Let me begin by stating that I effectively traded a semester, a year of my life for five rehearsals and two performances. Perhaps forty people came to watch, and I would not take the time back.
The show was Charles Mee’s Summertime, a play that fractures the lives of (in this production) six people all plagued by love and life. Each person pieces themselves together existentially, to varying degrees. I came into the process two weeks late; my participation, enabled by the stress of another, was unplanned but necessary and – I can only conjecture – welcome. Over a week, I learned an hour-long script and laid the groundwork for character development for the only man in this existential torrent that possessed recognition of the situation. Metaconsciousness in the form of words and gestures.
We performed in an abandoned amphitheatre. The forestation of the area nearly complete, seating areas and the stage itself were consumed by roots, bark, and leaves. As we cleared the natural world so we may co-inhabit, the director (Anastasia Sullivan, referred to onwards as Sully) and myself came across an emblem:
It was the front to an old button. It was merely casing, the fastening mechanism lost to time and history. It was plain, a repeating ivy hatching with intermittent cerulean and crimson flowers. At first, it appeared to be stained; however, once washed of debris and grime, it proved to be immaculate. Free of stain, free of a past. New.
We remarked on this wonderous item, and then almost unthinkingly she offered it to me. I put it in my pocket, and for the time being we resumed rehearsal.
I would keep this token in my pocket for the entire process, through two performances receiving strong approval. Once completed, it became a part of my usual clutter, the significance buried in forgetfulness and apathy. This was in spring.
Summer came. My life shifted to the conventional – work, friends, sleep, family, stress, fear, and the rest. Though healthy and alive, passion had left. Then the emblem resurfaced.
It had found its way into my laundry, and I went to retrieve my basket, it sat on the washing machine. Knowing. Metaconscious, knowing it was waiting for me and that I would come. Upon rediscovering this memorial, I recalled every anxious flutter in my core, every sleepless night of memorization and every moment of joy in doing the work I love.
Overwhelmed, I ran to my room and put it on my desk. Lowering myself to the bed, I was helpess as the flood of memories inundated my person, catching my mind in the undertow and carrying everything I was with it. Swimming against the current, I knew I had to do something.
Tonight, I walked a path I hadn’t walked since middle school. The path of my youth. Feeling foreign, I could only smile and nod as children and mothers, fathers and sons, Little League athletes and high school graduates passed me, no doubt returning to their houses to end their days. Whole lives passed through me as these lives passed around me. Taking the casing to an isolated part of the road in the forest, I set to work.
I pressed it within the pages of a pocket Moleskin, with Summertime scrawled above its resting place in hasty pen marks. Placing it on the ground, I fought to maintain Stoic objectivity in the artistic gesture as I endeavored to set the pages ablaze.
Eventually, the book caught and the flames rose from the dark pavement. I was transfixed as it cracked and seered, its paper-fueled combustion straining against the less flammable cover. The heat virus that was the flame was not to be denied, though, and an hour was marked by the death of the last of the charred medium fluttering into the air. Working though the soot and ash with a branch, I sought some sort of proof, one way or the other. Time became inconsequential as I sorted, and then
There it was. Unmarked. Unsullied. New. The memories wouldn’t die. They were mine forever.
As I endeavored home, I set the button top on the ledge of a bridge, along with a note.
If you find me, please keep me. Remember the day you came across me, and hold it forever. This is yours, the gift of the Floral Blaze in the Summer Heat.
