Infinite Brick Corners in the Sandwiches of Memory

There was a brick house. There was a large back yard, open and sunny to the south and shaded by a line of pompeian trees along the northern fence line. (I say "pompeian" because, in memory, the trees are large and overreaching, monumental and monstrous - like painted trees in Nero's Domus Aurea - yet still and unmoving - like polaroids of the murals at Pompeii.)

The back porch occupies the north-western corner of the brick house, and is simple screens in wood frames in that cool perspective, parasoling in the shadows of the trees.

As one approaches from the sunrise-facing house front, and walks along the northern perimeter, the corner of the porch is approached; it is a corner of mostly screen and wood - as mentioned - and only five or so courses of bricks below the porch cap.

One walks a progression of delicate MRI slices of reality in this movement from sun to shade, then to sun again in the backyard. As the light filters through the leaves, one moves from dark to light within an instant: click! - too fast for eyes to adjust - then back to blind darkness, and out again. Each one is quite distinct and its reality no longer depends on the smooth continuity of one's awareness: like sliced deli meat, each view falls from the rotund and robust natural casings of one's life, only to be gathered up by memory as they hit the ground behind, the dirt and grass whisked off, and we shall eat them later in the sandwiches of remembrance.

Approaching the corner, this sequence of magic lantern infinitesimal slides - illuminated by twin Mazda lamps -  reaches a threshhold, and:  boom!, we turn the corner, and we begin to leave the cool shade behind.  Brilliant in the sun, bedsheets festoon the clothesline and fill with winds - the very same winds our teachers told us yet contain the atoms that once were breathed by Einstein, that once made up -even! - the body of Jesus! Yet there they are, caught within the drying sheets, filling one's future dreams with atomic inspirations.

Sit beneath the white, white sheets; become a captain of imaginary ships: Pan, Hook, Sindbad; Neverland and Cities of Brass roll out within the alleyway, and the freshly painted garage is a mountain of glacial mystery.

Always try to get around those infinite corners.