I am drinking a strong black coffee with two sugars. Sitting in my usual spot on the Paseo. In front of the little park and playground. Absent-minded. Dreaming. Watching the world go by. Mothers and fathers, babies in prams, children and pets, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, teenagers, middle aged men, young lovers, cyclists, dog walkers and their canine companions, street peddlers, delivery men, municipal workers, groups of friends, women bringing home their shopping from the market. A marching band is playing in the distance and small birds hop and flit between the tables in expectation of a free lunch or at least a few spare crumbs. I am wearing my bunnet and my three euro sunglasses which make me invisible to the passers by. I can see them but they cannot see me. That’s how it normally works. Or so I tell myself. And it’s what I choose to believe.
The warmth from the morning sun is dissolving the boundary that separates my body from its surroundings. Loosening the bonds that keep me in my place. Atomising entire body systems, blood and bone, organs, muscle tissue, tendons and skin. The extracellular matrix is disintegrating. My body is obliterated. The morning is on fire. There is nothing left now except trace elements and vibrations. I am escaping into the ether. Swimming in the air. Floating. Flying. Slipping away, unnoticed.
The scene before me is transforming into a work of art. It’s a painting. An obscure work by one of the lesser know Impressionists. I am inside the painting and viewing it from the outside as well. I am conscious but still invisible. I am breathing and the painting is alive. The sunlight is filtering though the branches of the trees and the leaves are blurred as if quivering in the breeze.
I am the trees and the leaves and the gentle wind which does not blow. I am the spaces in between the leaves. And the spaces within the spaces. The form and the appearance. The essence and the shadow. I am the paint and the brush strokes. Confident daubs of colour on canvas. A hundred splendid shades of green, yellow, orange and brown. I am the painter and the painting. The poet and the poem. The singer and the song.
This is where I live now. It is my new abode. My home. My destination. The end point of my journey. My happy place. I am captured and reconstituted. Transmuted and transformed. Glad. Ecstatic. Almost free. An idealised representation of the world in paint and pigment, occupying the territory where real life should be. I can stay here forever. Right in this place. And that’s exactly what I intend to do. Come back tomorrow, next week or in a hundred years and I will still be here. Waiting patiently for your return. Drinking coffee at the Kiosk in the morning sun.
24 November 2019