The Evolution of One’s Dream
The Evolution of One’s Dream Imagine an artist sitting before an easel…charcoal in hand…sketching an idea from the heart and mind—one that somehow encompasses his inner dreams, hopes and aspirations. Day after day, the artist returned to this very place. Stroke after stroke, there appeared a picture. Still very much impressionistic. All shades of black […]
The Evolution of One’s Dream
Imagine an artist sitting before an easel…charcoal in hand…sketching an idea from the heart and mind—one that somehow encompasses his inner dreams, hopes and aspirations. Day after day, the artist returned to this very place. Stroke after stroke, there appeared a picture. Still very much impressionistic. All shades of black and white. But the illusions of color began to appear.
A collage of things past, things of fairy tales and history books, things linked together by faith and desire. Things essential for a sense of unity and peace, happiness and joy, family.
The page seemed to get larger with every stroke.
And then, the dreamer put down the chalk, folded up the easel, and took the drawing and its stand to the middle of the town square. He set it up…and left it there.
As time passed, the seasons changed. Rain fell upon the picture and smeared some of the original markings from the artist. The sun and wind took its toll on the fiber and upon the drawing’s original look. Other townspeople eventually began to draw their expressions upon the fabric. Some in black and white. Some in color. Some in blood and sweat. Many came to view the picture and cried. Others mocked it. Still others felt a great warmth from the ever-changing image.
Vandals attempted to damage it. Others scorned it as something evil. Scholars and sages studied it and made their own deliberations on its origins and what it had become. Thieves twice tried to steal it from the town square…but each time, townsmen stopped them.
And for eight years, the cotton paper stayed in the square exposed to the elements. Eight long years the dreams and fantasies of others were marked upon it. Eight years of wear and tear. Eight years of evolution. Stains. tears, patches, precise strokes, blotches…
It had, in part, become as much of the place as the old clock that rung every hour on the hour for hundreds of years above the entry to the cathedral.
Wood workers brought benches out to be placed around it. Various tinkers were often set up about it selling their wares to strollers, admirers and doubters.
The town council once voted to encase it in some kind of wood or stone structure to protect it from the winds and rain, but, there were never enough votes to do so. Some on the council expressed monetary concerns to protect an old browning sheet of paper. Others believed it represented something of the town’s soul and was meant to sustain the effects of nature and man’s impacts.
And so it was…
On full moons, late in the night, the artist would come to that easel, stare at it, look at what was, and what it had become…and once or twice, he removed a piece of charcoal from his shirt pocket and made another stroke and went about his way.
Rengypsy 1196AD
