Fading Light

A little story to understand me better…

“Sweetheart, your hair-clip fell out again.”

“Sorry daddy.”

“It’s okay. Give it to me. I’ll put it back in.”

   How does one grow so distant from the innocence of their youth? A question that lingered on the lips of a father who looked down into the wondrous eyes of his most beautiful creation. Her gleaming smile, a smile that seemed ever-present on her face despite the formation of her muscles. Her face beamed with all the cliche brilliance of a fairy-tale cherub. When the question failed to fall from his mouth, he swallowed it. All too aware that the weight of the question would be lost on the mind of a child whose proximity to her beginnings would still leave her so whimsically ignorant of her coming fate. A fate that he was only now beginning to realize himself.

He was only in his thirties and yet death was not far from his mind, and in many ways, he had died more than once already. When presented with pictures of his past, his apathy and disconnection for those eerily familiar looking young men was that of a distant relative who had passed sometime before he had grown to appreciate them. However, unlike the mild hatred he felt for the obnoxious depressed thin boy with braces and glasses that he was reintroduced to every time his mother wanted to show friends and girlfriends his “awkward phase”; or the disappointment he felt in the muscular cocky posturing young man who was ready to leave high-school and take college by storm. He had a different perspective on the dimple cheeked, big eyed little boy who played with the markers he was meant to draw with. When being told to use the colors to express his imagination, he would opt not to draw a picture of brilliance, a still image for adults to gawk at. He waved the marker before his own eyes and created a world all his own. Moving images, like the ones on television, except these were his.

‘Imagination is good’ that’s what the adults would say to all the gifted young artists and musicians. But what about when your imagination is out of the norm? What about when your imagination is not just the finest of your traits but the essence of your being? What if you have no interest in instruments because instruments can’t fly? What if you have no time for drawings because they move too slow? It’s a strange world when you’re encouraged to be creative and be an individual but then told not to talk when placed in a room full of your peers. It’s strange when we are told that individuality overrules all, and yet we must treat everyone the same. It’s because of these odd rules that the dimple-cheeked boy hid the pen which served as his conduit into another world; his world. He walked through halls with it tucked up his sleeve, just so that no one could see it, but made sure that he could still touch it and see past the veil of his schoolhouse walls. It was these very same odd rules that deemed him to have learning disabilities at a young age, a fate he’d rather accept than admitting to his sin of having an imagination which had transcended his youth. Finally, it was these odd rules that prompted him to curse and speak in slang, rather than sing and dance through the halls the way he often dreamed of doing.

          As he watched his young beautiful ball of light seated beside him, he wondered if that depth of soul existed in her as well. He believed it did, but also believed he was a father who loved his child. A bias that can’t be matched. Dumb as a stump, ugly as a troll, he would love her. He knew his gift was magic, just as he knew the only other gift on the planet that held the same magic was his beautiful daughter. Even now he twirled the pen between his fingers and let his mind’s eye construct more ideas for his conscious self to write later.

His ideas had matured as his goals had grown more practical. He could still build stories of dragons and time travel but knew that his specialty had become character pieces. A maturity that he admittedly felt was an inferiority, a ‘shallowing’ of the depth of his imagination. A ‘shallowing’ that occurred from all the pointless information and anxiety thrust on him from the tedious society in which he was raised. It was here that his true feelings for the young boy in the photos was expressed, not so much pity or pride, but envy. Envy at the young boy’s elegant ability to become lost in his own mind and create the most beautiful and painfully original works. So effortless was the ability of the young boy that he may even have forgotten a masterpiece in a day. He half wondered why he had come to hide his pen, his gift from an angel. He felt the only answer was simple; that’s what he always did. Close friends who never got the full story on his strange habit of twirling a pen, or his tendency to never be anywhere without one. A habit of such reliability that even a question as simple as “does anyone have a pen?” became a dreaded one. So much so that his shame would at times defeat his pension for being a kind and helpful individual and push him to lie. A gift which had made him who he is today, but had also plagued him the majority of his life. A fate that he would wish on no one. A world entirely to himself in his head, but no one to show it to, no one he could trust to understand the beauty and splendor. Why don’t you play outside? Why don’t you have friends over? Why haven’t you done your homework yet? Questions that pale in the presence of his answer and yet he held his tongue. What could school teach me that the ocean of thought in which I swam couldn’t? Why play in the yard when I could ride on horseback with my warriors to save the princess who I didn’t have the guts to ask out in school? Why play with my friends when I can create them?

             A god? No, god never needed braces. The sort of power I held over my characters did, however, leave me with many questions of god’s empathy for its creations; assuming there is one. Imagine, if you can, the addiction one might have toward their own ability to create worlds and fertilize them with souls of their own. The consuming effects of erecting your own cities for those same souls to use as their playground. At one time it was dragons and beasts but just as man rose from the ashes of ancient beasts, so too did the characters in my head. I exchanged my beloved dragons and giants for Dannys, Shawns, Angelas; Shawn a dragon in his own right. I often curse myself for allowing this transformation to take place. My ideas were once pure and original. Influence has since come and snuffed my originality in its crib. Television and books helped to normalize my ideas, but no factor played a larger role than the need to hide my gift. Shame forced me to conform and as I conformed my light faded. It’s far from dark, but not far from dull. That’s why its not pity that sparks my curiosity, not self-pity that spurs me to find someone else like me. Its fear. Fear that others are out their spinning a pen, a string, the limb of an old toy simply to gaze at the bright light in their head.

I fear that these people will hide away in shame and that their light will grow dimmer by the day. I pray to those that listen, that the young child somewhere out there will never find the paper more interesting than the pen, never believe the shoe can take them further than the string and never find the whole toy more liberating than the limb. It’s impossible for someone who cannot see the light to understand it. Impossible to understand how the arm of an incomplete toy can somehow be more than the figure itself. However, it is this incompletion that makes the arm more. When someone has the light, the arm is not a piece of the figure, it is every figure. Better than that, it becomes more real than the toy could ever be. No batteries, but it speaks; no lungs, but it breathes; no blood, but it bleeds. I would be mocked if I were to admit how many characters I created based on old action figures which I can barely remember. I created souls where there was only plastic. I often wondered if when I abandoned an idea, when I was finished with it, if the characters fell victim to the monsters and evils that I helped them keep at bay; or if I was the one who brought the monsters.

           Yet somehow I squandered my gift. Sure, I still have it and I still have every intention of sharing whatever I can still salvage from my drowning imagination with the world, but I’ll never be able to wring out every drop. The masterpieces I’ve long forgotten will die with me one day, deep in my cerebrum. Perhaps they’ll come out in my final moments just to mock me when my hand is too weak to do anything but twirl my pen and watch. Perhaps it won’t be so grim. Maybe my lost ideas will run to me and allow me to experience them one final time before I pass on into the memory and imagination of others. I would sit and view them in my head like the northern lights. Watching my earliest creations rather than viewing my life over again. I’d stare up and watch these familiar ideas that were created by a young boy who would barely recognize me. The real artist in me passed a long time ago. Of course this is all very far away. For now I’m sitting on a train with my daughter, my new light. Something so beautiful and pure, my mind floods with jealousy for not having thought of her first. I knew I’d never let her dreams die. Never let her mind be corrupted or her spirit crushed. She would be her best and she would be whole. I wondered when I told her stories at night if she knew how I did it. If she could see the light, as faded as it may be, somewhere deep inside me. Perhaps even just a twinkle in my eye.

She would sit on the edge of the bed and pick books she knew she couldn’t read. It didn’t matter what. Old instruction manuals, my textbooks or literature, or perhaps a bible from a hotel room. I never read the words, she knew that, I just created a story and turned the pages as I spoke. She never questioned it but her eyes told me she knew. We completed a seven book series that comprised of some car insurance forms, an old phone book, an empty diary and a colorful thesaurus she received for her birthday. I won’t bore you with the details but what matters is, the good guys won. Naturally, if my initial question was whether there were other people like me, my follow up question was who? My daughter proved to be the answer to both of these questions.

         On the train I looked down at my daughter who didn’t notice me. I realized I had been staring for a while but, like many parents, I was looking without seeing. Like a child who was desperate to be caught doing wrong, she sat there and never looked up at me. Her eyes were staring down. Her hair-clip was out again. Before I bent down to help her put it back in, I stopped myself. I watched as her hand held the clip, her fingers twirled. It was not rhythmic, nor was it patterned; but it was purposeful. Her eyes didn’t look at the clip, but just past it. She was not here, but somewhere else far away. And like a gear moving within a clock, her fingers spun the hair-clip to keep that distant world alive.

“Hey bud, whatchya doin?” I say affectionately

“Nothin daddy.”

“Well that’s not nothin’. It’s your hair clip.”

“Yeah sorry daddy it fell out again.”

“Want me to put it back in?”

“Sure.”

“Well its ok, you can finish doing what your doing if you want”

“Okay.”

“Did you see daddy do that? Is that why your doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“Nevermind. What are you doing?”

“Just playing.”

“Whatchya playing?”

“Save the castle. There’s a bunch of dragons trying to attack the castle and I gotta save it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Can you see it, dad? It’s a huge castle!”

“Yes sweetheart, I can see it.”

END