, but a sort of growing cacophony, gaining momentum and volume as layer after layer of sound was added on to the mix.

"Let's try for a better view", she said to me.

She motioned to a tower next to us, sprouting out of the water and rising high up into the air. It looked like a haphazard totem pole. Blocks and planks of wood placed one on top of another. We began to climb. As we got higher up, the whole tower began to sway, I was beginning to get nervous, but followed diligently in the footsteps of my bodyguard.

Each step of the ascent became more delicate. The tower was stacked like a cup on a saucer on a cup on a saucer etc, etc... On its own, it stood reasonably stable, but to try to grab a hold of a portion above was to risk pulling the whole structure down.

Eventually we reached a height where we could jump easily from the tower to a sort of look out deck that still remained intact, part of the ancient oil derrick.

We stood up there alone for a while, away from the crowd and most of the noise, the sound of the band swept up with the fog rising from the lake, here it thickened and prepared to join rank with the clouds just above. We sat overlooking the band, the oil rig and all the people below, the lake and the land beyond on the horizon. It was a magic moment, swaying in the wind, embracing our souls together. We said very little, just taking it all in and enjoying each others presence.

After a bit we decided we should get back down.

She leapt from the little deck to the tower without causing too much of a stir. My heart, however, was beating a mile a minute. I had forgotten how high up we were and how scared of heights I was. I trembled and froze.

I tried to reach out to the tower, touching it for a minute with my foot, sending it wildly out veering dangerously in the wind. I quickly recoursed back to the safety of the deck.

"You stay here", she said, "I will go for help". And she nimbly descended the fragile tower.

Seeing her disappear below me, my fear of heights was over come by a dread of being alone, of losing her.

I leapt from the deck to the tower, trying to scramble down to catch her. I fumbled and lost my footing, and suddenly the whole structure was leaning again, tilting, veering violently out above the back water. I dug my nails as deep into the rotten wood as I could for fear of falling. But the tower jerked once more, violently, and I lost my grip.

The wind swept me up as the tower slipped away, my hands waving and clutching in vain. I was falling, plummeting quickly toward the water. I cringed in utter fear now, helplessly watching as the black awful lake rose up to meet me.