By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Sunderance: "Some mornings…"
SOME MORNINGS WHEN SUNLIGHT IS BRIGHT AND CLEAR, there’s a band of light on the south, bedroom wall in front of me, slicing beneath the venetians as through squinted eyes, and if the door is cracked more than slightly, I can into the next room, only part of one white wall and all of a white ceiling and on those mornings there is the flush of light followed by shapes of birds, or more properly, the Birds. The Birds circuit and spiral above the building, over the urban intersection, shadows like furious origami conveyed in flickery, reflected anime, avian Muybridge of piercing presence. They gather in hope of a market. They remember the market that’s gone; they can’t know a new supermarket is being built to replace the old one, the 1950s supermarket founded as an A&P. They expect flat roofs the span of a small beach, with irregular, shallow mirrors of sky from regular rain. That’s why the seagulls join the pigeons two, three miles inland from Lake Michigan. They recall the market, they expect the mirror. How easy it’s been to slip from lucid dreaming the past few weeks to morning light and into a metaphor for the braces, coveys, rookeries, sieges and flocks soon to circle baggage claim 8 at SLC then ascend I-80 up the hill toward Summit County and lodging and the Albertson’s off Park Avenue.
Disguised as subarctic fowl, skinnier birds from lower climes forage. We know there was a market. Last year, the year before, back into the past century. We sense the market to come. We circle, land, marvel at the band of silver carts operated by other shoppers in Albertson’s, carts so full the wheels fail to squeak, gliding with near- silent hydraulic precision. Steaks and soups and Stouffer’s and Ben & Jerry’s smooth forward motion. A market is a place. A city is a market. The birds are like a marvelous cave painting in my mind. I close my eyes and envision sharp, cutting anime shadows and think of Park City. [To be continued.]
