Manifest Desire
A pearl of sweat runs down David's forehead, traces the edge of his nose, and drops onto his top lip. He wipes its bitter salty taste off with the end of his sleeve, and continues to adjust a feathered hat he's placed on the head of a styrofoam mannequin. His body is bent in an L shape as he reaches over a wicker basket covered in various trinkets. A clamp light attached to an exposed nail in the ceiling is beaming down on the back of his neck as he works. There are two taxidermied birds that make up the body of the feathered hat, and David can't decide which way they should be looking. He ruffles the lace that covers the mannequin's face until it looks proper, and steps down to get a fresh perspective.
For the past three weeks, David has been building a shrine. His living room is packed full of furniture turned on its side, covered in rugs, tapestries, and flags. They are stacked in pyramid-like fashion around the mannequin, largest items at the center, with smaller items as the radius grows outwards. On each step towards the center, objects have been pulled from all over the apartment and painstakingly arranged to create dioramas. An enormous tangle of Christmas lights circle the entire shrine, with each individual bulb tacked down to cast a red, white, or blue light on a specific scene.
As David observes his handiwork, he quietly maintains a stone face, ridged in concentration. Ten minutes pass like this, of scrutiny over invisible flaws, until, for the briefest of moments, he wonders how things got so bad.
It's the night after he and Magnus visit two rooftops in the city, and everything in David's life seems to fall into complete order. There is contentment and peace at the prospect that even the most intense feelings of isolation are shared by people the world over, even in a city as large as this one. That there is still indeed magic left in the world, only hidden, and very hard to observe without a little footwork. This is the beginning of the promise that David made in the parking garage, to what ever force would prove to him that there are purposes to be claimed, and missions to be made in life.
A week later, this discovery is teasing out the smallest dabs of complacency, until it's sucked dry and rendered trite. It appears there is nothing left of the magic that has been found, and without the drive to go out and find more, David sets about rearranging his apartment. It's the quickest fix, and hopefully, the most permanent.
At first, David is building small shines, concentrated areas of wonder to be photographed. He diligently arranges a theme, and sets up a space, working on the lighting and object placement until the scene feels just right. A few images later, and it's time to take it all down, and start another. The photos will last as a trophy, like stamping the visual onto a collector coin, or adding a pretty feather to a box of finds from nature. Now he has that bit of magic forever, frozen, filed, and ready to reference at a future date.
