Flashback

I wake up.

Morning sunlight has burst into the room and the two paintings on the wall are lit as though they have been placed under the glare of a spotlight. They shimmer and change before my eyes and the colour glazes seemed to hover over the surface and then dart about the canvas like dragonfly wings, making the pictures pulse with energy. They seem almost to be breathing.

I have never looked at my work in this way before. Even while painting I had been aware of them only as if they had been two pieces of writing, carefully put together, grammatically conscious of the rules they must obey, and well behaved. I had thought of them as cerebral creations and little more than descriptions of the scenes they showed.

But now I see that there is something else. They are giving me back something that I had not put into them.

Perhaps it was the sunlight. Perhaps it was because that day I had actually woken up and opened my eyes immediately. I am not as quick as a matter of course, to move from sleeping to waking. It may be the weather here on the bog. Usually I wake to the sound of rain drumming on the tin roof of the red barn or the wind keening in the telephone wires.

I had been deeply asleep, wandering, as I often do now, in those fearful and decrepit places where dreams live uneasily and mutter things to us we would be well advised to remember.

On the stripped pine dresser by the side of the bed my morning mug of tea already waited. She must have put it there quite recently. It was smoking gently in the sunshine like a carefully placed votive offering. I still enjoy thinking like this, in terms of rites and rituals. It helps to nail the day down and keep it in place for a little moment longer. The mug is large and blue with a picture of a fat pink pig on the side. It is ample and it is appropriate.

There are other paintings hanging on the walls all around the room, framed meticulously, as though they needed to be sedated, like wild animals in care. Her paintings and my paintings; but mostly mine, for she is a Virgo, with a justice that touches on self-effacement. Her frames are like painted cages and in themselves are works of art.

These canvases all amaze me, but none so much as mine, for I have never called myself a painter, or thought to call myself one, until this moment.

She had opened the window to air the room, and the breeze gusted suddenly against the curtains and armfuls of light fell all over her furniture overturning the shadows. I try to move, but my body is like a sheet of hammered lead, sunk into the damp of the mattress. I wonder: “Is this old age or sickness?” I would reject them both. It can’t be time yet. But I am wary to throw them summarily out. I feel like a host at a large party confronted with two gatecrashers. Their faces are familiar but I cannot quite place them. I dare not make a scene, for although I cannot remember inviting them, I am not completely sure I did not.

“How strange,” I think, “How strange to start on a journey like this now, at my age.”