I walk through a plaza with a woman and my two teenage sons. I’m dreaming. It’s in a large, wealthy city; the plaza is made of red stone and designed with light and air in mind.
At each turn, you glimpse archways framing a blue, cloudless sky. Here and there, a bird flies comfortably high and away. We walk quickly, following the woman who knows her way.
She stops very close to a huge moving sculpture. It appears to be a musical clock — something like a pendulum movement mixed with a gigantic Jolly Green Giant-sized wind chime. Various-sized cylindrical rods, 10, 20 and 30 feet high, like organ pipes, are bundled in groups, each bundle secured with thick bands of copper- colored steel. The rods are hung from somewhere high up in the archway, and the entire piece sways in a gentle hula-hoop circle.
The rods circle near us, move away, circle near us, move away. At 10 a.m., a deep resonance begins — it’s almost a musical moan. The rods pass again — this time with sound. The woman leans her body onto one of the bundles and holds on. She rides, hugging the bundle of sounding rods, her feet just 6 or 8 inches off the ground.
I watch in amazement. There is no sign to indicate riding the huge gonging rods is appropriate, or allowed, or legal — they clearly weigh many tons and though the movement is measured and precise, some obvious risk remains. No instructions are posted.
On the next go-round, I step up near one of the bundles, catch it and hold on. My sons look at me, delighted and stunned. I pass them, nod yes, and then we are all riding around in a gentle circle, on a moving clock that tells the entire city it’s 10 a.m.
The sound reverberates through our bones, and then deeper still. We are a cocoon of sound and vibration. It beats through us in a physically audible quiver and shake.
She steps off. In turn, we follow her. As we walk, I chatter on, wondering aloud if the artist, and the city, designed the installation knowing people would “ride” the music as the chimes circled and rang. I remark that I’m surprised there aren’t long lines of people waiting to ride each hour.
I wondered how they got away without having seat belts, or harnesses, and some sort of brake to stop the movement of the giant sculpture in an emergency. I look back over my shoulder and see some people with sandwich bags, some with briefcases, one woman trying to corral three squeaking children through an archway. Some move like water around the circling rods, others stop to catch hold, ride once or twice around, step off and move on. I can still feel the sound in my body, and the boys, too, seem to be still and touched.
I ask her, “How did you know to do that? How did you know it was safe?”
“I didn’t,” she replied, matter of fact, precise. “I just did it.”
Flash ahead and I’m no longer dreaming. I’m walking through an empty pavilion. I pass by a middle- aged man dressed for summer in khaki shorts, a clean gray shirt tucked neatly around his globe-round belly, tennis shoes and no-nonsense white socks. He’s speaking aloud to himself about school starting up soon, his joy at finally getting to be a rich Saudi prince, how Dick Cheney and his wife would soon be moving into his house.
“Whoa,” I think and turn to watch him. He gestures to no one there, voice falling and rising sharply, and then falling calm before spiking again in anger. He’s quite enjoying his conversation. I wonder how I know he won’t hurt me, already knowing I don’t know.
Somewhere a minute passes, and there again, another, and another. So much passes by us every day, and we watch it, we read, we worry. Sometimes we are almost paralyzed with thoughts “What of me? What of me? What will happen to me?”
How do we know it’s safe? We don’t. Not for any of us. Yet we move on.
There are no humdrum days.
E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
