A Change of Mind

The noise woke Stanton West. Muffled trumpeting broke through his sleep, startling him. His mind responded curiously, opening an additional eye to apprehend the unseen. The noise stopped. Stanton sat up, listening for something behind the silence. Eyes scanned the darkness, imagining an impression of the unusual sound.

Again, he heard it, echoing down from the floor above. The building he lived in was nearly always uninhabited at night. Moving his long, birdlike frame up one flight of stairs, he peered down the hallway. Stanton now began to remember his future; the seams of an enlightened dream bursting. Sonorous, intermittent blaring came from the hallway’s end, the corridor glowing in the early morning twilight. Stanton nervously approached the room.

Unconsciously, he held his breath, bracing himself for anything. Just before the room, a slanting line of pale light was contrasted by shadow, dividing the floor. Stanton walked cautiously inside, crossing a threshold that exploded through previous limits of perception. His eyes strained to adjust to the illumination. It was a meticulous storage room; there were cleaning items, mops, and brooms stored neatly in the corner. Large brown boxes stacked perfectly against the walls. He wondered if an obsessive-compulsive janitor was trying to scare him.

Opening a small closet, he discovered something unexexpected. Stanton's senses crawled out of their former selves. Staring up at him inquisitively, was a tiny, gray elephant in a round cage. Cramped within her enclosing, her trunk curled against the wire of the cage. The elephant wore an unusual diamond ring, as if her trunk were a finger. Stanton kneeled down towards her, fascinated by the unique creature.

:::

Grayson Andrews sat at a bench overlooking a Zen garden. A sleepy breeze blew through him; the morning offered unseasonable warmth. It was a bright Saturday in early spring. As an architect, Grayson naturally noticed the structure of form. Looking down, he saw patterns of concentric circles in pure white sand. He imagined circles extending outwards infinitely, slicing through him and all else, leaving everything separated from itself.

Visitors strolled down the sidewalks; he noticed people for the wrong reasons. A sickly looking man was walking alone. To Grayson, the man looked like an old dehydrated raisin. An overweight couple, walking hand in hand, like two unwieldy mountains suffocating a small valley in between. His thoughts were often critical; he was particularly hard on himself

He leaned his wiry muscled frame back to lie down, resting his silvery head of hair on the bench. Grayson's forty seven year old body was a sturdy but weathered vessel. Within him, there was a growing preoccupation with things not being right.

For nearly thirty years, he had been estranged from his parents and his two brothers. More troubling to him, his wife had died of cancer almost one year before. Construction of his last building was completed just as she succumbed to her cancer; he had been unable to work after her passing. His emotional energy was now a tightening knot. Stretching out on the bench, as if on a gurney, a casualty of a vicious internal war. Grayson opened his eyes to the skies above.

The view was a panorama of azure blue and weightless forms of clouds. Picking out a cloud, he fixed on its image. It felt too asymmetrical; it reminded him of his own face. His mind deployed a small brigade of robotic hummingbirds that swarmed in the electric sky. They hovered over the helpless clouds, awaiting commands to manipulate and restructure the distorted forms. Grayson gave the order to compact and compress. To stretch and lengthen. To add whiteness and to smooth edges. Make things as they should be, he thought. When the birds' work was done, he melted them into the clouds, adding a metallic silver that sparkled in the sunlight.

:::

At thirty one, Stanton was unmarried, and was not close with any family or friends. At times, he felt loneliness was the most physically painful thing a man could feel. Although he was sometimes refreshed by absolute solitude . As all individuals are, Stanton was often characterized by contradiction.

Kneeling down towards the tiny elephant in the closet, he saw textured skin that was a faded coal gray. He wondered what moisturizers could do for her. The cage was a bit larger than a basketball; spaces between the wires were quarter sized. The enclosing featured a sturdy lock, although Stanton didn't know the whereabouts of a key. Although not from personal experience, he believed that all things must eventually come out of the closet, so he carried the creature back with him downstairs.

Stanton lived and worked on the second floor, most of the space was his art gallery. The elephant's eyes watched him intently, as he held her cage. His hands were calloused and skilled, the hands of a sculptor. Life was now imitating man’s collective dreams, which had, for some time, foreshadowed the coming transformation.

His gallery was a spacious room with views of small city life. Windows were ovals, allowing the building a visual breath of things beyond it. The room was an eclectic display of a world in itself. Ten years of painting and sculpture; the paintings were bright and abstract. The sculptures were unique and uncommon, rising several feet from the floor: A pensive looking meerkat with wings. A giraffe with a head of a lion, his legs replaced by black steel-polished shotguns . A bible with half-melted wax androids crawling desperately out of it. A skeptical gorilla with a question mark instead of a head. Animal intuition filled the air of the gallery.

:::

Grayson thought of his childhood. A vague and persistent sadness had always plagued him. He remembered the other children, it was as if they had sprung happily from the fountain of youth itself-as blissful droplets of optimism. Somehow, he had extracted a melancholic energy from the same fountain.

Grayson had designed many buildings, but he was unable to continue to do so after his wife passed. As he had finished construction on his last building, she was fading. Throughout her sickness, any hope within him was smothered, as if giant hands pinned him to the ground. The cancer was a merciless, uncompromising force. Surprisingly, as her condition worsened, her spirit became exalted. She understood something that Grayson did not. When she surrendered her last breath, she had moved beyond fear to arrive at a sublime peace.

His last creation harbored his torment. The building somehow had an animate existence, a consciousness of its own. A familiar chill as he pictured it; windows like knowing giant eyes staring back at him. Eyes with sharpened vision that cut concisely through the murkiest soul. Grayson knew they could see through him.

He obsessed over the building. 838 Renaissance Avenue was a blending of red and brown brick. The building was rectangular, but not angular. The rounded corners hugged the façade; no sharp edges. It was unconventional, but functional, as it was now rented commercial space. Grayson believed it remembered him; it knew too much of him.

:::

As Stanton prepared to open his gallery, he wondered what to do with his new friend. He took her to the back room of his studio living space. After placing the animal down, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to get her to drink water. She also refused an assortment of foods he offered, and was especially unimpressed with tv dinners. Looking at her, sympathetically, the creature's eyes appeared violet to Stanton; the ring on her trunk reflected their hue.

Throughout the day, he interacted little with his customers. Stanton stood before a window, looking outside; his face wore a subtle yet buoyant smile. Each moment now proclaimed a new significance. He saw a slow progression of clouds with incandescent silver linings. A commanding sun towered above, painting everything below in a crisp, lucid light. Although peering outward, Stanton was attuned to the unraveling of his majestic dream.

A few customers moved about in the gallery. A middle aged, balding man studied the paintings on the wall; the paintings were surreal abstractions: incomplete shapes in thought provoking arrangements. Stanton had, on a few occasions, been asked, “Why are you so weird?” He once replied, “Why is everyone else so unoriginal?” An elderly couple walked slowly between the sculptures, patiently observing the strange renderings. Each of the customers carried something unseen within them.

The elderly woman curiously approached the winged meerkat; the stone piece stood three feet high on his hind legs. The woman leaned her fragile frame towards it, running a paper silk finger over the surface of the sculpture. Its skin was a pale, cold stone. However, she realized that beneath this exterior the atoms within the creature were vibrant; subatomic particles inside him danced in patterns of intelligence. Millions of years of creative energy bristled. An entire universe beyond the surface of things was alive.

As the day collapsed into evening, the customers had come and gone. Stanton returned to the back room, where the elephant had spent her day. He noticed she was now restless, confined uncomfortably in her small cage. With the tip of her trunk, she reached through the wires in an attempt to release herself. Clearly, the lock would require a key. Stanton was unsure of the best way to free her.

After placing the cage on the bedside table, he laid down in bed. The elephant seemed to know something was on the cusp of happening. Speaking in a calming voice, Stanton tried to assuage the increasingly anxious animal. He stared impatiently at the steel lock on the front of her cage. Eventually he became weary and fell into the depths of sleep.

:::

838 Renaissance Avenue was unnervingly soundless on a Sunday morning. It was one year ago to the day that Grayson's wife had died. Her passing had led to a brutal spiral that progressively imploded his spirit . He was now in the small control room of his building. For a brief moment, he recalled that someone lived in the building, but this was of little concern to him.

Grayson's pulse was murderous; he began to perspire picturing the impending devastation. His emotions overpowered logic, turning cannibalistic within him. He attempted to concentrate only on wiring the explosives. Grayson feared that a menacing force was gutting him from the inside out. The building he had designed was attempting to take him apart.

A tear descended from the slope of his stoic face, landing only a few inches from the wiring. His hands trembled, teeth were firmly clenched, and he blinked incessantly. He glanced ominously at the detonator. Grayson now experienced the unimaginable fear of bringing his life to an end.

Completing his task, he took the detonator and moved towards the glass door near the building's exit. He allowed himself a chance to see the sun again. Perception of everything felt unreal. Time, at once, was a volatile acceleration and a languid hesitation. Just in front of him, a bright object on the floor sparkled, as he bent to pick it up. Grayson was stunned by what he found: it was the diamond wedding ring he had once given his wife.

Setting the detonator down, he realized the nearly fatal error of his judgment. His vision blurred with a cathartic flood of tears. He stood there in amazement, holding the ring more tightly than he had ever held anything in his life. Grayson had never been so acutely appreciative of the cycle of his own breath. A breath that renewed him, each moment now proclaiming a new significance.

Moments later, he looked up, noticing a figure approaching the building’s entrance. Distance closed between them, as the man came into focus; the man was returning to the same door he had recently exited. Grayson saw that he was carrying a round cage with a small creature inside.

Now, it all made sense: the essential energy of every thing is undying; however, it evolves through changing forms. Realizing this, he placed the ring deep in his pocket, when he pulled his hand out, there was a different shiny object. Grayson, optimistically, held this hand high, so that Stanton could see him through the glass door. He was holding the key to unlock the cage.