Sea Under Cloudy Sky ( oil on canvas 35 X 140 cm)

Sea Under Cloudy Sky 2 ( oil on canvas 35 X 140 cm)

                        GAS   STATION   ANGEL 

The   light  rain   that  fell  made  the  road   slippery  and   dangerous   for  the   old,  black   Buick.   But   this   wasn’t    the   reason   that  it   was   going   so   slowly.   There was no reason to rush.    Everything   was   finished. 

The only thing was left to do, was the final part of the ceremony. After all he deserved an honorary epilogue, since he once used to be the most famous author, full of money, and  awards. 

           He was now coming into the night’s kingdom, where cold,   solitude  and  darkness    prevails.                                                
                                                       Welcome.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Visibility was confined, behind and all around the storeroom.  Monstrous and dumb was standing over imposing behind the old gas station, which now was empty and deserted.

Silence.

The  car pulled over along side the gas pumps.  He turned the engine off, opened the glove box and grabbed the torch and a pair of gloves out of it.

Behind the broken glass of the old rusty pump, you could just make out the last words of the old sign that read

“SUPER   12  GALLONS”

He put his gloves on and opened the door.

With a big effort he pulled out a big long parcel, wrapped up in plastic, and let it fall on the ground, making a dull deep and dark sound.                        
Darkness.

The rain had stopped.   Nevertheless it had enough time to turn the ground into mud. That couldn’t stop him. He took the shovel out of the boot, grabbed the parcel from one end, and started dragging it, across the pot holes now full of rainwater, reflecting darkness.

Darkness full of rusty old car parts, dismantled boxes, thrown out old tyres, with wires and pipes, chopped up corpses, barrels, sheets of metal and a light.   Lightning.

In the glassy glare of the dead the lightning was indelible, while they kept on glaring  with no interest in participating,  from the  stand  of a forgotten wisdom.

He stopped asthmatically  , breathing the thick septic breeze.

The parcel now tangled up with a metal sheet.

He could hear his sweat dripping on the plastic of the parcel, under a moon marking his footsteps, on the road, his own road, that was nearing the end.

He freed the parcel, dragged it a few more meters under the glance of the fierce storeroom, and started digging a hole, big enough to fit all those trusted to him, accompanied with a prayer.

Amen

By the time he dragged the parcel at the edge of the hole, the moon had long gone. He unzipped it, and emptied the contents in the arms of the earthen oblivion.

When the first beam of light poured through the ceiling of the fierce storeroom, he found himself staring into the hole, now full of manuscripts, postscripts, notes, scattered words, corrections, and a white page.  The moral of a story he never got                                                                    around to write.                                                          

Emptiness

He grabbed the shovel, filled up the hole with the earth, and turned around to leave. When he got to the car, the morning dew was half smiling on the faces of the dead.  He threw the gloves and shovel in the back of the car and started.

 The old gas station and the dumb storeroom were now left far behind, to care   for their dead, while he was coming into the other road,  in the opposite direction,    where words never catch up with the reigns of the eternal light.

WINDOW    AT    THE    EDGE   OF  TIME

And it is the wind. The wind that blows furiously and makes the windows creaking and throbbing in a senseless dialect.

And it is true that I tried. I tried every possible way to write the truth. And it’s also true, that I failed once more.

The ink started pouring. It was pouring uncontrollably  from the slashed veins of my page, into black creeks, forming small pools on the floor,  dark enough to look inside them and see what the future held. But I don’t care. I have always liked memories.

Indeed, I have memories I reminisce at times, evidence that I once existed too. At least the photos can prove that, although now faded like me.

Sitting back staring at them, every single one has its own preserving little story. And then I give up on them.

I throw them around, just like I threw away all the years.

And other times, I am sitting in front of my creations just like a kid, a crazy inventor, and admire the magnificence of the perfect failure.

Just like that, I loose myself inside this crazy celebration of this irrevocable silence.

And  I  get lost from this internal monologue that keeps being reproduced out of control,  inside the guts of this place that grows constantly in a suffocating way all around me.

Until such time,  I walk away from everything and approach the window, which in turn starts telling me its own little story.

In the beginning it starts talking about the city which spreads all around, the big  roads,   the public buildings, the colourful flags that are waving proud in the balconies, its big imposing monuments, and how over there, at the edge of town,  there is  a lake, silent with its stunning azure colour.

It talks about the tinny old boats and the fishermen, the shabby old timber huts at the banks of the lake, the cane that bows in the wind, and the kids running barefoot on the piers.

And then how the plains start rolling down the valley, with the farmers in the fields, the sheep and further away the cows.

In the background the tree stands tall and haughty, with the flowers beneath it.   Along side of it, a little girl with her hollow hands overflowing a sea, where the  milky  moon hanging in the afternoon sky, is  floating out in the open, and while the wind blows over to the shore, it washes it out,  and then takes it all back into the open sea.

And it’s true that I tried.  I tried every possible way to write the truth.  And once more I  failed.

And it’s also true that it’s the wind, that  fiercely  blows and charges with menace onto the glass window that luckily hasn’t shattered yet, and continuously keeps on reflecting faded photos,  from the present of an old  forgotten story…