A Dose of Prose

There were moments when she could feel the spaces within her that were incomplete. Places where miss matched edges touched like the soft spot on an infant’s head, tender, and unable to withstand pressure. In her unfinished places she was jagged and crude, and insecurity grew under wet mossy rocks, thriving in the tight dark spaces. While treading on the flatlands of herself, unexpectedly she would stumble upon these gaps, slipping on one of these unformed areas could send her tumbling into a ravine of uncertainty and indecision. Collapsing into the vortex of organized chaos that was her mind, her head would turn inside a spectacle of color, where her reality twisted within this kaleidoscope of fear …
Unfinished …
At days end in and artist’s studio when all is still, as the paint dries does the work know that is in progress? Can it feel its becoming? Does it rest easily in the knowledge that tomorrow its creator will return and complete its mouth, form fingers? Does the symphony hear the ending of its phrase? Is it restless contemplating its future, does it have thoughts of what it should be? Does it have dreams of a direction of its own? Does it ponder, “How will I turn out?” “ Am I to be a masterpiece?” Does a melody already know its harmony? Does a sketch feel as complete as the final painting, or does it long to be completed? Does it feel…unfinished?
Like a Mona Lisa painted by Picasso, she was fractured and haphazardly reconstructed. There were no neat seams in her structure. She was abstract and indefinable in style and technique. The colors of her were clear, vivid and muddy all at once. Like a Bearden that only knew of itself as a whole, having no recollection that it had been pasted and glued into being from scraps and fragments of once larger, complete objects.
In her unfinished places tiny fissures marred her constitution. There were gaping holes, and fine pinpricks where liquid bits of herself seeped through. Places where she was split open like a tree struck by lightening leaving her insides exposed to the elements. Assured by the firmness of what she knew beneath her feet, she feared the depth of what was yet to be discovered within. She hopped stone by stone from one formed place in herself to another, crossing a creek in the woods of her Self. She tread slowly making her way through life, trying not to get her feet wet in her unfinished places, carefully, toes gripping to what she knew for certain, fearing a loss of footing that could send her plummeting into her void.
If she fell in she would have to struggle against that current like a salmon fighting its way upstream to its death, thrashing about in the turbulent surf of her own becoming. Within the formless void lay the whispers of expectation and the desires people held for her life. The murmurings echoed through the cavern of her head creating a powerful undertow in the murky waters of her unknown. In her uncertainty, the desires she held for herself pulled against the expectations of others. It would be a while before she realized that it was her own voice resonating within her head. In an effort to find the shore of herself, the voices of others had been sublimated into those of her own whispers of fear, of failure, and disappointment. Her sea of Self was wide, deep and upsetting. She was immense, vast and ever changing, full of everything that is or ever was…
Her incompletion threatened to envelop her, thick and heavy it wanted to pull her into the depth of it. The current was strong but she could see the shore. She was so tired she did not think she would make it. She did not know if she wanted to. When the surface is troubled, the depth is at rest; there is silence at the bottom of the sea. It would be so easy to surrender, be drawn down by the current. There was stillness, an ease, a weightlessness down deep. Enervated with life, its struggle and herself, she relented. She would lie on her back, feel the sun on her face; let life happen to her sink or float. No fear, no fight, just float…