It was like a painting unfurling before my eyes. The colors, the stokes of brush, the blending of the forms. It was as radiant as it was unreal. My eyes couldn’t focus on the details, only the vague shapes and forms. It descended from the heavens, with what I assume to be limbs outstretched and encircling us. We had been called here from unknown sources, each of us unfamiliar with one another. We had only just started mingling and questioning each other before it arrived. The limbs closed in behind us, trapping us as it began pulling us in. The illuminate white flesh grew more and more blinding as we were drawn in closer. My eyes shut, it still bled through my lids into an almost unbearable pain. Bodies were pressed further together, like being packed into an ever crowding subway car. After I could finally understand the plight of the sardine I felt the ground leave my feet. The acceleration upwards was the only other sensation I felt to clue me in on our ascent. Faster and faster, we raced into the sky and left behind the small outcropping in the woods. No one panicked, no one screamed. Our silent resignation, we were at the mercy of this entity that could only be described as having been painted into the universe.
It looked like a painting, because I had painted it with paint and brushes and an easel. I like to paint rabbits dressed up in business suits trying to figure out how to market freeze-dried carrots or something, or a rabbit that looks like a rabbity Bill Gates who wants to start making synthetic carrots from beet DNA or something.
It's what I do to pass the time in Maniac Manor. That's what I call it, but it's called Morning Glory Manor without the tagline "...for the criminally insane." I like the blue in morning glories. I guess they bloom in the morning. if they didn't, then the name would make no sense.
My dating life sucks here. The girl I really love tried to stab me with a fork, a melted down toothbrush, her super soft shoes (the most ineffective attempt), and by choking me with her malodorous arm pit. She takes her pills, but, also, she sometimes doesn't. She makes better eye contact with me on the days she spits out her pills, but on those days she's much more likely to murder me.
I wrote her a poem, because she seems to hate bunny rabbits, or at least my paintings of them. She gives me no useful criticism except for, "AHHHHHH! MEWAAAAAH. ZZZZAAAAAH." I tried using fewer gray tones, but her reaction stayed the same so that didn't help.
Why did someone place me here? I'm not a worker. I'm a patient. Dr. Frank says he's really proud of my progress but that I should leave Murdery Mary alone. That's my little pet nickname for her. It's fun. You have to give your girlfriend a cute little name. Her real name is Kate. I used to call her Kate the hate before she started trying to kill me. I like the way the workers protect me from death and how they always wear white and have magic shots they give the naughties.
Happens to me every time because I write using stream of consciousness with just a starting line. In the end I'm surprised to find out I was running in a different race. I don't wear a GPS in my wrist.
It was like a painting. The light fell at a slant through the trees. The shadows lay still on the path. No wind. No sound, except a bird somewhere in the back of it all. Even the colours looked unreal, as though someone had carefully tuned them to one another. I stopped and thought of canvas, of oil, of the old masters. You paint a thing like this, I told myself. A thing like this does not just happen.
Only later did I understand my mistake. No brushstrokes. No frame. No picture on a wall. It was an ordinary afternoon. The sun stood low. The grass glowed. The air was clear. And for a moment the world looked as if David Hockney had switched it back on.
This didn't turn out the way I originally intended. But that happens sometimes...
It Was Like Painting:
Is it a good thing, when we regard something beautiful and say, “It was like a painting”? I look at paintings two ways. I stand back, and see what the artist intended me to see; a complete work, a depiction of something, person, place, thing that the artist painted to express their own mood, make their own statement.
But I look at paintings another way, close up. I study the individual brush strokes. When you do that, you cannot see the painting, the art. Just brush strokes.
There is that allegorical expression about not seeing the forest because all the trees are in the way. Up close, the painting is just trees, pieces of trees, no forest.
And then I stand back again, and regard the forest, but not the trees. I marvel at how Rembrandt converts brush strokes into skin, and satin, and feathers, and gold, and wood and windows, and whatever he cares to create out of nothing but brushstrokes.
But he cannot do it alone. He must have willing accomplices; us. We must be willing to let our imaginations see these things, and ignore that all that is really there are brushstrokes of paint. Is it good that we fool ourselves this way? Not always. Especially if we aren’t able to remind ourselves that this is not reality, that it’s just our imaginings of reality.
But the brush strokes are always there. Never forget that. Remember to look closely. Remember to see how those individual strokes add up to a depiction of reality, but not the reality. Feel the emotions, marvel at the skill of the artist, but do not let yourself be fooled.
There are those who want to influence us. They are masters of brushstrokes. When you stand back, you could swear you were seeing the reality, but you’re not. Appreciate it as art, perhaps. But then, step up. Look close. Do not confuse the brushstrokes with what is real.
It was like a painting. The evening sky blue and white clouds with setting sun ,almost blushing like bride red and orange smeared over the face . I was mesmerised , fell in love instantly . The sadness of the day was wiped out Asif a mom had added colour to humour a child. This is how I felt when I fell in love with him. He had that impact on me , his curly hair falling haphazardly on his forehead. I was tempted to touch his curls tenderly. It was insane I felt drunk with my strong heartbeats , it was like I had no identity left so vulnerable and helpless. It felt like this painting that was looking at upheaval of emotions. Chaotic.
It was the cows, the horses, the farm fields, the buggies, the woods, the streams that slowed the two-lane highway traffic and me as I traveled each day for two hours each way to enter the ICU. It was this earth and this earth's fallow fields that embraced me, taught me the lessons I needed to learn. Did I know it at the time my body and soul were drained of emotion, of thought.. did I know it as I followed Crows off-road to the trees, to the grass blanketed in snow and ice and lay there empty allowing the cold, the freezing to absorb my tears?
I lived in a Liminal State as I traveled three states daily for 6 months. The entrance fee to this place of protection that I stumbled upon in my soul blocking out my mind, my emotions is forgiven. I am learning. Each emotion blocked out, silenced for 6 months has become a friend. They brought me messages as I traveled that hallway of emptiness. I am grateful for the crippling fear, the raging anger, the loneliness, the loss. Behind a black buggy as I traveled in numbness, I learned the gift of all events, challenges, all loss. My strength comes with and in my choice. I choose to stay behind the black buggy and horse, to speak only with the cows, to hear only the low pitched moowing grunts and bellowing of the Longhorns. I choose to follow the cawing of the Crows. I choose to sit by a creek on my way to my life. Thank you, loss. Thank you, fear.
Not with my hands, but with something older. Something that existed before my first breath and before my mother’s tears ever touched her cheeks. A picture that began long before I arrived here, woven through bloodlines, prayers, heartbreaks, and promises made beneath stars I would never see.
I imagine God standing before an endless canvas.
A brush dipped in galaxies.
A stroke of pink for compassion.
A stroke of blue for wisdom.
Black for the nights I would question everything.
Gray for the moments between destruction and revelation, where nothing makes sense and yet everything is becoming.
No color was wasted.
Not even the dark ones.
Especially not the dark ones.
For years, I believed I was trapped inside the painting. A figure standing motionless while life happened around me. But lately, something has shifted.
Perhaps it is healing.
Perhaps it is Qi moving through places where fear once lived.
Perhaps it is the nervous system finally understanding that the war is over.
I don’t know.
I only know that some mornings I wake feeling as though I am hovering above my own life, watching generations unravel and reweave themselves through me.
My grandmother’s fears.
My father’s wounds.
The women before me who survived things they never spoke about.
The children who will come after me and never know the battles that were fought on their behalf.
I feel all of them.
And then I feel myself.
Standing at the edge of an unfinished canvas.
Brush in hand.
For the first time.
The cosmos whispers that creation is never finished.
The stars themselves are still expanding.
God is still creating.
The universe is still breathing.
Why should I be any different?
So I paint.
I paint futures I have not yet touched.
I paint homes filled with laughter.
I paint my children standing strong in a world that tried to teach them fear.
I paint abundance where scarcity once lived.
I paint women discovering their worth.
I paint families breaking curses that were handed down like unwanted heirlooms.
I paint forgiveness.
Not because everyone deserves it.
But because I deserve peace.
I paint love.
A deep velvet pink with ribbons of crimson flowing endlessly from a cup that never empties.
The kind of love that survives betrayal.
The kind that survives grief.
The kind that survives becoming.
And then I realize something beautiful.
Once a painting dries, it is sealed forever.
It cannot become another painting.
Not exactly.
A new canvas must be stretched.
New colors mixed.
New strokes applied.
The next masterpiece will carry echoes of the last, but it will never be identical.
Because no two brushstrokes are ever the same.
No two souls are ever the same.
No two journeys are ever the same.
And perhaps that has always been the answer.
Not perfection.
Not certainty.
Creation.
Again and again.
Until the final brushstroke returns to the hand that painted the stars.
It resonated with me and for the season that I’m in right now,and what kind of painting I am working so hard to paint. thank you so much for the prompts. I truly do enjoy them.
It was like a painting unfurling before my eyes. The colors, the stokes of brush, the blending of the forms. It was as radiant as it was unreal. My eyes couldn’t focus on the details, only the vague shapes and forms. It descended from the heavens, with what I assume to be limbs outstretched and encircling us. We had been called here from unknown sources, each of us unfamiliar with one another. We had only just started mingling and questioning each other before it arrived. The limbs closed in behind us, trapping us as it began pulling us in. The illuminate white flesh grew more and more blinding as we were drawn in closer. My eyes shut, it still bled through my lids into an almost unbearable pain. Bodies were pressed further together, like being packed into an ever crowding subway car. After I could finally understand the plight of the sardine I felt the ground leave my feet. The acceleration upwards was the only other sensation I felt to clue me in on our ascent. Faster and faster, we raced into the sky and left behind the small outcropping in the woods. No one panicked, no one screamed. Our silent resignation, we were at the mercy of this entity that could only be described as having been painted into the universe.
I write weekly articles on being newly paralyzed. I was struggling this week until using this prompt to help focus my work. Thank you! https://facemelter.substack.com/p/friday-in-the-chair-with-zav?r=86xjxf&utm_medium=ios
It looked like a painting, because I had painted it with paint and brushes and an easel. I like to paint rabbits dressed up in business suits trying to figure out how to market freeze-dried carrots or something, or a rabbit that looks like a rabbity Bill Gates who wants to start making synthetic carrots from beet DNA or something.
It's what I do to pass the time in Maniac Manor. That's what I call it, but it's called Morning Glory Manor without the tagline "...for the criminally insane." I like the blue in morning glories. I guess they bloom in the morning. if they didn't, then the name would make no sense.
My dating life sucks here. The girl I really love tried to stab me with a fork, a melted down toothbrush, her super soft shoes (the most ineffective attempt), and by choking me with her malodorous arm pit. She takes her pills, but, also, she sometimes doesn't. She makes better eye contact with me on the days she spits out her pills, but on those days she's much more likely to murder me.
I wrote her a poem, because she seems to hate bunny rabbits, or at least my paintings of them. She gives me no useful criticism except for, "AHHHHHH! MEWAAAAAH. ZZZZAAAAAH." I tried using fewer gray tones, but her reaction stayed the same so that didn't help.
Why did someone place me here? I'm not a worker. I'm a patient. Dr. Frank says he's really proud of my progress but that I should leave Murdery Mary alone. That's my little pet nickname for her. It's fun. You have to give your girlfriend a cute little name. Her real name is Kate. I used to call her Kate the hate before she started trying to kill me. I like the way the workers protect me from death and how they always wear white and have magic shots they give the naughties.
It was like a painting,
the Apocalypse .
The white clouds, like ribs cracking open
pulling the ice- blue sky skin taut until it split on the peaks of bone,
revealing a clot-red moon bleeding bright like a fresh heart above,
haloed by the crown of the sun.
Silvery voices sang out, filling the air with their cacophony,
their voices vibrating in the marrow of trees and the group of mortals
clustered in the Whole Foods parking lot,
who were suspended by the finality of Life,
the instinct to fight
snuffed
by the magnitude of the End.
extemporaneous poetry!
Thank you!
Happens to me every time because I write using stream of consciousness with just a starting line. In the end I'm surprised to find out I was running in a different race. I don't wear a GPS in my wrist.
It was like a painting. The light fell at a slant through the trees. The shadows lay still on the path. No wind. No sound, except a bird somewhere in the back of it all. Even the colours looked unreal, as though someone had carefully tuned them to one another. I stopped and thought of canvas, of oil, of the old masters. You paint a thing like this, I told myself. A thing like this does not just happen.
Only later did I understand my mistake. No brushstrokes. No frame. No picture on a wall. It was an ordinary afternoon. The sun stood low. The grass glowed. The air was clear. And for a moment the world looked as if David Hockney had switched it back on.
This didn't turn out the way I originally intended. But that happens sometimes...
It Was Like Painting:
Is it a good thing, when we regard something beautiful and say, “It was like a painting”? I look at paintings two ways. I stand back, and see what the artist intended me to see; a complete work, a depiction of something, person, place, thing that the artist painted to express their own mood, make their own statement.
But I look at paintings another way, close up. I study the individual brush strokes. When you do that, you cannot see the painting, the art. Just brush strokes.
There is that allegorical expression about not seeing the forest because all the trees are in the way. Up close, the painting is just trees, pieces of trees, no forest.
And then I stand back again, and regard the forest, but not the trees. I marvel at how Rembrandt converts brush strokes into skin, and satin, and feathers, and gold, and wood and windows, and whatever he cares to create out of nothing but brushstrokes.
But he cannot do it alone. He must have willing accomplices; us. We must be willing to let our imaginations see these things, and ignore that all that is really there are brushstrokes of paint. Is it good that we fool ourselves this way? Not always. Especially if we aren’t able to remind ourselves that this is not reality, that it’s just our imaginings of reality.
But the brush strokes are always there. Never forget that. Remember to look closely. Remember to see how those individual strokes add up to a depiction of reality, but not the reality. Feel the emotions, marvel at the skill of the artist, but do not let yourself be fooled.
There are those who want to influence us. They are masters of brushstrokes. When you stand back, you could swear you were seeing the reality, but you’re not. Appreciate it as art, perhaps. But then, step up. Look close. Do not confuse the brushstrokes with what is real.
It was like a painting. The evening sky blue and white clouds with setting sun ,almost blushing like bride red and orange smeared over the face . I was mesmerised , fell in love instantly . The sadness of the day was wiped out Asif a mom had added colour to humour a child. This is how I felt when I fell in love with him. He had that impact on me , his curly hair falling haphazardly on his forehead. I was tempted to touch his curls tenderly. It was insane I felt drunk with my strong heartbeats , it was like I had no identity left so vulnerable and helpless. It felt like this painting that was looking at upheaval of emotions. Chaotic.
It was the cows, the horses, the farm fields, the buggies, the woods, the streams that slowed the two-lane highway traffic and me as I traveled each day for two hours each way to enter the ICU. It was this earth and this earth's fallow fields that embraced me, taught me the lessons I needed to learn. Did I know it at the time my body and soul were drained of emotion, of thought.. did I know it as I followed Crows off-road to the trees, to the grass blanketed in snow and ice and lay there empty allowing the cold, the freezing to absorb my tears?
I lived in a Liminal State as I traveled three states daily for 6 months. The entrance fee to this place of protection that I stumbled upon in my soul blocking out my mind, my emotions is forgiven. I am learning. Each emotion blocked out, silenced for 6 months has become a friend. They brought me messages as I traveled that hallway of emptiness. I am grateful for the crippling fear, the raging anger, the loneliness, the loss. Behind a black buggy as I traveled in numbness, I learned the gift of all events, challenges, all loss. My strength comes with and in my choice. I choose to stay behind the black buggy and horse, to speak only with the cows, to hear only the low pitched moowing grunts and bellowing of the Longhorns. I choose to follow the cawing of the Crows. I choose to sit by a creek on my way to my life. Thank you, loss. Thank you, fear.
It Was Like Painting a Picture
Not with my hands, but with something older. Something that existed before my first breath and before my mother’s tears ever touched her cheeks. A picture that began long before I arrived here, woven through bloodlines, prayers, heartbreaks, and promises made beneath stars I would never see.
I imagine God standing before an endless canvas.
A brush dipped in galaxies.
A stroke of pink for compassion.
A stroke of blue for wisdom.
Black for the nights I would question everything.
Gray for the moments between destruction and revelation, where nothing makes sense and yet everything is becoming.
No color was wasted.
Not even the dark ones.
Especially not the dark ones.
For years, I believed I was trapped inside the painting. A figure standing motionless while life happened around me. But lately, something has shifted.
Perhaps it is healing.
Perhaps it is Qi moving through places where fear once lived.
Perhaps it is the nervous system finally understanding that the war is over.
I don’t know.
I only know that some mornings I wake feeling as though I am hovering above my own life, watching generations unravel and reweave themselves through me.
My grandmother’s fears.
My father’s wounds.
The women before me who survived things they never spoke about.
The children who will come after me and never know the battles that were fought on their behalf.
I feel all of them.
And then I feel myself.
Standing at the edge of an unfinished canvas.
Brush in hand.
For the first time.
The cosmos whispers that creation is never finished.
The stars themselves are still expanding.
God is still creating.
The universe is still breathing.
Why should I be any different?
So I paint.
I paint futures I have not yet touched.
I paint homes filled with laughter.
I paint my children standing strong in a world that tried to teach them fear.
I paint abundance where scarcity once lived.
I paint women discovering their worth.
I paint families breaking curses that were handed down like unwanted heirlooms.
I paint forgiveness.
Not because everyone deserves it.
But because I deserve peace.
I paint love.
A deep velvet pink with ribbons of crimson flowing endlessly from a cup that never empties.
The kind of love that survives betrayal.
The kind that survives grief.
The kind that survives becoming.
And then I realize something beautiful.
Once a painting dries, it is sealed forever.
It cannot become another painting.
Not exactly.
A new canvas must be stretched.
New colors mixed.
New strokes applied.
The next masterpiece will carry echoes of the last, but it will never be identical.
Because no two brushstrokes are ever the same.
No two souls are ever the same.
No two journeys are ever the same.
And perhaps that has always been the answer.
Not perfection.
Not certainty.
Creation.
Again and again.
Until the final brushstroke returns to the hand that painted the stars.
It resonated with me and for the season that I’m in right now,and what kind of painting I am working so hard to paint. thank you so much for the prompts. I truly do enjoy them.
Exquisite. Thank you!
Bold , beautiful and brave .
🙏🙏🙏thank you !!