Sky Bottling Uncovered

Pleakley Pow Pow,
Surreal Times Reporter

A recent exploration into a long abandoned and presumed desolate lighthouse burrowed in the coastal craigs of New England yielded the discovery of a most extraordinary craft. Largely devoid of the musky debris which generally accrues in abandoned places, the lighthouse was rather stocked with an uncanny assortment of glass bottles. These bottles circled the lighthouse in a seemingly infinite spiral that followed the wooden stairs of the cylindrical building up and up and up and up. There was a certain ethereal hum in their continuance, a similar wonder that accompanies things which appear endless.

Some bottles boar stoat figures and grainy surfaces. Some donned long iridescent necks and pear-like bottoms. Some showed fading soda pop labels and glimpses of bygone days. Some were small vials wedged between boastful, curving jars. They were of endless variety and a myriad of translucent, earthy hues. Their enchanting uncanniness stemmed primarily and undoubtedly from their contents - a snippet of sky from an unknowable number of places and times.

It seems that you could spend all day traversing and exploring the sprawling array of bottles and even longer observing the uniqueness of their skies. In some, hues of gray warred amongst each other in upheaving gales and roaring squalls. Miniature tempests brewed amongst bottlenecks and bolts of lightning severed through smoky clouds. Upon removing the corked stopper from a bottle of this kind, our correspondent noted not only the sound of thunder but a distinct salty spray graze her lips - likely foam from some sprawling sea blanketed beneath a tempestuous sky. Serene summer evenings from abounding lands settled in the cool glass of others, quiet except for the murmuring symphony of cicadas, crickets, and peepers. The kind of sound that eventually comes to feel like quiet the longer you listen and your awareness wanders. Certain bottles could barely contain the glorious golden chromas of various horizon’s dusks and dawns. In others, rain pattered ruefully down the bottles’ panes, snowflakes drifted silently in cottony tufts or blizzardy torrents. Clouds imbued with a most electrifying spectrum of colors frequented many jars, their hues ranging from the softest of lavenders to cherry reds and lemonde pinks, to the most lustrous of ambers and striking cerulean blues. Beautifully, as with all creatures, none were precisely the same, and nor could they be. Even a sky from the same place assumes newness and uniqueness under the sun of a different day.

In trying times, the human psyche can fall prey to a great number of uninvited yet nonetheless relentless plagues, demons, aches and maladies. One’s mind may feel stuck and one’s body and life subsequently stagnant. As with the evershifting celestial spheres above us, we too will persist, and lingering darknesses will pass. Finicky and capricious is the world, and we are bodies that must move with it. In moments where the shadows feel impenetrable and permanent, know they are anything but, and derive their power from asserting a sense of overwhelming permanence. Remember, even in the most uproarious storms, the clouds always and miraculously breach to allow for new light. There are infinite skies and boundless horizons and vast tomorrows. They may, at times, get tucked away in dusty corners of yesterday’s memory, but are never lost, simply in need of being remembered.

The art of sky bottling seems a quietly curious and wonderful one indeed.

For more articles by Pleakley Pow Pow, click here. To get in touch with this writer, email pleakley@surrealtimes.net.

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