Wren Handman's Blog, page 14

That Loving Feeling

I can’t seem to get that feeling back.

I’ve spent most of my life trying not to remember technicoloured moments; screaming so loud it seems to be all around me, blood staining off-white tiles, the smell of stale beer so thick you choke on it. I’ve fought them down, drowned them in the poison in my veins, suffocated them with smoke and music, and now – argh! Now that I want to hold on to a moment I find it fuzzy, insubstantial. The harder I cling the more it seems to slip away, and that sense of freedom like fire ripping through my sluggish life cools and stumbles to a halt.

I want it back.

I chase it through dark alleys, slam its head into brick walls. I bathe myself in recreations of it, but how can they ever compare to that moment? Suddenly understanding I was not the slave I’d always been, that my life wouldn’t fall into the same set patterns that my parents left as footprints in the sand.

It was the wave that washed it all away.

There’s a gurgling hiccup. I am sitting on my haunches, clothes protected in a plastic bag a few feet away. He is trying to crawl his way towards something, but whatever freedom he imagines he might find is as impossible as my release. I know this. I trail my fingers through his blood and know it.

Killing him didn’t feel the way I thought it would. The way I needed it to.

It was nothing like the first, and I can’t seem to get that feeling back.

 

Today’s image comes to you courtesy of Rene Blais. Check out his work  on His Facebook Page, and see more about him on Lucid Dreaming’s Contributors Page; with model Missy Anne.

Light a Candle

I don’t know who put it there, but she would have liked it.

The rest of the shrine – why is it that we make shrines to the dead? – is so staid. Pretty little clear glass holders with pretty little white candles, pretty white orchids (she hated orchids; said it was crazy that anyone would pay that much for flowers. she hated how some flowers are ‘second tier’ just because they don’t cost as much to produce. they should be priced based on how beautiful they are, she said, and daisies would win, picked free by little girls and bored teenagers) and pretty metallic autumn leaves. Pretty fake grass (the soccer field where she used to play?) and pretty silver crinkles, arranged just so (when nothing in her life was ever arranged, ever perfect).

But right in the centre, where it draws the eye of every mourner, someone has taken a candle and wrapped it in blue tissue paper. On its centre they’ve pasted a black cat, lined in gold pen. It’s fun without being gaudy, young without being immature. It’s the red streaks in her black hair (which her mother made her dye over as soon as she walked in the door), the lip ring she used to slide over painted purple lips (she claimed she didn’t want a hole in her face, but we all knew the fake jewellery was protection against her father’s wrath).

I light it first.

I don’t know why we make shrines to the dead. Maybe it comes from cultures that used to worship their ancestors instead of gods. Maybe once we used to believe that they weren’t just watching over us; that they were still dipping their toes in. Fixing here, nudging there, an active instead of passive observer. Nowadays it just feels strange – wrong. I can’t imagine worshipping her in life. She was beautiful, don’t get me wrong. Smart, funny, passionate… but she was effed up, too, just like we all are. She was a part of me, and I don’t worship myself. I’m not a supplicant at her altar, even if I am lighting candles like I would at church. She was flighty, and sharp, and she kept an iron door between herself and the rest of the world, kept people away with sarcasm and biting wit. She was wise but jaded, fiercely loyal, and god was she an idiot. She threw herself at life like life wouldn’t fight back – except, of course, it did.

I’ll bet her mother hates it. I’m surprised her father hasn’t taken it away. But I light it first, that candle with the cat. I don’t know how it made it past their defences – but she would have liked it.

 

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.

The Perfect Storm

They call it a perfect storm.

I don’t think they would, if they were in the dragon’s mouth. If they could hear the way the wind comes alive and makes you believe in demons, I do not think they would find the breath to speak, let alone to paint the canvas with such dulcet terms.

The perfect storm.

As if the waves do not rage, as if the swells that eclipse your flimsy sails are not the personification of a Goddess’ mighty cries. Ask not for Poseidon’s mercy, ask not to be spared by Rán. They do not hear you, do not empathize with your pain. They are mighty, they are alien, they are the sea.

That moment when the rope snaps through your fingers with a greater force of life than the men sodden and sluggish around you; that frozen instant of time when your mouth fills with salt that tastes like blood, and your feet are still solid on worn wooden decks but the sea is around you; that whispering calm in the back of your mind as you say goodbye in your thoughts to the sunlit dreams of another life; what is perfect about that moment?

They call it the perfect storm, but if they had lived through this moment they would find a more solemn word; a more respectful word. Of course, if they had lived through it, would it still be the perfect storm?

 

Picture by: Emily Lampson. Emily is a Canadian illustrator and fine artist. Check our her work at EmilyLampson.com.

What Do You Feel?

“But what does it mean?”

“Well, what does it make you feel?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

“It must mean something.”

“Why do you have to define everything? Just look at it – doesn’t it make you feel?”

“It makes me feel like I want to know what it means!”

“Well – isn’t that an emotion?”

“…Pretty sure it’s not.”

“Wanting is an emotion.”

“Is wanting to stab yourself in the eye an emotion?”

“That might be an autonomic response to a greater emotion.”

“Just tell me what it means. … Please?”

“You think you want to know, but you don’t. Everyone thinks they want the mysteries of the universe explained. We slave away for centuries to answer burning questions, and then we complain that we’ve ruined magic – that there’s no more enchantment in the world. We somehow fail to see the enduring mystery of the complexity that is science. How is a burning ball of gas whose light has died a million years ago any less beautiful and awe-inspiring than a window into the souls of the dead, or the ashes of a hundred heroes scattered across the sky?”

“How did we get from A to B?”

“You’re not following?”

“Not even a little.”

“You say you want to know.”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t.”

“But I do.”

“That’s my point – you don’t.”

“Don’t tell me what I think!”

“You think wrong. You think you want to see the entrails, the bloody inner workings, but it will leave you heaving and, ultimately, empty.”

“Just tell me what the fucking painting is about!!”

“Don’t get mad.”

“I am going to strangle you.”

“The rabbit is painting the fox – it’s the architect of its own misfortune. All of the things that we think hunt us in the night are of our own making. Stark blue and white, as real – maybe even more real – than the rabbit itself. Fear is outside of us, greater than us, but created by us. We made it, but once loosed we can no longer control it.”

“… I don’t get it.”

“There’s a pretty tree made of rainbows?”

“Now you’re just being an ass.”

“What does it make you think?”

“I don’t know – now I feel stupid – I thought it was, like, playing with the fox. Like, the fox was a gerbil in a ball or something.”

“You’re right.”

“But you just said it was about fear.”

“It is.”

“So I was wrong!”

“You really don’t get how this works, do you?”

“My autonomic impulses are flaring again…”

“Let’s start at the beginning. What does it make you feel?…”

.

Image courtesy of April Milne. April is a fantastic illustrator and fine artist. See her work at her website, or check her out on Our Contributors Page.

I believe…

In the beginning, there is a voice. The words touch a place of nothingness waiting to be, and somewhere in the shiftless emptiness a single sound pulses. A second close on its heels and then a pause, so long it seems no sound could follow, that nothing could breathe or speak in this primordial quiet. Thump thump. Impossibly strong, real and surreal. Thump thump. A single heart beats.

“I believe,” the voice says again, and the sound is heard, it is not alone in the quiet, and sound meets sound and something waits. Waits for the rest, waits for the knowing and the breathing and does not know itself but knows more could be.

“I believe,” the voice whispers, echoes beyond itself. The heart pumps life into new-grown lungs, wings flutter just on the edge of sound and the void whimpers, full of alien presence.

“I believe… in fairies,” the child says, and colour explodes in the formless dark. Malachite and amaranth, pumpernickel and xanadu. Leaves sprout, curl, grow and wrap around her forming limbs. Bones shift, break, settle into blood and muscle, smooth gentle skin wrapped up like a present. Her mind blinks, eyes open, lips form trills of music and the void is gone, filled with being.

“I believe in fairies!” the little boy hollers at the empty cloud-filled sky, and somewhere a first breath is taken, and a first laugh is released.

“I do too,” the fairy whispers with a wink.

 

Picture by: Emily Lampson. Emily is a Canadian illustrator and fine artist. Check our her work at EmilyLampson.com.

And She Waits

 

 

She stands silhouetted in the window, watches the shortening shadows and knows in her heart what she won’t admit in her mind. Thinks of the children, asleep in the room beyond, of the way her daughter yawns and throws an arm across her face to hide the light; of the peace her son finds in the bit of discarded down he has made into a pillow.

She ponders butterflies. Thinks of her own drab motley, of how close she came to being something beautiful. Of her soft downy wings, the gentle shapes and patterns in brown and dun, knows you might find beauty in it if you stopped a minute; but who wants that? Who wants to be the quiet sensation, who wants the mystery of the every day when they could shine? She wonders, if she did, would he still leave every night, drift lazily through the breeze in search of wonder?

In her mind she glows, and the light leads him back to her, a radiance to rival the rising sun, a blaze that calls him back, faster, faster, come here, come home, come back. How much space is there between them, and how many miles can light travel? The sun rises beyond the hills, hurts her eyes, drops her dizzy to the ground.

Mourning moth wife, she wraps her wings tight across her shoulders, knows in her mind he has lost his way, has wandered into the fire. It calls, it burns, it leaves ashes in its wake, ashes in her mouth, children asleep in the room beyond and a mourning moth wife at the window, waiting, waiting. Dreaming of fire.

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is a graphic designer and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.

And now, for something just a little different…

Normally with Lucid Dreaming, my contributors create art, and I write something in response. This week, we’ve turned it on its head – I wrote a short piece, and one my contributors went out in search of art to match it. This will hopefully be a recurring theme, happening every second month or so. So please enjoy, the following.

The Heart

When I was five, I painted a picture of a heart. It was the first thing I’d ever made. My family wasn’t an artistic one – we didn’t have crayons, white paper you could leave your mark on. I played with blocks and Barbie dolls, but Plasticine left stains on white furniture, markers might be used on thousand dollar painted walls and heaven forbid I leave a smear of paint on my mother’s Burberry bathrobe, no. Art is messy and my family was precise, careful. In kindergarten I entered a magical world, a world of noise and mess, of feelings. People cried, they screamed, they laughed and played games with no rules and finger painting on Friday afternoons was just another learning opportunity. I was proud of the heart – bright red on white paper, flecks of paint around it that might have looked a mess to someone else, but me were part of the art, part of the beauty of it all. I brought it home to my mother and she asked me why. I put it in the recycling, and there were no pictures on white paper on our perfect silver fridge.

When I was thirteen I learned how to draw a heart in the shape of someone’s name. You would carefully, gently trace a heart in pencil; then plan out the letters of their name so they matched the contours of the heart. You would go over the letters in pen or marker, and then gently erase the guiding strokes so only the perfect shape was left, like magic, on the ruled paper I was supposed to be taking notes on. I did it first with the name of a boy. He was fourteen, one grade ahead, and I only ever saw him in the cafeteria at lunch. We exchanged seventeen words over the course of three months, and somehow I thought I could love him even though we’d never truly met. I drew his name in colours, in rainbow scales, in sparkles. I drew two hearts and linked them, his name and mine. And even after he laughed when Jenny fell down the stairs and I decided I could never love a man like that, the hearts stayed mine. I drew my own name, my best friends’, even the characters in my favourite movies. I felt creative, like this little sketch was proof that I had spirit.

When I was twenty my mother gave me a solid gold heart necklace. It hung at an angle, so the heart could be tilted to the left or to the right. I told her I hated hearts – that they were cheesy, that they didn’t mean anything; and how could she know so little about me, that she wouldn’t know that? For years I’d scoffed at them, scorned those who adorned their clothes with them; like a little embroidered heart was the root of all my malaise. The truth was I’d stopped believing in the kind of love that I felt hearts represented; that lofty ideal, that children’s fantasy. I had an anatomically correct heart tattooed over mine, wore high-necked dresses and bathing suit wraps to hide it from my parents’ disapproving eyes. This was reality, I told myself, as if I knew everything there was to know about the world. This is life, with the illusion stripped away.

When I was twenty-nine I looked out my window and saw sixty-three of my friends and acquaintances standing in the shape of a heart. My fiancé had asked them all to wear red and pink, and arranged them just before noon in the quad between the buildings where I worked as a financial analyst. He stood in their centre and declared his love, and the heart started twirling, dancing into a circle, into a square. Beautiful, simplistic choreography. My coworkers laugh and rolled their eyes and asked how embarrassed I was, and I laughed and groaned and agreed that he was such a ham, that I couldn’t believe it, that it was the worst proposal ever; but in my heart I felt something thaw.

When I was thirty-three my daughter went to preschool. She was so excited, in her cute little boots and her brand new coat. She talked the whole way there about the friends that she would make and all the things that I told her she would get to do; the toys she would play with, the books she would make. After I dropped her off I sat inside my car and cried for an hour, feeling an empty space in my arms where she had been. When I came back that afternoon to pick her up, she ran into my arms with a white flag waving from her hand. “Mommy mommy!” She cried. “Look what I made!” I praised her skill, gushed over the beautiful lines, the perfect colours. I told her how proud I was, how hard it was to draw – a perfect heart.

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, with more information about Hayley on Our Contributors page.

The Dread Scourge of Dar’abor

Why do people always assume that I’M the bad guy?

Sure, I’m a big guy. And yes, I’m scaly and green. I wear armour, but that’s just a cultural convention. The nails on each of my three fingers are sharp enough to break bone, but can I help it if my ancestors drank a lot of bone marrow? My teeth are razor sharp, but so are every carnivores! And okay, I kill things for a living. But is any of that reason to assume, just assume, that in every fight I’m the one in the wrong?

I’m at a bar the other night, and this little fucker starts ragging on me. Big dumb orc, bet you’re so dumb you can’t find your face with your mug, that kind of stuff. Little salamander thinks he can get a rise out of me! Well, I ignore him. So he starts hitting on my woman, crawling up her arm, circling his tail around her ankle. Still I hold my cool! I’ve been taking anger management classes and I’m really good. I got three gold stars last class!

So I turn the other fucking cheek, and you know what this aggro little mother fucker does? He bites me! HE bites ME! On the foot! My naked, unshod foot! So I punch him in the face.

Now, yes, okay. His face is about the same size as half of my fist. So one punch to the face is a pretty big wallop. But all of a sudden I’m surrounded by fucking warriors and wizards and elves who think beating me up will be the greatest start to their epic quest ever! Like gold is going to rain out of my ass if they beat me senseless.

No one thinks to ask my side of the story. No one throws the manky little salamander out, oh, no! No, it’s all let’s beat up poor old Throg, he’s the Dread Scourge of Dar’abor! I’m not my job, you know. You don’t go up to a milkman at the bar and demand milk, do you? You don’t ask your cousin the bard to sing you a song even though he left his lute at home. But no, the Dread Scourge is always the bad guy! Just because I’m green!

Fucking salamander. If I see him again I’m going to bite his head off. Literally – I’ve heard they taste great with mead.

 

Image courtesy of Kieran Macanulty. Check out Kieran’s website, Purple Sock Studios, or read more about him on Our Contributors Page.

With her Hand in Mine

Her hand in his is warm, a mirror of the sun on his face. Though his steps are slow she matches them perfectly, and even his snail pace picks up dust as he walks. He takes this path every day – leaves his small white house, with the piles of newspaper in the corners and the smell of Bengay on the still air, and turns left down the worn concrete path; manoeuvres delicately around cracked pavement and telephone poles sticking at awkward angles into the sky; and turns three blocks down into the park. She walks a few steps behind him in the city, so he always wonders if he has lost her; like Orpheus he is afraid to turn, knows she will vanish in the harsh light. But under the calm dark trees she moves closer, slips her hand into his, and he breathes again. Dappled light like candle flames give her room to stretch, and silently they tell stories of their lives together. He remembers the day he asked her to marry him, her bright hair in a thick coil, the terror he could feel in his throat at the idea that she might say no – at the idea she might say yes. He sees her only out of the corner of his eye, the so familiar curve of her cheek, the tiny upturned nose. Remembers when their first child walked to the altar, how out of the corner of his eye he had seen a tear fall down her cheek, known the swell of pride he felt was mirrored in her felt, felt at one with her.

They reach the end of the day today, as every day they do, and he clings to her fingers, knows it won’t help; knows that at the end of the path he will turn to her, and knows she will disappear but it will be worth it because before she does, she will smile. At that smile will sustain him, warm him, feed him even as she fades away, as she falls two steps behind. And that smile will guide him through the lonely walk to his empty house. That smile will be his companion as he eats borscht at the table alone, the empty chair across from him a constant toothache. That smile will take up room in the bed beside him, the pillow still indented with the shape of her head. That smile will be the closest thing he has to keeping her place in his life filled, and tomorrow he will walk again, and she will smile.

And that will be enough.

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Thursby. Stuart is a graphic designer and photographer, currently adventuring in the wilds of Germany, where this photo was taken. To see more of his work, or to check out his portfolio, please visit StuartThursby.com.