If Searching Were Finding

In the end, the wings took her inside herself. She flew right through her own nostrils.

The flight, she still recalls, was endless. She didn't know that her inside was deeper and vaster than the sky in which she used to fly. It wasn't exactly dark. A deep shade of grey. Heavy. Like when you fly right through the clouds about to puncture.
  
As she flew deeper in through the contours and detours of her puzzling body, she realized that her body wasn't a sequence of places, but a panorama of moments. Interconnected. Inside her body was where the past resided. Sediments. All over. On her heart. Upon her lungs. On the walls of her nerves.

On the walls of her nerves, she also found a painting. That painting seemed oddly recognizable from her past although she found no semblance. It was a perfect black dot at the centre of the white background. And the painting had no frame. Therefore, the whiteness spilled out of the canvas. On the walls of her nerves. In no particular order. It was hard to tell where the painting concluded and the wall started.



"Your paintings always tell me some story" she had told him once, looking deeply into one of his latest work of art.

"Don't ever call my painting a story", he had reiterated "a story is always finite. With beginnings and endings. My paintings are infinite. A perfect picture has no conclusions tied to it. It resides in time and must go on forever."



She couldn't remember him painting this piece. She had been there with him whenever he had painted something new. She had flown through the window of his bedroom on the 57th floor. They had spent hours looking into the painting. Discovering life anew.

And this painting wasn't a part of those thousand lives they lived together. Yet when she watched it, on the walls of her nerves, she knew it was a part of her.

Curiosity is always undeniable.

She decided to fly deeper into herself. And she realized at the same instance that chances were if she flew any deeper she won't be able to trace her way back outside her body, ever again. Return would be nullified. The scent of the sky would be forgotten forever. Free air sacrificed evermore. Liberty robbed. But curiosity is always undeniable. And nothing else mattered to her then but answers to a question she knew not to ask.

And therefore, she flew deeper. Searching for a moment in which she would find him too. For the interiors of her body were nothing more than a panorama of moments lived. Random pieces of her own memory. Memory. The deeper shade of grey turned deeper as she kept flying. It was becoming more and more difficult to disassociate the grey from the black. She sensed blindness. But she kept flying through her instincts.

It's hard to tell how long she had been flying, but slowly as the molecules of darkness became denser, it started hurting her eyes. And wherever she turned now, she saw white spots.

Her entrance to the realm of white darkness was slow but gradual. Slowness is optimism in a world where mobility is immeasurable for the ensuing white darkness all around. A promise of movement. She flew through the whiteness. It felt as if she were flying through an endless white hall. And still there were no signs of him.



One evening when she lay with her head on his chest, and he moved his fingers on her wings, it had started to rain outside, heavily. She had got up and went to the window –

"My God! How am I supposed to return now?"

"The rain must subside."

"I can smell the wet breeze. It's heavy. The rain won't stop in the next few hours."

"Stop worrying and come here."

She went and sat beside him.

"I'll paint you a clear blue sky if the rain never stops." They kissed.

"Won't you rather paint off the fear in my heart of not being able to reach home?" she asked, smiling.

"Sure, if you lead me there."



Where was her heart now? Or rather, how far was she from her heart? Could she find him somewhere close to her heart? Don't we always connect the love to our hearts? But is it where it truly resides? Or is it hidden somewhere in this endless white darkness through which she flew?

And how vast is this ensuing whiteness? If someone were to look from outside she'd be nothing more than a perfect, white dot. Suddenly, she shuddered at this thought not just because it reminded her of the painting but because it reminded her of watching the painting. And rather than finding answers she found a mist of questions enveloping her.

Was the dot truly her? If she was the dot in the painting, then does she exist without herself watching it? Was she present in two places at the same time? As the watcher and the watched? Or is it two streams of time flowing simultaneously through her?  Is it a conscious decision for the painter to create this maze of unending? And who's the painter? Is it him?  But why would he want her to get trapped in this cycle that never ends? Why must he wish that she meet herself over and over again?

And then, she remembered his words – "a story is always finite. With beginnings and endings. My paintings are infinite. A perfect picture has no conclusions tied to it. It resides in time and must go on forever." And she realized something she had never known about him before.

All his paintings are inspired by some story. He paints because he doesn't want a story to end, ever. His paintings are inconclusive. They go on forever. Repetition of the best moments. But a trapping in an unchanging stasis.

He painted this picture because he loved her. And she'd stay in his paintings, forever. Unlike in their lives, which was essentially a fairy tale and must end somewhere. Where else do you find a girl who has wings and visits your home every evening through your window? He knew he was just the side character in some fairy tale about a girl. He knew he had to change it to be with the girl forever. And therefore, he decided to create a painting in which the girl would stay forever, as according to his wishes and not that of the author's.

She realized it all, now. She felt a strange feeling of compassion for him. For she loved him, too. But she was addicted to being the reason of the tale. She was the protagonist. A girl with wings. She was not ready to let him become the protagonist of the tale. As much as she loved him, she knew he didn't have powers enough to carry a fairy tale on his shoulders. And therefore, she asked me to end this tale.

… Right here.


________________________________________________________________________________

Join us for more 'exclusive' surreal contents & participate yourself in The Surreal Circus

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________