Copyright 2010 Roberta Osborn. All rights reserved.

Dreams of the Borderland

Uniqueness

After dinner one evening in summer, I sense an unusual light outside, and I peer out the window.

The clouds are dark and it is about to rain, but what is truly strange is that everything, even the

air, is thickly, mysteriously green. I go out into the yard. I check my perception. Is it just the

greenness of the trees that reflects on everything? No. Turning around slowly in the stillness, I am

immersed in a palpable green atmosphere as though underwater; every molecule is green. The

sky spits a scattered rain. Waving trees in the distance signal the approach of the wind. The

mystery resolves into a crashing thunderstorm. I retreat to the porch. The trees whip wildly and

driving sheets of cold rain bounce in thin waves down the street. I watch this, listening to the din

of the rain in the downspout, breathing in cool,

washed air. Later, I am glad to learn that what I

have experienced is a known thing, a "green

thunderstorm." The sun catches the right

amount of moisture in the sky at a precise

moment at sunset and its rays focus into a

specific wavelength of green. Since other

people have seen it and named it, it is possible

I might see it again some day.

What is unique in my experience is really only

rare. Given the same combination of

conditions and events, the effect on someone

else could be same. In this way I am identical

to every other being. The part of me that is

unique does not reside in experience or

reaction at all, but in what I choose to retain of

it, from it, create with it.

I am at the breakfast table near the kitchen window overlooking the deep lawn that leads back to

the woods. The fog is thinning and lifting in the first rays of the sun to break over the trees,

revealing how green and lush the yard is. Indeed, a woodchuck is grazing down by the shed.

Here, near the house, there are two small birds alternating at the birdfeeder. Three baby rabbits

run into view and begin racing after each other under the old chestnut tree. They are very funny

to watch. They dash about in circles in the grass and then pop straight up, at least two feet into

the air, again and again, clearly enjoying everything that their little legs can do for them. They

continue to pop up, over and around each other for a long time, until finally, exhausted, they flop

down, panting, and lay back in the grass. I realize that there are experiences I wouldn't miss for

the world, even though they may have happened to many other people.

I watch the plumber closely as he replaces an old copper pipe under the stairs. Sensing my

curiosity, he instructs me. The pipe has been leaking slowly for a while. He points to the evidence,

blue-green crystals spreading along its underside. The important thing, he says, is to drain the

water out of the entire assembly.  As long as it contains water, the water will absorb all the energy

from the torch and the solder at the joints will not soften. We turn the water off. He cuts the pipe

and drains it into a bucket. The old solder now responds to the torch immediately, melting,

allowing the pipe to be removed. The new pipe is cut to fit and carefully prepared. Each end must

be bright and clean for a solid connection. The edges are beveled and ground clean of burrs and

oxides and brushed with flux. Above the blue flame of the torch, the solder liquefies suddenly and

runs unerringly into place around the joint. Where it drips and splashes onto the floor it creates

flat silver exclamations. We turn the water back on. It flows freely again, properly contained. It

reminds me that to refit myself properly, to rejoin others in a new way, I must sometimes empty

myself of the flow of emotion and events long enough to heal.

 

The tools for work with copper pipe are simple, a pipe cutter, a torch, sandpaper. The materials

are common, pipe, solder, flux. I pick these up and admire them, musing that it would be easy to

create a sculpture or a water fountain from copper pipe and funny elbows, to decorate it with

traces of liquid silver and somehow induce time and weather to create interesting blue-green

details on its surface. I may try some artful plumbing some day, just for kicks.