The Museum Was Me

  The Museum Was Me

I. The Memory Rooms

I stare at the blank blinking cursor and wonder which memory rooms stand intact. These memory rooms, gilded and glowing in opulence, now rest—scarred by a revolt that brought firebombs aplenty. Less so for pride or show, these rooms once neatly arranged by eras, chapters, ages that have past told a remarkable story. Memories adorn the walls while trinkets, tokens, and portraits once proud and prominently arranged liven the room with a steady hum of warmth. Framed photos, photo-albums, notebooks and collected novels weave the tale of a life lived well. An undertaking that wasn’t much when it began, stands as a mighty museum of oddities and curiosities slowly curated in time.

II. The Revolt Begins

The revolt changed everything. Dark figures stormed the rooms. Portraits were knifed. Images of grace and goodness were sliced marring the figures and unions once held in gilded stillness. A family portrait of our trip to the coast was sliced running the length of the print beginning at the crowns of the four heads drooped. The snapshot of joy now hangs hollow, its faces erased—only sand and sea remain.

Notebooks were ripped, split at their bindings. Sacred treatises, etchings, myths, covered the hallowed stone floor. Then, came the cacophonous shattering. Picture frames were plucked and launched. Wood bits and glass exploded in the floor shooting shrapnel debris. Lit bottles of accelerant arced through the air, striking relics still untouched. Pools of liquid fire danced from books, to bookcases, and settled into the walls. Strewn crisp pages, creased, tore, caught falling embers and running residue of liquid fire turning recorded musings into crackling flames.

Smoke billowed down the halls leaving a thick film of soot coating the walls, clinging to the cut canvases. A black plume of heat singed what odds, ends, and curios remained. The dark figures were dressed in hoods that hid their features. They could have been me. For they were no different than me if I adorned a flipped up hood. Their anger righteous, albeit justified. As loyal supporters of the union rallied for change and were met with words as big as they were empty. Promises made, while the repair of the sullied union were further delayed. The armaments were gathered by loyalists turned dissenters. The wicks were lit.

III. Tea for One in the Peach Garden

I caught the unfolding from earshot. Down through the courtyard and just past the hedges at the gazebo I sat with your favorite tea of dried peach and ginger root. Piping hot, resting in the teapot, waiting to be parsed out, and savored. But you never came. That’s when I heard it start. From behind me came the sound of splintering wood and the shattering of a dozen or so glass bottles filled with fire made peace abandon the garden with the noise of a raucous riot

I knew it came from the museum, the collection of memory rooms. Tensions had long run high. It was only a matter of time before something reached a breaking point. The assailants from the stampeding sounds of jubilant ransacking, and cacophony of chaotic destruction were insatiable. Even a bit feral. I sat there sipping upon the peach tea poured for one. The love that had brought the families together was once warm, but all gone. The union, the delight in the two sides coming together, like the museum to which I played curious curator to, went up in fire and anguish. This is the blow back of life inside a pressure cooker that remained without vent for much too long. This unfolding of events is the pressure tamping down.

The black plume of smoke, heat, and cindering things calmed the calamity. Catharsis was reached. Placing the emptied cup down, I wondered what part I play in this scene: conscientious objector, firebomb bearer, unphased witness. Compelled by silence’s retreat, by my own stillness in crisis, I returned from whence I came. The tea mostly went to waste, as I strolled past the well manicured hedges, through the smoke filled courtyard. And back into the museum of smoke, fire and damnation. The ransacking dispelled. The hooded dark figures pleased by their deeds of roiling rage dissipated when I entered eyesight. The figures paused, stilled, pensive in my presence.

IV. The Bottle and the Blaze
The roaring flames licked at my cheeks and bit at my legs. The hooded figures prompted me with an outstretched bottle plugged at the top with white cloth. I dreamt of days when such fires and violent catharsis wasn’t explainable as inevitable, necessary. I took the battle from the outstretched hand. The hooded figures fled accepting their work as done and collapse of the ceiling eminent.

I strode through what hallways were walkable watching the years, the time, flash in radiant oblivion. The treasures and curios were now a mix of ash and smoldering sediment. I took a final look at what I had created—years of toiling, brokering treaties, arranging things so the story was told well, told right—until even the embers floated into the rafters. Beautiful things I wish I could pluck out, or revive were already too far immolated.

The ceiling began to crackle and bow inward. I paused for just a moment and thought what it would mean to stay here moments more to watch the ceiling cave down around me. The fire leapt at my sleeves, smoke stung my eyes. I had all, but forgot the plugged bottle was still in my grasp. With a detached smirk and furrowed brow, I hurled the bottle at a bookshelf that was only partly ablaze and heard the ceiling give way as I head for the door.

The museum collapsed. Once a symbol of preserved paradise, it now reflected the oblivion buried within its gilded grace. The beautiful haunts and cherished sanctuaries we once shared were free to rest or roam—untethered from the memories they once called home.

V. The Museum Was Me

At the bottom of the steps, the museum lay  toppled—a mess. a mass of embers, heat, and smoke flew up in a swirl. The ceiling and walls lay fresh upon the ground. The revolution, the collapse, beauty undone by calamity—an unholy baptism washing over me. Tears linger in a liminal state, smoke-ridden eyes refusing to release the trace of moisture that remains.

I stand at the threshold between fiery collapse and open air. A gentle breeze runs over my fire-kissed skin, and I wince. A whole life brought to its close. I once prayed to arrive here in matrimony—celebrating the foibles we survived, honoring the golden vein that bound us. A bond that stretched from snow-capped peaks to valleys carved by deafening ravines. You left when my sight began to fade— a two-fold existential blow I’m still reeling from.

I turn to leave. The heat and ash now sharply at my back. I step forward, into the journey— wherever I may go.