Zeesy Powers

 

There is a highway which leads to a paved road which leads to a gravel lane. The lane continues for a far walk or a short drive, and it is lined with signs. Subtle boundaries marked out by taste in landscaping. Where the road ends is forest but it is not yours to explore without an invitation. Private property. Do not trespass. On one side of the road are houses, on the other side there is a lake. In the daytime the windows of the houses look out onto water and trees, shade and sun. The big, sunny lake. The cool, shady forest. You cannot fence off the water, although everyone wishes they could. If you narrow your vision during sunrise you can almost imagine a world untouched, a fantasy that you can own everything you see. A quiet place for solitude or a remote place for magnanimity away from prying eyes. The cell phone towers reveal themselves only at night as they signal your status in code.Some days, there are sounds of jet skis and music, some days the call of a loon. There are waves rippling away from swimmers that are picked up by the satellite dishes pointed up and over the lake like a chorus of full moons. When you think that it is quiet, close your eyes and you can hear the highway over the hill roaring like a river, carrying bodies from the city to their piece of mind. The city extends its geography to anywhere we take our social state of mind. Implicit in to Get Away is to Go Back. There is always the return.The facade of a cabin falling in on itself is the ghost that haunts the palaces emerging from the woods after nightfall like spellbound castles. No place lives untouched. It carries the traces of every person who has looked out at the water hoping to find the place inside themselves as calm and timeless.