Fiona Canters excerpt from Shuttered Vision

She liberally applied the paint to the brush and dabbed the canvas at the right spots.  It gave the flower she was working on texture and depth.  It almost felt like the vivid shade she had seen in her dreams.  But there still wasn’t any amount or type of paint that could fully capture the texture of her dreams.  She placed the shades on her brush in the sky now and dotted the horizon.  The music playing in the background only made her hum slightly to herself following the rhythm and cadence.  She always painted to classic rock.  There was something primal about the way it moved and the way it was played that connected her with her dreamscapes almost seamlessly.  She imagined that bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple conducted their music in that same place.  That was why it drew her there so completely.

Most people discounted dreams as merely unrealized desires, hopes and ambitions.  Small confessions from a person’s subconscious mind to their conscious.  These are the explanations given to them by the practitioners of psychology.  These ideals and thoughts have helped countless people deal with their neurosis and fears. For that reason, Fiona didn’t necessarily disagree with these thoughts.  She just thought it was rather limited.

Fiona Canters grew up differently than the rest of the free world within the United States of America.  When 5 year old Fiona first told her mother about one of her extraordinary dreams her mother had smiled pleased and asked her daughter to tell her what they meant.  Confused Fiona had not answered.  The very next day she had been privy to the conversations the women in her family had away from husbands, boyfriends, sons and fathers.

“Fiona dreamed last night.” Her mother had told her mother in law excitedly.

“Does she know what it means?” her aunt had asked anxiously.

Her mother proudly shook her head and then recounted the dream for the listening gaggle. With gasps of delight and praises to the Almighty they had all regarded Fiona differently. 

The Canters were a French Creole line originally that intermixed with a line that had roots in Native America, Africa and Ireland. Now they were a rainbow people where the shade of relatives spanned the realm of possibility. 

Fiona’s mother was Salvadorian, her skin the color of burnished copper, her hair fell blue black tightly curled and silky across her shoulders.  Her light brown eyes always alight with seemingly forbidden knowledge. A Canters man, her father was tan skinned by nature, dark eyed and hard to place into a particular ethnic set.  From that Fiona had emerged a shade lighter than mahogany, eyes an almost eerie shade of dark grey making them look lit from within as the iris closest to the pupil was a paler grey than the midnight that it changed into as it floated to the rims.

“Witch eyes.” Her grandmother had said that night as the women talked and she took the child’s measure for the first time.

Fiona had starred up innocently into the clear hazel eyes of the paler woman and felt that nagging suspicion of being in the presence of something that was more than it seemed.  Of course as a child she had no true idea of what it was.  Just this sudden unmistakable unshakable awareness as she peered up at the woman waiting for her to change form right before her eyes.

She had always been fearful of her father’s pale, hazel eyed mother. The woman had eyes that saw too much.  They saw everything and communicated with the souls of others without their knowledge.  These were things she had heard whispered growing up among the others.

The others were the ones of her family that had been born without that extra thing that most of the women had.  It was a generation skipping instance.  Every once in a while a woman in their line was born without that extra sense of the world, without the vision to see into others through dreams, premonitions and senses that were a family birthright.

They were raised in a different way than those with sight.  Still loved and shown the same affections and care, but kept away from the ones who bared stunning signs and levels of awareness.  It was a courtesy to both sides.  The children would grow to understand and appreciate each other before they interacted.  Understanding their differences and not treating each other badly over them. 

Before the conception of every child, the women of the family dreamed, during the pregnancy the women dreamed.  They dreamed of the child they would bare, knowing before modern technology whether a boy or a girl would be born.  When the mother conceived her entire existence was enrapt in the being she carried. And through their personal dreamscape they would understand the nature of that child. How it should be raised and what it should be led to do. 

Even those born without the special gifts procured to the blood line were dreamt of.  Regardless of whether it had been given sight or not, it would one day raise a child that most likely would be given sight.  And they needed to be raised in a fashion to be able to deal with their child’s gifts. That was why all dreams and premonitions centered around the child.

Fiona was the exception. Fiona’s mother Alejandra calls that time in her life ‘el negro’.  The dark. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to live as most people do.  She had only common sense, instincts and logic to guide her way through life.  All of her dreams during Fiona’s conception and birth had been shielded from her. All premonition and sensory insight dulled to just instances of déjà vu. Her mother in law said it was because the child she carried was blank. Meaning there was nothing to see. 

For the longest time they thought Fiona was going to be stillborn. Her mother’s gift hiding what was to come to save her enduring the pain more than once. Because of the circumstances of Fiona’s conception and birth she was raised with the children that the family knew possessed none of the gifts.

“At times mi amor, I can see what I must do with you and then I do it and like that its gone.”  Her mother would sometimes whisper at her temple as she put her to bed at night.

It wasn’t until much later at the age of 10 as Fiona started to have actual premonition episodes did she understand what her dreams as a young child meant. Slowly over the years the pieces had started to put themselves together and it implied things about her that was unnatural even for her family.

Transcendence

Lovely word and fascinating movie. All of us have ideas about what would make the world a better place. I do but I shape them more around what I can do to make the world a better place. I thought the most interesting thing about the movie was the ways it embodied the word.  A state of transcendence is described as the state of going beyond limits, exceeding confines, becoming more than what you were ever meant to be.  The movie was about life beyond death, and life beyond death reshaping life as it is irrevocably.

The irony about it is that the entire time the main character was trying to attain what they already had.  In many ways I think we as humans endeavor to do the same thing. We fight our confines just to attain what we already have. We all seek some form of liberation from our humanity. We limit who we interact with, who we allow ourselves to be seen as, we limit all things that push away from the downfalls of humanity. However it is the downfalls of humanity that spark the most vibrant and amazing aspects of being human.

Some of us do this by procreation. This belief that somehow creating new people will cement our transcendence. The irony is no one remembers the parents of a great human being. We rarely recognize the brilliance of a human when they are alive and demonstrating it. We often have other words for them. Anarchist, rebel, criminal.  It just depends on who is doing the naming in most situations.

Others do this through labor.  Work plain and simple. But the lure and the ultimate lie of this is that work has permanence. And in a way it does until someone else's work comes along to shatter it. In those situations all that can be done is to try and use work to facilitate well being.  When all is said and done legacy is a lie. Its a myth we tell ourselves to deal with what can be seen as an unfair lack of time bound in our human forms.

Its ironic that in many ways I believe our short lives are our only true gift. I believe the purity of who we can be and what we can accomplish are only possible because of the frailty of life. The things we fight for, live for, and die for define the sanctity of our existence. We move through this life this existence with hardly a clue as to what is needed or expected of us. We leave our callings to belonging and love.  We make connections and declaration based on tribal and regional affiliations. We find and discover things that bring us hope, beauty and joy. Some of us even deny ourselves the pleasure because of the fear of loss. Not ever understanding that the only thing lost is the moment.

We move through this space and seem not to understand that simple fact. We define what is important. We verify what brings us hope and joy. We dictate what love is and where it is spent. Now is the essence of humanity. Now is the world as it is. Now is the only truth.

What I always seek is to sing the song in every key.  Sometimes my notes are happy, sometimes my notes are sad. At times I wail and at times I moan.  From time to time I rise like the coming tide and crash like the coast ashore. I crest and hold for days, I swell and drop, I burrow and shriek, I cry in joy and in pain. Its in those notes in that phrase, in that bar, octet, reprise symphony is life. All that it can be, all that it shouldn't be all that it is and all that it is not. The point is not to control, regulate or build.  Those are distractions from your song. The point is to live and life can only be lived in one way now.

True transcendence is freedom from ideas that hobble, thoughts that condemn, habits that contain.  Transcendence is viewing hurt and pain as notes in the harmony of the concerto. Its viewing joy and happiness as the underlying melody that's always playing whether you hear it or not. Its in the rhythm of your beating heart. The lulling hum of your breathes.  The harmony of your flowing blood. The buzz of life singing around you.
 

So Suddenly

Resurrection drawn in oil pastels 1995

It always happens so suddenly, takes my breath and humbles me
As I fall down to my knees, I can’t believe you’re here with me
I look around and take in despair, glad to know that you still care
Feeling sorry for those who don’t see, the love of you setting us free

So Suddenly I was put to the test
So foolishly I denied to myself what was best
My arrogance overwhelmed my thought
Silly of me to let myself be bought

Always happens so suddenly someone not wanting me to be free
Always happens in a glance, another person taking that chance

Always happens in a blink of an eye, someone’s truth another’s lie
Suddenly you realize, that you can’t live outside His eyes

So suddenly life didn’t make any sense
Words had no meaning vowels no consonance
I was you and you were me
Inside I was sad, alone and ugly

My mind spun out of control
Not even aware of my own soul

So suddenly a calm settled over my heart
No longer was my mind being pulled apart

Ask so I held on in my heart and believed
And the way is true cause I opened and received
So suddenly it happens so suddenly you know where you must go
You know where you belong, you know

That Divine Spark

I dared love once to show me the truth.  Face me head on show me what the mettle of love is and can be.  It starts with the wind.  Always it starts with the wind.  The touch of that which cannot be seen can only be felt. Always it caresses my skin pulling my mind towards you.  I imagine your hands live in that space.  As it ruffles my skirt and pulls at my hair.  I turn towards it like a flower to the sun.  Thirsty for another breath of you on my skin in my hair felt and not seen.  It seems at the oddest times you are in fact always there.

Never dare love to show you its face because it ends up being your own ravaged by tears.  Always tears fall like rain in joy in sadness in grace in pain.  The storms are the best with the drops of rain and the whip of the wind.  The build is where the truth lies. . anticipation.  It brews slowly softly within to break its wrath across this plane.  I feel the rise in me the instinct to meet it.  You can only survive that which you bear yourself to brunt and even then it is merely a mercy that survival is possible. It breaks open, shattered in bolts of lightning across the sky. The sky bleeds, the earth feeds.

Elemental and sublime in the heart of knowledge I remain complete in the hearth of my emptiness I surrender to defeat.  A force of nature that has rend and set asunder all earth, hell and heaven in a calamity of indisposed inevitable unbearable music.  The gnashing of teeth it’s called, the lamenting, the unfulfilled moaning. We forget in chaos the Universe was born.  Only in chaos will such marvels come into being. It lies in the clash. It lives in the fight. The push for solidarity against the desire for union.

The will of destiny is the mating of chance and karma. They dance around each other like pulses of violent intensity with passionate disregard.  They meet and recoil, the joining painful, sweet, yielding, hard, impossible, inevitable. One carries the light, the other bourn by the dark. Its completion that the space calls for.  Meeting of different ends to form a cohesive whole.

What is born lives in the soulful coupling of two never meant to meet but must know each other. The boundaries of commitment unresolved, unrefined, primordial and absolute. As one sees the other hears, as one inhales the other exhales, as one touches the other feels. The answer is not clear, or spoken but felt.  It moves in the subconscious that causes the belly to pull, the heart to skip. A knowing that has nothing to do with logical comprehension matching to identical pairs.  This is the way of nature filling in what was left unfilled. For each open space there is matter to align perfectly to it. Fingers lace, skin meets blends joined.   Separation an improbable and probable instance cursed to join in that moment and walk different planes in all others.

Forever together, forever apart. Bound in the endless dance of existence.