(2) Hyperion's Crucible

On an airy, sun-drenched Saturday afternoon in late August, my room is five shades too dim. The blackout curtains are still up. A quarter day earlier, they protected my tenuous sleep from piercing rays of morning sunlight. Now, the dull grey sheets may well be concrete prison walls, keeping me and my irritable temper away from the upbeat thrum of weekend city life. I sit within these walls, hunched over my keyboard, squinting through harsh blue-white monitor light and cursing at swarms of errors dripping red blobs of text onto my screen.

The plan had always been to wake up early, to yawn and feel well-rested muscles stretching to pull my body out of bed like strings on an optimistic puppet. In this alternate reality, I'd scrub sleep from my eyes and brush staleness from my breath, replacing the latter with notes of dark chocolate and roasted hazelnut from stovetop espresso poured hot and fresh. Then, I’d cup my hands around the warm ceramic of my favorite mug, its engraving of a T-Rex fossil rough against my palms, and take it out to the balcony. Breathing deeply, I’d savor scents of dewy brick and petunia on the morning air, hiding hints of salty ocean. The stillness would be broken — not unceremoniously — by sounds of construction as the city came to life around me. Against a backdrop of sapphire sky, sparrows would rise in wheeling flight, chasing gnats away from the night. This moment, as I imagined it, would be thoroughly and deeply inspiring.

Thinking about what could have been only makes my current predicament worse. I’m trying to install new software, but the damn thing keeps complaining about my operating system. The morning culminates in not only zero, but negative progress, as I now realize that the most recent installation has not only failed, but also broken two additional packages.

I get up from my chair, shoving it to the side in frustration. Plastic wheels covered in dirt and hair scratch floorboards I meant to vacuum two weekends ago. I can see tangled nets of polyester fiber in the curtains as dull orange light seeps through, retaining little vibrancy but keeping most of its heat, which begins to mount oppressively in the room. I start to sweat. I smell the cloying scent of steady rot from an old banana peel, though I do not know from where. I look down at my white shirt, stained yellow from left armpit to my sternum, a small hole unraveling at the hem. Outside, the driver of a produce truck lays on his horn for four continuous seconds, bringing expletives from a group of cyclists waiting to pass.

The morning’s delicate sense of contained order has devolved into utter chaos. The sight of my monitor screen disgusts me with its reflection of my incompetence. I palm my laptop shut and turn to look at the outlines of buildings visible through the grey veil. From this angle, the blocks and domes resemble the geometry of an arid landscape dotted by Pueblo-style homes.

Should I just go outside?

I tear the curtains down and the world pours into my room. I swear I can see the teardrop leaves of my plant flex slightly as they start to feed on the life-giving rays. Condensation on my glass of water refracts the light into a chromatic display of brilliant specks, cast onto the opposite wall like a peacock displaying its feathers. Outside, pearl-white clouds drift carelessly across the sky. A singular tree on the sidewalk, five stories below, shifts gently in the breeze, a few of its leaves fluttering onto shade-dappled concrete.

I snatch my keys up, stash them in the rough ripstop of my cargo pants, and drain my glass of water on the way out. I decide to take the stairs, forgetting in my haste to close the door gently. I wince as it swings shut with a metallic bang. Three flights of stairs later, I step past thick glass panes into the afternoon.

Fumbling through the glare, I make my way to the bike station. There are a few electric bikes parked here, a rare commodity. On weekdays, this good omen brings promise of a sweat-free commute, but today I decide to go all natural. I unlock the bike with the brightest coat of blue paint and the least amount of handlebar rust.

I push off and swing my back leg over the seat, swerving to avoid a walking tour crossing the street. A mail truck rumbles past before I start to pedal, banking to merge onto the southbound street I know to be least crowded.

I cruise past walk-ups with tiered fire escapes like creeper vines made of black metal. The local kickboxing gym greets me with a series of shouts, followed by the muted staccato of gloved punches on leather pads. Some workers just ahead are unloading styrofoam crates of fresh-caught fish. The smell is intense. One white box lays open, and sunlight glints off both the silver scales of albacore and the blocks of glittering ice they lay on. Their wet, bulbous eyes seem to follow me wistfully as I ride past, as if to say; must be nice to not be food.

The brick of each building comes in a different shade; sun-baked red and thick white mortar, burgundy, light pink, tan and mahogany, army green. My favorite is the deep-ocean-blue brick of the bakery on the corner, now closed indefinitely, once home to the densest, richest, most fragrant olive oil cake I have ever tasted. This square is closed to street traffic on weekends, and the bars encircling it are setting up for the evening aperitivo. I hear the scraping of wooden patio chairs and rippling canvas of umbrellas opening, the clinking of glasses as the staff samples the house wine.

There is just one more stretch of lime-green bike lane left until I arrive at my destination, a waterfront pier on the East River. These intersecting streets are quietly residential, and I twist the rubber gear shift to its highest level, feeling my quadriceps strain slightly against the increased resistance from the pedals. The sea breeze picks up slightly and tousles my hair as I turn right, then left, then right again onto the promenade. Pedestrian crowds find little purchase on the narrow walkway here, and I take my hands off the bike for a few moments and spread my arms wide, feeling the exhilaration of open road. Coming back down, I make a sharp left onto the pier, a contemporary hodgepodge of glass, wood, concrete, and grass. About a quarter mile downriver, the Manhattan bridge splits the sky into two, and beyond it, the Brooklyn bridge splits the bottom half once more. My perspective makes the arched grey towers of the latter appear as struts supporting the former, the girders, cables and metal struts coming together to form a beautifully complex lattice of human ingenuity on the teal canvas of the afternoon sky. The waves chop softly, rolling first against the pier, then back into each other, forming small peaks that spray surf onto the concrete of the pier, darkening the spots where they land.

There is a man sitting here looking out at the view. I can see his skin, one or two shades darker than my own, through rips and tears in his shirt — whether from neglect or fashion I cannot tell. His head is bowed, palms pressed together, and I realize the man is praying. I walk my bike past him to the end of the pier, where the chirp of insects and clicking of wheels combine to form a percussive symphony. There is a wide patch of green here, mostly wild-growing weeds and shrubs and a few rebellious patches of manicured lawn. I inspect the long grasses for the telltale red flash of lanternflies. Satisfied with the lack thereof, I kick my sneakers off, take my shirt off, and lie flat on a poplar bench.

Sun pours onto me like molten iron. It soaks every inch of exposed skin, sears my shins and feet, suffuses my face with warmth. I imagine the sound of my forearm hairs sizzling. I cross my arms behind my head and watch a plane cut across the sky, then a low-flying helicopter, the thwap-thwap of its blades buffeting the water. A thin film of sweat appears on my chest in one second and evaporates in the next, and with it, I imagine latent tension bubbling to the surface and dissipating into the air. I am glad my stress has a low boiling point. Soon after, all thoughts, productive or otherwise, vaporize completely, leaving behind a flat mental landscape of calm serenity. The last thought, which I hang onto briefly, is that this heat is like a forest fire, cleaning dead foliage from the underbrush of my mind and coaxing new growth in a process of renewal as old as life itself.

My irradiation lasts a blissful 5 minutes until it becomes painfully hot and a fifth fly buzzes past my ear. The first new sapling of thought that sprouts in my mind is that I have forgotten to apply sunscreen. I get up and put my shirt on, letting the rough cotton pull the sweat off my skin, and swing back onto the bike, driving it back into the cool shade of the promenade. I know the way home from here well. When I get back, I will be a different person than the one who left, having been melted by the sun and ready to be forged into someone new.

~