Due to its surprising popularity, I'll extend my Flash Fiction Friday segment. Thanks so much for all of the great writing feedback. Happy Friday ;)
BEDTIME STORY PART II.
“People work in cycles,” Kaylah sensing my distress, said one evening.
I was eating pea soup on the window-ledge. Kaylah was in her usual chair, looking over files from work.
“Artists, the criminally insane, there is one constant, the cycles.”
She worked as a psychologist in a home for the mentally disturbed. She was used to cycles.
“If it doesn’t come to you, don’t stand around waiting. Don’t beat yourself up. Find a new angle. If you’re not in a creation cycle, decide what you want this next cycle to look like, until it is creation time again.”
In the back room, Kaylah’s child whimpered, I was left staring at the Manhattan skyline, juggling her words.
I stopped fighting my stagnancy. I surrendered all attempts to direct my hands letting whatever manifested take residency on my canvas. My work without judgment was allowed to lean against our apartment walls and grow into itself. Neither portraits or abstract cells, these paintings were outlines of both. Devoid of my characteristic colorful parade of patterns, these pieces were pastel, tainted with gray. Sometimes, John, Kaylah’s son, would drag his crayons across the edges of the pieces I allowed to rest on the floor. Surprisingly complimentary, the wisps gave the paint character. I did not stop him.
copyright 2013, Sojourner Walker, All Rights Reserved