Emily Vieweg
Vision
after The Laramie Project, by Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theatre Project as performed by the Fargo/Moorhead Community Theatre, October 2018
Over the years in this theatre, seat B-H-12 has earned its lumps, its creaks and creases,
and as I scan the program, I read of the plot and the actors. I see
a single set with movable chairs, and, I know from experience,
waiting backstage, a hundred familiar characters breathing deeply and,
ready or not, the show will go on.
I will notice the blinking house lights, calling “places” for the audience.
House lights will fade to half, followed by a sound cue, an announcement, and blackness.
Lights Up, Go.
I realize that I have been gifted an extra set of eyeglasses.
Not glasses that help me read or see the road as I drive in rain, but
glasses that shield my sight. I do not mourn this lack of sight, per se,
it keeps me sheltered, it keeps me innocent, it keeps me from
knowing the world is against me. Perhaps I have inherited this naiveté
from my father, who raised me to find the good first, then see
the hard as pain, as struggle, because even the Gorilla in the neighborhood
had clown-like shoes. I could smile at that thought.
My breath catches as I witness The Fence. The Buck Fence.
The Buck Fence is set upstage left. The Fence could be used as a
metaphor for distance – from truth, maybe? In this case, though, The Fence is
not hyperbole or metaphor or simile. The Fence is Death.
Twenty years ago, The Fence held a young man. Twenty-one. Beaten. Left For Dead.
Murdered. Because he lived his true self. I wonder if this true self was too
foreign to others, not because they were born that way, but because, as Hammerstein
famously penned, “You’ve got to be carefully taught…”
As the curtain falls, my head drops forward.
My fingers pick the rose-colored glasses off the bridge of my nose.
We could have been so healthy – instead, we are choosing
Fear, Migraines, Anger, and Ulcers. Any style of hurt
to remind us: We are still alive!!
Why must we not see the fly rehydrating from the dew of the banana leaf? or
the notebook’s overwritten pages, complete with folded corners? or
post-it-note-ridden textbooks?
I mean, Sarah ate all her peas tonight! The car started!
My pillows have cases. Water is drip-drip-drippling into the cat dish, and
you can still smell grandma on the afghan, eighteen years later.
Maybe we see what we want to see?
There are pluses and minuses to this strategy.
By the way, what tint is embedded in the lenses you wear?
Do you see the leaves, or the weeds? Petals? Thorns?
How low do you wear your ball cap?
A darkened molded plastic protects your single set of eyes.
Open them.
Blink once, or twice,
give your sight time to adjust.
What will you see today? Shrubs? or Aphids?
Pinto? or Manure?
Infant? or Sin?
I grew up seeing shrubs and all things green.
Perhaps this innocence is choosing a paler color for today’s tinted trifocals.
~~~
When I walk outside with my daughter, I see
the doting grandparents eager to converse with
her stuffed puppy dog and help her giggle
at fart noises.
When I walk outside with my son, eight inches
taller than I, visually 24, socially 16,
he is now an adult and I know
his muted, solitary stroll across the mall
may evoke alarm.
Perhaps we see what we want –
or do we see that which makes our breath stop?
How strong is that animal part of our brain?
My chiropractor adjusts the stress from my neck and shoulders,
bones realign, air pockets pop, crunch, and I grunt from the good pain – the relief.
I am so heavy… fresh out of the ocean, full of sand and salt.
I pry the rose-colored glasses from the bridge of my nose,
place them in my pocket this time.
Some evils share a red deeper than roses
these molecules, unstrained, pass through.
I remember my first set of rose-colored glasses.
I was 10.
All of us: my sister, myself, mom, and dad, drove to dad’s office
40 minutes away. We met a portly fellow outside the building –
he wore a tattered white t-shirt, oversized jeans, and sneakers;
a resident of the state hospital near downtown St. Louis.
I squeezed daddy’s hand.
“It’s okay, Muffy,” he’d say, “These folks aren’t dangerous, they’re just sick.”
“Will I get a fever?” asked my sister.
“No, Buddy. Their illness is in the brain. They are not contagious.”
Our lenses are not all-filtering, fully-sifting, opaque.
They help us notice, at times, how different is not always dangerous.
Just, when we hide behind those glasses –
when we remove them from our coat pockets and don them on a cloudy day –
when they become part of our daily costume –
moment by moment, inch by inch, molecule by molecule,
our lenses become less transparent. They filter deeper shades.
Until all we see is
black or white,
left or right,
all or nothing.
~~~
As I reflect and refract from the representation of feeling and fact,
the curtain falls.
my head collapses into my hands,
my palms cover a muted scream and I see
twenty years after Laramie, after Matt…
not much has changed.
except, now our stage whispers carry further,
carry longer, hold more clout and attention,
and our staged personas will morph into full characters
with faces and names and facts and fury
for this reason
we stand
sighted
and sing.
Emily Vieweg is a poet originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Her work has been published in Soundings Review, Art Young’s Good Morning, Proximity Magazine, Spillwords.com and more. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota where she is a mother of two, cat wrangler and office assistant.
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