Postcard from Immensity

by Leath Tonino

“Street Scene, Beaver Island, Michigan” (eucalyptus oil transfer, 4x4”) by Michelle Disler

Sophia is writing a postcard to her aunt. Her aunt who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her aunt who has always dreamed of visiting the Grand Canyon. Her aunt who is dying.

Stage IV lung cancer and she wasn’t even a smoker. Can you believe it?

Yes, I can believe it.

We were just in the Grand Canyon—ten days on the river, five days on trail—and there were many times when neither of us said a word. Only the sky talked. Only the rocks. We listened to their conversation and what we heard is that you better believe, that there’s nothing but acceptance.

A thousand swallows swerved and scooped all through immensity.

Yes, I believe.

What I don’t believe, what I’m having trouble understanding, what I’m resisting, is this apartment. This cramped kitchen. This dirty floor. This rickety table, one leg too short. When Sophia touches her pen to the postcard’s back—when she writes strata, sunrise, glimpse, wish, everything, riffle—the coffee in my mug trembles. The memory trembles.

For real? We were just there, listening to sky and rock, tracing the invisible ribbons that swallows trail all through immensity?

And now?

Sophia pauses, looks up. She flips the postcard over to show me the cliffs, the emptiness and light, the miniature Grand Canyon that will ride a truck to Portland, Oregon and bring an ache of happiness to a woman tasked with letting go of long-held dreams.

No, not right now, I say, and turn away. I’m thinking that photographs are doors that can open or close, and that today, this morning, a photograph of immensity will only shrink the immensity I still feel inside my chest.

What’s the volume of a grown man’s chest? By some strange math, might it equal the volume of the Grand Canyon?

I’m confused, still waking up.

For real? We were there?

And now?

Sophia keeps writing, keeps moving dust and sun and maidenhair ferns through her pen, onto the paper, toward her dying aunt’s waiting mind. She writes eddy. She writes sorry and current and tomorrow. I raise my mug, sip the black coffee. She writes granary. I put the mug down, pick it up again. She writes Nankoweap, potsherd, mule, Unkar Delta, relentless.

Weeks, months, years in the future, I will find some photograph of the river’s green flow, the sandstone’s brown soaring, and that will be a door swinging open. That will be an invitation. The immensity gone small within me will swell and become vivid. I will enter the photograph and remember and be grateful for the remembering.

But what about today? What is this?

A word from Tibet comes to mind. Bardo. Intermediate state, transitional state, liminal state. Bardo. State of existence between two lives on earth. I close my eyes, feel the chair beneath me, feel the swallows above me, feel the dirty kitchen floor with my bare toes, feel the cold water wrapping around my bare ankles. I open my eyes and reach for the mug, but there’s nothing left.

Ten days on the river, five days on trail. Sky talking to rocks and rocks talking to sky. How incredible it is to place our sorrows and joys—our stories—in the space held between one rim and the other. In the space ribboned with flight. In the depths of geologic time.

Yes, I believe. Sophia's aunt is dying and dreaming of visiting the Grand Canyon, dying and dreaming at once. A person is big this way, as is a moment. A chest is big. A postcard is big. A 50-cent stamp with the strength to lift immensity and carry it to Portland, Oregon is incomprehensible. The math is strange indeed.

Sophia stands, walks out of the room, returns with another postcard, a photograph of more cliffs, more emptiness and light. The pen touches down and its ink spills stillness, whitewater, stars across those tiny-huge inches of blankness to the left of the address lines.

I lean forward. The address lines have not yet been filled.

Who’s that one for?

Sophia does not look at me. Keeps writing.

My aunt, she says, a tear caught in the corner of her eye.

Leath Tonino is a freelance writer publishing prose and poetry in Orion, The Sun, New England Review, Tricycle, Outside, and a couple dozen other magazines. He’s the author of two essay collections: “The Animal One Thousand Miles Long” (2018) and “The West Will Swallow You” (2019). His work has recently received support from Aspen Words and the Vermont Art Council.

Michelle Disler is a primarily an essayist and a poet who's currently working on two book manuscripts, one about James Bond, and one about Beaver Island, Michigan. Both manuscripts feature writing in hybrid form; that is, a mixture of all that's best of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, as well as graphs, crossword puzzles, and images, like "Street Scene, Beaver Island, Michigan," featured in this issue of Barnstorm. Michelle's artwork is informed by the magic of Beaver Island, Michigan, quite simply; its colorful history, and its landscapes, consisting of miles of sandy soil, shoreline, and foliage. "Street Scene, Beaver Island, Michigan" is Michelle's first published piece of art, although she's been creating these images for many years.