Immortality

365 Days of Creativity

day fifty eight

Immortality

She smacked the camera out of my hand.

I scoffed, "What?"

"Don't take my picture."

I chuckled and raised the camera to my eye again. She hit it askew once more. I tilted my head and challenged her. "What is your problem?"

She shook her head. "Nothing, just don't."

"Don't what?"

A glare.

I turned to take a photo out of the window. The soft rocking of the train made my picture blurry. I sighed and turned off the camera, giving up. The day was overcast anyhow. Solid clouds of grey rolled across the sky. Big waves of charcoal and dust fighting to conquer the big blue.

The train was speeding through fields of golden wheat that the light diminished to a less brilliant khaki. The horizon was jagged, with harsh mountains that cut into the sky, jutting and stabbing and clawing upwards. Everything was fighting against something else, trying to defeat that which allowed it to exist in the first place.

Her hair was brown, but stroked with red, as though a painter hadn't quite washed his brush before picking the next colour. The copper tones peaked through here and there, playing hide and seek with my searching eyes. The freckles dusted across her nose were barely darker than her skin, which was tan from the summer sun. It was fall now, and soon she would pale again. But winter was her season anyways. The cold brought out the sparks in her eyes. I could see her now, her head resting on my knee as we sat by the fireplace. We'd listen to jazz and indulge in hot cocoa, laughing as a young pup snapped at the sparks from the fire.

But there was no such place. And she was no such girl.

"Why are you staring?" Her hazel eyes bore into me, sharpening from the dull, day-dreaming trance.

I smiled, "What do they say? Take a picture, it'll last longer? Well I'm not allowed such a photo, so forgive me for resorting back to face to face admiration."

"You read too many books," she rolled her eyes, and for a second her lashes splayed upwards, and I realized why men fell for the batting of them. "What do you mean?" 

She sighed, as if this conversation had already been had many times in her head, "I mean, you read these fantasy stories about beautiful lands and beautiful women and beautiful love, and you get lost in it. You forget that life isn't like that. And don't give me that look," she stopped me, as I was preparing to object, "I'm telling the truth and you know it. You just don't want to face it. You don't want to face reality, so you bring your flowery words and artsy practices back from your novels and try to make this place like one of your stories. But you've got to realize, that's all they are, is stories." 

She was right. I knew she was right, "But what's so wrong with that?"

"You can't spend your entire life wishing you were somewhere else, someone else."

"But why? Why can't I want the world to be a beautiful place?"

"You have to see it for what it is first! You have to realize how things are, before you can make them how you want them to be. How do you expect to take the photo you want, if you don't have anything to take a photo of?" Her copper strands were teasing me with glimpses as she shook her head, like a can-can dancer lifting a hem for a loyal customer, "You can't just make something real, without having something to make it out of."

"That's not true! What about art? What about stories themselves? There are whole worlds built from nothing."

"No, not from nothing. From words. From language. You think your writers didn't study words before they used them to write? You have to know the world you live in before you can change it."

"I know where I live," I mumbled. Her words were disheartening because they were true. I don't like logical people, they have a way of making themselves seem right. "But you're not."

She looked at me, puzzled, "What?"

I raised my eyes from my lap, "You're not right. I can live in a fantasy world, because this is my fantasy world. I'm going to look at things any way I want, and try as you may, with words you wield like weapons, I'm not going to stop. If you want to see everything in a bland and boring way, that's your prerogative, but don't try to bring me down to your lowly level of living, where magic cannot exist, because people like you won't let it."

Her eyes did not change. They didn't widen with shock, or open with realization. In fact, she was smug, and quite so, because I had just confirmed everything she stated. That was alright though, let her be pleased in her painful world.

The sky was darkening now, the line between the ferocious mountains and the cloud covered sky was blurring, as they faded down to the same colours.

I turned to her again, determined to know something, "Why can I not take your photo?"

She searched my face, perhaps looking for a sign of a gag or joke. Apparently finding none, she spoke, "Because, to be captured in a photograph or portrait, is to be made immortal for who you were at that moment." I was puzzled, and she saw, so she continued. "How sad it is, to live forever on earth in a picture frame, eternally remembered as that smiling man, or that crying woman, but never being able to change. Never getting to be sad when you wish, never being able to laugh when you wish, because that person holding the camera, decided to press the shutter at that exact second. What if you were a lonely person, and your heart was full of sorrow, and you lived your whole life trying to find someone to relate to, but someone got a picture of you at the exact moment you grinned? Even one photo is a photo too many, for it may immortalize you as someone you never really were."

And as she explained this to me, I realized she was not logical. She did not believe in anything she told me about my books, she did not hate art, or fantasy;

For she too, was a dreamer.