Indelible Vision...

The main area of the canvas was covered in a blood red stain. In the centre of it was a black object, somber, a lone human represented by a line. It looked like it had been striped off any sense of dignity, a lost soul of insignificance that had given up on the world around it. The artist had chosen the world around it to represent blood, a wilderness of uncertainty, penance in an Armageddon of sorts. The dark object a reflection of the self within and the darkness of the human succumbing to what it was surrounded by. He watched it with some interest.
‘This is how you see yourself?’ he asked.
‘This is how I feel,’ she replied.
He was silent, observing. He let his mind absorb the moment. We got to these places in life when we could see no outlet or instance for reprieve. We were drawn in by a force of loneliness, loss and illness. Our disease was life itself. We felt and saw darkness in every corner of the universe as we fed on it as much as it did on us. Unfortunately in the long run it had a wealthier appetite than ours and fed at our soul. This was eating at his friend’s and he could see it in her work.
‘There is no light in this room,’ he commented.
‘There can’t be when we get to this place. Light is our darkness, this is what we have,’ she replied.
‘Perhaps because we think this is all there is, this is all we know,’ he said silently as if he hadn’t heard her.
‘One with darkness doesn’t mean we are dark. It could be a place, a passage, a period in time,’ he continued.
‘Or it could be our eternity,’ she said.
‘I guess that would depend on if we controlled our own destiny,’ he replied.
‘You don’t think we can. I think we can make ours. This darkness can become ours if we choose it to be.’
‘Then my question to you would be how did we find it. No one chooses helplessness. It is when they get there that they discover it exists. We are a people that find places in life, peaks and troughs laid out in our path. By the same token that life can bring us into darkness it can also take us into the light.’
‘You are doing it again, you are playing with my mind.’
‘I am calling a spade a spade,’ he replied.
‘And I am telling you that my spade is darkness now,’ she replied.
‘No argument there. It’s just that the operative word in your argument would be now rather than eternity. No one knows that far ahead.’
There was silence as they returned to their thoughts. It was almost impossible to resolve arguments such as this. They resonated from centuries and represented two sides to a coin.
‘I hate you now more than anyone I know,’ she said quietly.
‘I know.’
‘But you give me hope,’ she smiled.
‘This I know too.’
‘What would you call it?’ he asked, he was curious.
‘I don’t know. I have very many things in mind but I can’t find the words. What do you think?’
‘Indelible Vision.’
‘Sounds deep, profound,’ she said.
‘It should do,’ he said ‘This is an important time in your life, let it mean something.’