THE RIVER RUNS BLACK

"I´m sorry, Edith; I lied to you..."

She looked pretty pale, but then again it could have been the cool morning breeze. She had never been to my hometown so the next Christmas morning I explained that there was this one place I was literally dying to take her to, and that was none other than the Black River in Elyria.

On the east side of the river there were a series of amazing falls and they were frozen at the moment. I used to come here for inspiration when I was younger but the access to them was very difficult. There wasn´t much to look at back then, just ruins, but then again my dark, occult side always a passion for old sites.

"Mom was right, I was about six years old when I fell into this river. You see, after I saw the helpless rabbit I went down all the way to try to reach and grab him..."

"Oh..." she said with awe.

"...But then again little old me was helpless as well; the ice was too thin so I fell too."

"Oh, my God! Wasn´t there anybody nearby to save you?"

"Yes, but I got out all by myself luckily. I lost consciousness after a while. Somehow, the rabbit started to kick me with all his might and then I realized I had to get out. After I carefully climbed out of the ice I placed the white rabbit on the ground and he wouldn´t stop moving its hind legs again and again until he froze to death..."

"Oh no..." she said.

"Yeah, yeah, he gave his life to save mine but I had to admit his strength was incredible. So instead of burying him or whatever I tossed him back into the water, he was meant to be there anyway. After that I felt very sick but still wanted to come back here so badly but Mother wouldn´t let me and that´s when..."

"If I´m not mistaking that seems like this last November, history repeats itself?" said Edith looking below the Black River bridge.

"Yes, I figured out that strength doesn´t come from just the body, it comes from the spirit, so even the smallest of creatures has enough will to carry on until his last breath so could I...I..." I leaned against the bridge too and felt somewhat emotional, "I felt so mad at myself for being so weak, so I drew the rabbit so it could be a constant reminder to never give up fighting, a talisman, a charm..."

"That is so sweet," said Edith as she hugged me tightly.

"I saw this very same spot yesterday in a dream, actually every time I visit my folks I come back here maybe just for a while because something might be waiting for me down there, like a spirit...do you know why I keep seeing the number 11 everywhere?"

"No, you never told me that, why?"

"You see, the Tree of Life has ten spheres which represent the path into spiritual enlightment, yet there is an eleventh one which stands for hidden or occult knowledge. I read that intuitively while going to the library at school...I had a lot of spare time on my hands."

"So now you are embracing these things free of guilt, that´s great!"

"Ritual is an important painting to me because it speaks of the bond I have with that silly creature, since he is the white one I am the black one; together we create or together we shall destroy the world...",

"Since today represents the Birth of Christ it should work well to be a creative day, nothing can go wrong now, right? You and me together, facing all the perils of New York."

I smiled as I placed my head below my arms, "If you say so, next year will be quite a bundle since I´m getting busier than ever."

"Because you deserve it! You like doing what you´re doing, don´t you?"

"Sure. Now I feel like a messenger for the dark arts...come here, close your eyes, I´ll give you something..." I pulled out her hand. "Open them."

"You want to give me this? It´s beautiful, very classic but very beautiful..."

"The message is what counts the most. Home is where the heart is, it´s wordplay, so if you ever feel lonely think of this as my heart and soul, that way you´ll always have somewhere to go...Merry Christmas, kid."

"Thank you."

1:11 AM

by Beli Cantú, 2010.

CHAPTER 1:  1:11 AM.

The piercing sound of silence, the emptiness that's left and the Cold Moon as my witness. I´m standing on my rooftop trying to jump, something I've been practicing for quite a while though I seem to keep having some flaws in the process.I was wondering if I'd become successful this time...

Learning to jump is essential for any rabbit, an effective means of escaping from the pain, Mother Nature would say. But not in my case, I'm tied and I'm nailed to the ground until God knows when. How did this handicap begin?

Well, as the Mad Hatter said once:

"Start at the beginning and when you get to the end, stop."

When I was younger I had a nasty habit of writing in black notebooks. I made my mother go nuts trying to get  them otherwise my mind went blank. I felt like a had a tiny hole in my hands, a void waiting to be filled with anything, and I mean ANYTHING...

When it turned into SOMETHING I was relieved for a moment, a scape valve for my hurt psyche.

GO AHEAD, JUMP, GO AHEAD JUMP, WHY DON´T YOU...

Not today, not today, wait another day or two, or three or four go figure...

"Automatic writing, that´s what it´s called my dear, you´re not mad," said a school teacher once. "You have become aware that the unconscious is manifesting in the form of words. "Tell me, you don´t talk much, do you?"

Of course I didn´t. And it´s still utterly irritating that they confuse the way I feel with my quietness.

"Then when you decide to shut your mouth, the words come out of your hands. Like a blind man, he develops another way to get around. So if you decide to make this your most common way of expressing yourself, then your vocal chords will begin to weaken..." Ironically, the next day I had to give a book report and I couldn´t speak because my throat was so sore, it was like razorblades scraping my tissue.

My teacher was mad as Hell. Artists have always been known be eccentric, a little confused because they live in a world of their own, or maybe they´ve redesigned the actual world until it fits them well.

In my case art saved me many times, from the cold shoulder of loneliness and from the pain that lies within, it´s a kind of magic, more powerful than the one you read in storybooks. It gave me an invisible shield in my teen years. Back then I used to see myself in dreams in gray and black. So i figured out that there would be no problem for me wearing those somber tones every day until it made some sense. But then, I wasn´t counting on the fact that I´d be labeled as:

GOTH.

Oh, so now there´s a name for that too. Subcultures can be bitchy in high school, I know that. They brought me some very disposable friends, like Lisa, though I couldn´t call her exactly a girlfriend. She used to be the kind of person who´d always hang out in the same little corner with her jet black hair covering her face, like the silhouette of the Moon hiding behind the clouds, with cigarette in hand .

"Don´t give that look, woman, I´m not the one to blame," I said one time she was horribly pissed because I stopped calling her.

"You´re so selfish Adrian, why are you so insensitive , you don´t think that we have a heart too?" she shouted giving me bewitching looks.

And that´s another thing. She was always addressing her issues as WE and not ME, as if she were speaking for the entire population of dark monsters, when the whole thing started with just her. So she used others as her shield, I wrote and drew and my black diary as usual until my fingers bled. In fact she got even more pissed because it had become a ritual of mine carrying that damn book everywhere. She threatened to show it  in class so they could see how twisted I really was. But then I safely said, "Go ahead, you´re just reassuring I´m mad. I´m proud to be this way . Give me the fame I deserve."

Lisa was supposed to be blurred out of my mind anyway, but she didn´t just because she wound up in one of my paintings. Now I´d transformed her into SOMETHING.

My teacher, a middle-aged short woman who always wore those large patterned scarves saw the portrait and she began saying this whole ass of a speech in which I shouldn´t have done this in the first place, that Lisa had been glorified and elevated to the point that I became powerless. And that then if one did want to become a true artist he´d  first look into one´s self and exteriorize both the inner demons and angels and then use them to blind everyone who saw them, that´s what makes you will make you inmortal. So the fact that I ceased to hang out with goths to hang out with myself was a very good step for my initiation into the art world.

What kind of people was I meant to be with, then?

There was not much promotion for the art at school, not that it was highly noticeable. Not that my hometown was well known for that either. They only had three major topics, at parties, in family conversations, at CHURCH, and they were beginning to get stale.

"Sure, get out of this hellhole kid, YOU got a future, not so sure about the other folk,"  my daddy used to say. Enough said, I had nothing to lose.

COME TO BED, ADRIAN, COME TO BED...

That unidentified voice was Edith, my non-artistic lover, by the way.

But that´s a story for another day, got to much to do tomorrow, Damn, I always say that, I need to come up with a better excuse, I´ll work on it, I promise.


NEXT BLOG:  CHAPTER 1 CONTINUES...