This piece explores the idea of freedom through the classic symbol of the sky, and uses quotes (italicized) from Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
As we all fiddle with our pencils, double-checking to confirm that they are of the No. 2 variety, that we have erasers, that our cell phones have been turned off, there is nothing more to be done than to wait for time to crawl past, so that our ordeal may be over.
Outside, the cloudless blue sky eludes us all, as though flouting the whole world, particularly our myopic mind-sets that we peer through.
Settling in, there were jokes thrown around about the range of activities that we were able to do upon completion of the exam when time wasn’t called yet. Checking the test for perhaps the sixth time was an apt checkpoint, though sleeping, singing, and all other great, fun activities were prohibited.
I suggested looking out the window.
Of course, I never got around to it, spending my time repeatedly checking my answers.
The splendor of a poetical sky was full of mirth, laughing at me from the shadows of my vision.
It is early afternoon as my friend and I walk by the Hudson River, where “sunlight on waves [is] drowsy tinsel.”* The glittering beads scatter among the yellow-green waterscape as they are directed by the winds. New Jersey peers over from the other side, looking as undistinguished as New York has ever perceived it.
This part of the sky is an intense azure, unmarred by white, as the sun makes its descent. As we walk toward it, we move farther away from the section of sky so densely concentrated with gray clouds that sunlight could not filter through. Such was the divide between cloudy and clear, as we walked along its boundary.
To stare into the unblemished blue sky is to stare into the depths of infinity, for there is nothing in that blue that could be retrieved that the mind could attribute to solid form. It held layers and layers of colors, denser deep down and lighter and lighter toward the enameled surface, allowing us to lose ourselves in those depths.
There is a plane heading into those depths, out of our reach. We stare at it, straining our eyes, trying to hold that white dot within our sight. In the end, the plane still eludes us, becoming indistinguishable from the blue.
We blink some more and laugh it off.
How happy those days were. How free, how full of hope. There are none left now.
The sky from my room is a caged bird, its wide expanse contained by black bars and insect screens. The glass on one side of the windows is translucent, with patches of unidentifiable gray matter spread upon it thinly. My desk is placed right next to this view, alongside a much longer table jammed behind it, leaving only a narrow aisle for my chair. When the chair faces to the north there is the desk meant for work, with nothing on it; when it turns around there is the table with stacks of books piled upon it, meant for escape.
I sit on the ladder, despite its failing legs, reading, despite my obligations to my schoolwork. I gave myself deadlines, which I would extend.
Waiting for a new self at the bottoms of pages, I seek epiphanies from the novels, something to bring into my life. Schoolwork is never fulfilling. On some days I could be full of motivation, seeing the tedious tasks as just one step to complete the higher goal of education. However, most days this is not the case.
I can never seem to get myself to my desk to even start my work. I know that if I can take that first step, everything will be much smoother sailing. When I watch shows on my laptop my eye is constantly monitoring the clock. Somehow, even as I know of my duties, I can ignore them so easily.
Let the succession of identical days occur. There isn’t much I can do about it, anyway.
I read on, not thinking about all those bothersome issues of reality. If I’ve read everything, will I find the better details of the world? Is there something intrinsically worthwhile in humanity I could cling to, something in myself, that could be discovered in novels, that allowed myself an excuse for my action?
But how can it be easy to express an uneasiness so intangible, one that changes shape like a cloud, that changes direction like the wind?
The sky holds so much beauty, indulging in my need to seek something beyond what modern life can offer. A cloudless sky’s endless depths beckon to me, allowing me to become lost within them, so that I may cast aside the troubles that plague my reality. The ceiling of the world is a relic of the past; sometimes I imagine New York as it had once been, heavily forested, as the sky engulfs my vision. The night sky is my refuge, where I am free to do as I wish for those scant hours of darkness, before society demands I enter again.
Such is the sky’s comfort.
*From David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green.