We Are Sea-Farers

It was late. Well, not late for me as I had been home from work about an hour, but late concerning the day as it was now half past midnight. I decompress alone upon returning home while everyone else is in bed asleep. I enjoy the stillness of the house at this time. The dog quietly waiting for me by the door; kneeling I scratch her ears, stroke her long back, kiss her nose, then take her outside. The quiet of the backyard where various aromatic plants perfume the night air; Champaca Alba, Salvia Clevelandii, Patchouli, Plumeria, African Jasmine. I search the heavens for favorite stars and constellations, Cassiopeia, Orion, Southern Cross, Big Dipper, Pleiades. What animals are stirring; something in the Palm or Orange tree, an Owl, maybe a possum sitting atop the telephone line will stare down at me? Small planes overhead, their passing distant and nearly silent except for a slight drone and buzz. I track them by the lights blinking underneath and along wingtip edges. The dog goes for a last minute tinkle and sniff of the yard, and together we come in and close and lock the back door, our reflections silhouetted in the dark windowpanes. I turn off the dining room lights and then walk through the galley kitchen to the door leading into the garage. I open this heavy door, and click the switch turning off the front yard lights. Lights we have posted in brick columns the gated yard contains running along the burn of the street. I close and deadbolt the door. Next to this door is a small bathroom I use at night where I brush my teeth, and then back through this end of the kitchen turning out the light. From here in the dark now I cross the great front room guided only by the soft light of a singular post in the front yard. It casts a glow through the blinds and efficiently lines the floor before me like an enormous pad of paper. This is the dream light and it remains on watch until dawn, making a friend to moths and the errant random bug. Quietly I enter my daughters room. She is asleep and her white noise machine burbles the soft sounds of a stream she enjoys having on at night. I pull up her covers and turn down the stream to a quiet gurgle.

I walk to my bedroom and slip into bed closing my eyes, ready to fall away from the day into sleep.

It was a high pitched, singular, beep, I heard then. Like a small digital wrist watch could make. I opened my eyes waiting quietly, for the second, and then continual, beep, to sound; thinking, I would now have to get up, find the watch somewhere in the dark, and turn it off. But there was nothing. All quiet. No more beep from the perceived watch. Instead it was followed by a bright but isolated, flash, just outside the french doors in our bedroom. As bright as lightning but small, contained, and not much larger it seemed than the width of the doors and the narrow vertical side-windows which bordered them. The deep grey curtains were closed shut, and for this briefest moment were illuminated from outside. Lightning? I began to count;
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi,...
expecting a small distant thunder call. Nothing. I waited another few moments. No digital, beep. No accommodating, flash. 

I puzzled for a moment, something imagined, perhaps. Unexplained but certainly plain and natural had occurred. The tonic of two separate events collided. First, a beep. Then, a flash. Mixed together in my mind making the sum greater than the whole. Had I the answer to this minor mystery right then, I would have fallen fast asleep. I closed my eyes, laid my head back down and tried to settle my wondering thoughts.

Beep. Beep. I open my eyes. I heard the small but distinct digital sound again, twice, and then immediately following, right outside my bedroom doors facing the backyard; a backyard completely fenced in with 12' high ivy and bougainvillea covered walls, two lightning-bright flashes illuminate against the curtained windows. This time I sat up slightly, resting one side on a bent elbow. I counted to myself again, hoping for the thunder roll;
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.
Silent. No car driving past on the street, no plane flew or mobile craft helicoptered overhead. No one in the house stirred, not even my easily-stirred partner fast asleep next to me. Nothing was happening at the neighbors. It was silent. Not a sound. Nothing to give away or explain the beeps and flashes.

Of course I had to get up. Investigate. Look around.

What is it which prompts such a thought? To make one explore such things in the night, when everyone else is asleep and you are basically, alone? The need to protect your family and home? The need to understand the place you are in? Or is it the invitation to mystery so great, even if frightened or anxious, you still go out into that great dark room and peer around the corner.

I step into the great front room just outside and to the right of our bedroom door and peer through this space. With the glow of the dream light it is much more vast than it appears in the day, and as such I wait and look at unnatural shapes of art, furniture, plants. From here I can look out one of the front windows, the blinds about two-thirds closed. Open enough so I can see the outdoor security lights are not on. The lights on the brick posts lining our yard to the street are off. The singular glowing post is alone, and but for the tips of Milkweed plants and an Hibiscus against the window, I see not much to report. I listen carefully to nearly nothing other than maybe a faint humm of the refrigerator and the slight spill from my daughter's room where the burbling brook continues to play. I step a few feet into the front room and half expect a field of dozens of little grey visitors to come running past me like salmon swimming upstream against a current, but it is just me, and the dark, and the quiet.  I look toward and face the kitchen. There isn't a watch left out randomly beeping, nor are there flashes of lightning, even though it is cloudy and a slight mist was in the air when I arrived home. Lightning is extremely rare in Los Angeles. If it had been lightning the flash would have surrounded the house in a fashion causing all doors and windows to become lit up, but the only thing lit up was just outside our bedroom doors. I continue my search, slowly stepping through the dark toward the front door where I can turn to my right and look into the open back room and dining area. I see the dark silhouette of the couch, the enormous plant standing by a window, and the french doors to the back yard where me and our dog just visited the night stars. I walk through this area to the french doors and carefully step into their frame hesitantly looking into the backyard. Nothing. The pool shimmers darkly from ambient light pollution, but most of this is darkened by the huge fence, and trees shadowing the space. I turn and then look through the galley kitchen and notice, the light in the garage is on? I can see the frame around this door is brightly lit from some light on in the garage, but much brighter than I know the garage light actually contains. It is a bluish essence, like a cross between a neon light and fluorescent. There is a fluorescent light in the garage, but you have to turn it on from a switch which is currently blocked by a stack of unsorted boxes, and two bicycles. Simultaneously I can't help but wonder on the tightness of the seal around this door. I mean after all, it should be totally sealed making it fire proof as cars drive in and out of the garage and as I am looking at this three-sided lit rectangle around the door, which may or may not be now properly sealed, frozen by the mystery of it, when it instantly goes out.

What. The. Fuck.

I can sense my mouth drop open and I am stock still, immobile, with my back to the outside doors as thoughts like a damm bursting open tumble through my head in unorderly fashion, making senseless demands like, you must go into the garage and investigate, and, who is in the garage, and, why am I so far from any light switch, and, I should stay in the dark that way any prowler will not see me and I will have the upper hand because they don't know they woke me and I can slide along the floor and find my way to protecting the family and getting help and surprising them and I saw Jodie Foster in that movie with Anthony Newly, no not Newly, umm what is his fucking name, that movie where she was in the dark of a basement, it has a poster of a moth in a mouth, not unlike the moths now fluttering around the singular front post whose light is so brief and dim it couldn't possibly cast a glow into the garage and did it just go out and maybe there was a car in the street parked perpendicular in the street blocking the street and its headlights were on bright and like spotlights they shown through the garage window the one covered in blinds so no light actually can get in and I don't hear a car it is actually so quiet it is making this entire scenario more uneasy oh God why don't I hear a car driving around the block or a dog barking or the humm from the freeway just four blocks away or cars drag racing up and down Ventura, and before I realize it entirely, I have made my way stealthily through the galley kitchen and find I am standing in the doorway of the small bathroom next to the garage door. I may be shaking. I open the frosted window in the small bathroom trying to get a look out onto the front yard, hoping I can see some answer for why there was a light on in the garage. I see nothing, and continue to hear nothing. On my tip toes I step toward the door to the garage and place my right ear against it, and hear nothing. I pause and consider my options...wondering if and what I should do. I turn the deadbolt and quickly open the door as my hand reaches for the light switch, just past the door frame and click it on.
The garage is as quiet and silent as I left it just a few minutes ago when I shut off the front yard lights and locked up the house. I stare into the garage. I see the alarm light of the car blinking as it does when parked and locked. Nothing is out of place. No one had been in here.
I turn out the light, and close and lock the door.
I am standing once again in the dark. Slowly I walk through this end of the kitchen and into the entryway of the front door. I close my eyes and reaching outside myself I ask,
Who is here?

We are seafarers looking for safe harbor. We are astounded by your bravery.

I open my eyes, and am stock still.

What does one do at this point? There is nothing more to investigate. The answer to my question seems to provide a mystery I will wonder on for some time, perhaps the rest of my days.

We are seafarers looking for safe harbor.

Well, aren't we all, really? Here we couch ourselves in distractions of safety; our homes, our families, our friends. All together now while on a planet who spins through the depths of space and dark. A moon posts on our doorstep, the dream light catching our nocturnal wonderings like moths, or an errant bug. We are alone, really, and safety is an illusion we create but don't deserve or possess.

We are astounded by your bravery.