Lightning Droplets

 They sit on the mantle and she fingers them slowly one by one, as if touching them brings back the sights and smells more fully.   They are self-contained, held in proper place by perfectly spherical glass walls, so that the snowflakes of experiences and emotions of each segment do not intermingle. Each one collects its own dust, attracting mites to its cause with sparkling reminiscences.   For each memory, an ornate, dainty pedestal calls out the name of the place and cradles the round, full memory that it holds.

Prague.  One of the few globes that has snow in it.  You almost can’t tell what century it’s from.  Bridges over the Vltava and Gothic architecture with snowy-tips.  It holds days that were ripe with inspiration.  It seemed that lightning was everywhere.  Circuses popped up in her favorite park and artists chased the buildings.  It was a country ruled by writers and it seemed that Milan Kundera was on every street corner.  Gargoyles caught the eye of old Communist statues from across the river and dared them to join in staring contests.  On tram rides to school, everyone was a character.  War widows and Russian spies, past lives and secrets sat all in a row waiting for their stop.   “Better Red than dead!” her grandmother joked, reminding her of past generations who once lived in this land, when it had another name and held a shameful family past.  This memory holds side trips to Cologne and Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava.  It’s one of the few snow globes that holds pieces of her family.  Aunt and uncle, mother and grandmother, all curious about this homeland.   Nightclubs filled with expats and whispers of absinthe.  Maybe if she drank what they drank, she could write like them.

The house itself is sparse.  Her movements make noises that echo off empty walls and bare floors.  As she places the snow globe from Prague back on the mantle, the noise echoes an emptiness, bouncing off bare walls and floors.

Alaska.   A summer that was constant spring.  The trees were always that new shade of green, as if they were permanently fresh.  Mountains grew into glaciers.  Snow was stuck in crevasses so that it didn’t float as you shook the snow globe.  This was closer to what she remembered anyway.  The water in the globe seemed to be cold to the touch, as if it had just melted, as if it had been melting these past 8 years.  It was bright blue, but not clear, like the run off from ice age giants.  There were toothpaste tubes hidden from grizzly bears and games to show you how to run zig zag away from moose.  Even the plants seemed like overgrown prehistoric remnants, with mammoth leaves and sabretoothed thorns.   There was no electricity or internet there.  Unconnected, but somehow much more connected.  She was sure she herself sat on one of those glaciers, too small to be seen, wrapped in the inciting cold.   The water was 39 degrees, and still she couldn’t keep from swimming.

She wonders briefly how many people have seen this globe.   She doesn’t keep her snow globes in order, chronological or otherwise.  They cluster together in the center of the mantle, as if vying for attention, at odds with each other.   Alaska might be in back most days.

San Francisco.  There are no row houses or piers in this one, like most people would expect.  She didn’t take home that Bay Area.  There was no Golden Gate Bridge jutting out from the water or Coit Tower thrusting up over the bay.   Instead she captured potlucks in the park and quiet BART rides.   No-pants parties and the murals of Mission Street swirled fancifully around pirate stores and parks and parks and parks.  The water in this globe churned, far from pacific, but alive all the same.  There were misplaced bison, grazing on grass from the Golden Gate Park.   At 4pm every day, the fog rolled in, keeping the globe fresh, sheltered.

And all the people from San Francisco stare back at her from inside the globe.  They don’t speak or move any more.  They stand as they were then, snapshots of friendships that only live in this one memory.

Thailand.  Water from the Chao Phraya fills the dome, so packed with life that you can’t see inside.  Water monitor lizards hide in the water as ochre-robed monks send turtles into the waves and birds into the air.  The globe gives off a mishmash of smells, each indistinguishable one setting off a strand of memories that seems unending.  Dried squid and fresh rain and jasmine and incense and sewage mix until you are no longer sure if you want to inhale deep or hold your nose.  Bodhi trees and strangler figs burst from the cracks, tiny parodies of each other.  Rambutan and mangoes and durian bob to the top of the riverwater, beckoning and repulsive in the same call.  Water hyacinth spurt purple blooms and ladyboys call to tourists from beneath temple gates.  Bangkok sparkles with grime and seems to drown in its own development.

Her hair had gotten darker in Thailand.  It went from a fiery red to an anonymous black.  She lived inside that globe so long that she could no longer look through the murky river out into the world.  This globe was both the majority of her adult life and also so, so far away.

The Bahamas.  Tiny sea biscuits float in what she likes to imagine is a little piece of the Atlantic.  Tiny periwinkle shells swim through the water and dance around a junkanoo parade.  The drummers are paused mid-beat and ready to strike.  Horns are held to lips as if they may scream any minute.  Feathers reach every which way.  The sand is pink, reflecting millennia of queen conchs sticking their tongues out at the waves.   The roosters never know what time it is, but it doesn’t seem to matter on the island, as long as you make it to the beach by sunset.   The globe held its own miniature Sargasso Sea, hiding the mystery of deep-blue depths and the growth of sea turtles and eels.  Mermaids’ purses and conchs burst with song.

This snow globe is her newest.

It is sudden and confusing when the house begins to shake.  At first it’s as if someone very large is trampling down the stairs, but in the back of her mind, she knows she is alone.  As it gets stronger, she holds the corner wall that hugs the fireplace for balance.  The snow globes begin to jostle and bounce, dancing side to side and right off the edge of the mantle.  They throw thirty years of dust into the air like confetti and she briefly wonders what they are celebrating.  They jump, glass heads first, freely into an ocean that begins to form on the floor, free diving out of their prescribed places.

The ocean they create is choppy and alive.  Gargoyles and Buddhist monks swim like fish amongst each other.  Gothic buildings and Alaskan mountains jut out from the sea like islands.  Friends from Thailand stare in awe at the aurora borealis that plays on the water.  Lizards play junkanoo while park-bison dance along.  The interactions are rich and charged.  Alive and fresh.

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/_vini/ for the photo!