Great Expectations //Basil
Dec 8, 2013 4:17:00 GMT -5
Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Dec 8, 2013 4:17:00 GMT -5
H E L E N A W U.
I am never quite certain how my parents were convinced to let my sisters and I attend school. If it had been entirely up to them, we would only have been home schooled, there was no way they would have let us go without a fair amount of begging. Still, we are only allowed to attend two classes each before we are to return home for the rest of our lessons, which focus more on what we really need to know, rather than what we want to know. My father says that learning is meant for men, my mother was raised to agree with everything he says. Seeing as we were only given the choices of art, literature, sewing and food tech, the decision as to which two classes to take was not a difficult one. The stitches I make are flawless and small, the things I bake more than edible and lovely.
I am in love with literature, the very word is intriguing to me. I chose it for the course outline of poetry, and the novel to be studied. My breath gets caught on words that come from pages, spoken aloud like stilted diagrams of things that used to be. We study words not only from men, but from women as well, which is fitting. My mother says women should be the poets, we should leave war to men. Of course I am a fan of the sonnet, but my favourite is free verse. I love the way the words seem to run, barefoot and hurtling towards unknown destinations across the page.
Art I chose because I could always learn more. I am no apprentice to the brush, but neither am I a master. It is nice to have a teacher other than my mother, to learn the different view points of the other artists in the district. My fingers are too trained to the calligraphy brush, too used to drawing on paper much thinner than this. Still, I take it all in stride, and I believe I have much improved over the course of this year. Although I have not made many friends. No one speaks to me, either I am too shy or they are. Possibly, I am too weird, too foreign. I never grew up with them. It saddens me, I am lonely, I think. I am used to it.
Today, the topic is landscape. We are to paint something from our memories, but that has proved challenging for me. The only thing I usually see, other than the route to school I walk with my sisters, is my back yard. Although large, I would not call it a landscape. So I paint a landscape that for all I know never existed, from a dream I once held in the palm of my hand. Waves form beneath my fevered brush, not the ones you would think. These ones are green, long stemmed things. I am capturing the wind that pushes the grass down and up, making these hills that surround appear to be breathing. In the center there is a tree, thick with roots, with leaves, with light and life. In the tree there is something, I know something or someone, I don't know. I need to capture them.
I work intently, as if I have dogs on my heels. For me I do, for when this class is over, I will meet my sisters in the courtyard, to return to our gilded cage. When we arrive, I will be transformed once again, bathed in lavender, my hair oiled and coiled. Right now, my face is clean and clear, my hair long and flowing. Right now I have paint on my hands, arms, even on my cheeks. I look a complete mess, I'm sure, and I love it. I wear a painter's coat, ten sizes too big with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. I dip my hands in the blue, and grab great gobs to press against the canvas, trying to give life to the wind that terrorizes the land I draw. I want to show how much colour, how much life is happening.
Without me.
Who is that girl I see
Staring straight
b a c k a t m e
Why is my reflection someone
I d o n ' t k n o w
Staring straight
b a c k a t m e
Why is my reflection someone
I d o n ' t k n o w
