Eshtine

disappearing

"I don't get you. You're always going on about impossible things."
Ellen knew there was a difference between the "I don't get you" which means "I refuse to even want to" and the one that means "I want to. Help me." She sensed her friend Jeffrey's protest was the latter sort. That meant she'd better keep talking.
"Impossible or not, it happened."
"Are you talking disappearing like invisibility, or disappearing like you engaged in some identity theft and spent the last week in Tahiti?"
She laughed louder than the joke deserved. "Perhaps I better just start at the beginning.
"You know I've got this big honking stereo, right? Picture the other night--I have it cranked, I'm standing there between the speakers with the volume so high the bass was rearranging my internal organs. And I had my eyes closed.
"It's really, really hard to describe, but I just got this feeling like I was looking through the song. The way people say they get lost in music--well, what if the sound landscape where a physical place you could travel in?"
Jeffrey's eyebrows did little flips. Ellen soldiered on, quickening the pace of her words to stave off an objection.
"That was what it was like. And soon my hand was out, out in front of me, like I thought I was was going to touch the notes--isn't that crazy?"
She laughed again, her laugh a little higher pitched than her normal one, and covered her mouth. Jeffrey didn't comment on the sanity or lack thereof in what she'd just said.
But he was still listening, so Ellen continued.
"So my hand is out in front of me. I'm facing the wall. I'm right at the wall, too, because I'm practically pressed against the speakers. And I've just been reading about how maybe we all used to be able to do impossible things, but as we grew up we lost the knack. So then I'm thinking--here I am, nothing's real to me but this song. I should be able to stick my hand right through this wall like it's not even there."
Jeffrey's voice was small. He was looking like he'd bolt at any loud noise. "And...you do...?"
"I reach out and out and out--and I hit that wood panelling every time. It's cold and smooth and solid. But wait. I keep listening, and soom I'm totally in the song again, kinda doing the swaying-around thing like a hippie chick at a Grateful Dead show. And you know what I finally have to do?"
"What?"
"I gotta reach out and brace myself against the wall!"
Ellen leaned back, grinning in triumph. Jeffrey didn't get it, and said so. "If that's your big payoff..."
Ellen scooted in toward him, her chair squealing against the floor. "Think! Think!" she hissed. "It had been so important to me that the wall stop being there, and that was just a few minutes previous. Why all of a sudden did I need it to be solid?"
"'Cause you lost your balance while you were dancing?"
"No! Well, maybe, yeah. A little. But more than that. I think...I lost more than my balance. I lost...me; I needed to grab onto that wall so I'd--I dunno--reconnect to the physical world. Oh, forget it. You don't buy any of this, do you?"
Jeffrey just looked at her. Ellen thought he was trying to see right through.