Life and Art

Several years ago I worked at an art museum.  It was a place for the quiet examination of the world as seen through the eyes of an artist.  The words spoken by its inhabitants rarely rose above a whisper and the lack of aural stimulation caused restlessness in my soul.  The need to break free from the heavy chains of silence always forced me to conclude my shift with a primal carnivorous howl.  This cleared my mind and prepared me to enter the noisy world outside the little museum.  After a long contemplation of time, I decided to put my wasted hours at the front desk to better use by teaching myself a new trade.  At first, I tried to learn Italian by memorizing an endless list of vocabulary.  But this did not last long.  I discovered I was simply unable to retain the foreign words without speaking them out loud over and over again.  A few dirty looks encouraged me to cast the book aside, which was done so immediately.  Then I turned to learning the art of poetry.  Understanding the complexity of lyrical meter was an enormous undertaking and so I bought many books on the subject to aid in my study.  However, I learned that this too required my verbal participation.  Poetry is meant to be spoken aloud so that one can hear the stresses on the individual words.  I thought “This is a cultured crowd that wanders these painted halls, perhaps they will respond favorably to the recitation of Emily Dickinson.”  But it was not long till I was quieted down by a rather large woman wearing an even larger purple dress.  Finally, I stumbled onto the expressive world of drawing.  Many different people, of all shapes and sizes, passed through my field of vision throughout the work day.  I thought it would be a rewarding experience to capture the strangest ones by drawing their likeness on paper.  I was only a novice, and so it was a difficult task to render drawings that held true to the flesh and blood creatures walking all around the room.  I thought I would have to give drawing up too, since I lacked the ability to portray anything more than the same figure over and over again.  I decided I lacked inspiration and the last place I expected to find it was at my quiet little desk.  Then it happened.  Inspiration walked through the front door and sat in the chair right next to me. 
She said she was my new coworker and asked for my name.  My fat tongue warped the words that fell from my feeble lips and so I was not sure what I had said to her.  I admit I am easy prey for the opposite sex and obviously she saw that within our first few moments together.  She tossed my heart around as if it was a toy and with rose petal words she gently whispered me into a glob of clay, which she then sculpted to her liking.  With great interest she followed my struggles as an artist.  She found it odd that I was drawing pictures from a book instead of the real world which sat all around me.  She had me practicing every day by drawing her hand or ear.  I found studying her to be one of the few joys in my life.  Through the dissection of her body, I found the beauty that existed in shape of an ear, a foot, or an elbow.  Before long the time came to put all the pieces together.  She stretched out on my couch in tight fitting clothes, while I sat and obsessed over every inch of her.  At first I was little more than a child of art; my drawings were barely intelligible.  But she seemed overly excited by them, as if she was happy just to see me trying.
Late one night, as she lay on my couch wearing nothing but a shaky smile, she asked me to draw her.  The moonlight filtered in through the dusty blinds in the window and rested on her long smooth body.  The light slid across her skin producing faint shadows that dissolved into black, while her milky white chest slowly rose up and down with each gentle breath.  I consider that moment to be my first awakening; a time when the world’s mask was lifted to reveal its true self.  Even the word beautiful sounded flat and dull against its blazing colors.  The way she moved was sublime and her simple touch evoked blue fire within my veins.  In that dark moonlit room Time sat quietly beside us, unable to move, while she sank deep into my hungry arms.  When she looked up at me with her soft green eyes, I saw a reflection.  I saw a man with a face carved by his ancestors; brave and proud.  The eyes glowed with raw power and they consumed everything they looked upon.  The blood of the gods rushed through his veins and, in his presence, even Aphrodite trembled with desire.  But he lives only in her eyes; no such man exists without her.
When the winter wind began to blow a little warmer and the bare trees gave birth to their children of green, she wilted away.  A love born from a kiss, died with a tear.  My heart turned gray and silent without her.  The warm breeze tasted old and rotten in my mouth and the sun felt cold against my skin.  I was lost and all alone.
Lost love is always a complex experience and only with time and thought did my heart mend itself piece by piece.  A year later, with a sober heart and mind, I found the old black sketchbook that I had used to draw her.  Its large crisp pages told a story for which I was unprepared.  The first few pages revealed a monster masquerading as a woman.  The drawings looked ancient and raw.  But with each turn of the page, she slowly emerged from within the savage beast.  The long crooked claws became small delicate fingers.  The wild sweaty stare became a soft playful glance.  I witnessed the transformation from beast to angel.  I did not know if she came from Heaven or Hell and I did not care.  In her presence I was helpless.  I saw her fleshy form stretched out before me.  Her carnal pose and milky skin fevered my mind again and again.  I longed for her hot flowered breath, the sweet perfumed air that she left, and her small playful fingers dancing across my chest.  The convolution of thoughts ballooned in my mind, until finally life and art fused into one brilliant sparkle of truth that outshined her Siren ghost.  I would never see her again.