:: The Dreamer ::

For a moment I didn't believe that A had created that. It wasn't that I doubted the creative genius of my friend―I've always known A to have magical fingers, burning with artistic impatience, their nerve endings raw with talent―but that. It was a crucible of allusions to some of the greatest Masters―Da Vinci, Sisley, Monet, van Gogh. It was coloured with care, created with meaning and crafted with me―of me―in mind.

It was beautiful, and it was for me. I choked.

'Happy belated birthday,' A said. His eyes were bright with casual happiness.
'Does thank you even begin to cover it?' I asked, half-bewildered, looking at my gifts. The Nabokov book―bless his heart, he remembers―was a great testament of our connection and shared interest in prose stylists. But his little masterpiece was a precious piece of his art and his heart, and I felt small and undeserving and very close to tears.

His canvas was a postcard, his medium was watercolour, his advocacy were the post-impressionists of a neo-Corot era, and his inspiration―this is too much―was me. Or more accurately, he was insipired to put on canvas what he's tried to tell me so many times before.

'I want you to tell me the meaning behind it,' he said, almost forcefully.

I looked at the caricature of myself―A had married my corporate reality with my ethereal faith, and the result is a distorted dreamer, staring out to the world with lopsided eyes, her sight twisted by the clash of passion with logic.

He infused the high renaissance conceit of Da Vinci by painting in code; he combined the lazy emotions of French painters and the modern niche of cartoon art to become a van Gogh with the soul of a Joe Sorren. He painted with me in mind, and he created a revealing portrait of a Jean I never thought anyone knew―a Jean that has been buried in her business plans and crushed into a literary coma by the weight of her Inbox.

'I need to run,' I said finally. Her eyes―my eyes―that look―those colours; I was in awe with the beauty of his creation, and I was ashamed of the meaning behind it.

'You can't love your art unless you hate it,' he said, severe in point, but tender in tone. He shrugged in boyish wisdom. 'It's like an ugly relative―a cranky old aunt or a senile cousin. You need to hate their existence but love their being.'

'Biological. We have to make our art the thing we breathe.' The words ripped themselves from my mouth; inside I was bleeding because A had set an empty dream on fire, and the ashes were scalding sense from me.

He nodded. 'You know the words, Jean. Put them down and believe them. Make sacrifices. Write for writing. You know what's important.' He grinned and polished off our rucola salad, while I felt like tearing up my employment contract with a titanic vehemence. 'It's not that hard. You shine when you write, so you write to shine. All very simple,' he sang, a Peter Piper of his own brand of truth.

'You're an angel, Apollo,' I said at the end of the night, using my favourite nickname for him. We held each other for a while before I boarded the train home―A was going on a self-imposed artistic hibernation, with ten hours of work each day and six hours devoted to his craft, every day, until June. I envied his freedom, and I admired his courage to suffer for his love. Could I?

'Well, send me a postcard. Those things are much better than an SMS,' he said, cheeky but enlightened, a sapient scholar in a cheap T-shirt, as he waved goodbye.

I went home with my head in a spin, clutching the promise of his unwavering faith in me, and the beautifully haunting reminder of who I had let myself become in his artistic pansophy.

Thank you, Apollo.