You're Nothing Like I Imagined You To Be

"You're really nothing like I imagined you to be," she says, sitting
next to me. "What do you mean by that?" I ask, "I mean, you're simply a
figment of my imagination. You're just a character, born out of the
shadows of my brain. I can't even say that you are a 3-dimensional
character. You're not even all that real or odd. "Who are you to comment
about me?" "Don't be so defensive. Touchy today, aren't you?" she
giggles as if mightily amused, "I just meant that you are so different
from the way I imagined you. I imagined that you would be more
powerful, not so ultra-sensitive. I somehow expected to see a man, but
what do I get, a rather shy person, a person who is unable to even
speak to his character." Now what am I supposed to say to that? I
didn't know how to respond. She had been so bold. Where did she come
from? She came from my mind, wasn't that right? How was she able to
just parachute out of my mind and land right next to me while I was
taking a rest from a walk. It was surely very very strange. I didn't
feel well next to this strange and wild spirit who had dared to exit my
mind without my permission. I mean, she could have at least informed me
that she was leaving that splendid room that I had made for her, up up
up-the-airs in the cloudy castle of my mind. "So tell me, then, how do
you like me NOW that I am right before you, made more real by your new
reality." "Well, first, I want to announce that you are certainly
sweet, yes, sweet like sugar in ice tea. You have a certain smile, a
generous smile I like to see. When you smile, it is as if all these
opposites which had been warring against each other had come together
and hugged, shook hands and made a grand compromise." "Is that really
so," I could not repress a hint of delight, "And you know me that well,
so very well as to know what I am thinking at this moment?" "You are
trying to think of a way of putting me back into that box of your
brain. It's not so simple, is it? It's not like I'm an algebraic
equation that you can solve and then shelve into a part of your brain
where the mind finds its home, the brain is, after all, nothing but the
physical locus of the mind, and WHAT WAS I SAYING, yes, and then you
could forget about me until you had to REALLY REALLY think once again.
Am I correct in saying that or NO? I am correct, aren't I? In a funny
way, I could even be the voice of your mind, even the most perfect
creature to express your mind since I live in the space between reality
and thought! Yes, I really am a splendid creature." Why was I talking
to someone who did not even exist but that she made me smile. She made
me forget as only the silent spaces in heard melodies could make me
forget or as only a breeze could make me forget when all I could feel
was the breeze. Looking into her eyes, her dark, ink-blown eyes, black
pearls in seashells as off-white as marble, I could only imagine the
forgetfulness of wine, brought home from seas as green as the
flowing eyes of envy. 

"Do I like her? Do I like my creation?" I wonder. I had created her
to cure my loneliness. "Could a fictional creature cure my
loneliness," I wonder. At the same time, she already had bloomed
into reality, with a body and soul, a vivacious spirit, and the most
mysterious eyes. They live in the sea, those eyes, I
think.  They are most remarkable eyes, I think. I
imagine that a calligrapher lives up in the heavens, over the
clouds. He dips the point of his feather into the ink, but
the ink drops to the ground through space. The ground swells up
and her eyes begin to grow from the most green leaves, dark.  They
reveal almost nothingness.

Back at my studio, I begin to paint. I like to paint pure fields of
color. There's something so sensitive about trying to create a
painting whose form is created sheerly by shades and tints of one
sublime color. "It's so monochromatic," she snaps. "I mean, it's like a
field of color, isn't it? You can almost swim in that field.
It's an emotion, is it? What are you trying to say? What are you
trying to do?"

"Well, I think I am trying to roll a color into form."

"No, no... you're doing it all wrong. You don't want to roll it like
that. You have to vary the rhythm. You have to let go of the need for
repetition. It's pornography if it becomes just a sustained repetitive
motion."

For the first time, she smiles. She even winks at me. "I'm not
really that kind of girl. I just wanted to tell you that I
don't like the fact that I was kept in your mind for so
long.  Were you so ashamed of me that you wouldn't show me to
anyone else? I have my vanity to worry about, you know. I know,
it's not all that simple, but sometimes, I just don't know
whether I am truly alive or not so I just keep on pushing up
against the door, just keep doing that and LOOK what has happened. I
popped right into reality, only that you are the only one  who
knows I exist.

A pure thought then occurs to her, that if she kills the person who
created her, she could exist in and of herself, not tied by the
leash of an idea onto HIM.  

If only she could muster the guts to kill him! She is afraid, even
terribly afraid that she would die if she killed him.  It's true
that she would be free of him if she did kill him, and yet, how could
the idea of her exist without him?  Does she simply exist? Does
she create herself as she goes along, creating fictions as well as
truths about herself, fantasies as well as facts or events?  The
idea of killing this painter's very attractive to her though for she
wishes to exist even without the idea of her existing alongside of
her.  Besides, she is getting tired.

The knife is quite a sharp tool.  As soon as she holds it, she
feels a surge of energy coming into her veins. She must not let the
painter know that she intends to kill him.  She must be carefully
guarded as she speaks to him, as she deceives him:

"You look so awfully tired," she suggests, "take some of these and
get some sleep."  He goes into another world, a world of sleep, a
world where he swims in his unconscious, coming to terms with who he
is:  his fears, his anxieties, and his inner struggles. 
"Don't you feel so much better? That was a nice nap, wasn't it? 
It's nice to be able to sleep like that, isn't it?"  It is, he
cannot deny it. She takes care of him, even looks after him.  He
has been so lonely for such a long time. It's unending, the coldness of
living alone in front of paintings for so long, looking for an audience
who will understand what he himself does not understand.  For he
only knows one thing: he knows whether the painting works or not,
whether it is a living thing or not, whether it breathes or
not. 

AS she lifts the knife to strike him, she looks at his closed eyes
for the last time, waiting for them to open.  Of course, they will
not open.  Why is she waiting? The knife is dark in the night,
almost simply a shadow of a knife. It strikes him over and over again.
She can't hear anything. It's almost as if he'd imagined this moment so
many times in his life that he can finally keep silent, think only of
the bad things he has done in his life, finally concluded that he
deserves this stabbings as marks of his sins, as cuts which resemble
the face of something that he has personally done.

"You have turned me into a shadow," he chances, speaking in the
darkness.

"I wanted you to feel what I felt for so many years before I became
strong."

"Is that so?" He breathes in deeply, "You could simply have told me
how you felt."

"You wouldn't listen," she pauses, "Let me ask you something
first... did those cuts, did they hurt? Did you even bleed?"

"Of course I did," he responds, "Didn't I tell you that my blood was
made of shadows.  I thought you would have known," he becomes
silent, almost dead silent, "I can really understand you now. You've
never even been touched, have you? You've lived an intensely protected
life. Now you can actually feel your flesh, experience for the first
time the joy of actually possessing a body. It's miraculous, isn't
it?  Now you know what you are since you have a concrete form. Now
you can't simply sneak into the body of a bird and cause a crash into a
tree or enter the head of a thief and cause an accident.  Now you
have a body and you are responsible for what you do."

She does have a body and she feels different. She feels the weight
of gravity.  She tries to look condescendingly at the
painter, but she cannot see him.  He's just not there. 
"You feel powerful for the first time in your life, do you not?" he
asks.

"Yes I do.  Why do I feel this way? Is this how I am supposed
to feel? I just thought I'd feel as flighty and strange as I was
before. I felt that I would be asking for your help, especially if
you had somehow survived the stabbing, but it's not like that at all,
is it?"

"No, it's nothing like that."  He moves into the darkness: "The
darkness feels more dense now, doesn't it? It's really miraculous, how
free I feel. I really want to thank you for what you did. I mean,
you really freed me from a prison of the body." 

She gazes curiously into the shadows, "I've killed you."  It's
calming for her to say that.  The doors of her eyes open
into another room.  She begins to really peer into the shadow,
trying to see all the space in front of her. How comforting and
even warm it is, she thinks.

"Your style has changed so dramatically. I always thought of
black-gray-and-white as so cool.  You use those colors so
warmly, almost as Matisse uses the more vivid colors..."

She smiles at her admirers. Indeed her style had changed.  In
front of all the eyes that gazed so intensely upon her paintings, she
found an incredible assurance.