The Others – Seventeen

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: CURAphotogrpahy

Image credit: CURAphotogrpahy

“Ok, watch this, just over here” I said, pointing to the upper right side of the monitor.

Natalie leaned forward from her hunched position, sitting so close to me I felt I might melt. Her gaze was so intent on the screen however, that she hardly seemed to see me, and only what I was showing her.

In the small confines of my filming alcove the sensation was both claustrophobic and exhilarating. Indeed, we were sitting in such proximity that our arms almost touched as she leaned inwards. I swore I could vaguely feel the hair on her arm brushing mine, but it was so slight it might have been electricity instead, electricity between us. Or perhaps that was just pathetic, wishful thinking.

So close, I could vaguely smell a hint of jasmine from her, a perfume I particularly like. I had to remove myself from these pleasant and disorienting sensations to explain what I was showing to her. It was a wrench.

“See this guy here, coming out of the shadows? The tall one with the wavy, thick blonde hair? Watch him approach the girls on the dance-floor. See how he’s calling out something to the people behind him as he leaves them, then the girls see him, so he’s being seen all the time?”

“Yes…” she said, hesitant to give me anything more. Fair enough, all I’d shown her so far was just another guy who seemed to be on the camera all the time.

“OK, watch him with the two girls.”

“Peter, is there a point to this?”

“Oh, ye of little faith!” I chided, half laughing, “Just be patient and watch!”

The man started dancing with both the girls. He was very good looking, just like Natalie, brazenly youthful, this time blonde, this time a god rather than a goddess, another one more than capable of catching the eyes of others (all things being equal of course). I felt jealous, and I’m a good-looking guy, as I told you. I look like a celebrity. But that’s me. My attraction at least partly based on my similarity to someone else, while this guy, he seemed to shimmer. Just like Natalie. I didn’t like him, but since he was soon going to prove to be what Natalie needed, I tolerated him and his glory.

The girls were starting to compete for his attention and he seemed to be half laughing about it. I typed some commands into the computer to bring his face into magnified close-up.

“Watch his expression,” I said.

It was cruel, playful, knowing. He was smirking about something he knew and they didn’t.

I zoomed out again, about half way, letting the girl’s reactions take up part of the screen but be more magnified also.

The girls started to become more awkward, they actually pulled away from him slightly, and he stepped back out of their immediate eye line. They looked at each other, as though sizing up the competition, and then they seemed to change. Their movements loosened, became almost homoerotic to each other, they had forgotten about him.
And he had disappeared, suddenly, no wavering. One second he was there, the next he was gone, no film to show him walking away, nothing.

“Now look over to this angle, up to the bar. It’s just a wide enough angle to get it, taken off camera three’s focus on the shadows behind the bar area.”

I pointed to a spot just near the bar approximately where Natalie was standing, serving, still seen at that stage by others so very, very visible.

“You were looking very nice that night, by the way,” I said, “I like your hair out.”

“Thank you” she said, smiling a very secret, gleeful little smile to herself as she watched the camera. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t need to, I was warmed by the pleasure of my compliment being received so greedily. She seemed to hug it into herself, as though she was almost hugging me. I wish….

The man reappeared suddenly, his hand on the shoulder of one of the punters. He was talking with his apparent friend, but he was looking directly at Natalie.

“Now, it gets even more interesting.” I said, “Watch! This is peculiar”.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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Animation – Seventeen

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Bruce Amos

Image credit: Bruce Amos

Once finished, I sleep fitfully, then the next morning, around the time of cafe assignations, I sit at my window to watch.

At precisely 10am I see my beloved arrive and sit, happy and excited at a café table. He is dressed exactly as I painted him, of course, and my heart breaks afresh to see his innocent joy as he awaits the arrival of his love. Her name is Penelope, a lovely name for a lovely girl.

A lovely girl about to die. I am struck by guilt for a moment, can I allow this to be? I look back at the painting and wonder if I can save her, stop this, by burning the painting, burning it now. But would that even work? I do not know if the painting needs just to be done to work, or whether its power would be robbed by its destruction. I have not tested that, do not know, but I could now, and in doing so learn something. I could save her for the moment, but leave the opportunity for me to continue on this path later should I choose.

What would a god do? What should I do?

But then time answers my questions for me – there is no time left. She is already hurrying down the other side of the street to him, dressed in the red dress of sacrifice I painted for her. I am struck by seeing her as real, and the guilt awakens afresh. She is young and vital, and he loves her, and how can I wipe her out from the world? Now I see her as a person and not just a hated, painful idea? Can I destroy the painting, even now, and save his love?

But if I was to burn the painting now it was very possible both she and my beloved would spontaneously combust below me. No, for now there must be resolve, the resolve of a god.

And then she is rushing across the road, and the car comes screeching through at the appointed moment, and the impact occurs. Even though I have painted it, I still sit up, shocked and bewildered to see it in real life. Real life and real death.

I see my beloved’s face change, just as I painted it, see him run to his love in despair, hear him cry out a moment later that she is dead, and see him fall by her side, weeping uncontrollably. He is holding her in his embrace, rocking her back and forth as if by this soothing he can call her back. But she is gone. I have made sure of that at least.

I want to go to him to comfort him, but even I know this would be obscene. I watch, sitting back from where I can be seen, watching others surround him in sympathy or just morbid curiosity. I watch, hidden, until the ambulance comes and the dead body of his love travels with him away from this bloody scene of my creation.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Others – Sixteen

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: STUDIO GRANT QUEST

Image credit: STUDIO GRANT QUEST

The thing was, apart from the ridiculous idea another would be there anyway, finding her, or him, as the case may be, was going to be tricky. I saw Natalie for two reasons. First, she was pretty. For someone who could disappear on film with all the skill of a stage magician, she was, on physical grounds alone, a head turner. Ironic really.

Second, I’d probably not even have seen that had she not been so ‘visible’ in her occupation. There were only three behind the bar at most times, a focal point by virtue of occupation rather than anything else. If another ‘ghost’ danced on the floor or did drugs in the toilets, would I even notice them among the throng?

Where would a ‘ghost’ most likely abide in a dance-club? On the dance-floor primarily, to be seen by others to the greatest degree possible, or in the shadows? I was thinking the shadows. I’m not sure why. Call it instinct. Maybe I actually had the scent of it now, this species. Natalie said she avoided crowds (which unfortunately might mean any others wouldn’t come to the club unless they had to for work, but we work with what we’ve got…). She said she felt uninteresting and unimportant in the groups. If she had chosen to be in the club, and wasn’t working, she’d be in the shadows. It was the best place to start, at least in the absence of any other workable theory.
So I changed all the cameras to get the maximum number of angles of the entry and exit areas from the shadows. Anyone lurking there and emerging to go to the bar, or the dance-floor, or the toilets, would be recorded. It would take a bit of discipline to take notes of each and where they went, a lot of time also, and a sense of mathematical intensity that didn’t sit well with my artistic pretensions. But, needs must as the devil drives, as they say in the classics. I had no other choice.

Natalie would ring me every couple of days, just to ask how it was going. She was trying not to seem pushy or demanding, but I could tell she was desperate. Hell, I would be too, if someone was holding out a hand to me while I felt I was drowning. I wanted results, as desperately as her, and I wanted them fast.

Mostly the task was boring. I found in myself I had the capacity for altruism, to put aside my own interests, motivations and obsessions, for another. I surprised myself. It felt good, I must say, it actually felt good to be a bit selfless. Perhaps all those born again Christian types who used to harass us at school had a point after all. Remarkable.

Anyway, that sustained me, that warm inner glow or whatever it was. Plus I had an instinct for the hunt as I was also discovering in myself. And for hours nothing resulted. I felt like a fisherman in a difficult stream or river, waiting, patient, hopeful and hopeless by turns, so still, so silent, so respectful of the passage of time. And like that fisherman, eventually, it seemed I’d reeled something in.

And it was the big one.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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Animation – Sixteen

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Zwiebackesser

Image credit: Zwiebackesser

I wonder, as I paint, if the story of the Fall is actually the story of god and not an errant angel. Could it be that profound disappointment makes you resent the boundaries you place around yourself, and if you are indeed a god, how can you be anything, truly, but boundless?

Perhaps God, weeping for the willfulness of humankind, split apart and sent his own despair and disappointment and rage as Lucifer, and thereafter that has been the Fall, the splitting apart of a once whole god. I could understand that, I could empathise if so. For this is how I felt now, split apart, boundless, only curious in some detached, bleak way about how far I might go.

Forcing Richard by my painting was too far, even for me, and in any case, my rage was not to him. It could never be to him, for I loved him so simply, so perfectly. Thus Lucifer had to split from God to do his damage to humanity. God could not have done that from such profound love within. And neither can I.

But part of me fell, split apart, given birth by my brush and my paint. And my hatred fell on the shoulders of a different one, the one who had stolen my love, the one who had made my beloved so deeply and unknowingly betray me.

I paint her very deliberately. And her form is perfect. Richard had many photos of her, in fact, and from these I gleaned every precise detail required. I painted her running, rushing to her lover, across the street from my home, across to the café, laughing with joy to be with my beloved. My beloved.

But just as she is crossing, she does not look, does not look in time, and she is hit, sudden, complete and fatally, by a speeding car. I paint death in the pain and the impact, and on my beloved’s sweet face a strange mixture of joy and horror, caught in the split moment of the painting. The moment he realizes she is gone, just as she is leaving, just as the soul departs.

It is perhaps my greatest work artistically, the nuance of that precise moment caught so perfectly. It is a shame I can never show this, and I know I never can. Like so many of my god-strewn work of late, it is a private affair. It is my equivalent of Dorian Grey’s portrait in the attic, the proof of my mastery over life that only I can see lest it is taken from me forever.

And it is also proof of my mastery over death.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Others – Fifteen

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Eugenio Marongui

Image credit: Eugenio Marongui

Well, there you go, bloody man with the ideas, eh? And the problem with ideas is they come before you even realize you’ve had them, and if you’re keyed up – like talking to a very pretty girl who is crying in front of you – you just blurt them right out as though they are writ in stone, eminently realizable, the logical conclusion to everything.

It’s got me into trouble before, my tendency to speak before I think, and my lack of regard for follow through and consequences. But now, how was I to do what I suggested? Whatever possessed me to think that this strange, otherworldly phenomenon, which no-one had ever seen or spoken of in anyone else (to my knowledge anyway) could not only be replicated in another person – and not just one other person on this planet – but another person in George’s pissy little club?

I’m a moron. It’s true. The evidence is in. And a moron now faced with a big problem, because I desperately didn’t want to disappoint Natalie. I’d thought discovering her was fascinating, rather delightful really. It wasn’t until she’d laid her secrets bare to me that I began to really think how terrible it would be to be like that. I’d had vague thoughts about it, but nothing concrete enough to think and take care. Take care. My mother used to tell me to do that all the time, because she knew I never did.

I have an eye for things – a very perceptive eye – it’s just that it doesn’t connect often enough to my brain. Maybe that was why I was still lurking around the edges of the film world at almost thirty with the most impressive entry on my resume being working for that halfwit Roger. Who was I to think that I’d not only make the discovery of the century for film, but also be able to make something of it?

Or help a lonely, frightened girl find someone else who really knew what she was going through?

Still, I’d made my bed – another of my mother’s favorite sayings. The odds were against me, that was true, but I had to at least try. I made a list of the possible reasons I might just be successful, because I thought it would cheer me up:

1. Maybe like draws to like, others of her kind would come to the club because she was there
2. Maybe it was something in the drinking water in this city – a kind of mutation – and so there would have to be others
3. Maybe she was the next evolutionary step up, and that evolutionary improvement liked dance-clubs
4. Maybe I was destined for greatness so I’d just be lucky this time

Yes, you can see the problem. Except for the very slight hope around number one, the others became increasingly absurd. And even that one seemed unlikely too, because she didn’t even know exactly what she was. Why would anyone else so blessed and afflicted have any idea either, or have progressed to actually seeking out others? Unless they had someone who noticed too? Or unless some difference in personality made the experience different for them and so they were confident or brave or inquisitive. Or at the very least less timid.

I could, of course, extend the experiment outside the club, but the logistics were extraordinarily difficult to manage. If I roamed around, vox pop like, filming in the streets it probably wouldn’t work because I would be there, looking through the camera eye in situ, an ‘intelligent’ presence that would see any possible other ‘ghosts’ and so the film would film them, just as Natalie appeared on film whenever anyone was looking at her. And while theoretically other security camera systems might have captured – or only partially captured which is more to the point – such creatures from time to time, where would you start going through them even if you had access to them? Which I didn’t have, of course. So, I would be limited to other places where I could set up cameras to film by themselves, and that meant getting the agreement of other club owners, café operators, restaurant managers, librarians. Well, you see the difficulty. There aren’t that many George’s around, and if there are, I don’t know them.

So, it was the club or nothing. Well, I’d try at least, and I’d also try to put some intelligence into the operation. Hard for me, you might say!

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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Animation – Fifteen

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Aleshyn_Andrei

Image credit: Aleshyn_Andrei

Too late a god understands that free will has a hidden sting. I wonder if the original god, who created all of our world, found a similar regret when his creations had inner lives, not just outer. Like me perhaps, this original deity had principles no doubt, and beliefs and some form of self-regulation. And in so doing perhaps a certain unconscious arrogance is surfaced – the belief that within those confines people will actually do as you will, and not just a pale approximation of such which is then something quite other.

In the Garden, I think perhaps, the apple was meant as a symbol only, and god did not count on curiosity. Positioned high on a tree it was a form of art, like mine, and meant for something quite other than what it was eventually put to use for – something quite other indeed.

God knew too late, as did I, as did all of mankind. Knowing too late, that’s the precipice of every tragedy in life.

I was smug, I was excited, I was certain of so much. So when my beloved Richard came to call I only wondered how we would move from friends to lovers, and not if that would occur. Had I not painted our first wonderful embrace and did not everything I paint come to be?

Well yes, it did, but not as I had imagined.

Richard is flush with excitement the moment he enters the studio, and foolishly I think he may make a declaration in this very moment, running to my arms. And if he does, although I have painted it, I also assure myself it is true, it is real, and has arisen from the deep intimacy already established, quite genuinely, between us.

I think I will faint at his first words, swoon as a young lover might, and he must speak soon, soon!

– Paul, I have such news! Such news!
Yet even with these first words some incongruity arises, some slight flutter of dismay and unease. Are these the opening words of a lover?

– I have not dared to tell you, not dared to tell anyone, it is so fast and so perfect! But now I know my affections are returned I feel I can speak!

He has read my love in my kindness, my concern, my intimate care! In any moment, my joy will be complete.

– I am in love Peter! I met a girl only weeks ago, and it was love at first sight! I cannot even begin to say, but she feels it too, she told me last night, and I am so happy! So happy! Oh my dear friend, we are to be wed, so soon!

And as the completely alien message starts to sink in he is indeed in my arms, hugging me close, so happy he cannot contain it and must share his joy with me, his dear, dear…friend.

The painting has come alive, quite perfect in s vision, but completely imperfect in its import. Free will! I have not counted on the life that one leads away from the dictates of the canvas! I have not counted on that, and I have not put it in my calculations. And now as he embraces me, as I dreamed, it is completely unlike how I have dreamed it. Completely unlike.

– Richard, that is wonderful news, wonderful.

I have to say it, though my heart is breaking so fast and hard I think I will indeed faint, but with despair, not joy as I had expected. Free will, it is my undoing, it is the undoing of everything. I can paint a world and make it be on the outside, but I cannot also make it so on the inside.

And if this, in some bleak way, confirms that any real affection between Richard and I is genuine, for I could not paint his caring, his liking of me, it is only that: the smallest and most bitter of consolations. Liking. It will never be more. I cannot paint that changing without something much more extreme, much more intimate, to the point of obscenity. Yes, I could paint us at lovers, naked and within each other’s embrace far more intimately, and I could make that be, but in these circumstances what could that be but rape?

What has any of this been, in reality, other than a type of rape? I am ashamed in his sudden realisation. I cannot do that. And in any case, what would that do to my dear Richard, and his new love?

His new love. A thought occurs, so brief and unformed I barely know my own motives.

– Do you have a photo of your new love? Can I see what this paragon looks like?
– Oh yes, oh yes! Perhaps you might paint her someday?

Perhaps I may indeed.

He shows me the photo, a picture of a lovely, smiling, blonde girl with perfect facial symmetry and youth. Such youth. I can see her full, see her whole, from this one picture.

I can see her quite well enough to paint.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Others – Fourteen

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: Aleyshn_Andrei

Image credit: Aleyshn_Andrei

“I do feel invisible, quite often,” Natalie finally said, as though she had decided by some internal assessment that I might be trustworthy, or even because she wanted to talk about it to someone. Finally, to talk to someone who had noticed. “Sometimes it’s as though I ceased to exist as far as others were concerned. It happens quite a lot here. And there’s other things…”

Her voice trailed off.

“Like what?” I encouraged her.

“It probably isn’t what you’re asking about,” she demurred.

“No, no, please! It probably is. Please keep going..”

She shook her head and I decided to take a risk. Looking back, this was probably the first step into the other, a kind of blind longing and need propelling me over the edge. A friend of mine reads tarot cards and there is one called ‘The Fool’ which normally depicts someone just stepping off a cliff. That was me now. The fool.

“Natalie, there’s something special about you. Something unusual, something I can’t easily explain. But the camera has seen it and what I’m asking and what I think you were about to tell me, well it’s all related, it’s all relevant. I think I might be able to help you, perhaps, if help is what you need…”

“Okay,” she said, “Okay. Well, at the bar, sometimes it’s like I’m suddenly not there, like there’s this wall between me and everyone. And we have this routine, this pattern, to make sure the customers get served quickly and no-one is over-worked, but somehow it’s like the other girls forget I’m there and none of the customers ask me for anything and it’s frightening because I’m there, but no-one will look at me. It even happened with you the other night..”

I was oddly gratified that she remembered this, that she noticed me in this manner.

“I know Natalie. I suddenly forgot you were there. I’m sorry, but that’s the point. Please go on.”

“I find I find sometimes it’s a relief and I just stand there, and I walk up and down to see if anyone notices but they just don’t, and the only way to get them to is to say something quite loudly to someone who knows me, then they turn to me and they see me again. It’s odd but it’s not really new to me…”

I’d suspected that. I nodded to her, encouraging her to continue.

“It’s happened in some form most of my life. Even in my family. Sometimes I’d be at the dinner table and they’d all just look everywhere but where I was and I found something interesting when that happened, they never looked where I was, they looked everywhere else, almost like the space I occupied had ceased to exist also. Or that it existed in some other, inaccessible plain that only I was in at such times, like a kind of lacuna in the fabric of the world, surrounding me. And then I’d get frustrated and shout something and they’d see me and tell me off for being so noisy, but it was like being down this strange, deep hole and everyone seemed both larger and more distant all at once and I had to call out to get out. It sounds crazy I know..”

“It sounds crazy, yes, but I believe you. I believe what you experience is very, very real.”

“Why? Why do you say that?”

“It’s what the camera showed me, but we’ll get to that, tell me more. Is there more?”

“Well, it’s caused me problems with jobs and it did during school sometimes too. I was accused of being absent a lot for classes I attended, that sort of thing. One teacher joked it was because I looked like another girl in the class, but we didn’t look that alike, not really at all…”

I nodded. She seemed to have stopped, so I probed further.

“How does it affect relationships, friendships?”

“It doesn’t affect friendships, except that I rarely choose to see people in groups because I just get lost in them and it makes me feel so shy and self-conscious. Like no-one finds me interesting enough if there are others around. It hurts really. So I tend to avoid it. As for relationships, you mean with men?

“Yes, that’s what I mean..”

“I don’t have them. Anyone who ever seems interested, they approach me, then something happens. It’s like, it’s like they get afraid or something. Or they lose sight of what attracted them. I don’t date. It never gets that far, pathetic I know..”

“Natalie, it’s not pathetic. And besides, many men are frightened of beautiful women.”

It seemed a hollow compliment given my purpose in talking with her, but I wanted to give her something. She was really very lovely, and so open – you only had to ask – as though her nature, when questioned, was the very opposite of her self-hiding form. Perhaps it was just because no-one else had ever asked. She wanted to tell someone because no-one had noticed enough to ask her before. And of course, had I not first seen her ‘nature’ on film, I’d have been no different. I’d have been, at best, another of those men who came close then took fright, forgetting what attracted them and possibly forgetting her entirely.

“Another thing,” she said, “Is that I get ideas for things, ways of looking at the world, and I tell people and within days they tell me, as though it was their idea, as though it never came from me..”

“Unconscious plagiarism, that can happen a lot Natalie, believe me. I have a friend who vampirises every idea I’ve ever had. I’ve gotten to the point of never telling him anything of substance.”

“But it happens all the time!” she cried, “Nearly everybody!”

Who was I to presume? I suddenly thought. It could be far worse for her. Why wouldn’t anything that came from her be similarly ‘forgettable’ and ‘invisible’ as her form? Particularly in relation to friends or family who had long ceased to really see her in anything but greedy one on one interactions.

“It could be part of it then,” I said, “That’s got to bite..”

Bite big time, I thought, and it was a good allegory of how it probably felt. When it happened to me I literally felt the other person was feeding on me. What would it be like to be perpetually consumed and ignored at the same time? It would have to make you hate other people a bit, wouldn’t it? I’d hate other people if it happened all the time to me. As it was, when it did happen to me, I did hate the person concerned just a bit, every time.

“Part of what?” she said, suddenly on the verge of anger. She’d laid her vulnerability out to me and clearly it was time to lay my cards on the table also.

“Natalie, what I’m going to tell you might seem odd, impossible even, but I can show it to you and I can promise you no tricks are involved and that I’m as perplexed as you are. But that it fits with what you’ve just said you experience, so I think you’ll accept I’m earnest..”

“Tell me what? Show me what?”

“I’ve been filming the club continuously for the last couple of months. I started to notice you. Firstly because you are pretty, but then for another reason. I started to really notice you because you’d just disappear..”

“What?”

“Disappear. Sometimes you’d kind of waver and fade out, other times you’d just be there on film one minute, gone the next..”

“I don’t leave the bar..”

“I don’t mean you ran off somewhere. You don’t go anywhere. It’s just like you say you experience, people stop looking at you and suddenly you aren’t there on film anymore. You just disappear for stretches of time, then you reappear again, probably after you’ve called out to someone, but I can’t say that for sure because I don’t record sound…”

She sat very still, looking at me, her eye contact not wavering, but blinking rapidly.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I think you can somehow, whether knowingly or not, and it sounds like it’s not knowingly, vanish. You can become invisible, like something in a comic book, only this is real and it’s obviously, it’s obviously not something good for you…”

She blinked more. I realised it was to hold back tears. I reached out and took her hand. It was all I could think of to do to comfort her. Something about her seemed to stop me trying to embrace her, something indefinable but strong. But she allowed my hand in hers.

“I’ll show you,” I said, “You can see that what you’ve experienced is real. You aren’t imagining it..”

“I’m not paranoid? I’m not crazy?” She said, half stuttering her words.

“Not, not at all, not at all..” I responded, “And more than this, I thought, maybe you aren’t alone in this. Maybe, if we understand it better, we might be able to find if there are others..”

I saw a small hope in her eyes. It made me want to cry. I swallowed hard.

“Maybe you aren’t alone Natalie. Maybe we can find others..”

“Of my kind..”

“Yes, Natalie. Of your kind…”

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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Animation – Fourteen

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Helen

 

Image credit: bikeriderlondon

Image credit: bikeriderlondon

Eventually I had to know. I now understood god and his wish for man to have free will in a manner I had previously not apprehended. Love is not love if it is coerced or forced. You must choose to engage from your own desire, be it sexual or spiritual or both. But even god holds a weapon in his arsenal – eons of religion which remind one of the penalties of not returning this love, of straying from the path. As a hidden god I could not play this game with Richard. At best I could withdraw my patronage and tutelage. But of course, that would have been impossible for me – to lose even that connection with my beloved was unthinkable. So my only power was hidden also, the power of my paintings to progress a matter, rather than dictate it wholly. Was it so bad, then, to do what god has done for centuries, even under the guise of powerlessness? If the penitent sinner is beloved of god and acceptable, and if god’s threatened ire is considered spiritually just, then how could my power – given from I know not where – be wrong?

I was given the gift of art and I pursued it, even where many were not so blessed. I thought nothing of it. I was given material comfort and I enjoyed it, even though many starve. I was given the crucible of a happy family life in my youth when I knew many of my peers were not so fortunate. And also I was given the harelip, the awkwardness at sports, and a myriad of other disadvantages. It all balanced in the end. You use what you are given and there can be no wrong in that.

Therefore, given this power, how could its use be unholy? In fact, to not use it, was that not churlish and ungrateful?

Thus I convinced myself, driven by my need. I painted late into the night our first embrace. Do not judge me harshly. It was no naked bacchanalian festival. I did not presume to draw or paint that most intimate and glorious of moments. No, instead, it is the embrace of two fully clothed men, the very moment after the declaration. It is the relief of loving and returned love, that wonderful sensation of stepping over the threshold into an entirely new and more welcome life. I would let nature take its course for the further and more intimate expressions of love – I wanted not to direct my beloved in this manner, I wanted to see his love in its natural form, as he would give it, not as a producer might elicit a passionate dance for a film.

After the painting was finished I gazed at it, long into the night, pouring all my hope and love and need into it, as though to further ensure its efficacy. Every other painting, even the one that allowed us to meet, was more an experiment. Had they failed I would have laughed to myself and returned to my lesser life a wiser man. But this – this – was more. This was everything. This was the beginning. This was also paradoxically, the full flowering of my power through my desire.

I could not bear for this to fail, for my art and my power to desert me. I could not bear it.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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The Others – Thirteen

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: locrifa

Image credit: locrifa

Natalie blinked and re-positioned herself. It looked like she was buying time to consider something, but whatever it was, she was resigned to this interaction at least. I wondered what George had required of her and what she therefore expected of me, if anything. Maybe he had suggested I was an important friend who needed to be indulged for some unspecified business reason, or maybe I was just as he put it, that she, like most people, was bound to be intrigued when a film-maker found them interesting. Or perhaps she was just curious and nothing more.

“Of course,” she said, “Go ahead.”

“You’re very game!” I couldn’t help saying.

“Maybe I just expect a film maker to ask odd questions,” she replied, unperturbed. With each moment she was apparently becoming surer of herself, almost more into herself – if you understand what I’m saying. I was thinking that if I were filming this (which I wasn’t and I suddenly wished I was) she’d appear more and more physical with each passing moment.

That was exactly how it felt to me, and in a way I could have sworn it was literally true rather than an impression. Everything about this echo was becoming more distinct as she seemed to relax. I realized I was noting the contours of her cheeks in the shadowy light, and could see her eyelashes clearly, the small pores near her nose on her face. It was as though she was in high definition focus, or gradually becoming so, and the impact was only acceptable because it was gradual.

It wasn’t just looking at a beautiful woman for the sake of seeing more. It wasn’t like the way that finding the indistinct flaw in beauty actually heightens it, so the artist in me seeks it out. It was more than that, more subtle and more pronounced. It was as though something in the beautiful woman was allowing itself to be more seen. I wondered if she knew.

“Or maybe you just get asked odd questions a lot?” I prompt.

She frowned at me but said nothing.

“OK, perhaps not. Let’s start. Do you find that sometimes you feel…invisible?”

The frown deepened.

“Doesn’t everybody sometimes?” she asked, “Like when you want to get served at a counter and no-one sees you there for ages?”

“Yes, like that. But more often than that. In social situations, or even at the bar, does it sometimes seem like people cease to notice you are there?”

She was looking troubled now, but I couldn’t tell if that was because I’d struck a nerve or whether I’d somehow insulted her.

“I don’t mean to say that you wouldn’t attract attention,” I blurted out, “You’re very, very pretty, and the camera loves you, really, it’s just, it’s just that sometimes the camera..misses you…”

That was too much to have said. You can’t ask leading questions or make leading statements in an investigation; you can’t show your hand too soon. She leaned forward now, her elbows resting on her knees. I noticed how pale her skin was and how her forearms had a fine sprinkling of light hair upon them. I looked up from the blue of her t-shirt into even bluer eyes. She was watching me with the avidity of a hawk about to swoop.

What do you know of yourself, I wondered, what do you know?

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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Animation – Thirteen

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Helen
Image credit: ira v gustin

Image credit: ira v gustin

Weeks passed, my heart trembling in his presence as though on the edge of a precipice. Was it wrong of me to read between the lines of his words, his gestures, to something more personal, more sweet, more tender? How could I help it? The eye sees, but often only what it wishes to see. And the trickery we play upon ourselves, this insolent ruse we internally manufacture within ourselves, is effective – we do not see what we have chosen not to see, and in this denial, we do not even recognize the choice.

And so I courted hope, even as I courted him. I indulged his art work, I taught him principles and practices of design, drawing, proportion, style. Already I knew the truth of what I had intuited the first day I saw his sketches, that he would never be a great artist. He had style and precision certainly – the boy could see with fine detail any subject you suggested to him. What he did not see, which only the great artists see and represent, was the essence behind the practical form. The ephemeral, one might say the Platonic form or the archetype, but even these descriptors lessen it. The religious might speak of soul, the poet of the muse, the alchemist of the Philosopher’s Stone. It is impossible to give words to this form, this being which is in all, and it is impossible to show in which lines or brushstrokes the true artist captures it. Yet, instantly one sees if this butterfly has been caught or not, and for young Richard it flew eternally free, outside his grasp.

I began to worry about his eye in other ways because of this lack. For, to me, the playful dance of our emerging relationship must also be seen beyond itself to the realm of the artist’s senses. To read in the words and actions the love that I hoped to inspire and claim, I used the artist’s perception. I hoped that he could also see this, respond to the call, recognize what he may not have the technical skill to reproduce on canvas.

Behind every word we exchanged I saw the silhouette of everything we could be. My heart almost burst with the radiance of this vision. But did he see the same? We progressed so slowly, if at all, the changes or movements towards one another at a snail’s pace, slight iterations that I fed upon but despaired would ever reach their destination.

I became impatient. I had eschewed any more of my manipulative paintings of him, preferring to see the relationship develop its own form as a collaborative effort rather than as an outpouring of my own design. I so much wanted him to meet me on my level and not merely to follow. I was his mentor, a position of sufficient power, I did not wish to manufacture more.

I did not realize, until him, how essentially lonely I had become – or perhaps had always been. I wanted someone to meet me where I truly lived, to reach that level, to commune. I wanted it to be him.

But, time was dragging. I began to fear he would never see the nuances of our relating. He would see the approved and time-honoured mentor/pupil relationship, even accept without hesitation the clear love that an older man may have for a younger without the trappings of sexual and emotional union. Did he see more, did he hope for more, did the shyness in his eyes on occasion or his protestations that he could not have everything he desired, mask a more abiding passion to meet mine?

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved

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