Sage. Wendy Anne
walks away. Normally, I would dismiss such nonsense, but her voice seemed so sincere, and I am intrigued enough to keep the card.
When I was a waitress during my teenage years, I learned that older folks truly are a wealth of wisdom, in spite of first appearances. I always attempt to visualize myself as an old woman some thirty to forty years from now. Growing through generations, watching people change, and trends shift in and out of style, friends and family passing, but still having something to share. Their words can be quirky carelessness or condensed knowledge, sometimes both, and conversations with elders usually leave me more satisfied than ones I’ve shared with their young successors.
Without looking at the card, I shove it in my exceedingly crowded purse. Having had enough of the company in the museum, I head to the arts and crafts shop for some overpriced paint and supplies to do some of my own artwork. I pick up some multipurpose paintbrush assortments, water-based acrylic paints, and several prestretched edge-stapled canvases, and make my way to my next destination, home. It has been a while since my family and I decided to explore our creative sides together, and they will appreciate the gesture.
In my car, I blare ear-piercing music to drown anything that should try to invade my musical peace during my drive home. Dinnertime is so unusually quiet that the ice rattling in my glass and the creaking of Bruce’s chair is easily heard. I guess we made up for the small talk this morning over our unexpected family breakfast. I set fire to the wicks of long stem candles in the sterling candelabras placed on the circumference of dark walnut curio display cases surrounding the majority of the living room and lure my family to follow. Candlelight adds an interesting vibe, as each animated flame casts flickers of light in constant motion. Classical music permeates the room. Music with no words, only sound, gives way to more self-interpretation and less creative influence. Once the ambiance is created, I instruct Cheyanne to grab the fresh canvases and place three of them on separate wooden easels.
In the center of the room, we face our backs to each other to produce our masterpieces. The room smells of candle wax and acrylic paints as we stroke our brushes along the bare canvases.
I have no idea what to paint. There are no pictures in the form of lucid thoughts that I can use to create anything specific. Therefore, I paint a random mesh of vivid flowing pastel colors portraying my bright and positive inner aspirations. For a moment, I shut my eyes and pretend my hands have eyes of their own, hoping my subconscious flow will lead me to a form that I could eventually decipher from the mess. At first, I open my eyes to a bunch of puzzling, muddled images. In the center of the disarrayed bright colors, a shape resembling the hourglass figure of a voluptuous woman catches my eyes. Tracing along the shape, using contrasting darker colors to define the hazy figure of a woman’s body, I bring her to life. Her breast-to-waist ratio is as unrealistic as a Barbie doll, though I award her with the kind of attractive childbearing hips Barbie lacks. All of the existing colors around her morph to become a rather bizarre sunset. There is such freedom playing with the pleasing colors until I have to discipline my eyes and hands to the finer details that add a tinge of realism. After what feels like hours of being tuned into our worlds, we start becoming curious about each other’s work. It is amazing and fun to turn around and see someone releasing their feelings into their designs. Our distinctive personalities and uniqueness are exemplified in our final product, though none of us seemed fully finished or completely satisfied. Rather than finishing our paintings, we spend half an hour explaining the drive our subliminal minds played while creating our works. Bruce’s dark and strange picture seemed to have no plan, only confusion.
“That’s where my mind is right now, a dark and cloudy place.” He laughs without humor. It looked more to me like he had mixed too many colors, as the entire painting looked to be a thick mess of brownish sludge. Cheyanne, as expected, painted a series of all her favorite comic and amine characters. It’s rather juvenile in regards to concept, but she is extremely fond of intimate details, and her painting is far better quality than mine or Bruce’s. She knows how to create a 3-D effect by adding shadows and highlights in all the right places. I have often thought about providing her art classes, to teach her how to use the brushes appropriately, but she seems to do pretty well freelancing. Maybe when she has developed a style that is completely her own, I’ll send her to an art school to fine-tune her skill.
“Let us clean ourselves and awake to our masterpieces in the morning,” I say jokingly as I inspect our chaos one last time for the evening.
“Maybe they will look better tomorrow,” Cheyanne adds with a smile.
VII
Mystical Being
My first notion is intrigue rather than fear as the radiance of the moon struggles for its place within the solid blackness of a sky engulfed with heavy dark clouds. A soft, warm breeze lifts my free-flowing hair off my shoulders, making me at ease in what would otherwise be the perfect stage set for a nightmare.
Oceanic waves crash at my feet and break into the moist sands below, never fully saturating. I walk for what seems to be many miles, without company, yet I do not feel alone because my sixth sense sends warning signals to my psyche that detect an invisible presence following and anticipating my every move. His masculine energy feels powerful, familiar, and incredibly seductive, but I cannot see him. I try willing my sight to match my empathic senses—to no avail as frustration leaks from my mouth. “Show yourself,” I say with inhuman confidence and in a powerfully assertive voice as if I am an unbreakable force. A small time interval passes with no response, and just as I am about to become frustrated, the clouds begin to shift cryptically before they twirl into a cyclone that opens into a black hole delivering the presence I requested.
I am overwhelmed as I stand inundated in his remarkable energy, as he stares at me with a devilishly cunning grin and icy blue eyes that plunge into my soul like an Athame knife.
He’s relatively tall and slim though manly and perfectly toned with nicely carved shoulders and a muscular stomach. His long lustrous blond hair matches mine in length, though it is perfectly straight and virtually opposite in color.
“Did you miss me, my dear?” he asks with a deep, confident voice as if we had just left off recently at some intimate encounter. Even though it’s obvious that I know him somehow, I cannot recall a vivid memory that can assist a cognitive reason I feel that way. It is clear that my awareness feels a strong sense of longing to embrace him, but that realization adds to the confusion. I know that he can sense my bewilderment, as his face exemplifies expressive gestures that react to each question my mind ponders regarding his familiar existence.
“You have forgotten me again. You haven’t evolved beyond the constraints of modern society yet. Nonetheless, the universe always has a plan, and though the spiritual conditions of the twenty-first century seem to be deteriorating, you will eventually become to remember me.
“It will be splendid when I no longer have to remind you during our short-lived encounters contrived in your subconscious realm,” he says, seemingly amused by my noticeably blank expression.
I am frightened and intrigued at the same time. I’m aware of his immense power over my senses, but confident that he will never abuse our deep connection. How do I know such things? I wonder purposely now, trying to provoke a response from this being that created a strange, compelling power felt in every ounce of me. While he continues to read my mind with conspicuous facial expressions that respond to each question, he’s respectfully quiet as if he doesn’t want to interrupt my thoughts. We’ll get nowhere if either of us has to rely on the silencing of my never-ending inner monologue, so I speak a voice louder than my thoughts. “How do I know you? Why do you feel so familiar? What is this place?”
He responds with deep vibration in his voice that penetrates all of me, sending chills to parts of me that I didn’t realize have sensitivity. “Well, my lovely, where we are is but a figment of your imagination conjured by your subconscious realm in the form of a lucid dream. You have many of these, and during each of them, I explain who I am and what we are, but you do not remember when you awake. We have had this conversation many times recently. It’s a wonder when you will start remembering because it is time for you to start recalling everything.”
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