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The Plough And Orion
Rich Butler | | | | | |
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When I was thirteen I told my English teacher I planned to be a
writer. He didnt exactly take me seriously and I cant blame him. At that
age I wasnt interested in words and their meanings; for me books were
like deserts, dry and devoid of any real life. I didnt believe that a
string of odd shaped marks could describe the way the seashore smells
first thing in the morning, or the way a caterpillar scratches as it
inches itself inexorably across a leaf. I wasnt a very good student. I'd
spend the lessons staring bleakly out at the hills. Those hills seemed
like mirages to me. They seemed to shimmer in front of me, all dark and
tempting. They were the Welsh hills, the hills of my Grandfather, and of
his fathers. They seemed timeless, eternal. I used to imagine dinosaurs
striding over them in the days before the scars of telegraph poles and
barbed wire fences. I'd stare at them all day trying to pick out the
lonely houses of people I knew and the tumbling streams by the long soft
grass. There were tiny villages lost in those hills, with churches the
size of garages and strange vowel-less names. It was a foreign world to
the grim refugee camp of a school in which I spent my days.
The only time I really loved school was when it rained heavily
and the water would lash angrily against the window panes. I'd watch the
individual drops as they descended the panes, deflected by and curving
around invisible objects, competing with each other for speed and then
slowing down, joining. For a moment they'd kinda embrace each other,
then they'd split and be lost, like lovers losing each other at train
stations. I always imagined that this strange imitation of life was what
should be in art galleries; not dreary imitations of landscapes which
told you nothing, but the lonely dance of water on glass. Those days I'd
wait for lunch time with even greater anticipation and when it came I'd
sit alone in the old art block; steaming up the windows as I watched the
fierce droplets attack the puddles, and the way the puddles absorbed
their anger and grew, engulfing the areas where other children played
and talked. When the rain stopped the air seemed new and pure, as though
the stale boredom of the playground had been washed away, and Id often
miss my lessons, just kinda sitting there and breathing, all happy and
warm inside.
But despite my lack of interest in school and reading I was
serious about being a writer. I still am. Maybe one day Ill achieve it.
Then, it always seemed an honest profession, perhaps the only one where
a lonely, hopeless dreamer like me could work and be honest to himself
and the world about what he was. I saw the way other people absorbed
those funny marks on the pages and the way books affected them, and I
wanted to influence people that way. It was kinda like I wanted to tear
open my heart, pour it on the page, so others could see that I existed,
that I was real. I wanted to somehow express that tremendous awe I felt
every morning when I opened my eyes and saw the blossoming world around
me, and realised that all that time I had been asleep, unconscious, the
world had been continuing around me, people had fallen in and out of
love, others had died or been born. And so I decided to write.
My teacher did give me one piece of advice which I still
remember. He told me never to be too autobiographical in what I wrote.
It may me tempting when your young to write about yourself and what you
are, he told me, but that is just ego, to truly be a writer you must
live outside yourself. Most of the rest of his advice he gave I forgot
instantly. I was too busy watching the way the morning light caught his
bald head, glinting like it was polished.
As you're reading this, you dont need me to tell you that I
ignored his advice. The thing is you see, I kinda suspect that he was
wrong and that all writers write about themselves, just some more
obliquely than others. This is the first time I've ever tried to write
anything and I kinda wanted to explain myself, in that longwinded way,
first. Anyway, I want to tell you about the time I saw a spaceship.
It was just an another day in a summer I was wasting according
to plan. I was eighteen and directionless, spending all my time just
grinning and sitting still as countless adults tried to push me this
way, then that; trying to point out the signposts and set me on the
right path. It was one of those days that are so hot that theres nothing
to do but slump next to a clear fresh brook on a low squat hill, and
just lay there with a pack of Marlboro and a copy of `On the Road'. I
was just sitting up there on the hilltop as it got dark, trying to read
in the halflight and watching the darkness as it crept silently around
me and began to envelop me. I loved the slow darkness of summer and the
stealthy emergence of the stars. I always tried to watch for the first
star so I could make a wish, but Id never see it in time. Suddenly I'd
look and there'd be two stars and it would be too late. That day was no
exception.
After a while I gave up trying to read and just kinda lay back
with my bottle of wine and stared up as the constellations began to
appear. The ground was still warm and I lay in a little trough I'd dug
in the heather so that no-one could see me. I always wished I knew more
ofthe names of the stars. I could pick out Orion and the plough but I got
bored of looking at them after a while. So instead I just tried to
arrange the others into shapes and animals and made up my own
constellations, much as the ancients must have done. I could see shapes
that looked like penguins and camels and icecreams. I stared at them for
a long time. I felt like I was peeling away time like a banana,
civilisation vanishing around me, and was so happy I thought I might
implode.
I thought about a lot of things. I was thinking that maybe I'd
go to America, Alabama maybe, and I'd work in one of those ramshackle
petrol stations, stuck right out in the middle of nowhere. I'd serve a
couple of customers an hour and the rest of the time I'd maybe dream
about being an Eskimo, something silly like that. At night I'd go back
to the camper van I called home, itd be parked out in the woods. I'd
chop some logs and make a fire, then I'd sit and drink bourbon and strum
my guitar till I was so tired I couldnt move. When I was old I'd live in
one of those wooden shacks, and I'd spend the days on the veranda in my
rocking chair watching cars going past, listening to dirty blues music
and slowly going senile. I wondered if I'd still be able to see Orion
and the plough
from Alabama.
I was still pondering this thought when I saw the spaceship. Id
like to say it looked like a saucer or maybe a cigar and then perhaps
youd believe me. All those people in America who've seen them say thats
what they look like. But the thing is, it looked far more like a
lollipop to me than anything else. Or maybe a tennis racket. It was just
like a round bowl shape with a long handle to it. I suppose you could
call it a flying frying pan but it doesnt have the same ring. It just
sounds kinda stupid.
At first I thought the strange arrangement of lights in front
of me was a constellation I hadnt noticed before, some stars arranged in
a freakish geometric pattern. But then they kinda moved a little bit
forward, almost by accident, as if it had sneezed, and I realised I was
looking at not stars but windows. I couldnt see anyone inside the
windows and the ridiculous thought came into my mind as to whether or
not they had curtains they could close when they wanted to sleep. I
thought they probably had blinds. Curtains seemed too cheap.
The spaceship kinda freaked me a bit to begin with, but then I
smiled at the thought that I might actually get to meet the owners and I
stood up and waved at it, urging it to land so I could go inside. I
guess I thought, in my arrogance, that maybe the reason it was there was
to see me, and I felt kinda awed at these alien beings here on my
account.
I suppose you'd like to know lots of silly pointless details,
like how big it was, and did it have any markings and how many windows
there were. Well to tell the truth I don't notice things like that. I
noticed the way the moonlight seemed to cling to it, like a protective
skin. I noticed a kinda sweet pungent smell which I thought probably
emanated from the ship. But as for size, no idea.
I dont mind telling you I was transfixed by the thing. I thought
it was the most beautiful thing Id ever seen. I wanted to touch it and
see if it was warm. I wanted to lay my head on its metallic sheen and
embrace it. I ran down the hill towards where it was hovering. But all
the time it seemed to move away from me the way a rainbow does. I ran
and ran, stumbling over the grass and the bracken, clambering over
hedges and gates. But however fast I ran it always stayed the same
distance away from me, just out of reach. It kinda hovered about twenty
feet up in the air; it seemed like it was teasing me. Finally I caught
my foot in one of those snags in the grass where rabbits lie, and I
tumbled over till I was lying on my back with my feet facing up the
slope.
I stopped then, gave up trying to move. There were tears in my
eyes at the beauty I felt I'd lost and I lay there staring up at the
sky. There was a redness in the air Id never seen before, and I guess
this was related somehow to the ship. I decided I'd never move or close
my eyes again, just lay there till I died. And then suddenly the ship
was above my head and I could see it as clear as day. It was the colour
of a winter frost and yet not cold at all. It just kinda hovered above
me for ages, perfectly still. I felt like a giant eye was staring down
at me and then somehow, don't ask me to explain how, it was as if it
kinda winked at me, just for one second. It made me so happy I thought
I'd burst and I clenched my eyes shut to keep the emotion in. I held
those eyelids shut for a long time and all the time the image of the
ship seared itself into my mind. When I opened them my spaceship had
gone and so had the sweet pungent smell.
Well I lay there for hours as the grass grew cold and wet around
me. I just kept staring up at the dark hoping to see again that giant
lollipop shape. The stars seemed now to be even more enriched than
before, their lustre magnified tenfold, and I lay there trying to guess
where the ship had come from. I fell asleep there in the dew-strewn
grass, in my T-shirt and jeans, and the dreams I had were fresh and
pure. There were snowmen sunning themselves on hillsides as giant,
metal, tennis-racket shapes hovered around them protecting them from
harm. For a while, in my dream, I watched the snowmen and then suddenly
I was one of the snowmen, feeling the suns rays caressing me, but not
melting. I've never felt so safe in my life.
I guess that in a strange way I fell in love with that
spaceship. For months afterward I'd walk up to the top of that hill
every night and just sit there, staring up at the sky waiting for those
lights to reappear. I wondered if maybe they were hovering over some
other dreamer on a hill; maybe in Minnesota or New Zealand. I often lit
fires and once even set off fireworks, but to no avail. The spaceship
did not return.
My friend in school once told me about how he fell in love. He
was on a train just pulling away from a station and looking through the
window he saw this beautiful brown-haired girl. She was sitting on a
bench, just sitting and smiling at the coaches as they passed her. She
smiled and waved at my friend too. And though he only saw her for maybe
five seconds he can remember every last thing about her; the way her
eyes danced below a mass of dark hair, the shape of her ears, the way
she crossed her legs. He never saw her again, but he told me that he
would love that girl forever. No-one he would ever meet could touch her.
She would be his first love and his last.
I guess thats kinda like the way I felt about that spaceship.
Nothing or no-one I ever met would be able to touch me the way the
silent beauty of that ship had. I spent all my time for months thinking
of it and idly making half-remembered sketches of it.
I didnt tell anyone what I saw because I knew they wouldnt
believe a useless dreamer and anyway I felt like I didnt want to share
my spaceship with anyone. I felt kinda privileged that the ship had
chosen me to watch. I wanted to hold that beauty in my heart forever so
that whenever I was feeling low I could stare at the stars and see again
my friends from another world.
And now if anyone ever tells me that theres no beauty in this
world I just smile at them and say nothing. And when theyre gone I just
sit quietly and dream of a July night on a hillside and foreign
creatures I never met.
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