The Monet Story - Pt 3
- DreamingMonet
- Oct 4, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 8, 2022
I suspect the most attentive readers noticed a certain word has scarcely appeared so far. The word in question being, of course, heart. Such scarcity is no coincidence.
If on the one hand the spark I spoke of provided a gateway to my psyche and set things in motion, on the other hand the suffering and frustration inevitably resurfaced upon separation from my musical activities. At times with tremendous force.
Clouds of gas and dust within me were collapsing and giving birth to new stars, but the external world remained just as terrifying to my eyes. I felt vulnerable and threatened, judged, and ashamed of my pitiful state. Nothing seemed to hold any beauty or marvel anymore, simply because I denied myself the opportunity. A trauma, physical and psychological, prevented feelings from leaving or entering.
When I first sat down to write this post, I heard an unmistakably hollow and percussive sound. I turned around and suspended my activity for a few minutes to find the wonderful woodpecker at work on the acacia tree, just a few metres away.
Female Dendrocopos (Source: Wikipedia)
It really is a privilege and a joy to be able to contemplate life in this manner.
Wearing a smile I now turn once more, to find the bird on the acacia tree again. I had a feeling it[1] would be back, which reminds me of Einstein’s famous words: ‘Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?’.
Everything in life seems to beg for an observer. Mankind has felt this way from time immemorial, long before peeping into the quantum world.
Recall that Vedic scripture? Two birds associated together, and mutual friends, take refuge in the same tree; one of them eats the sweet fig; the other abstaining from food, merely looks on.
My personal belief - quantum physics and Hinduism aside - is that if you smile at life, it will smile back.
Not so a few years ago, when I was unable to see the Moon to begin with. It's hard to see a mountain when you're standing on it, let alone a celestial body. Fact is that, unlike the cow, I failed to jump over the moon. Rather, I crash-landed on it.
Crash-landing on the lunar surface
Had you pointed your telescope to the heavens, you may even have seen me. The chances of direct observation, at any rate, would've been very small.
The moonbase where I found shelter, you see, turned out to be cosy and well supplied. Why leave such a place? Besides, it's not as if there was much to see outside.
Occasionally, however, I was forced to venture out in my only and compromised spacesuit to carry out critically important missions. This was to be expected: I was born on July 21st after all[2]. Upon such occasions, it was always a battle against time, constantly checking the oxygen level and dreading PLSS[3] failure.
These life-and-death situations not only shared the same sense of terror, but also the same view: the one I eventually came to curse. My heavy breathing, my clumsy and panicky steps... they all meant nothing to her. Mother Earth was too busy, spinning on her own axis 30 Earths away, to care about her lost child; too busy dancing in all her colourful and indifferent splendour. A ballerina pirouetting in a snow globe, the flakes being stars frozen in aesthetic arrest[4].
In time, I came to believe she had selfishly sucked in all colour within her reach, leaving me little more than a few shades of grey to tread on.
Such contemptuous glimpses were, furthermore, somewhat of a luxury, having to pay close attention to the hostile and sterile lunar landscape. I was a space-age Fisher King of sorts, a wounded king truly worthy of his wasteland. The wound being my sensitivity.
The reader must know that, by cursing beauty, I turned myself into a beast - and a silly one at that. A lonely and forgetful beast not recalling that Beauty is, by all means, in the eye of the beholder. For what I was really cursing was my heart, that treasure deposit full of wonders waiting only to pour out like a rainbow.
We are the light, the eyes, and the mirror. We are the givers and the receivers: we reap what we sow. Just as the Earth's atmosphere tints the skies and moons of many colours, the heart paints all visible reality, bringing forth a whole universe from within. This exposure comes, however, at a price: vulnerability.
Typically, we'll open up to the world using an ancient expression. It may have started out as 'Life, I fear you, please be kind. I'm harmless, see?' (the sheepish kind), to gradually evolve into something like 'I love you as much as myself. This is fun, let's play!'. Life has been smiling for millions of years, with and through us. It's our bond and possibly our greatest legacy.
Admittedly, I had regressed beyond sheepish, to the point of losing my smile entirely. I could not stand beauty in any form, as it pained me too much. I belonged no more to its vividness, or so I thought[5].
And so I rushed even more among the lunar deserts in order to keep the cosmic ballerina - and myself - out of sight.
On a day like many others, I left my quarters at the moonbase to carry out a routine mission: reach point B. Everything was going according to plan - panicky steps, heavy breathing and all - until an event, one that would make history, occurred. I chanced upon something deemed impossible until that day.
Life! By Jove, there was life on the Moon! And, quite rightly, it ignored me completely, before walking away and disappearing.
From time to time, mission to mission, I'd catch sight of it again. Curiosity gradually overrode my primal fear, until mission reach point B started to incorporate reconnaissance operations. The fascination would suspend my preoccupation regarding oxygen levels and system malfunctions, allowing room to build up some confidence. Before I knew it, it was contact day.
How do you go about meeting another life form for the first time? I recall being excited but also hesitant. Was I being selfish? ‘Quit stalking it! Just let it be!’, I’d tell myself.
Even so, I couldn’t resist, and thus I selfishly reached out - in the name of mankind, of course.
The closer I got, the more captivated I was by this peculiar creature. Upon examination, it appeared to be a quadruped coated in organic and fibrous matter. But what was most surprising was its colour - or rather the absence of it. Before me was a being perfectly capable of camouflaging itself with the washed out surroundings, exception made for its piercing eyes. Their magnetic amber glow made them appear self-luminous, as if they alone carried every drop of the creature's life force. I was baffled by the sheer contrast, which probably held the key to its survival. Two globes of light peering from the homogeneous grey.
I tried communicating, in non-verbal and verbal ways, but all attempts failed. I had yet to understand its rather soft and subtle language. Such difficulty was heightened by the creature's wariness and lack of patience. Contact day ended in utter failure.
Being unable to retrieve any ID during my patrols, I increasingly felt the necessity to somehow refer to the mysterious being. Keeping both politeness and a scientific integrity in mind, I eventually added him to my log entries as Mr Grey[6].
Early contact with Mr Grey
Somehow, I wasn't discouraged. On the contrary, failure seemed to fuel my determination and excitement.
Missions were about to turn into adventures.
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