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A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. July's Theme: "Beyond the Horizon"
Volume 6 Issue 5 ISSN# 1708-3265

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 		Eye-level
by Alegria Imperial

A line seen from the shoreline, which marks the end of the world, that's how I described the horizon in our Grade 4 geography class. My teacher had me go back to my seat, being kind not to say I didn't read the lesson and I was bluffing my way by describing the obvious and adding to it what I imagined on my own.

But growing up, I didn't change how I looked at the horizon: It zips the world and keeps humans where they must—square on the ground at eye level. My idea always sounded like a threat to others; for them, the horizon meant the point where dreams get melded with reality and thus, it unleashed paradise. I argued a void lay beyond it.

To the first guy I ever walked the shore with, my idea of the horizon sounded incredulous. "Are you serious?" he had stopped kicking the sand as we strolled one sunset in a town, where beaches ribbon coconut groves. Right above the palms, the sky that seemed bent to make a concave roof stifled me. "Yes, I am" I had sighed.

The sun had rolled alongside as if it trailed us like a sentry. I guarded my words. Apparently, he took my idea rather personally. "We do have our future together nicely laid out, you know," he suddenly told me. Raw Food and Fasting Coaching with Aleesha Stephenson

His hand on my shoulders, he slightly turned my face looking sideways with his palm toward the blazing horizon. It had looked so close at eye-level that if I stretched my hand I could snag the seam of sea and sky. "Yes," he said as if reading my thoughts, "you could pick that line up and peek into our future, just now in fire orange."

Conflagration—that was how the evening turned out as our arguments left us stepping on ashes next morning. The horizon had been hazy as we drove away. I left town a few weeks later and changed jobs when I came back to the city.

"A new horizon has opened up for you!" A staff member working in the president's office of an exclusive school where my resume had been reviewed as consultant got approved and she couldn't help but pre-empt the mail with a call. I reacted with typical reticence at the mention of the word; I had thought, "When would I ever be freed from this line hemming my world?"

Part of my job was to organize seminars about the old city of Manila where the school had existed for 300 years. Like a new horizon, ruins of stonewalls, royal gates, palaces and gothic churches ringed my days. I had imagined I must have been dealt my wish of not ever wanting to see that line on water until the day I met our guest speaker.

An architect who spent three years studying how to restore ruined monuments in Spain, spun for me dreams of the Alhambra and the Escorial. He walked me around decaying stone structures close to the school. "From these came my future," he meant his career in the gaping destruction; I thought he meant the skies as we peered through holes punctured by war or vandals because I had gradually felt mine was.

"An architect's job is to create a dream out of reality," he once told me. We had just climbed the side of the mountain against which he would have to design a new building for the college out of town. He led me by the hand to the top of the mountain.

"Where is the horizon?" I had asked and he pointed to the foot of the mountain where the horizon clipped the bay and sky together. Not on eye-level, it diminished for me from a threat into nothing but a line. He had smiled at me and I leaned toward him as if by command, feeling unfettered for the first time. I asked him then if he thought paradise lies beyond the horizon.

He said, "Do you mean behind that line? No. Paradise is what we make of our dreams. Who we become is what's behind the horizon." My eyes widened as if I learned it for the first time.

After five years of engagement, I married him on the roof of that medieval building he designed against the mountain. Above us the sky spanned as far as I could view and the horizon glimmered far below our feet, where it had ceased to be the end of the world.


A seeker of truth and peace after tangled pathways, I have also found a voice in my search. A retired journalist, I have since focused on poetry and fiction. I launched my first book in Manila before migrating to Vancouver last year and recently received two honourable mentions for poetry.

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