First Frost

Midnight skies cross the void, causing festive merriment and crusting the grass with one million dancing, singing, laughing stars. This night, first frost inverts the world as the universe crunches beneath my shoes. I'll puff out white clouds of stilled adoration before cold bones and screaming blue fingers blind my sight with apathy.

I went to a concert known as "The Rounds," a collection of artists brought together to make a larger whole. I watched dozens of artists celebrate the beauty of the world. Painters painted, poets spoke, and musicians traded songs like playing cards. I was, in every sense of the word, audience to the art created by camaraderie and collaboration. My seat as observer grew increasingly uncomfortable as all my senses stayed tuned to the beauty before me. By encouraging artists to play and collaborate with each other, relational dynamics form and further separate the distance between performer and audience. We observe the budding friendships, secret love affairs and artistic rivalries, understandings and misunderstandings that grow in the stage light but quickly fade and die with the approaching day. Rather than interaction between performer and audience, we sit entranced and slightly voyeuristic at the artist/artist bonds. This left me with a feeling of guilt and shame. Why could I not be with them? What sets me so profoundly in audience- in waiting- while others so joyfully and beautifully arrive?

The stars are set like diamonds in the sky. I know this image and set of words has been placed together before Petrarch and Shakespeare. However, this realization does nothing to take away from the ever growing beauty of this deepening night. Sometimes the best thing to be said remains in a silent acknowledgment- a brief nod from my end of eternity back to the giants of art and expression. I like to think they nod back. That way silent understanding can sit in the space of thousands of years and on the first frost of the season, stars can be diamonds.

Would I- if my arms stretched high enough and my fingers proved as strong- would I pluck those diamonds from their thrones and store their beauty in my pockets? Would I put them in my mouth and suck them down like hard candy in an attempt to infuse inspiration into the fibers of my being? Could I call myself an artist, a writer, at that point or would I need a whole bucket of twinkly, lemony jawbreaker stars to ease this nagging appetite of insecurity? Perhaps I am the force separating myself from the stage and given the chance to make my soul fly, I clip my wings for some unknown and driving fear of rejection.

Fear can make an audience of artist. I attend wonderful performances and enjoy them, but am left feeling unnerved, as if a desire so deep and strong is awakened at the mere suggestion of art. Restlessness drives me to a bar at 12:00am. I sit scribbling to candlelight, drawing inspiration from stars distant through foggy windows and courage from a brimming glass of pinot noir. Here in the deafening noise of pop music and pick-up lines, I can be artist, or writer, or anything at all. The anonymity spurs me on to greatness.

Perhaps the fear of becoming is the yawning, lethargic shadow friend that remains ever looming. The fear of, not becoming something narcissistically outstanding, but distinctly myself. Instead of stepping past the shore and into the waves, I find ways to distract myself. I choose one relationship after the other to define the bounds of my existence but am left bitter when my universe is too small. I open up within another's world where things are safe, predictable, not alone. I give myself completely and wholly over to outstretched and pulling arms for a solid eight months before resenting the embrace I not so long ago thought safe. I shudder and cringe at the weight of limp arms. I stop eating in an attempt to disappear from a reality turned nightmare. I run away, leaving behind an empty, wanting embrace that I once filled. I vomit the cycle like wine from my pores. These aged dreams stink like cheese I've never liked. I am single and unnerved, standing at the brink of the unknown. Greatness? Ruin? Truth? Dare I step beyond this shore and into the dying night?

The waiter announces last call. Is this my last call? Guys struggle to secure the phone numbers and nightcaps cumulative of a night's work. I listen and watch. I am the awkward, quiet girl, sitting in a bar during happy hour- writing. Even here, I am audience, watching people pass and placing myself distinctly outside normal. Perhaps my anxiety comes from balancing one position of audience with another. I listen and watch. I read. I lose myself in the lyrics, lighting and staged laugh of performers. Maybe I need to break the limbo like bread dipped in wine, all in feet first. Maybe I need this last call and one more glass of pinot noir. After all, nothing is more futile or finite than a lack of alcohol.

I stand here, at the brink. Should I remain solidly ashore or ease into the ocean, black with night and filled with crashing waves and sirens' voices? I feel closer to the stars when swimming but danger looms among the rocks. I have been told this truth in stories fresh from my birth. Waiting, waiting, waiting...

I step out of my car and into the lawn, realizing the grass is alive with millions of dancing, singing, laughing stars. Grace has brought the skies to my feet when my arms fell short. Here, in the first frost, can I dance among the universe of dreams and forget the what-ifs and why-nots of cemented and crusty habits. In the sparkle of the sky above I imagine a thousand giants- Shakespeare, Keats, Steinbeck, and Lewis- cheering me on with twinkling eyes and brimming smiles, whispering a lullaby to guide me through the crushing rocks and waves.