(A detail of 'Elite Intervals' - Mixed Media on Canvas, Feb. 2015)
Little Margot had bought herself several new umbrellas; she had quite learnt to enjoy all the rains but sometimes needed to stay warm too. Blue, yellow, white, purple and magenta - all different colors to suit her different moods.
The rains were strange that way - each time it was but glorious water pouring down from the heavens, but each time it made her feel different. Was it all about circumstances then? She wondered. She loved the rain when she was near a cave on soft sands, but hated its prickly drops when she was standing on a stony beach. The only reason she would push away a drop was if she thought she was unworthy of its embrace, and hoping she would one day prove good enough.
She had always found it difficult to know herself, but with this new realization, she became even more confused.
How could she know what she really wanted and what she really was?
She stood upon the waves and emptied herself of everything; and what still remained in her heart, her soul and the deepest part of her being was her in her total essence. A total void of circumstances held a mirror to her inner truth, and how beautiful that was!
Exited to share this beauty with all the islands she had found in her deepest dreams, she wrote her lengthy letters and rolled them inside a bottle to send them across the seas.
As she rolled them out on the sea, the moon rose high and blessed her being.
If given a choice, would she be a bottle or a message inside it ? She thought, for she knew that would definitely be the next step. The bottle experienced all the waves, felt the sunshine and the chill, laughed with the foam and wept with the night snow. The messages, however, stayed safe inside, having very deep words and sentences, but 'bottled' up, literally. No stars, no scars. But they did have an amazing view of the spectacle though, and of the whole voyage.
It was a difficult choice, but Margot had listened to her call and she knew what she would really like. Instead of finding substitutes in messages on yellowed paper, she would roll herself into a sheet, snuggle inside the bottle and bounce down onto the seas. And once in the center of it all, once in the center of life and drama and the beautiful theater of existence, she would break the bottle and pound herself on the deep waters. She would know the visuals, she would know the colors, and she would now feel the chill and thrill and the drowning ecstasy of someone totally unarmed except for their own dream in the wild rush of merging rivers.
Someday, maybe, some sailor would find the smashed pieces of bottle and a bit of her hair floating below his boat.
He would maybe honor her memory with a knowing smile, for that is all we really need - an acknowledgement of our souls, an awareness of our emotions, and an acceptance, no matter how subtle, of our innermost journeys.
