Down From Above, The Sky Awaits

Vetiver – Down From Above

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I spent the frost-filled week wrapping myself in layer after layer of musical perfection, astonished and comforted by the unavoidable truth that 2009 is already an infinitely better year for music than the entirety of 2008.

Today, after 103 hours of wrapping, I am at my thickest. In my living room, I waddle from speaker to speaker. Stripes and the final five seconds of one album peek under the sleeveless graffiti of the next, the starched cuffs of yet another higher up, newer in. I start to shift and worry. I think, “Too many layers. I need to breathe. I cannot breathe.” It is unnerving, the weight of all these intangibles.

My falling was inevitable.

I rock on my back. I rock on my back like a turtle to Vetiver’s tender plucking. First curiously, aligning my body this way and that in order to — What? What do you mean, “Why at first curiously?” Have you tried it before, rocking while wrapped in 103 hours, trapped under the weight of your insatiability? The motion is alien; it is Mars, I swear it.

I then hasten to rocking with determination. This is where wrapping has led me; I will find my feet again; I will assume perpendicularity to the Earth’s surface. This I think for hours. I crane my neck. I elbow the carpet. I cross my toes, one toe under the other, as though they are cold, as though I am 14 and discovering that the sheets blanketing me for the past two years can no longer contain the entirety of my body.

This song is on repeat. On repeat. On repeat. The remote is within walking distance. I will it toward me. I say, “You are inanimate, remote. I have brain.” This is a silly thing to say aloud, let alone repeat (repeat, repeat), so I point. In my mind, I point to my head and say, “See, remote? Brain.”

Reality: I can barely lift my arms. My digits instead twitch and gesture toward a long-forgotten sock hibernating beneath the wooden legs of my couch. Red corduroy. (The couch cover, not the sock). I hear myself say the words, “See, remote? Brain.” My fingers point and say the words, “See, remote? Sock.” Understandably, the remote is confused, but it is an inanimate confusion, silent, an El Greco painting with rubber buttons. It stays put, and still I am no further along than when I started rocking with determination, and that hours ago.

At this point, I begin to think my efforts perhaps somewhat naive. What’s so wonderful about perpendicularity, anyway? What’s so wonderful about rocking? I can sway, can’t I? Even if disgruntled. Even if I am maladroit. Even though I’ve grown sick, so very sick, of Vetiver’s tender plucking, of “Down From Above,” after six hours of misguided rocking. I can sway. And I will. And I do. Sway and savor a weight which has, with one thought of submission, transformed itself from obstacle to much-welcomed hammock.

The song /ends; it starts anew. It is day now. Sunlight yawns through the slats resting against my window. I would have missed it from any other angle, but there, on the floor, nestled in the arms of my hammock, I count the rays one by one. There, you see? And now there is sky.

My head turns toward the sofa. I hear a noise. Is it the power? I hope it isn’t the power. My milk will spoil, and I bought the carton only yesterday, and now it will be spoiled milk. No, it is not the power. It is the sock. Counting. Saying to me, “There, you see? Sky.” And there, on the floor, I think I understand why it jumped down (from above) to begin with.

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