The Writer and The Artist: My Story

Chapter 13: My Story

 

MY STORY

 

1

 

Suddenly I was awake.

My eyelids felt heavy as they stretched slowly open, revealing to me a hazy dimension.

Above me I could just make out blurs of human shapes looming over me, gazing down with blobs of faces against a white backdrop. Slowly my vision returned to me. I had been asleep for some time. Not only that, I had been dreaming.

Oh what a dream it had been. It could have easily been a nightmare.

I heard voices echoing through the drums of my ears, beating away at my senses until I was forced to recognise them. Words began to fall in to place as I strained to listen.

‘John? John?’

It was my name, no doubt about it. At least I could remember that.

I tried to call out to them, but all it achieved was a faint murmur that contained no sense of language. I even tried to raise an arm to indicate that I could now understand them.

But I could not.

I was limp all over; my body was as stiff as a corpse.

But I was very much alive.

I tried to scream, but all I managed was a hollow echo that ran through my head and vibrated my skull. It was feeble.

More words broke through: ‘Don’t strain yourself; you’ve been in a coma! Stay with u….’

I suddenly tumbled into a faint.

What a coma it had been.

 

2

 

I feel the need to rewind this tale to a moment where things can begin to make sense. It feels somewhat difficult for me to do so, having spent the last however many months writing a story that has consumed a lot of my free time. But it was worth it. It was my driving inspiration.

            But we get to that part later. For now, we need to take a step back.

            Every story has a beginning, middle and end. So far you have only heard pieces of the two former constructs. There is more beginning and middle to explain.

            Please set your brains to listen on the highest possible setting.

            Here is my story.

 

3

 

I was driving on time for work on a busy weekday morning before it happened. I had been in a rather chirpy mood. For one it was the day after such a wonderful night of passion. I had slept as beautifully as was the lovemaking preceding it. Another reason for being so happy was having my vision of The Field of Glory painted for all the world of two people to see. I was on a high.

            Unfortunately the same could not be said for my mind.

            About half an hour into my journey to work, after leaving the housing estate and heading through the industrial region just outside of town, I made my way onto a two-lane bypass. It was relatively new and extremely quiet for such a time of day. I am not quite sure what made me travel this particular route, for it was not the usual route I would expect myself to take. I would normally travel further through the industrial region towards the motorway, which even at such an early hour would be a quick-fire journey to my destination. Perhaps I was too elated to care whether I got in on time to work. Perhaps I was just in a mood to make a slight difference to my day.

Whatever reason it was, I have a distinct feeling that fate had something to do with it.

The bad sort of fate.

Anyway, on this particular day, not long before I awoke, I started to feel hazy. Believe me when I say I am not one to randomly experience headaches or drowsiness whilst driving. I like to think of myself as a mildly healthy young man with a long life ahead of me, who does not like to take risks.

The word irony has just slipped into my head.

The haziness strained against my eyes, forcing me to wince. Luckily (I suppose) the bypass I was on was just a straight stretch of tarmac without need for a corner or the slightest inclination of a bend. At the time I was going at a steady 40 mph, even though the speed limit was actually 50. Like I said, I was not in any particular rush.

My foot did not fall onto my accelerator out of choice.

A pain started to proceed from my temples and rattle my brain. It hurt. A lot. I felt my teeth crunch as they clashed together in agony. My eyes were suddenly closed to withstand the exploding pulse that throbbed in my skull.

My eyes did not open again for a while. At least not properly anyway.

My body was suddenly separate from my mind. I felt the binding strings between them begin to strain and snap painfully, like stretching rubber bands with both hands. A echoing void filled the space between them; my mind began to soar into the lower depths of my subconsciousness as my body lay helpless, encased within a tightened seat belt.

So much good it did me.

As I drifted into my mind’s abyss, I could hear the faint sounds of screeching tyres and an obtrusive collision of metal and destinies.

 

4

 

It was the start of what would be the strangest day of my whole life.

            At least, I hope it cannot get any stranger.

            So there I was, amidst a shield of white light that shone across me in every possible direction. I have to be honest and say I have little understanding of heaven and hell. But I honestly believed that I was dead, and hoped I had reached the pearly gates.

            But when the covering of light began to dissipate, I realised I had actually gone to hell.

            My hell.

            I was standing atop moody green grass on a long stretch of field. There were roses everywhere, aligned in peculiar rows as though someone had actually planted them here. I suppose in a sense that is true.

            Above my head the whiteness remained, patiently glaring at me without expression of emotion. Within its body flew the scatterings of hungry crows, waiting oh so patiently for a feed or a kill.

            Sorry guys, I thought, it’s only me. I was alone on this abandoned land. No monsters here.

            In front of me was my nemesis – the cottage. I have no real desire to describe it to you yet again. You have seen it once already to know how creepy it looks.

            But there is a slight difference between my cottage and the cottage you have seen. In my vision, something I had never told my beloved, the door to the cottage was open.

            It revealed the shaded writing desk that I had closeted myself, guarded by three erect candles, each with a beacon of luminous light.  Blank pages of the open book ruffled in the apparent wind travelling through the door. It battered against the outside of the stone exterior in frequent thumps.

            I could taste the neglect from here.

            Bitter.

 

5

 

Only then had I realised the reason I was there.

            And it was too late by then. The damage had already been certified. Signed, sealed, delivered, no refund policy, you get the idea.

            I was here because of a choice I had made years ago. It had all to do with one image that had brought my nerves into disrepute – The Cottage. It had jeopardised my whole reason for being who I am.

            And now I sense as you read these words why on earth a stone cottage with a cute white picket fence surrounding it could create such a fearful attitude.

            Let me explain.

            The cottage itself was a building I had been to about six months before I experienced the visualisation of it. It had been the location of a creative writing seminar. I remember how petrified I was as I drove up onto its cobbled driveway.

            I do not know how the average young (whether talented or not) aspiring writer would usually react to going to a creative writing group, such as this. For me, it was a bundle of perhaps a glint of excitement in sharing my work, but also the sheer petrifaction of judgement upon it.

At this stage of my life I had been writing for several years, ever since I was a young adolescent. Writing had been a sense of release, from all the emotions and fantasies I experienced at the time. I dabbed in different areas of creativity, experimenting in my own forms of poetry and the occasional long story that I could never quite finish (such was the life of a so-called busy teenager). Poetry I never really aspired to; I felt bogged down by all the different styles cultivated by the thousands of different poets, all of which I felt deliberately obliged to neglect. However, I did like the works of William Blake and his comparison of Innocence and Experience.

His poetry really related to me as a teen back then. To me, I was the innocence – a young creative-overdosed hungry writer that wanted to break into show-business, so to speak. The experience was the already equipped well-acclaimed author, who had the cash and flaunted it. That was who I was trying to be.

But I knew it was tough. Not only that, but a competitive market. Publishers can glance at hundreds of manuscripts sent in by aspiring writers from all over the country and only ever a handful per year will make it. Perhaps they even get to make a second book. Who knows?

Fingers crossed, I used to think.

But, like most teenagers, I had a habit of being lazy. I would rush out a story without careful planning. I felt a rewrite was down to someone else who could get paid for it without quarrels. I was immature. For me to even consider going to a creative writing seminar to brush up on my skills felt almost suicidal. Back then there was no way I could have done that. I felt I was the best and everyone should live with it.

But rejection letter after rejection letter brought a new incision of doubt into my bloodstream. It grew an almighty fear, one that would haunt my writing life for, well, perhaps the rest of my natural life.

Failure.

As a more mature young adult, I eventually decided to give the seminar a go, facing up to the inevitability that one day I would actually need to show off my work before beginning to think about world-wide acclaim.

The inside of the real cottage was far different to the darkened mess inside the cottage I had invented. For one there was furniture, without the sight of a writing desk protected by candlelight. That too was my own invention. Instead it had been pleasant and inviting, like a bed and breakfast. There had been a handful of people at the seminar from all different ages; surprisingly a lot of them were middle-aged, rather than all being around my age that I had expected to find. In fact I was probably the youngest of them all.

The proprietors of the cottage, and therefore the seminar, were an elderly couple by the names of Mr and Mrs Bridge. Both were successful writers in their day but had since retired after a long eventful life. Now they had settled into retirement, they wanted to give back something to the community. They also used that opportunity to have regular visitors and sometimes (if clients could afford the costs) to stay at the cottage if the courses would run over a few days.

Mine had been just a day seminar, so I need not bother with spending the night away from home.

And boy was I glad it had only been a day.

I am not particularly interested in going into what actually happened at the seminar. Such details are not important and somewhat irrelevant. Besides, it is somewhat mentally painful to completely recall. All you need to know is this. In the seminar, each of us would read out in front of everyone a selected piece of writing we had chosen to bring along and be critiqued. Mine had been a very old story of mine that I considered to be one of my best.

I realise now it was something churned out of Hollywood’s primary factory.

After the selected writing is read out, everyone in the room gets a chance to speak their mind about the piece: what was good; what was bad; what could be implemented into it, that kind of thing.

Mine had given a lot to talk about. Unfortunately, genuine good comments were few and far between.

It had implemented the representation of the cottage as my fear of failure. My belief in my writing began to diminish as the fear began to grow.

It had erupted on a lonely bypass on the way to work.

 

6

 

So there I was, now situated within that very depiction of fear that haunted me with its open door, enticing me into its blackened depths and towards the writing desk, waiting with quill for words to be written.

            But I was too damn scared. I could not go anywhere near it. As soon as a word could even be etched into my thoughts, let alone on an open page, I would be filled with complete doubtful frustration. What words would be best to use? What is the best grammar to use? How many more times am I going to spell this particular word wrong? Do I even need to use a comma in this paragraph? Does it even make sense?

            All these pathetic, niggling things build to a complete contempt for my own work. Even now I write with sheer frustration as I tear at my skull to break into the words that float needlessly inside. But, as I have learnt, that is what writing is. It can make you and break you. Some writers have it easy. Others do not. I have never had it easy and never will do.

            But I have learnt to accept that.

            All because of her.

 

7

 

You see, as I stood upon that field, waiting for what could only be a miserable eternity in my hellish imagination, I realised that there was more here than meets the eye. I was in a visualisation, yes, implemented within the deepest regions of my mind.

            But it had not been the only visualisation I had experienced, as you know well by now.

            By simply thinking of my position in one of the thousands of paintings I had been in – had felt – I realised that I was swimming. I visited tops of skyscrapers; jungles of emotion; fields of glory; stood animated by a gaping vortex; saw the world itself from space. So many viewpoints and so many emotions I had felt, all in the space of seconds. I was swimming in a mega-gigantic goldfish bowl of my own mind. Sure, there was plenty of room for me to explore.

            But it did not imply there was a way out.

            Or was there? After all, even a goldfish bowl needs an opening for water to be poured in (and of course for the metaphorical goldfish). I needed to find that opening.

            The depiction of the cottage had given me the answer.

            Laura.

 

8

 

We had shared The Cottage between us. Both instilled dread into us, but for different reasons. Mine had been the open cottage on abandoned land, where only crows could feast on infantries of roses. It had been the neglect of the very element that made me deep down who I really am – a writer.

            For Laura, it was what lay upon the field itself, something I could not have seen. When I had found the incomplete painting, locked away in the cabinet under our stairs, there had only been a faint sketch of the cottage and fragments of pencilled scenery in front of it. I knew instantly what it would represent if it were ever complete. What intrigued me most was that I had never mentioned to The Cottage to her previously.

            I had never intended to.

            It had been the consequence of a drunken night out. At first I had considered it only to be an alcohol-fuelled nightmare. But it was sure as hell real to me as any other visualisation, as drunk as I was at the time.

            What I did not know until later was Laura had dreamt of the cottage that very same night, but from her perspective. She told me of the monsters of darkness that plagued the fields in front of her cottage. My fear of failure was matched by her fear of the dark colours in her paintings. Because of it, I had stopped writing entirely. Fortunately for Laura, she had kept on painting, merely forgetting The Cottage as I had done.

            The painting was a link between her mind and my own. I could use it to contact Laura, to bring her to my cottage and help me get free – to supply me with the inspiration I would need to feel alive again.

            It was a small opening, but it was the only chance I had.

            Immediately as the plan came to fruition in my mind, I set about turning it in motion.

 

9

 

As you may have gathered by now, Laura and I are strong believers in the theory of soul mates. At least when we were a lot younger we believed in it full-heartedly. Unfortunately, as our own fears buried our memories into the ground, such a theory fell into the quarry of our thoughts.

            But being at the bottom of the barrel amongst my own fear brought that theory back to me. I found it through this scrap of hope I had managed to recover.

            I knew Laura could not just reach in to my paintings and grab me and potentially pull me free from the wreckage. I knew that when she painted my visualisations she did not see them as alive as I did when I had experienced them.

            But I did believe that someone out there could for real.

            In our belief of soul mates, twin flames, whatever you wish to call them, there were balance partners, or messengers as some would like to call them. These messengers are people that enter your life, whether full heartedly or subtly, to infringe upon your imbalance in life. This imbalance is due to a person not having found their other half – the ying to a person’s yang or visa versa. This person will share their experiences or knowledge with you, which in turn will ultimately help you in your subconscious mission to find your soul mate.

            I prayed that Laura would find such a person for real, to help restore our balance.

            I am not exactly sure how long I was into the coma when I took action. Time seemed a mere fabrication to me. I did not feel the urge to sleep or to eat or even, dare I say it, excrete.

            I was just another version of myself within my own painting.

            But when I did start to piece together my plan, I felt so much better. Even though I was clutching at what felt to be impossible straws (mine of which being the shortest of any known to man), I held onto that thought for as long as were possible. Besides, what else could I have done there? Wait until my own mind felt like expiring? That would be the coward’s way out. There was one slim exit available and I had to take it.

            I gathered a rose from the grass into my hands (which felt dry, like paint, against my skin) and managed to excavate a semi-dead crow festering on the field some way away. It stank a lot. I know that sounds somewhat unbelievable – one dead crow in a figurative visualisation – but like I said it was a slim exit. Anything unbelievable was a construction of hope.

            I gathered the rose and the crow, knowing they would be two primary clues of Laura’s depiction of the cottage. She had already outlined a few crows and several roses in the foreground when I had seen the unfinished painting. I figured that clues extracted from the actual cottage, even perhaps the picket fence, would be relatively useless for Laura to remember, as her fear would be placed upon the field itself, not the cottage in the distance. The cottage was more in my foreground and so it was more important to me.

            That was my excuse, anyway. Really I just could not go anywhere near the cottage. I felt as though it would have swallowed me and finished me off.

            So with these clues, I travelled to other paintings that Laura would have no trouble remembering, so that I could plant the clues securely. But they would have to be particular paintings, ones that had perhaps certain details in them that made them stand out from other paintings.

            The first one I came up with was easy – the mantelpiece in Cosy that had items of no real significance to the painting on them. In particular, the pale green vase, as its choice of colour was somewhat different to her usual style. I slipped into Cosy and placed the rose in the cabinet behind the painting, believing that if I placed in the original viewpoint of the painting that it might somehow ruin the painting as it was not supposed to be there. A paradox, you could say. I later realised this was because of a threshold between my mind and the paintings Laura stepped in to, which I shall explain. In any case, as long as the painting stayed as it was when Laura had painted it, she could reach it.

            In theory. Somehow. My mind was too eager to understand or care.

            My second choice was more difficult, but I eventually came up with the orange dress in the shop window on the busy street contained within Bubble. The choice of where to place the crow would have to be away from the bustling crowd, as it could be difficult to find amongst a horde of retail shoppers. So the bin behind the viewpoint was the most obvious choice. I also thought coincidentally that by placing both clues behind the viewpoint of the painting would make it easier to find them both, as proved when Laura returned to Cosy after realising a clue could be hidden in the cabinet.

            I felt somehow that this was not enough. In any case, I had ample time to make it easier for Laura (and of course, Ethan) to find me. So I thought of one other clue I could forge from Laura’s depiction of the cottage.

            The dark monsters she could describe to me.

            The contrast of light against dark.

            That was when I thought of Isolation and the beams of holy light that represented her colour.

            That was also when I invented the tower and the crystal.

 

10

 

You have to understand that I could not just reach out to Laura and tell her I was at The Cottage. Although I could reach out to her, which I managed to in her dreams (which I shall explain in due course), The Cottage was far too deep inside my mind (and ultimately hers) that I could reach her from it. It could only be done through more easily recalled paintings like those of Cosy and Bubble, ones which she would have no trouble remembering. I knew Isolation would be such a painting as well.

            The crystal and the tower was a thought of genius.

            I knew she would need some sort of further guidance to find me inside my paintings. She could not just enter one painting after another, looking for me. For one it would have taken far too long and I did not have that much time to waste. And also she would never have found me, as The Cottage had been forgotten. Even if she did finally remember it, it might have been too late.

So instead, I invented a landmark, something that felt significant. A tower was my first choice and with it I created the crystal that contained Laura’s chosen acrylics in all of her paintings. That is right – all of them, including those she had seen in her version of The Cottage, as well as my own. That would be one sure clue, even if hidden within the other bright colours. To make it far easier, I used Isolation as a place to see that contrast.

To add to it all, I invented the tower with the markings of Isolation as a further clue. Even better than that, I went back to Cosy and inscribed the markings of the pillars in Isolation onto the cabinet, using my own nails to do so. I did try to do the same with the bin in Bubble, but my nails only do so little against metal.

I think by significantly combining Isolation with the idea of the tower left some kind of imprint of my knowledge into the John that existed there, hence why he could recall quite freely The Cottage from the traces of darkness within the white light. He was basked in the knowledge I had left behind. But of course John of Isolation still gave Laura some kind of chance to figure out the clue for herself, as I had intended.

            As much peril as I was in, I did not want to patronise my wife. Laura was a smart woman. I knew that very well.

            The decision I then had to make was where I could implement the tower so that Laura could reach it. Of course it did not exist within the paintings as of yet. So Laura would need to paint it herself. By being within The Cottage I felt I could reach out to Laura through the overlapping connection there. I knew it would be easiest to reach her in her dreams, when reality would waver and I could clutch at her wandering subconscious mind.

            But where to put the tower was the first thing to finalise.

            The answer that I got made me smile.

            The most obvious choice was within the black void of Laura’s first painting of my visualisations.

            Bad Day.

 

11

 

I did not think it were possible for me to combine my visualisations with other creations of my mind, in the ethereal state that I was in.

            But it was being within my own mind that made it possible, by being in my mind. It is all to do with original viewpoints of the paintings and the blind areas surrounding them. Let me explain the thresholds.

In the state that I was, I was not a physical being within my visualisations. As Laura ventured through each painting, I was unable to just simply enter those paintings and meet her. The paintings in the view room were windows that looked into my mind, but they were not actually my mind. There was a connecting threshold between the paintings and my visualisations, but they were not the same thing, just as my version of The Cottage was different to Laura’s.

But because the threshold existed, I was able to leave a clue that Laura could see outside of the original viewpoint of the painting. Within the original viewpoint of the painting was Laura’s window. Everywhere around that original viewpoint was my mind where I could cross, where clues could be placed, although I could not be seen. The threshold allowed me to influence the structure of the crystal as well to reveal to them the clues of the vase and the dress. You might argue that that should not be possible, as the crystal was painted into Bad Day and so was part of the original viewpoint, where I could have no influence. However, I think when Laura travelled through the black void of Bad Day she did cross a threshold into my actual mind, for the tower and crystal was a creation by me, rather than by my subconscious mind without my control. Of course I could not reach the tower and the crystal myself, because they were not an actual visualisation I had seen that I could cross to. I had merely invented it, only for the purpose of Laura to find. Believe me, if I could have made myself a portal to the real world and have stepped through it, I would have.

So instead, it was up to Laura to take the step for me. When she finally stepped over the last threshold into my version of The Cottage from hers, she became a part of my mind. That monster in my head had been real, existing in my mind as Laura had been there when she destroyed it. Who knows, I might have actually felt it if I was physically alive.

But when she took that quill and started writing the story idea I needed, I did feel it. It brought me back out.

I was John Henderson again.