Lynne Elizabeth Heiser
A La Luce
Mixed Media on Canvas
Inspiration piece
Troublous Dreams
By Tim O’Kane
Response
“This man is walking to work, same way as always, and he crosses Wielhe Avenue, same place as always, when he come across this fork in the road. It wasn’t – the road didn’t split – it was a fork. A dinner fork, you know? Flatware or whatever you call it. He just stops and stares at it. What does it mean? A sign? Allegory? He’d actualized himself into this new age mythos metaphor magnet, yet in the moment, he still considers it might all just be a visual pun. So he’s just standing there, letting a thousand combinations of a hundred possibilities race through his mind.”
“What happened then?”
“That’s when the truck hit him.”
“Sounds like a movie.”
“Yes, but not a Lifetime Movie Network movie. The truck was driven by the Ghost of Joseph Campbell, not the man’s wronged ex-wife.”
She laughed the easy laugh; the one she always used during their Saturday morning lollygags. “There’s always a movie playing in your mind.”
“Not always, but often enough to frighten me. I’m always afraid I’ll cross the street with my mind in Walter Mittyland and get killed. Sometimes – just the idea of that terrifies me. That’s why I never take the exact same path home. I always vary the routine to try to keep my head in the present.”
She pushed a mass of blonde curls off her face. “When are you always in the moment? So I’ll know when I need to make sure you are …”
He smiled. “Pleasure and Pain; one always comes and suffers in the moment. And when I’m all wrathy, I suppose.”
He looked at her. “No, I don’t see movies in my mind. In the pure moment – the honest moment – of introspection, I see a non-ADA compliant stone staircase of indeterminate time and origin; old, yet somehow timeless. It seems to materialize out of the warmest light you can imagine; a light that holds the promise of a warm embrace. Or hot sex. But it descends into classic Dark Recesses; a giant, black, yawning chasm that says “You: Damned for All Time!”
She stretched in the morning light. “So is it a stairway to heaven or a stairway to hell?
He reached for her. “Yes.”
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