Swirls of Illumination

Στρόβιλοι του φωτισμού

Glancing at my watch, I decided to stop by the World Art Museum on the way home from art class. My tote bag was slung over my shoulder, with my left hand firmly holding the bulging weight in place. As if to counteract the load, I carried my laptop in my other hand. The burden of everything almost made me want to just go home after a long day. I’d had work as a waitress at the restaurant early in the morning followed by my community college classes. Yet, it’d become tradition growing up to go look at the painting that my mom, twin sister and I had spent hours looking at whenever possible.

Stepping off the subway, I stepped quickly to keep warm against the brisk cold air that had faint snow flurries mixed in. I almost slipped and fell face first into a snow bank as my heel slid across a small patch of ice. My arms flung out, I was barely able to steady myself, as my heavy load swung like an off-center pendulum.

“Cursed imbalance,” I muttered to myself, attempting to regain my pride against the small crowd that had briefly stared. “Why do I get to be clumsy, and SHE gets the dancing skills,” I complained to myself. My twin Tess, short for Tessondra, was currently studying at the New York Academy of Ballet. I could almost imagine that she would have floated across the ice. Shaking my head, I brought my mind back to reality after I pictured the sight of her in a pink tutu, tiptoeing through the snow to rapt applause. “Well, we all know who got the imagination,” I chuckled.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I reached the double-doors of the old gallery. I struggled to pull open one of the heavy doors, before the guard mercifully opened it for me.

“Good evenin’ Jesmyn,” the guard greeted me. Since we’d been coming here, Rob had been a faithful fixture as the museum. A retired police officer, he earned money on the side to his retirement pension by serving as a guard.

“Hiya Rob” I replied. “Thanks,” I continued with my face an exaggerated expression of gratitude.

Glancing at his watch, his close cropped silver hair was almost glaring in the museum’s harsh florescent lighting. As always, Rob’s uniform was neatly pressed with the creases still showing. “Only have about an hour left Jes, don’t you want to come back on the weekend?” Rob joked. He knew my family always had to see the painting, but Rob still thought it was a funny joke.

“Ha ha Rob,” I replied, a grin sliding over my face. “Well, I better get goin’ if I don’t want to waste my precious hour,” I said with a conspiratorial wink.

“Wait, take the flashlight. We’ve been havin’ warnings of power outages all day. Don’t want you gettin’ caught in the dark,” Rob offered while holding out a heavy duty flashlight.

“But what about…” I started to reply.

“I’ve got another one,” Rob interrupted me. “Here, take it.” Knowing Rob wouldn’t take no for answer, I gratefully accepted the flashlight. Even though I’d grown out of most childhood fears, I still had never quite gotten over my fear of the dark.

Smiling my thanks, I trudged to the elevators but veered to the stairs at the last moment. Last thing I wanted was the power to go out in the middle of riding that thing. Breathing heavily, I got to the top of the 3rd flight of stairs. Since it was an art museum with paintings sometimes the height of an entire room, every floor was the height of two. I tried to reason with myself that I wasn’t out of shape, but it was from having to carry my entire load straight up approximately six flights of stairs.

My twin Tess had been the one to get the willowy frame of my mom. She’d never been out of shape, ate like a horse and still struggled to gain weight. That was great in her profession of ballet; for I never worried that she was going to be anorexic or bulimic like so many of her friends. Her only complaint had always been about her dark brown hair, which she’d insisted looked like warmed-over mud. Now, considering I’d overheard several of my art guy friends wax and wane about how her “chestnut locks glimmered in the sun,” I didn’t quite sympathize with her.

My lungs were ending their complaint as I trudge across the floor and through halls to the back right corner of the top floor. I hadn’t taken the stairs in a while, and I think I was ready to admit, as I glanced down at my body, that I did need to lose a good fifteen pounds. Sighing, I imagined all of my favorite junk foods flying away at the impending diet.

My threatening dark mood melted away as I turned the corner and walked through the open wall entry into a small room. The only piece of art in the room, with low mellow lighting and hidden sub-lights to play up the colors, was captivating on the wall. Walking the short distance to the donated black velvet love-seat in the middle of the room, I sunk into the cushions and plopped my stuff down.

I reached into my big tote bag and pulled out my sketchpad and pencil. My mom had brought us here since we were babies to look at the painting, and passed her love of it onto us. This painting had been my inspiration to become an artist, and for years I’d been attempting to recreate it. Since all of the guards knew us, there hadn’t been any forced restrictions on my drawings over worry of copyright. They knew I wouldn’t recreate and sell it. I just hoped to capture what had always pulled my heart and stirred my imagination in the painting.

Flipping through the pages, this was my “random” notepad and it had sketches of different things and people I’d seen while roaming throughout the city. Reaching an empty page, I looked up at the painting. I gazed at it for a good five minutes to let it soak into my imagination and refresh the image it’d impressed on my heart.

Made by an anonymous painter and donated as such, the painting was critically acclaimed but virtually unknown. It didn’t even have an official name, so the art museum has chosen to call it “The Couple”. With the feel of mythological Greek time-period, there was also a fantasy element as the painting showed an intimate view of a touching farewell. My hand relaxed, I easily sketched the outline of the couples’ forms as they stood by an entryway.

Finishing the loose placement of their figures, my eyes focused on their embrace. The man’s hand was on the side of the door, and there was an implied urgency of his departure. Yet his body was turned toward the audience and the woman, as if to convey his reluctance to leave. Drawing in the details of his body, my hand moved with ease. I penciled the form of his muscles, visible through the loose crimson and gold colored tunic he wore. It hung on him with a fitted elegance, with colors rich and vibrant.

Now, my eyes moved to the woman, struggling to capture with precision her posture as she tenderly and fervently embraced his back. It had always been difficult to represent the feelings she conveyed: a longing to never let go of him, yet you could tell she wouldn’t hold him back.

I set my pencil down on the notepad in my lap, and stretched out my fingers. My right hand was already starting to cramp, since I’d already spent over six hours in two art classes back to back. Clenching and unclenching my hand, I wished I’d stopped for that cup of coffee on the way after all. I faintly heard the chiming of the grand clock in the museum’s lobby, indicating that I only had a half hour left before the museum closed. Feeling new enthusiasm due to the time constraint, I picked my pencil back up.

I completed her body with a sense of reluctance and again resigned myself to an imperfect rendition. The complexity was partly due to the way her tunic of deep blue with gold trimming defied all description at the way it laid on her. It seemed as soft as velvet but with the glittery shimmer of satin. It didn’t look like any traditional cloth, though I’d spent hours in fabric stores over the years, attempting to find something that captured its feel.

Moving on, I focused my gaze on their heads. With a simple metal circle on his head, the man’s golden curls seemed to bounce as if they were alive. His piercing blue eyes held such depths to them, swirls of emotions from love, sadness to even anger. While her dark brown hair was softly bound in a single loose braid hanging down her back. Her eyes closed, I could only imagine what color they might be. When I was a kid, I’d often dreamed that they’d open up to be a bright jewel-green like my mom’s eyes, and the same color that my sister had inherited. My mom had often told us made-up stories from the paintings as bedtime tales, but I never could quite mention how the woman in the painting looked like her. I’d never said it, for the apparent love in the painting seemed cruel to bring up in light of my dad’s disappearance when we were babies.

I finished my sketching with the faint outline of their surroundings. Reaching for my bag, I rummaged around for my colored pencils. The lights suddenly flickered, and I felt my heart stutter in response. Lunging for the flashlight, I barely wrapped my fingers around it before the lights went out.

Groaning, I slapped my forehead in frustration. The last time the power had gone out while I’d been in the museum had been a month ago during the New Year’s snow storm. I’d been stuck in the museum for two hours. Having recently installed electric laser-sensitive doors, they locked automatically when power was lost. It’d been someone’s bright idea for the doors to do that after an attempted break-in, in which the thief had tried to use an outage to cover his tracks in escaping.

“I KNEW, I should have just gone straight home,” I grumbled to myself. As much as I loved the painting, 6:00 a.m. would come far too early tomorrow morning for work. I still had at least a couple hours of painting left to do at home for a class project due in a couple days, and I hadn’t grabbed dinner yet. My stomach voiced its agreement in being forgotten, and I rummaged for the candy bar in the side pocket of my laptop. Pulling it out and unwrapping the cover, I remembered the promise of a diet to myself. Shrugging, “There’s always tomorrow,” I muttered.

I nearly spat out my chocolate as Rob came into the room, startling me out of my reverie. His years of experience as a cop enabled him to walk more silently than a ninja on a mission. Holding up the flashlight, I moved it quickly out of his face as I accidentally blinded him.

“You aright Jes?” Rob asked, as concern was etched on his face. He knew of my fear of the dark, which was probably why he’d insisted on me taking the flashlight. I could have kissed the man now for his foresight, if he wasn’t the age of a grandparent with a wife and kids of his own.

Wiping my mouth of chocolate bits, I nodded and mumbled, “I’m fine.” His walkie-talkie squeaking, Rob picked it up and carried on a conversation with the guard from the front desk. Hearing them talk, it appeared to be a city-wide outage, with it possibly taking anywhere from two hours to all night for the back-up generators to kick in.

Putting the walkie-talkie back in his belt loop, Rob looked at me with compassion. “You want to come to the front desk with me kiddo? You’re the only one left in here besides us.” As much as the two guards antics could be amusing, I was too tired to move or joke around.

Fixing a brave look on my face, I nodded my decline of his offer. “Thanks Rob, but um, I think I’ll stick it out here. Do you still have that blanket I could borrow? And um, any extra leftovers from lunch?” I asked. Rob’s wife Noreen was notorious for packing enough food to feed three of him. He always gave the scraps to homeless on the way home. As if to accentuate my plea, my stomach grumbled loudly to second the motion.

A grin slowly spreading on his face, “I think we can manage that. I have to do my sweep of the whole place, and I’ll bring ‘em back with me then.”

Setting my stuff down on the couch cushion, I bounded up and gave Rob a quick hug. “You’re the best!” I exclaimed. Even though Rob enjoyed treating Tess and I like his own daughters, his police training always ruled him as he blushed at the sign of affection.

Muttering to himself, Rob walked off to complete his rounds. As his flashlight faded around the corner, I felt some apprehension as the darkness closed in. While the flashlight I had was pretty powerful, the room still wasn’t illuminated very well.

“Ah ha!” I said to myself, as I grabbed my laptop case and pulled it out. It’d been plugged in during class, and the battery was fully charged. “Here’s hopin’ the outage doesn’t last all night,” I muttered, as I flipped it open. The slow glow of the computer helped to somewhat lighten the room. I opened my essay document that was due with the painting next class.

Yet, as I stared at the screen, the painting before me seemed to beckon through the soft glow of the flashlight. I kept looking back down at the few paragraphs I’d typed and drew a blank on what to write. Before I knew it, I heard Rob’s footsteps bringing me the promised blanket and food.

Coming around the corner, I gratefully accepted from his arms the musty wool blanket, cold thermos, and insulated lunch pack. “Thanks Rob,” I said with a smile, as I placed the laptop down on the cushion facing the painting. Rob gave a wave goodbye as I opened up lunchbox to see what leftover goodies there were. I nearly squealed as I saw a whole sandwich, apple, and cookies in it.

Taking a deep bite of the sandwich, I closed my eyes in pleasure. Munching this way, I kept my eyes closed until I noticed the lights changing underneath my eyelids. Quickly popping them open, I looked around to see if the lights were starting to come back on. Confusion settled on my face as the wall lights stayed dark. However, the painting before me seemed to wave with different colors illuminating it.

“Huh, that’s weird,” I muttered, before shoving the last of the sandwich into my mouth. Turning the laptop towards me, some screensaver had popped open during idling. However, it had some matrix looking thing going on as weird characters scrawled across it. The colors flashing on the painting had come from the laptop’s screen, which was flowing and swirling as if a blender on high.

Hitting all the keys I could think of it, the computer continued to stay in that mode. Even holding down the power button to force it off didn’t do anything. “Oh great, now I’m gonna have to get Uncle Max to look at it AGAIN. Why now,” I complained, “I need to turn that paper in.” My resident computer fixer was my mom’s childhood best-friend Maximillian Dresden. Known to us kids as “Uncle Max”, he’d perfectly filled the eccentric uncle role with all his computer and mathematic mutterings every time he supposedly found something new in his researches.

Setting it down in disgust, I watched instead as the light from laptop’s monitor played against the painting. Watching the roiling colors, the painting seemed to come alive with the illusion of the clothes moving as if they breathed from their owners. Their hair seemed to shift as if the wind from the open door softly played against it.

For the first time in my life, I noticed something new in the painting. I’d never really paid attention to the scroll clutched in the man’s hand hanging down at his side near the edge of the painting. It was barely noticeable since his other hand was on the door. Yet as the colors from the fake light of the laptop crossed the scroll, words hidden before now glowed in illumination.

I couldn’t quite make them out, the words were so tiny. Stuffing the last cookie in my mouth, I brushed off the earlier sandwich crumbs from my worn-in jeans and NYU sweatshirt. I wasn’t attending the college yet, but had found the sweatshirt at a thrift-store. I bought it and wore it to remind myself of my eventual goal of art school. Pulling a hair tie from my pocket, I hastily pulled my dark blond hair into a low ponytail. Tess said my hair was like “spun gold”, while I just realistically called it “dishwater blond”. In bright light it was a honey blond, but in dark places like this it was an uninteresting light brown.

Standing a foot away, the words were still ineligible as I squinted at it. Muttering in frustration to myself, I quickly went back and grabbed my reading glasses. Sliding them over my sky blue eyes, I moved to only a couple of inches from where the scroll was in the painting.

I noticed the words of the scroll only came into view as blue colors from the laptop played against it. The words were in some weird scrawl, looking like a cross between Latin, French, and who knows what else. It was individuals letters that appeared to make out three words. Waiting for the blue lights to flash again, I made out each word over a period of good 30-seconds.

Trying to sound it out, I attempted to read what was wrote: “Ileteriamus Eneritam Soliquizum.” Saying it again more firmly and not drawn out, I was startled as the floor gave a quick jerk. Oh crap! I thought to myself, Not an earthquake, New York never gets earthquakes! I turned to the couch to grab my stuff. I didn’t have time to move far before my laptop suddenly shook and then thrust out a solid beam of blue light on the painting. Brighter than a thousand suns, I had to close my eyes as my arms flung up to protect my face.

Turning my back to the laptop’s streaming beam, I gasped as I saw the painting. The couple was gone, but I could see the entire room of the painting and it looked like it was in 3-D! As if a sucking wind greater than a tornado plucked at me, my feet slowly slid across the tiled floor as I was pulled toward the painting. Frantically trying to turn around and grab onto anything to stop me, I was helpless as I kept slowly being dragged backwards to the painting.

Flailing my arms, I felt my feet lift off the ground and squeaked in terror. Nothing else seemed to be effected in the room, and I felt myself slam into the wall where the painting was hung. Since the painting was a good 4 feet off the ground, my lower half took the impact but my upper torso connected with pure air!

Frantically trying to grab onto the wall below my waist that now felt like a window ledge, I opened my mouth to try and scream for help. The wind seemed to steal my very voice as if sucking the air from my lungs. My chest heaved for air that it couldn’t get anymore, and I was losing strength to fight the pulling wind. Strands of my hair whipped around my face as it loosened, and my glasses were knocked off. The last sight I had before me was the art museum’s room appearing to spin in swirls as if on a bad rollercoaster. My eyes fading to black, I welcomed the sensation of falling backwards as I let go of the wall.