Star Humm

Star Humm
by Blaise Koller
Wild Rivers
15 September 2018

Throughout the two week trip, and for months before Land Arts started I have been having a sort of infection near a tooth that had a root canal, and near where one of my wisdom teeth came out this summer. I was having throbbing pain, more and less depending on the day. This experience happened at Wild Rivers the night before we left to come back to Albuquerque-

The Stars shivered with me
My sight stretched to the edges of the splattered lights
Trying to take it all in at the same time with my limited vision

Lying on the edge
My body felt heavy on the ground
Enthralled by the vastness
I felt unable to look away
From the sprawling light scape above me

A bat swooped around my tent
Coming close and flapping away
Its' clicks getting louder and quieter
Higher pitched and lower pitched
As it moved through the air

My eyes absorbed the starlight into my mind
And I was overcome with a need to humm
To move the sound within my mind
Out into the greater World
Not knowing why exactly
The only word that I can think of that seems closest to what I felt in instinct

Perhaps to communicate with
And intertwine my voice with the buzzing voices of the celestial bodies which seemed to peer down at me

For hours
I released an aching humm
From my mouth and heart

I sang with the stars
The notes oscillating up and down in my mouth
Feeling encapsulated
In fuzzy tendrils of light
A magic gift of healing
Was fleetingly given to me
For that night

The throbbing bump in my jaw was dissipating
As the sound waves moved through it
Blowing the stored up pain out through my mouth
And into the night sky above me
Creating a path so that the pain could be released

I thought, with all their hugeness and power
The sky and stars could absorb my toothache and it wouldn't hurt them