My life started eons before you mixed your paint. Eons before you first put brush to canvas. Mine was a miraculous conception, copulation of celestial magnitude. Everything was dark. Then everything was light. And finally, everything was a mixture of the two.
I arose from the depths of that space. The space between the space. The space within the space. Fortuitous foam was my womb. Exoskeletal wings lifted me from the void of the Great Ocean as I drifted upward, forever upward. Or so it seemed. Dazzling stars flashed; bubbles of divinity danced about me. And finally, I arrived at the surface.
Now, many lifetimes later, standing in front of me with a brush in your hand and a picture of me in your mind, you think that you know me, well enough to paint me. And, maybe you do know me with intimacy. Maybe you can see beyond the lavish cloak of ignorance that you seem so keen to paint, attempting to conceal my dignity, my divinity, my purity. Yet do you know that with this choice you also mask my true beauty? A beauty that is beyond form, beyond human desire; if only two physical eyes could merge into one, then perhaps…
Perhaps…
Perhaps there would be less suffering. And more true love.
You paint as though you were there with me when the west wind blew. Flowers fell like feathers in the air and spring soared on heavenly wings. I was neither content nor displeased as I landed on the shore of the world. It was my duty. What was I to do?
In your final brushstrokes, you said farewell. But how can you say goodbye to your own reflection unless you destroy the mirror? Or maybe the mirror itself never existed? Nor you. Nor me. Nor anything.
Copyright © James Golding 2019
