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Hours of the Moon

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience with tags , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2012 by javedbabar

Guru Baba gave his assistant Sami the day off, “But only the day!” he said. “Tonight you will stay up working!”

“May I ask doing what?” said Sami. He was accustomed to Guru Baba’s mysterious utterances, but there was no harm in trying to glean some extra information.

The bearded sage adjusted his orange robe beneath the waist in an unseemly manner, and smiled. He said, “You will see!” He also adjusted the tilt of his turban. “You will see!”

Guru Baba’s first year of retirement to “the nice village with the white mountain above it” had been a confusing period. There were concerns that this famous holy man was suffering from dementia. Many global leaders had come to see him, thinking that he may soon die – it was a valuable PR opportunity not to miss out on! – but here he was in tip-top shape. Sami had given up trying to understand the man. He had developed a deep fondness for him, even when he was being very annoying, like now.

Sami didn’t want to have the day off and work all night. He made another attempt at extracting information. “Guru Baba, what for?”

“What for? What for? Because I said so! I know more than you! Come here at six o’ clock tonight or don’t ever bother coming here again.”

Sami spent the day watching movies and cleaning the house. He should do it more often, not let it build up like this into a disaster zone. Did spiders really think they’d catch sumptuous dinners in his apartment? Bug screens kept all the insects out, but seemed to have no effect on fluff and dust.

Sami appeared at six p.m., as instructed, at the Transparent Temple. Guru Baba said cheerfully, “Come on, let’s go for a walk.” They walked along the canal trail for a kilometre before turning off into a field. “Look,” said Guru Baba. “There’s the moon.”

This was true. Though it was not yet dusk, a full moon had appeared, more grey than white, in a pale blue sky. Guru Baba said, “You will be learning lessons from the Man in the Moon tonight.” Then he produced a sketch pad and pencil from beneath his robes and said, “Draw the moon.”

“But I can’t really draw,” said Sami. He’d never enjoyed art class.

Sami recognized the signs when Guru Baba was angry. His nose drew up and he shouted, “Draw it! Drawing is just looking! Look at it!”

Sami did the best he could. There was nothing to draw really, just a circle with some shading. “Well done,” said Guru Baba in a conciliatory fashion.

They continued looking. The sage said, “Do you know the Japanese artist Yoshitoshi? He made a series of woodblock prints called One Hundred Views of the Moon. They are very beautiful, and so surprising and original, with lovers, warriors, old women, children, farmers, and monkeys all looking at the moon. They are entranced by it. I want you to always look at the moon like that. Yoshitoshi was the last master of woodblock printing before photography and other forms of mass reproduction destroyed it. His life represents one man’s struggle against time. He eventually lost. We all do. But while he was alive he was always looking.”

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Extracted

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2012 by javedbabar

Naomi and her uncle Bobby remained trapped in the drawing that they had created. They’d recently tried tattooing their bodies decoratively as a way to escape it – the thinking being that drawing on yourself within a drawing gave you more control. They had not been successful though, and their tattoos had eventually faded.

Bobby felt an area that still held promise was that of medical tattooing. Placing careful marks on the body allows you to align electronic instruments to perform precise procedures. It is more accurate than a surgeon.

Though human intuition is a wonderful thing, it mustn’t go against the principles of nature. There is a cosmic order based on numbers – on ones, twos, and threes; on pi, the golden section, and harmonic frequencies; on primes, doubles, and squares – which creates the structure of the world. By using medical alignment in reverse, maybe we can access this order and escape our physical limitations. We can free ourselves from spatial confinement.

Bobby spoke to an elder that he’d come to know, and whom he respected deeply. Guru Baba said, “You have tried many ways to escape the drawing, but they have not proved fruitful. There is a reason for this. You have tried to do too much. We know that as Ancestors you have created the mountains, valleys, forests, rivers and towns. We are grateful to you for creating this bountiful world. But that is also the problem. You have created so much that you have become lost in it yourselves. You must remove yourselves from its complexity. The way to do this is to focus on one thing only. The Masters call it Spatial Study. You must study the gap between your thoughts.”

“How do you do that?” said Bobby. “How do you see the gap between your thoughts?”

“That’s a very good question. I don’t know the answer. Only you know the answer for yourself.”

He’s infuriating sometimes, thought Bobby, but I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about. I must be patient. A further hour of confusing conversation led towards an answer. “You must create a cosmic dot. Tattoo a spot between your eyes and use it to focus your energies.” Guru Baba smiled and added, “With laser like precision.”

Sophie was rehearsing her presentation in her office. In an hour she must present her plan to the crisis team. Rising rivers in the Upper Valley had everyone worried that there would be a great flood.

Her phone rang and she fidgeted. This sent the beam from her red laser pointer astray, hitting the framed drawing on her wall.

She was amazed to see the form of a man appear in the drawing, and then tumble to the floor, followed by a girl. The optical amplification and high irradiance of her laser had energized their cosmic dots, creating spatial and temporal coherence, which via spectroscopic principles paralleling the techniques of bloodless surgery, had extracted Bobby and Naomi from the drawing.

She heard a disembodied chuckling. Then a voice with an Indian accent said, “Good shot.”

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Erased

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2012 by javedbabar

The city’s elders told Bobby that the way to escape from the drawing was to “Cut through the skin to the edge of the blood flow. There mark thyself.” When he asked them if they meant tattooing, they nodded but said nothing more.

What a strange notion, thought Bobby – drawing on yourself within a drawing. Did that mean that you became more a part of the drawing or less so?

There were no tattooists in the city. No one spoke of it. It was a forbidden art, forever taboo. Then why did the elders mention it to him? Maybe like corruption and murder, or a sweet tooth, it was allowable to some.

He brought needles and ink and asked Naomi to tattoo him. She was too squeamish to do it, and impossible to persuade, but said, “I don’t mind if you do it to me though.”

“You want me to tattoo you? Are you sure?”

“I’ve been to Diya’s house lots of times. We make henna patterns on our arms and hands. It’s lucky.”

Bobby showed her the needles again. One of them had to try it, but he would prefer it to be him. “But this is different. It will hurt you. Do you really want me to do it?” She nodded.

Naomi was remarkably tough. Maybe it was a result of her being in the drawing. She didn’t flinch. Bobby started with a single red flower, and then filled a meadow, which was in a beautiful valley, with a river running either side. There was a white mountain at one end of the valley and a dark one at the other, seeming equals yet opposites. The rivers were teeming with salmon and trout, and the forests were filled with coyotes, deer and bears.

“I feel like I’m home,” she said.

She wasn’t though, her physical location was the same, but she was somewhere else spiritually. She had become the archetypal goddess whose body is the world.

Within the drawing Naomi and Bobby were influential beings. People thought of them as manifestations of the Ancestors Aqu and Pani, so their deeds were observed and copied. Rather than singers, sportswomen, or salesmen, people emulated the Ancestors. They were the ultimate role models.

Whereas before, mutilation was seen as a sin, now it was embraced enthusiastically. Everybody was decorated with tattoos, including priests and leaders.

However Naomi’s tattoos soon began to fade. Maybe it was the effect of early sun-exposure, or her picking away scabs – Bobby told her not to, but she couldn’t resist – or simply Bobby’s lack of skill. When people saw that her tattoos were disappearing, they also began to get theirs removed. The tattoo industry largely disappeared.

They remained however on gladiators, slaves and soldiers – to prevent their escape and desertion. Prisoners were also marked for life here; there was no forgetting of crimes. Gangsters took pride in the markings they’d received in prison, and added to them, creating complex codes. A tear meant you were a killer. A trail of tears, a mass murderer. Livestock continued to be tattooed rather than branded, which was considered cruel.

There were also uses in the field of medicine. Tattoos allowed precise alignment of instruments during medical procedures. These cut through the skin to the edge of the blood flow, and then went deeper. Maybe that was the only way to escape the drawing.

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Framed

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2012 by javedbabar

Sophie had framed the drawing she’d found by the side of the road. It looked good on her office wall but the colours seemed to be fading, so she’d put it behind her desk, out of the sun. She kept banging her knees on the frame though.

The frame was also causing problems elsewhere. Since the drawing had been bounded by a black wooden strip, covered by glass at the front, and board at the back, things had changed for the people who had created it – Sophie and her uncle Bobby.

One day Naomi said, “Uncle Bobby, things don’t feel right here. Recently I’ve been feeling trapped. I don’t know why. It’s making me sad.”

“I’m feeling the same way, Naomi. I remember being freer, and travelling wherever I wanted to. Now I feel that we’re stuck in this city. Every day is the same.”

They were no longer able to move in and out of the picture. The frame had created a physical barrier that was impossible to cross. It had also created a mental barrier – to leave the drawing was inconceivable – and a spiritual one – there was no other existence possible, no past or future worlds.

Naomi said, “Maybe we should try to think of a way out. Can we do that?”

Bobby wondered where this talk would lead. He didn’t want to disappoint his niece, so should be careful. There’s nothing worse than a sad little girl. But then he thought, she is already sad, so why not go with her idea and try to change things?

He said, “Sure, let’s try. Let’s decide what we want to do, and then make a…”

She interrupted, saying, “I don’t want to be here. I want to be somewhere else. But I don’t know where I want to go to. I don’t know where else there is.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why don’t we make a mind map? It’s always useful to write things down.”

She wrote the word escape at the centre of the page. Then she joined it to freedom, imagination, desire, will and pleasure.

“That’s a good start,” said Bobby.

She looked at him desperately. “But it’s not changing anything,” she said.

“When I was your age, I loved different languages and scripts. Shall we try some other ones?” She nodded with enthusiasm.

“Okay, I know some letters in an ancient writing system called cuneiform.” He wrote the symbols for dream and vision.

“And here are the Egyptian hieroglyphs for beauty and joy.”

Then he drew astroglyphs for the sun, moon and stars. “Should we go to another star or planet?” Naomi looked amazed, but then looked sad.

She said, “I like all the languages, but they haven’t changed anything. We’re still here.”

The next day Bobby consulted the city’s elders. They said that there was indeed another world beyond this one, but to reach it you must engage in body modification. Between this world and the other world was a permeable layer, accessible by imagery. They repeated ancient words, “Cut through the skin to the edge of the blood flow. There mark thyself.”

It seemed that the way out of the drawing was more drawing.

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Copied

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2012 by javedbabar

That picture is always changing, thought Sophie. Yesterday it had a bluish palette and today it seems browner. Maybe it looks different throughout the day or maybe it’s just fading in the sun. She looked at the picture more closely, “Hmmm…” she said to herself, “maybe it isn’t a drawing after all. Maybe it’s a cheap print.”

That would be very disappointing if true, as she’d spent $100 getting it framed. But what if it was an original artwork, a very fragile one that needed more care?

She removed it from the wall and put it behind her desk, to at least get it out of the sun. Maybe she should photocopy it before it changed some more. At least she’d have a reference. It was a big drawing though, three foot square; she would have to do it in sections.

Sophie turned the picture around and removed the back of the frame. Then she systematically copied each section. There was a little overlapping on each one, and she completed the job with a total of twenty copies. She taped them all together and folded the whole thing down to fit into a folder.

Sophie’s actions created panic in the drawing. Its citizens were dumbstruck by the overwhelming flashes of light that seemed never ending but eventually stopped. Then there was an earthquake that caused considerable damage. They prayed harder than ever to the Ancestors Aqu and Pani, who had once manifested in their city as Bobby and Naomi.

“Save us!” they cried. “Forgive us!”

Naomi and Bobby were stuck in the drawing. They decided to go into hiding for a while to think things through. They made camp in a cave on the outskirts of the city, near a source of fresh water. Bobby managed to find fruits and berries and catch some grouse – who virtually came and offered themselves up, stupid birds.

Naomi said, “Uncle Bobby, I’m feeling very strange since those flashes occurred. I hear echoes of my thoughts. “

“Echoes of your thoughts?” said Bobby.

“Yes, it’s like everything I think ripples outwards and returns. Right now, I’m feeling scared, and somehow feel that I’m scaring others…”

“Shhh!” said Bobby. “There are people coming. Be quiet.”

A crowd of men and women emerged from the forest and headed towards them. “There they are,” cried one of them. “Aqu and Pani are here!”

Bobby tried to shield Naomi but the crowd pulled her away. They were both held down and presented to a shaven-headed man in black robes. He said to them. “Excuse our rudeness, Holy Ones, but our need is urgent. I am Ozwald Malchizedek, prophet of Aqu, who like all others, is formed of dark ink and Ancestor’s blood. There have been powerful omens – both on land and in sky. They have spoken to me in divine language. They say you are required to complete your cycles of return.”

Bobby and Naomi were taken to the top of Mt Alba, where they had their throats slit. Naomi’s screams beforehand echoed throughout the valley and into the original drawing, where the genuine Naomi felt that a part of her somewhere had died.

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Cropped

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , on August 13, 2012 by javedbabar

Shama pulled up in his silver pick-up truck. “Having car trouble?” he said.

“No, I’m not,” said Sophie. “More like brain trouble. I had a rough night and don’t feel like driving this morning. Are you heading into town?”

He said, “I sure am. Jump in.”

Despite feeling bad, Sophie was looking good this morning. A white summer dress always works wonders with a tan. Her relationship with Danny had cooled off since they’d got engaged. Though her friends had said this was normal after reaching such a milestone, she hoped it would revive soon.

Shama dropped her in the village and she went straight into a crisis. The Lilly River was rising in the Upper Valley, setting off alarm bells. Four years ago the Village office had been slow to heed warnings and the flood had claimed ten lives. The Authority had made the mayor and council scapegoats and removed them.

No one was taking chances this time. Geologists had been called in from the city, and old timers with personal experience of the great floods of ’43, ’68, ’89, and 2008 were consulted. Search and rescue teams stood on standby.

At lunchtime Sophie remembered the drawing. Why would someone throw away such a detailed artwork? It must have taken days of careful sketching. Then she thought, well, everything changes. Maybe they were redecorating their house and it no longer suited their scheme. There’s days when there’s just too much stuff, and you can’t even breathe till it’s sorted and gone. Maybe somebody had one of those days.

The drawing had not been casually tossed aside though. It had been properly screwed up and stuffed into garbage. Sophie opened it out on her desk. Again she felt assaulted by the detail and somehow drawn into it. It seemed alive.

She knew that good art affects you. This drawing was doing that. Maybe I’ll get it framed, she thought. She went to the local art shop, which also offered a framing service. The owner priced it up. “It’s three feet by four, that’s twelve square feet at thirty dollars a foot – so that’s three hundred and sixty dollars.”

“Three hundred and sixty?” said Sophie. “Really? I didn’t think it would be that much.”

“It’s a specialist job. It if was three feet square, I could sell you a standard frame for a hundred dollars.” The owner gave her a mean look. “Why support local artisans when you can support factory workers in China?”

What a stupid comment, thought Sophie. She’s offering Chinese products in her shop. No one is making her do that. There was no question though. “Why don’t you crop the picture for me, and I’ll take the hundred dollar frame.”

The woman sliced a one foot strip off the end, and fitted the drawing in the hundred dollar frame. “There,” she said. “How does that look?”

“It looks good,” said Sophie, thinking that it looked different somehow.

It seemed darker and quieter.

She didn’t know that the slicing of the city had caused agony for suburbans, who had suddenly lost all power and communications. Huge fault-lines had appeared. Disaster recovery teams had been despatched to patch up the broken edges of the city.

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Discarded

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , on August 12, 2012 by javedbabar

Naomi and her uncle Bobby were lost in their own drawing. What had started out as a bit of fun together had become a serious business. They had created a village, extracted resources and developed technologies, expanded it into a city with a vibrant creative economy, allowed it to become a totalitarian city-state undermined by revolution, but too late to stop a nuclear war, and their world’s ultimate evolution was into a black and white digital territory. Naomi’s mum coming home early, screwing up the drawing and throwing it away, had been a setback, as Naomi and Bobby were now trapped within it.

Naomi’s mum assumed that her brother had taken Naomi on a surprise adventure, like he often did, and they’d be back tomorrow. He was a good uncle.

The black garbage bag sat outside that night, leaking aromas of old dinners. The most prominent smell was from Bobby’s famous lemon chicken, a dish that he was very proud of but which failed to impress most others. They all said it was wonderful that he’d made his lemon sauce from scratch without using a recipe, and then scraped away half their plateful when he wasn’t looking. Naomi had done the same.

Local coyotes however had fewer issues with lemon chicken. They came soon after dusk and ripped the bag apart. They devoured the chicken, even licked up lemon sauce, and left a mess of onion peels, garlic skins, wasted rice, and eggshells mixed with plastic and paper.

Naomi and Bobby’s drawing was curiously unspoiled. It had taken only a light hit of lemon chicken, and wasn’t soggy. It had flown out of the bag along with everything else, and now caught the wind and rolled into the road. What strange tumbleweed, containing a whole world.

Sophie was driving her Toyota too fast down the Lucerne Valley Road. She saw a torn garbage bag sitting by the verge. How stupid, she thought, people really should know better – putting out stuff that was sure to attract bears.

Something white came towards her, causing her to panic. Was it a seagull swooping down? It was pretty far from the lake. Maybe a ball of cottonwood seeds?

The drawing hit her windscreen and became tangled in a wiper. Sophie screeched to a halt. There was something scary about the image before her. Its detail assaulted her and she felt drawn in. She couldn’t make out the forms but it seemed like a city plan. There were brief snatches of grinding sounds and sirens, and wafts of singeing and decay.

Sophie thought, I really did drink too much last night. And from now on, no more disaster movies. I can’t believe that they’re affecting my alertness the next day! Maybe I’ll park here and hitch into town. I don’t trust my reflexes this morning.

She was intrigued by the drawing though. She grabbed it from the windscreen and stuffed it in her bag.

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After Work Beers

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2012 by javedbabar

The amateur entrepreneur set up what looked like a record player. Younger members of the Devils’ Den audience had only ever seen these at their grandmas’ houses. They seemed cumbersome objects.

“Are you ready to go?” said the event’s host, Collette Vapinski. She had been selected by the New Ideas Show’s producers for her high public profile. She was famous for being famous.

“I’m almost there,” said the presenter. “Just two more minutes.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls!” said Collette. Her comment drew shrieks from the girls in the audience. The presenter continued fiddling for a full five minutes, and then indicated he was set.

Collette said, “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our sixth and final amateur entrepreneur waiting to impress our panel of expert investors. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your idea.”

He was confident for a guy barely in his twenties. He said, “Hello, I’m Matthew and I’d like to tell you about my Virtual Vibration technology.” This caused some girls to snigger, and the speaker stopped and said, “Calm down girls, I’m only just getting started.”

Maybe he wasn’t as innocent as he appeared. He indicated the apparatus and said, “This is my equipment. Impressive isn’t it, girls? It may look like an ordinary phonograph to you but…”

Collette looked at the panel and said, “Is that what it’s called?” Low tech pioneer Amisha Jordan, ex-banker Arthur Choo, and social media activist Juno Osh, all nodded.

Matthew continued, “In one sense it is, but with an important difference. Allow me to illustrate.” People craned their necks to see what he was doing, but his actions were hidden by a raised cover. It seemed that he had set a record spinning and then placed a needle upon it. There was a very rough crackling, and panel members put their hands to their ears. A recorded conversation was relayed; two male voices with Greek or Arabian accents.

The first voice said, “How’s it going over there?”

The second said, “Not bad, pal. I need to do another coat. I’m not sure this one will dry in time though.”

“Ah, just do it tomorrow morning.”

“The painters are coming in tomorrow. It needs to be done tonight.”

“Okay, pal. I’ll have a warm beer waiting for you when you’re done.”

The rough crackling returned and put an end to the conversation.

Arthur said, “Is it immigrants working in Britain?”

Juno said, “Music would have been much better. Something like that will never go viral.”

Amisha said, “Well done for portraying ordinary people doing honest work, not empty celebrities.” Without meaning to, she looked across the room at Collette.

Matthew removed the gramophone cover to reveal a pot spinning, being brushed by a slim blue laser beam. “These are voices recorded in wet clay, ten thousand years ago in Egypt, picked up by a laser needle and processed through a digital translator. The first guy was a potter. His words were encoded on the pot by his paintbrush wobbling as he talked. I must be honest though; the plasterer’s words were recorded separately from scratches in the plaster, and mixed in later. What do you think of my Virtual Vibration technology?”

Nothing recordable was said for a while, and then there was an eruption that would have produced very rough crackling.

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Programmable Matter

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2012 by javedbabar

There was chaos at the Devils’ Den event, with the host Collette Vapinski running around, shouting at her assistants. The previous presenter’s slideshow had malfunctioned. Instead of impressing the panel of expert investors with his technical prowess, the flashes of goofy pictures, drugs, pornography and End Time prophecies bemused and disgusted them. The amateur entrepreneur left in shame.

Collette said, “On behalf of the organizers of the New Ideas Show, I would like to apologize to all audience members for this unexpected occurrence. If people are really upset, we can curtail the event. Who would like us to cancel the rest of Devils’ Den?” A few hands went up. “Okay, not too many of you, so we’ll continue. Please give us five minutes to set up again.”

Bobby realized that he’d been thinking too conventionally. The first notion he was developing was that of a “spice cream” van, serving exotic flavoured ice creams. The second was that of an African Sandwich shop, which sounded exciting but he hadn’t yet thought about what his definition of “African sandwiches” should be.

Presenters today had shown their ideas for floating cities, underwater container houses, and head plug-ins to connect men and machines directly. He too should stretch his imagination.

After a while, Collette Vapinski said, “Okay, we’re back in business!” The audience cheered. “Who’s next?”

A tall blonde girl, wearing a loose white dress, walked up to the stage.

“Not her! Not her!” said low-tech pioneer Amisha Jordan. “She’s some kind of fraudster.”

Ex-banker Arthur Choo and social media activist Juno Osh both burst out laughing. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Amisha. “You won’t be laughing later.”

Collette said, “Excuse me panel, what’s so funny? Would you please explain to our audience?”

Juno said, “Cindy will explain.” Arthur nodded.

“Grrr!” said Amisha. “I’m tempted to take a break. I don’t want to share the stage with this crook.” Juno and Arthur gave welcoming smiles to the girl in the white dress, while Amisha sat in a grump.

“Hello everybody,” said the girl. “My name is Cindy. I’d like to present my idea for programmable matter. It’s a way of arranging electrons and atoms into different shapes. You can change the information and energy present in objects to transform them into other objects. Einstein said that all items are energy with differing vibrations. It we can change their frequency, we can change their form. It works with products and with people. My initial tests with repurposing, invisibility, and time travel have been very encouraging, leading to…”

Amisha said, “This is ridiculous. She somehow sneaked into my office last night and tried to trick me out of money.” She walked off the stage. “I’ll be back when she’s gone.”

Juno and Arthur however were both entranced, and said nothing.

Collette said to the girl, “So what’s your offer?”

“One-quarter of my company for one million dollars.”

Juno said, “Hey, yesterday you said one-half of your company for one million dollars.”

“Well, I transported myself to all three of your offices, and received two expressions of interest. So I changed the terms. Of course, if you are no longer interested, I could go elsewhere.”

“No, no,” said Arthur. “I’m very interested.”

“Me too,” said Juno. “Let’s talk after.”

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Archway

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Sacred Geometry, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2012 by javedbabar

Sophie loved wandering in the Botanical Garden; it was a great way to wind down after work. She knew the main path well, but there were always new side-trails appearing. She often crossed paths with this haven’s creator, The Gardener, and young crews who, he said, were studying Extreme Gardening.

She’d been upset by her argument with Danny. Last night had started well. He’d bought a cheap but surprisingly good wine; they’d cooked together, watched a movie and gone to bed. After making love, he’d brought up the subject of marriage. God knows why. Wasn’t that the girl’s job? He’d said, “Sophie, do you want to be with me forever?”

She’d said, “Let’s take it slowly, love. We’re only just getting to know each other.”

After a brief silence, he’d said, “But don’t you think that when you know, you know?”

“Well, maybe, but I don’t know yet.” That had been the end of the conversation and the start of the fight.

Sophie saw an arch in the distance, covered with red flowers. It appealed to her anger, and she walked towards it. What kind of flowers were these? Their petals seemed as if made of glass. She was afraid to touch them in case they shattered. Their red was hot, evoking power and anger, also passion and danger, and blood.

Sophie sat in the garden for a while. The sun appeared from behind dark clouds and the flowers on the arch seemed to change colour. They were now yellow, making Sophie think of summer, gold and joy, and the wheatfields of her uncle’s farm in the prairies, where she’d spent so many childhood summers. Wasn’t it amazing how colours changed your moods?

The sun continued its daily journey, now slipping beneath the tree canopy. There was a new coolness and freshness. The flowers on the arch appeared to be green. What neat shadowplay there was in this part of the garden. These strange verdant flowers cast a spell of fertility upon her filled with health and youth, and if it was too late for that, at least renewal.

The sun dipped below the horizon. Sophie realized that she’d been here from six to ten pm – four hours! She better get home; she rose to exit the garden.

The flowers on the arch now seemed blue; the colour of sea, sky and mountains, also of deep space. It was a colour that brought peace to her soul. Calm. Stability. Harmony. A colour of acceptance of the larger things in life; awareness that she was a tiny character in a vast cosmic story.

As she passed through the archway, she saw movement ahead. Danny was rushing towards her.

He said, “Where were you, babe? I’ve been looking for hours. I was worried.”

“I’ve been here,” she said.

“You missed dinner. I couldn’t get hold of you. I feared the worst.”

She looked at him with kindness. He really cared for her.

He calmed quickly and said, “For some reason I thought you might be here.”

The archway’s colours had transferred from the outer world to her inner realms. She said, “You were right. Now I know.”

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