art makes company

It was one of those effects in which I knew who the character was, but I can't actually remember seeing her face. Hillary and I were in the living room in a house which appeared similar to our Roscoe layout. There were nights of revelry, tricks, and single encounters flashing through my mind (I was myself. I was watching myself. Isn't that how dreams are? I don't recall ever not seeing my own face. My mind stepping out of the body.).

Back in the room we were talking, but I was not focusing on the conversation. Babies in bonnets, Victorian lamp posts along dark velvet streets, spiders behind bed posts, and a standard sized portrait hanging on the wall behind Hillary. It kept changing. The image was beautiful. The animation in a style that brings to mind Pan's Labyrinth. The colors were brilliant heavily contrasting the deep shadows. The subject was holding a bundle of blankets shaped like a baby. Or maybe the baby simply had no face. Then there was a rather large woman swinging on a hammock dangling a wooden heart from a string, then long figures lazily marching in slow motion, willowy and ghostly. "I made it with you in mind." Such a compliment - to think that someone would have me on their mind enough to make a piece in my honor.

Standing in the room with us was another figure. A tall, willowy girl in a tattered old wedding dress draped elegantly over her bare body and lacing up her neck. Tiny buttons studded the seam down her arm and down her back. I could not see her head, though I recall whispering strands of curled brown hair escaping the frame of her face as she struggled to stay up-right. She was plastic, but still so real. "Oh!" I jumped when she leaned into me. Her tiny feet were elevated on their tip toes.

Two beautiful pieces of art to keep a lonely girl company - to charge a dull, static room with mystery, possibility.