In
The Dark by
Victoria Thai
This piece best represents the feelings that I encounter as I
place myself
into
a world where judgements are not passed and questions are not asked;
a
place where you don't have to please anyone but yourself.
"Vicki! You’re leaving again?" There is nothing I can
say to my friends except "There is
something I have to do." They don’t understand. They return to their pile of
calculus homework,
which I have not started yet. I close the door to a room with odors of take-out Chinese
food from
the night before, and the cinnamon-scented air freshener that I sprayed to mask it. There
is something
else I need to do, something more important.
Eighty-three, eighty-four… At the crosswalk I tap my toe as I
impatiently count the seconds that it takes
for the light to turn red. When I reach the other side, I quicken my pace as the frigid
night air surrounds me and
seeps through my lint-covered black fleece. I breathe a sigh of relief as the maroon
bricks of Olin building come
into sight. The warmth of my breath meets the frosty air, forming a puff of smoke.
I grip the metal handle bar and twist. Before my eyes can adjust to the
dim red light, I hear the gurgling sound of
a sink as it sucks out the chemically tainted water and spits it back clean. I can see
eight enlargers, four on each side;
in the middle are three trays of chemicals: the developer, the stopbath, and the fixer. It
is in this room that fleeting, ephemeral moments in time are transformed into lasting
eternal pieces of art.
In the dark, I let my hair down and rub away my eyeliner, which leaves
a smudge that no one, not even I, will see. In the dark there are no judges. There are no
questions. There are no expectations. In a world where personal bests are considered
mediocre, darkness provides a leveling ground. In the dark, without the structures of
school and commitments, imagination is the true essence of a human being. You are what
your creativity allows you to be.
The trays of chemicals do not look at me and see me as the girl who
does not understand the molecular makeup of adenine tri-phosphate or the girl that would
rather play field hockey than the piano. They know the important things about me. They
know my anxiety as I count the seconds it takes for my prints to go through each bath.
They know what my favorite picture is, the one of my reflection on a car door. Yet the
trays of chemicals don’t compare it to the reflection they see when I peer into them.
They know how many times I've reprinted that picture in an attempt to make it perfect.
These simple trays of chemicals know who was at my sixteenth birthday party and the
torrential downpour during my summer vacation trip to Florida. They know what mood I am in
from the music that I play on the radio and the off-key, wrong lyrics that I belt out.
Most importantly, they see the world through my eyes, in all its beauty and possibilities.
As I make my way over to the radio, I know where there could be a
puddle of dripping water and what to grab onto if I slip. In the dark, I turn the radio
on; counting the four clicks the knob makes to get to my favorite station.
The Beatles’ voices pour into the air and suddenly I dance around
the room singing, off-key of course, the lyrics to "I Feel Fine."
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