By Sharmila, Grade 10
Gray, gray, and gray. Grass, charcoal. Trees, graphite. Sky, lead. The clouds, at least, are grayish-white. Is this truly all there is? I’ve wandered the mountains, seas, and valleys, gray landscape, followed by gray seascape, by gray landscape. Surely there must be more? This world, my world, can’t be limited to the scale of a drawing pencil set. The colors I can fill my paper, my canvas, with –the deepest garnet, and purest azure, blazing lemon, and calming pine– can’t be found in the world around me? I refused their claims. I wandered and wandered, looked, and became lost.
Somehow, this is different. This day feels new, this landscape, it feels like the end of one, and the beginning of another. I don’t know what. Not yet. I’ve traveled the world in circles, but this….it’s the end of my circle. No…the beginning of the next. It feels like I’ve traveled to the ends and edges of the world…all of them, but this….truly feels like something new and different. I definitely couldn’t put a pin on what exactly is so different about this. The truth is, I have absolutely no clue. I’m an artist, a writer with a little too much curiosity. I’m brilliant at expressing my ideas, thoughts, and feelings in creative ways. Not a scientist making observations and discoveries about the world around them. Certainly not. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Actually…I suppose I’m looking for wrinkles in the fabric of this world, the world as I know it. Anything out of the ordinary. Wait….there….over there. Look! There’s something….looks…like a piece of fabric?! The dead grass beneath my feet….oddly silent…like it’s holding its breath in, sensing that I’m on the verge of discovering something new…abnormal as the silent dry grass I’m walking across.
And then…the prickly carpet underfoot turns into one of smooth silken fabric. I lift my gaze, from my feet, up, higher…until I realize what’s been here all along. What I presumed to be the horizon, endless, and daunting, is actually something more. A large expanse of that smooth, silken fabric, draped impeccably, hanging. Hanging like those pieces of cloth in windows in history books. What were they called…I can’t think of it, ah! Curtains! This beautiful, terrible fabric was draped like a curtain, the one thing preventing me from seeing what lay beyond. I grabbed fistfuls of the fabric, hoping to drag it down, pull it off, to see.
I pulled my hands back to my side, securing my fingers into fists. I was a step away, a thought away from realizing my dream. What was stopping me? I’ve wanted to do this my whole life…all I’ve ever wanted is to find out if my works, my dreams in color, could ever be true. I’ve wandered the mountains, seas, and valleys, gray landscape, followed by gray seascape, by the gray landscape. I realized…that as I was chasing my dream of deepest garnets, and purest azures, blazing lemons, and calming pines, I had fallen in love with my world, my home, my empty palette, my blank canvas. The endless possibilities that it provides. Did I really want this? Did I want what I’ve never completely understood, but always searched for? Did I want to finally see my dream of color in the world come to life, even if that meant losing all that I was and am?
It was all too much. My knees buckled, giving in to the mental debate and crucial questions, my body sank to the prickly carpet just beyond the silken curtain. Water that could never be found prior to that moment fell from my once clear eyes, trickling down the strange sunken cheeks. Somehow, the unfamiliar tears calmed me, soothed me. I exhaled deeply….once….twice. I sat bolt upright, pushed my shoulders back, raised my chin, confident as a realization shot through me. Whatever this new, unfamiliar world filled with my beloved deepest garnets, and purest azure, blazing lemon, and calming pine threw at me, I could take it. I would survive…no, not survive, thrive. Thrive without losing the world I had come to love. Without losing all that I was, and all that I am. I rise, maintaining my posture, my confidence. I grab fistfuls of the fabric, hoping to drag it down, pull it off, to see. To finally see my dream come true.
Elements Magazine 