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A Study of Moment

[ an excerpt from Book Six, 16 June 2003, ~1740 EDT ]

It seems that life, much like sound recording, is about moments.

I just returned from the studio to a quiet apartment on a warm sunny day. The relative silence of this place, the few sounds that keep it from absolute, and the quality of light are somehow surreal to me.

I entered the front door and, closing it, noticed a spray of colorful light on my shirt. It was the sun, hanging at such an angle as to refract through the peekhole of the closed door. I cupped my hand around the circle and slowly carried it across the room. It slowly dropped as I walked, and at the kitchen half-wall I carefully let it slip from my fingertips to see where it would land. Barely noticeable, it tinged the glass door of the toaster oven that sat against the back wall of the kitchen. A mere step away from the invisible path of the beam caused the subtle change of hue to vanish.

I put down my bag and walked around into the kitchen. Closing one eye, I turned my head toward the door and slowly lowered it in front of the toaster oven. Across the quiet warm-grey room, the dark alcove of the door suddenly filled with a tiny sunburst of color. The peekhole shone like a tiny star set within the door, and slowly I moved very gently, changing its hue. Green to orange to yellow to red, then back through the pattern to turquoise, blue, and fading violet, the little sun burned bright in the dreamily quiet space of our tired apartment.

For just a few moments I stayed, soaking in the pure colors hidden in the sunlight, one by one, and taking the image into my mind. I smiled to myself, at last standing upright.

Then, suddenly, my mind filled with thought. It was as if a floodgate opened, and in poured a small sea of concern without so much as a second to prepare. I found myself contemplating architecture and astronomy. I wondered if I should try to mark the spot on the wall, so as to leave a piece of curios for those to come: here is where the peekhole shines on such and such a day and time. I thought on my dreams of building a house someday, and if they will ever come to pass, and how I wish to incorporate such ideas into its design.

I thought about Kim, and about others, and if I should note the time or try to somehow capture the moment to share it. I thought on the perfectness of it all, of sight and sound and cool humidity, and I was suddenly consumed with the fragility of the moment. I was struck with a sense of stress over its irreproducibility, the trees, the sun, the weather, the door, and this evocative image still fresh in my mind. What was I going to do with this? Could I be content to simply let it pass?

It was only a few seconds, all of this thought, and then I tried to quiet my mind. Maybe this was just all that it seemed, a moment, one to experience and then to let pass.

This thought brought to me some peace, but also a certain sadness. Perhaps when I die, I will recall nothing of my hectic days. Perhaps the accomplishments and events, the milestone occasions we think so much of in life, will have slipped away like the parts of a dream that we cannot remember once we wake. Perhaps when my life flashes before my eyes, it will be only moments like this one, all simple, unplaceable images snipped out of my time.

I draw a sigh and prepare to close the reverie I stole to write, and my mind fills again. It fills with the long long list of things that need doing, and then with the larger undeniable intuition that our days will always have such lists. But last, it takes on the question of where moments like this one fit into the plan, and what, if anything, they mean.

In deferrence of the answers, our sight will shorten, and we will return to the matters at hand, dutifully and endlessly, in the hope that we might someday know why.

(c)2003 Joseph Mancuso. All rights reserved.

Last modified: 23 November 2003 (posted)