Perspective
The community college sits nearly in the center of the county in this northeastern state, a tribute to the sprawling architecture of the West Coast. Like a large, interconnected raised-ranch with flat roofs and open second-floor walkways, its structure encloses several tracts of ground described as courtyards. These resemble their sketches in the architect’s drawings—asphalt walks, well-trimmed grass, taIl graceful trees. In the sketches, students sit and read or visit with friends. Although the courtyards are rarely used as the artist presented them in the drawings, they are still protected, quiet areas with an air of privacy, or even desertion, about them.
They are what survive of the manor house or castle courtyards, whose stone walls protected those inside from the marauding band, the stray arrow, the unwelcome guest in the black robe and hood. Inside, wildflowers were warmed by the sun, children’s voices echoed, a wren carried strands of dried grasses to a high niche, horses’ hooves clacked on the cobblestone near the fountain. But time has swept all this away in a fast-forward blur of tiny eggs hatching, birds flown, of children become adult, then old, of horses fallen into bones, fountain gone to dust, of chill winds, the stones themselves restless in the frost, pushing away from one another. The world moves toward rubble.
We gird ourselves with sketches that demonstrate how things should be; we shield ourselves with a thousand little impulses toward an imagined order. On most days, as they stream behind us filled with what those days require, these are enough. We move unchallenged at the center of a protected space. But small things have the potential to alter the view, to let us look through the wrong end of the telescope which, as a child, I always found more interesting than bringing the view closer.
Recently, as I crossed a second floor walkway at the college, the Academic Dean pushed out through the doors at the far side, accompanied by three visiting educators; we were all headed toward the glass-encased library, the four-story portion of the complex that rose between us. The visitors were Japanese, quiet, well-groomed men who carried brief cases and wore dark business suits so innocuously cut that they might have been in style—or only slightly out—at any time over the past 30 years.
All four men were smiling and turning their heads to take in the scene. A scattering of high white clouds moved across a sky so blue it hurt my eyes to look at it, the breeze seemed to carry a faint scent of wine, and a golden sunshine fell softly on us all. The Dean was smiling and saying something that I couldn’t hear, but the way he smiled and looked up at the sky and then returned his gaze to the school buildings seemed to suggest that everything—the blue sky, the clouds, the sparkling air—had been arranged for the tour.
I walked faster to get ahead of them—I did not want to mar the serenity of the morning by intruding with my faded jeans and shaggy hair to suggest that the sky and clouds had not been arranged after all, that if the school buildings had never existed, gently sunlight would be falling and the clouds drifting anyway, over pasture and farm field and woods. It was then, as I hurried toward the building ahead of them, that I saw a dead bird, a starling, at my feet.
It was evident that the bird had flown into one of the large windows, perhaps that very morning. It may have seen light coming from the opposite side and attempted to fly through—or may have seen blue sky and clouds reflected in the glass and soared confidently into it. I hesitated, thinking to remove its body, to hide it, but then walked on. There wasn’t enough time. As I entered the library I regretted that the dead bird would accomplish what my jeans and hair had not.
Weeks later, I looked through one of the corridor windows into a courtyard. There, only inches from my feet beyond the glass, was what remained of the dead starling. It had been dropped over the walkway railing to the courtyard below, into the expanse of jumbled stones that had been hauled from some lake shore to serve as a landscaping feature. The bird had fallen into the space between four of these stones, whose random positions had formed an unforgiving nest. The husk of bone and feathers contained an energy like that of a Japanese painting, in which a sparrow, vibrant with life, is created by a few brush strokes. It lay partially on its side, one wing spread as if it were trying to leave. Worn by the sun and rain, the feathers only partially covered the bones, which had been bleached a dull white. The beak was partly open; the delicate filigree of the neck vertebra poked into the air; one shin bone, from which the foot was missing, extended stiffly from under the drab feathers of a wing. The tiny feathers of its head had been plastered to the fragile skull by heavy summer rains.
In some of the stones, smoothed from years in the water, the cross-sections of crinoid stems winked dully in the light of the overcast day. Ages ago, these creatures thrived in the shallow waters of some lake over which clouds certainly floated and the sun blazed; now the petrified sediments of the lake covered the ground next to the window in the courtyard, the scattered stones of a fallen kingdom. The remains of the dead starling were not in the original drawing, and soon they would not be in the actual scene, either. Already, from up where the grey clouds moved slowly over the college, the bird would not be visible. Even the stone-covered portion of the courtyard would be only the merest suggestion of shadow--and from higher than the grey clouds, the battlements of the college a series of interconnected dots, quickly fading into the mist.
***
They are what survive of the manor house or castle courtyards, whose stone walls protected those inside from the marauding band, the stray arrow, the unwelcome guest in the black robe and hood. Inside, wildflowers were warmed by the sun, children’s voices echoed, a wren carried strands of dried grasses to a high niche, horses’ hooves clacked on the cobblestone near the fountain. But time has swept all this away in a fast-forward blur of tiny eggs hatching, birds flown, of children become adult, then old, of horses fallen into bones, fountain gone to dust, of chill winds, the stones themselves restless in the frost, pushing away from one another. The world moves toward rubble.
We gird ourselves with sketches that demonstrate how things should be; we shield ourselves with a thousand little impulses toward an imagined order. On most days, as they stream behind us filled with what those days require, these are enough. We move unchallenged at the center of a protected space. But small things have the potential to alter the view, to let us look through the wrong end of the telescope which, as a child, I always found more interesting than bringing the view closer.
Recently, as I crossed a second floor walkway at the college, the Academic Dean pushed out through the doors at the far side, accompanied by three visiting educators; we were all headed toward the glass-encased library, the four-story portion of the complex that rose between us. The visitors were Japanese, quiet, well-groomed men who carried brief cases and wore dark business suits so innocuously cut that they might have been in style—or only slightly out—at any time over the past 30 years.
All four men were smiling and turning their heads to take in the scene. A scattering of high white clouds moved across a sky so blue it hurt my eyes to look at it, the breeze seemed to carry a faint scent of wine, and a golden sunshine fell softly on us all. The Dean was smiling and saying something that I couldn’t hear, but the way he smiled and looked up at the sky and then returned his gaze to the school buildings seemed to suggest that everything—the blue sky, the clouds, the sparkling air—had been arranged for the tour.
I walked faster to get ahead of them—I did not want to mar the serenity of the morning by intruding with my faded jeans and shaggy hair to suggest that the sky and clouds had not been arranged after all, that if the school buildings had never existed, gently sunlight would be falling and the clouds drifting anyway, over pasture and farm field and woods. It was then, as I hurried toward the building ahead of them, that I saw a dead bird, a starling, at my feet.
It was evident that the bird had flown into one of the large windows, perhaps that very morning. It may have seen light coming from the opposite side and attempted to fly through—or may have seen blue sky and clouds reflected in the glass and soared confidently into it. I hesitated, thinking to remove its body, to hide it, but then walked on. There wasn’t enough time. As I entered the library I regretted that the dead bird would accomplish what my jeans and hair had not.
Weeks later, I looked through one of the corridor windows into a courtyard. There, only inches from my feet beyond the glass, was what remained of the dead starling. It had been dropped over the walkway railing to the courtyard below, into the expanse of jumbled stones that had been hauled from some lake shore to serve as a landscaping feature. The bird had fallen into the space between four of these stones, whose random positions had formed an unforgiving nest. The husk of bone and feathers contained an energy like that of a Japanese painting, in which a sparrow, vibrant with life, is created by a few brush strokes. It lay partially on its side, one wing spread as if it were trying to leave. Worn by the sun and rain, the feathers only partially covered the bones, which had been bleached a dull white. The beak was partly open; the delicate filigree of the neck vertebra poked into the air; one shin bone, from which the foot was missing, extended stiffly from under the drab feathers of a wing. The tiny feathers of its head had been plastered to the fragile skull by heavy summer rains.
In some of the stones, smoothed from years in the water, the cross-sections of crinoid stems winked dully in the light of the overcast day. Ages ago, these creatures thrived in the shallow waters of some lake over which clouds certainly floated and the sun blazed; now the petrified sediments of the lake covered the ground next to the window in the courtyard, the scattered stones of a fallen kingdom. The remains of the dead starling were not in the original drawing, and soon they would not be in the actual scene, either. Already, from up where the grey clouds moved slowly over the college, the bird would not be visible. Even the stone-covered portion of the courtyard would be only the merest suggestion of shadow--and from higher than the grey clouds, the battlements of the college a series of interconnected dots, quickly fading into the mist.
***
"Perspectives" was first published in The Albany Review, by Albany Review Associates, Albany, New York. The community college depicted is Niagara County Community College, in Sanborn, New York.
