Sarah Beckett - Installment 3

In the time it took Sarah to walk the several blocks to her apartment, she had already worked into a thorough and pummeling self-chastisement over the incident in the muffin shop. She had only meant to criticize herself for her innate awkwardness and lack of preparation in not having a standard, all-purpose response readied for such situations. However, the chastisement had gained such momentum by that point that her mind pushed onward to negative criticisms of everything from her choice of hairstyle to her inability to speak up when her 8^th grade English teacher had asked students to choose a book for a book report (Melissa Candler had quickly raised her hand and chosen “Bridge to Teribithia, the book Sarah had wanted to do, she instead got stuck with “Lord of The Flies”, Melissa Candler would have had a perfectly appropriate and charming response to the muffin girl and which would probably have resulted in becoming BFFs with the muffin girl and receiving free muffins for life). By the time she had climbed the stairs, unlocked the door to her apartment and fought her portfolio over the threshold, Sarah was exhausted. Even the critical voice in her head seemed to have needed to take a breather. She plopped the folio down in the nearest corner and plopped herself into her desk chair, coat and all. She turned on her computer and opened her email. Seeing that she had received nothing of importance, she began the task of messaging her mother to recap the events of her latest attempt to woo a gallery into showing her paintings. She had crafted many, many of these emails. She was quite good at them now. They always read (with minor variations to lend some authenticity) something like this..

Dearest Mother �"

Trusting that all is well at home. I took my paintings to another gallery today. The owner really liked my paintings (it was a little embarrassing, the way he gushed over them) but said they weren’t quite the right fit for his clientele. He did give me the name of another gallery to try. I’ll call them this week and see if I can get an appointment for next Tuesday.  All else is well here, I’m warm, well fed and happy. I’ll call on Sunday Afternoon.

Love you-

Sarah

     The utter deceit of the email further shriveled her already crumpled heart. She left the desk and headed for the comfort of the futon in her living room. She grabbed her well-worn wool afghan and wrapped it tightly around her body as if its tightness might somehow bind up her splintered spirit. She settled firmly into the corner of the mattress/cushion and drew her knees up to her chest, under the afghan. She stared into the rapidly increasing darkness of her living room, focused on nothing. The criticisms in her head were once again beginning to pick up steam, a train of negativity, just leaving the station. Lumbering and sluggish at first but carrying within itself the assurance of both speed and power once it had the opportunity to gain momentum. She didn’t try to battle against her thoughts, choosing instead to prepare herself for the inevitability of an evening spent in well-earned self-loathing and the promise of a long cry that might be exhausting enough to prove cathartic. She even considered enabling her mood by getting up and starting a station on Pandora, she had one that played a mix of the saddest ballads by Taylor Swift, Christina Perri, and a heavy dose of Sarah McLachlan, each song bearing the common thread of feelings of loneliness, inadequacy and weariness at being misunderstood or unappreciated. Even the contemplation of the fact that she had created a station glorifying pathos shamed her and amplified her feelings of weakness.   
     
     She was heavily involved in the needless anxiety of deciding whether or not to move off the futon when flashing colored light began to break through her windows followed quickly by the dull thump of a dance-beat bass line. Sarah realized it must be 8PM, the time when the night club across the street bounced to life. Sarah wondered what kind of people would be frequenting a night club on Tuesday evening. “What would it be like to have friends who are so anxious to hang out with you and have fun that they can’t wait until the weekend?” she wondered.  That thought alone began to crack open the door that was holding back her tears and her eyes started to sting at their presence. She blinked a time or two and tried focusing her gaze on the inside of her room. The flashing neon sign from the nightclub caused her sparse furnishings to become partially visible in the darkness. The second hand on the oversized clock on the wall appeared to jump forward 5 seconds at a time as the room would go dark between flashes. The burlap lamp shade on her thrift shop lamp would appear with the bursts of colored light and disappear when they faded only to reappear in a different color with the next burst. The presence of the subdued but audible thumping of the bass and drum track from the music in the club gave the whole scene a surreal “Alice in Boogie Wonderland” atmosphere. She looked toward the painting on her wall, wondering if the light would reach that far or if her “soul” would remain shrouded in darkness. 
     
She tilted her head sideways and rubbed her eyes to make certain that what she was seeing was reality and not merely an hallucination brought about by her depleted emotional state. As the light pulsed on the painting it appeared to be dancing. The colored light that the neon sign brought into the room caused the colors and shapes of the painting to appear to sway, spin and jump on the canvas in time to the rhythm of the music coming from across the street.  Her soul was dancing. She felt a crushing sense of betrayal at the sight of it. How could her soul dance when she felt so alone and hopeless? How was it possible for her soul to dance when she had never experienced such a thing. She hadn’t had any real friends as a young girl. So, while she had heard tales of girls getting together in one another’s bedrooms and dancing crazily to music from their favorite boy-bands, she had never known that moment. She had never attended a school dance or even a wedding reception with dancing. She had no idea what the inside of a dance club might look like. Was her own soul mocking her for her lack of experiences like so many high school and college girls had? She pulled the afghan over her face to shield her eyes from the sight and yet, she couldn’t stop herself from peeking out to catch glimpses of the colorful show. Her mind began to race, searching for some justification for what she was seeing. She knew that it was merely the reaction of certain colors to the light being shed upon them but she also sensed that there was something more profound at work here. Maybe her was soul trying to tell her something? A thought came to her, what if, under the jumble of sadness and inadequacy and anxiety she wore, there was a dancing soul inside her that just couldn’t wait for a weekend (any weekend) to have fun? Maybe her soul wasn’t mocking her so much as advising her? Being guided by light flashing on a painting seemed, to her, as valid as sobbing alone in her apartment because of one misspoken response to a muffin girl. 
     
     She pulled the afghan down from her face and stared intently at the painting. She observed how the colors moved and pulsed in time to the beat. It was good to have something other than her debilitating emotion on which to focus. She haltingly began to allow her head to bop back and forth to the beat coming in her windows. Her shoulders followed suit and soon her entire upper body was synching with the rhythm.  She stopped all movement, freezing for just a moment then with effort and purpose, she stood up, unwrapped herself from the afghan and pulled her futon’s mattress onto the floor. She stood on the mattress, eyes fixed on the painting. Slowly, with all the gracelessness of a faun trying to stand for the first time, she began to move her feet and arms to the beat of the lights, bass and drums. Had anyone been present, they would have been unable to keep themselves from laughing. Thankfully, she was alone. She persisted in her endeavor and soon found herself able to move in perfect rhythm to the flashes and thumps and even able to accent the off beats with a head toss or fist pump. She was thankful that she had thought to put the mattress on the floor so she had little worry of her steps causing noise to the residents of the apartment below hers. She kept gazing at the painting it seemed to nod in assent toward her and she, in return gave back a nod which meant “I think I understand what you’re saying”.  Together they swayed and moved and stepped to the techno beat of the music filling the street below and seeping through her windows. She continued this dance with her soul for an hour or more when there was a momentary break in the beat.  Sarah took this as a cue to call it a night. She was winded and weary from this type of exertion to which she was unaccustomed. She positioned the mattress back on the futon frame and her pillow back on the mattress. She set the alarm on her phone for 4AM and, for the first time since she had moved into this apartment, did not pull down the room-darkening shades on her windows. She fell into bed, clothes and all and pulled the afghan to her chin. She laid her head on the pillow and recalled that earlier, she had expected to fall asleep in a pile of used tissues on a pillow damp from tears. Instead, that night, she fell asleep watching her soul dance.