YD6-52(SHEg) Odyssey Of Aetheria Hiccup The Fillancialle In Central Park

 

A hidden boathouse, a mysterious barge, and the enigmatic Aetheria weave their way into the narrative, blurring the lines between reality and the ethereal. As the narrator grapples with his own anxieties and desires, the reader is drawn deeper into a world where memories and mirages intertwine.

Step into a world where memories dance with mirages and consciousness yearns to be born. Join the author on a journey through vibrant New York City, where chance encounters and introspective moments intertwine. "You Are My Sunshine: Vitrine of Consciousness" is a memoir that explores the delicate balance between reality and the ethereal, inviting you to witness the birth of Aetheria, the embodiment of consciousness itself. This is a story of self-discovery, destiny, and the enduring power of the human spirit.

YD6-52(SHEg) Odyssey Of Aetheria Hiccup The Fillancialle In Central Park

I’m seated on my bent leg, comfortable as a sculptured bedpost, gazing at Francine across our Aladdin conversation rug. I restrain my mind fantasizing, as my cloaked towel bathrobe ruffled over her Lotus figure. The phantom knot’s belt falling loose, the edge of the robe’s seam giving to the shadows, as her eyes sparkle, her graceful smile. From between the pillow, she leaps a nervous gazelle to the edge of the bed, to the aisle. Fluttering the bathrobe, trailing the serpentine belt ends, she vanishes through the gapping doorway to the shower room.

In her flamboyant cowgirl jeans, shirt, and pointed boots, she returns calling me, with something on her mind. “Can we go to Central Park?” She steps toward the archway with a leading glance, her demeanor saying. ‘Let us celebrate my desire!’ I untangle my leg, from the corner of the bed, step to the floor. Following her through the galley kitchen, out into dazzling sunlight. Walking 63rd Road’s mile out of Forest Hills, to the street margined fenestrated brick facades of apartment blocks to the clearing of Queens Boulevard. As we turn the corner, along a far spread lane trickling traffic into the distance toward the Manhattan hazy skyline. Approaching the sidewalk guardrail enclosure, to the intriguing sidewalk hatchway. Onto descending stairs with the “E, F, R,” colored disks leading to the platform lines. 

The driver flashed by the fluorescent-lit station’s inbound entry. A fleeting figure behind the cabin window. He conceded his presence to the carriage windows’ cinematographic flicker. The interior revealing among scattered passengers, clustered families on a Sunday excursion, the train rumbles to a halt, to a sigh of doors sucked from the flanks of the carriage flip and clatter over to the sides. Freezing open the interior, Francine steps across the threshold, advancing to the beam of seats along the windows. 

With a floor’s tug beneath our feet, the station platform pulls behind. We’re drawn with the glaze morphing into the blackness of the tunnel, switching to mirror us sitting among sparse passengers. Francine engrossed in quiet eye-shifting musing, an alternated culture from the France she left behind. I’m dawdling in the windows, mirroring ourselves in the bright interior, tracking our destination overhead, coasting the carriage, flashing out the station, slipping to a halt, sight, and clatter doors amidst a shuffle of interchanging passengers. As we settle into a punctuating rhythm, flashing stations mirror our ride to Manhattan.

Each station ticked by, a tense squeeze of my eyes reminding me of that subterranean labyrinth. Each stop, a knot on a string of memory, pulling me back to that Sunday. Finding the “F” route countdown beneath Manhattan, flashback, “5th Av/53 St” I led Francine up from the subway into the drizzling storefront displays. 

The French girl, the Champs-Élysées of New York, of Fifth Avenue, which led Francine and me to walk uptown. Oversized, glittering vitrines didn’t seem to faze her. She wipes off cursory glances at the changing displays, the wide, paved sidewalk laid bare. Stretched before us, expecting nothing else on a Sunday than a few distant figures. Until, she drew my eyesight to a quaint, squashed storefront. The open door, a wink among the grand glittering neighbors’ displays. She stepped inside, and I followed. The store felt a miners’ pick and shovel dug out a cave kaleidoscopic of minerals. Scattered with New York red heart trinkets. Clothes hung from the roof. Mugs sat on the shelves. But Francine walked deeper into the store. Mounted stuffed animals, dangled limbs from a metallic forest of racks in the corner. 

Under Aetheria’s watchful eye, in a mirage of sunlight outside the storefront window, suscitated the childlike wonder of Francine. She picked a fluffy gorilla, a semblance of the protective figure her heart was seeking. Walks back towards me as I stand back, away from the storekeeper behind the cash register. She approached, in a soft voice, whispered, “Can I have him?” Her eyes and sigh spoke, ‘I feel like having him.’ Her plea wiped away all my anxiety about living in New York when Black Monday’s 1987 Wall Street cash ebbed to the streets. 

We stepped out into the street. As Francine cuddles her Gorilla, I thought, ‘How little My Little Sparrow needs to warm her heart?’ It didn’t occur, I might be an inadvertent representation. I felt compelled to divert from the towering Toys R Us full-size giraffe on the street corner display windows and head for Central Park’s branching, flocculent green swells, for our walk that day.

As the loudspeakers blaring, rising to my feet, with a gaze waving Francine along. The windows flashing the incoming station. “5th Ave/ 50th St” splashed the walls. We alight from the carriage. The doors clatter close, to a cinematography of windows flickering of passengers riding past us, and the “R” tailgate vanishing into the tunnel. We weave our way past toward the exit. Ascending the stairwell, I reach out with glimpses at the azure sky snipped jigged towering city entrails. Afternoon shadows slipped along the glittering glass and steel skyscrapers. Rising to facades, paced back a myriad of eyes. To fall behind the flocculent foliage into the sun dazzling concrete jungle. Teasing across the plaza a tranquil - whoosh - of a passing car, and the other eyeing across the asphalt the city’s oasis. 

A horse-drawn carriage, carrying a lounging couple - Clip clopped - along an arcade of dark tree trunks, breaking through the dappled shade cast by the canopies' overbearing sidewalk with flocculent foliage. We cross 59th Street, through the wake of the leisure couple’s passing carriage. In front of the curb, a parked carriage awaits passengers. We cross the intersection by the rhythm of traffic lenses, toward the wall of pent-up dark hefty tree trunks, into the shade of overbearing canopies, the plaza, to enter Central Park.

The dappled gritty path, we find leading us. Lose myself in the woods. Wandering with Francine through sun-dappled shadows, a dozen stretches of streets. When Helios riding his chariot across the skies, suscitating in me a semblance of following a path attribution. Which untangled stepping into the track meeting Yael a week Saturday in late morning. Helios's early afternoon descent blurred my dappled paths. Until, the clearing hints at the spot where Gail and I parted ways. 

With Francine, I stumbled upon a shy dome in the wood’s canopy. With Aetheria puppeteering a silent sundial, echoing, ‘I exist!’ shifting the clearing’s sunlight pools onto the gritty T-junction, so I can recognize where I lost Yael. Now with Francine, along a paddock wood fence to pent-up thickets. We wander, and just short of an apparent rear brick barn’s jutted end. A shadowy hollowing in dense foliage. Out, jump a green, streaky sign to light. “Boathouse” a whispering invitation.

We followed the elongating high brick wall, a silent guide through the shady back alley into the unknown. Afar, a blurry clearing hinting at a glistening waterfront. Drawing us into the opening clearing beyond the wall’s abrupt ending. Sunlight filters across our path, greening the hedging thicket emerging from the shadows, to embrace weathered, gnarled stomp barks. Morphing with our approach, whittling the dark shades to shape arch-bottom barges. Starting the row of stern stock piled hulls half-dozen deep, sunlight stakes a signboard, Aetheria Beckoning me to stop.

Taming a nervous thrill, the novelty of my curiosity piqued, lying for a reflection at the edge of the deserted dock, my course a whisper. ‘I’m free to loop back from the expanded turquoise pond.’ and holding my anxiety tame.

I’m frowning, as I trail over and over again a selection starting from hiring half-hour and trailing into the hour and two onward. Glimpsing Francine standing back, and under pressure, surmounting my doubts. My instincts harkened back to my teenage years as a bricklayer apprenticeship. 

Memories of those dawns before my brother joined me. I’d saddle my road racing bicycle, pedaling away into the twilight from Kyalami. A family poultry farm between two cities — Johannesburg in the back. Pedaling a marathon ride, crossing the Highveld waving hill. An hour later, I would contour of the Voortrekker Hill. Freewheeling, a long descent into Pretoria’s streets. Meandering to one of F.L. Haas construction sites, to unsaddle to start my day. 

A voice quoting times and rates. I turn toward a burlesque man emerging from the boathouse’s blind corner. While I’m still in a daze, considering Francine’s desire. ‘You want to go on one of those things?’ not daring to voice my thoughts. Fearing I might dampen her excitement and fade the glints in her eyes. 

As Francine stands by with a silent gaze, before the boat-keeper pauses, at his belt, a conductor’s money pouch. Remembering the exertion of my cycling marathons, I opt for a leisure half-hour rental. Now I expected a smooth sailing. With a dismissive turn, the boat-keeper beckons us. ‘Follow me!’ His footsteps echoing his whispers as he strode across the wooden deck toward the only docked barge. The boat-keeper unties the anchored rope, gesturing Francine aboard. She stepped over the barge’s topside, wobbling along, and rushed to take a seat. I stepped onto the athwart seat. As the unstable floor sways under my feet, I rushed to sit astern. Facing Francine’s gaze, and no sooner, the boat keeper thrust a pair of oars into my grasp.

The oars snuggle in my palm, an instinct honed on construction sites. My hands nimble with a shovel —  wielding, scooping dirt, hefting resistance, and tipping off, to regain its light — Now I’m twisting the oars’ shafts, watching the blade catching the surface. I feel the scooping resistance through the water, releasing with a splash, before I recover the next stroke. 

The oars’ control, sparked a surge of nostalgia, awakening the little boy in me, awed by the novelty of operating the Bobcat skid-steer loader on-site. Seated in the cabin, hands gripping the dual levers on either sides of the seat. Feet poised on the pedals. To propel the tandem tractor tires, I pushed the left lever forward, the right lever backward. The Bobcat yawed sure-footed on the ground, counteract steering the levers, to fun in control. I ended up ceding the machine to an operator. 

While I’m spooning the oars, gaining a feel for their resistance in the water, I adapt as though they were levers. In a brief divergence of concentration, I'm finding we drifted — gliding an ice skid on the surface of the water — farther from the dock, the keeper’s cursory push fades from mind, his retreating figure distancing, a dismissive whisper, ‘You get by now. . .’

Glancing at Francine in front of me, I’m catching the creeping endless cheerful ripples dancing alongside us, leading ever outward. The silence and tranquil turquoise waters suscitate a haunting unease — in those blues, morph blurry skylines rest on the vast Indian Ocean’s horizons. When, as a toddler, I found myself lost on a ghost ship. 

My hands and wrists gain a feel of the shaft, slicing and spooning the paddles through the water. The barge’s impulsive raw yaws by my uneven strokes. Sculling, a tug-of-war between left and right. I aim at getting a rhythm, synchronizing. My torso rocks, feeling clumsy, drawing me closer to and then farther from Francine, sitting passive in her seat. I stress as my world falls out of my control, wrestling, finding myself on a wild goose chase. Digging and paddling, oscillating between progress and drifting across the bay. The barge veers in my sightline, steering away from the distant woods along the pond’s shore. 

Yet, the unwieldy barge, with a mind of its own, drifts lazily. Until, I’m aware of an accentuating chill over my shoulder — In bright sunlight, Aetheria, breathing an awakening call — with a gentle breeze nudging us. I’m sculling left, from the curvy woodlands, herded, sturdy and impetuous, gazing at us. Curving our course away from the boathouse huddled in the woods. Granting me to relax, emerging from the bay. I lend a glance at Francine, her heartily smile, as though she’s imagining herself gliding serenely on a gondola ride.

Offside behind Francine, the rustic stone arch bridge nestled in the distant woodlands. Piques my curiosity, to intrigue. My mind sets cape after figures on a barge at large, passing beneath the stone arch. But the breeze pushes us off course, toward the opposing woodland’s undergrowth. Glancing at my wristwatch, I begin to assess our half-hour turnaround. With the rooftops of 5th Avenue peeking with cats-eyes over the green crown to a golden flocculent foliage of the woodlands canopies. 

We drifted in a wishful mirage of sunlight, while behind Francine, she's unaffected by the dense dark escarpment of foliage emanating a humidity cold. The shore darkness a congregation of alligators bask, sinking to float underwater. Offside, the figures dwarfing and soon to vanish, in the time-lapse we need a few hours’ lee time.

Francine raises her camera underneath her eyes, nimble finger adjusting, dials setting. A veil tear to fear, as she aims, after she rotates the imposing lens, and points in my face. I scold my ego, ‘let it be!’ as the shutters click, giving her rights to document her adventures of “SHE. . .” her new city. 

With a nervous reaction, I’m constant checking my watch, simmering our return time. To elude me, a possible “Romeo and Juliette,” however, Francine’s reverie in her outing, as I’m myope of a romantic setting, Francine seems undeterred.

As Francine lowers her hefty-lensed camera. She pressed it into my hands, signaling me to take over. ‘Do the same. . . Shoot me, to remember this moment!’ 

With a surge of panic. “Oh, no!” I exclaimed. Convincing myself to relax. I pull the shafts on board, to lie across between us, to an impulsive grip. An icy shiver flow at drawing a pistol —.

While I’m thoughtful, of a simple hand digging into my trouser hip pocket. Grab a warm plastic bulge, my Canon Snappy mold into my palm. All automatic, after raising to my eyesight, I’ve gone around surveying construction sites’ work-in-progress to witness payments, and more, simply point-and-shoot. 

Instead of a feather-light customary Snappy camera. I exerted a firmer grip, lift with a toppling forward lens. Consuming my patience overlooking shutter speed’s complexity, to lock a manual film advance lever. I left off fine-tuning the shutter button setting. Raise the viewer to my eyesight. Centering Francine between the eyes in the crosshairs, fingering a lens rotation for clarity, I press the shutter, and return the camera to Francine — The latent exposure when the 35 mm film developed, she’ll sadly mock, “The photo you took is all dark!” Recollecting my clumsy abandoning, too confusing adjustments.

As I’m flawed by the adverse darkness, while Francine in sunlight savors her romantic gondola ride, with inadvertent glances at my wristwatch, The contradictory intuition didn’t filter through my mind, to leisure at her whims the remaining peaceful afternoon.

Our turnaround half-hour rental overcast my mind, to fare onto my duty. I row the port oar, but we’re drifting starboard. At the whims of the barge — tug by a dog on a leash following the scent — Aetheria mirage, calling us to follow the figures on a barge, now a distancing spec behind the arch bridge. 

I’m breaking into my impatience. I foresee stepping overboard. Then, to a lingering thought. ‘_How deep can the water be? A public pond, I’m sure, safeguarded against accidental drowning? But faced with the reality of wading through the water. The puzzle getting together, wet in the water, tugging the barge, to Francine — wipes the imagination off my mind.

Unlike cycling, tires to grip the ground, after a day on a construction site, duck my head into headwinds onto facing waving hills home. Worst, I wrestle with an egoistic pride against the stiff headwind, side drifting, and attempting to find an oarsman’s skills, steering and advancing paddle and scooping the barge veers lazily in a wide circle.

Approaching the shore thickets, the boathouse loomed in the distance. I dug deep, pulling the port oar harder and starboard to a mental exhaustion. Without alternative but a determination, I rowed faster, fighting, paddling, the water along tickets crowding, a corridor shielding in part the breeze.

The boat-keeper stands ready with a mooring pole. He walks hands along the shaft, hooked our barge and guides us alongside the deck. He waited for Francine to step off, while I’m left with the wobbly barge. Francine heads across the deck. I’m catching up for the brick quoin of the boathouse. Shadowing the ground pathway alongside the guiding brick wall. Without the glitter in her eyes, sinks to my mind, the weight of her dragging stride, in disappointment.

We merge with the old trunks, sentinel of distant lawns. We stroll in silence through the thick foliage. Sunlight filtered through a leafy cathedral, dappling our gritty path. As we advance, shattered leaves at eye level morph, giving off a subtle speckled light. Painting a mottled row of fenestrated facades, the architectural boosting to relax and find my bearings.

As the ground beneath our feet, turns to shadowed paving as - whoosh, whoosh, whoosh - cars pass by. We find the plaza bathes the avenue in a warm glow. Across the street, the sidewalk raises the obstructive railing, guarding the subway hatchway.

Francine abreast in silence, her thoughts a mystery, as my mind. Stretches ahead. To another destination, in a city that’s my workbench. Suffice, I knead my mind, as we descend the stairs, leaving behind the crowd of fenestrated facades and their myriad of windows overlooking the leaf-strewn flocculent ground. A filtering of sunlight, morphing to fluorescent-lit tunnel. We burrow through the fluorescent tunnel. Calling me to conjugate the subway labyrinth to the platform. Further breaking down any romantic warmth that might linger at heart. 

With a wind through a forest of chilling steel H-columns, roofing the street overhead. The driver’s face flashes behind the panoramic window, with the train rumbling past. The carriage windows flickering to slipping to a halt with doors untucking, sigh whisking across the carriage flank. We step on, cross over to the beam of seats, as the floor tugs under our feet. The carriage accelerates out of the station, dives into the tunnel and windows’ darkness, mirror our world. We punctuate flashing stations, until, we disembark, the train pulling away while prolonging the platform. Rising upstairs to emerge onto the home-ground of the leading Queen Boulevard. A glimpse back, at the Manhattan skyline, ablaze with the colors of dusk, stretches across the horizon. We turn the corner onto 63rd Road, a mile-walk the deserted street deep into Forest Hill, to reach home.