- Vol. 08
- Chapter 01
Bridal Veil
Bridal Veil. Was that the name of a waterfall? The name came to me sometimes in the morning. I couldn’t remember what exactly it signified and I felt like the reason might be that I no longer flew: I no longer sat thousands of feet above and looked down, listing, remembering, naming. No, I thought, I was—we were—at once squarely within the present moment and totally unconscious of that fact. Like flying, but few of us were flying. Time moved weirdly and that was all we talked about. Can you believe that was in February? Can you believe it’s only been a year? Today feels so long. But at the same time, people had always been saying things like this. Right? Maybe the fact was that we no longer were able to lift ourselves above it to make fun, to stand at an edge and look down. Instead I felt an ongoing hurtling, and I drove as if on autopilot, around my small town. Anyway, in my memory, Bridal Veil and Baby’s Breath combined into one kind of thing. Vague and white and made of many little dots. A waterfall, a flower, a constellation? I knew, but I didn’t. What I could remember was that the world flew with these kinds of funny names inside which sat slightly mundane realities. Or, not mundane. Just real, and mainly unrelated to their soft and loving titles.
Everywhere I read signs that the world was ending. I tried harder and harder to remember. I read up on maple syrup production (diminishing). On fires (growing). My boyfriend and I kept trying to watch a movie about honeybees and failed every time to want to watch it badly enough. A sharp vagueness of purpose. Lots of little dots. Downtown in our small town I saw other dog owners do the same thing I did: stop, bend, scoop, tie the bag with an unnecessary flourish, as if to say thank god that’s over with.