When It Paints Sense

Most days, we do not understand. The rest of the days, we try to make sense of the little we can understand.

This is one of the rest of the days.

I remember the afternoon I painted vines in my room's walls. The green swirled in every direction, playful yet gentle. Dots of red made roses. I nursed a haven in my mind, and all I wanted then was to make it alive. So I transformed my room into a work of art.

Each day, I would hold a paintbrush or a pen. Classic music played on my laptop whilst I stormed the white sheet with colors or different shades of black. I would tape my best pieces to the wall. It embellished my walls until it turned into a sort of gallery.

It was beautiful.

I was ecstatic, drowning in the abstract. I resigned from my full-time job then, and I was satisfied with the little I was earning with my part-time job and writing gigs. I held my time in my hands. I had enough money for myself. Just for myself.

Until I was told that I was drowning myself in the abstract, probably, to weasel out life.
That hurt. A lot. Suddenly, my awe melted and all I wanted then was to lay my hands on each of the paintings. Destroy them, perhaps. Career-wise, I was fumbling in the dark. Quarter life crisis, as they described it. I was lost. I wasn't happy.

Today is very different.

Life's no longer vines and roses. Now, I live not in a world I painted, but in a painted world. I am drowned in the concrete - in the real, in the truth, in both sheer ugly and beauty. I stand here, alone with my eyes and hands. Alone with God, the Great Painter.

God tells me that I should grow up, and leave the worlds I invented. God tells me to live and turn the abstract to concrete, the mind to hands, the ideas to things. God tells me that I may be what I behold...but I am, too, what I hold.

Most days, I do not understand.

But thank God, this is one of the rest of the days.