Awakening

Check email. Subject: E-invite. Two attachments. Point mouse to one, click-click...

...whoaaaa...

...computer screen buss open on a blue, yellow, green, white scene, a painting by Cousin Lis. Sunflowers stalking a bright sky, heads up in the clouds, breeze twirling-up them petals; every flower doing they own thing, posing in profile, facing front and showing off dark-pregnant middle, turn their back to flaunt green frill.

E-invitation to Lis exhibition in Tampa make me want to jump into the painting, grow me own green stalk, put me leaf-hands on me hips in bold Caribbean-woman stance, look around and exclaim, “But eh-eh, y’all check out this place how it nice!”

This place. So far from that place to where another invitation did kerry me, three or four years ago, a place of dread. Not to say that that other invitation, three or four years ago, was bad-looking. Stark-white, hand-made paper, a dry, pressed flower; no ribbony, frippery, girly-girly thing, that ain’t Lis style. I shoulda been impressed by the simple elegance. Instead, when I open that other invitation three or four years ago, I did feel oppressed. As if, when I open it...blam...something inside me shut close. And a secret room inside me open, where I hide a picture, one that even I couldn’t see well.

Only after the news of she divorce, the picture appear to me clearly. It was a canvas, pitch-dark as night without moonlight, starlight, lamp-light. In the middle of the darkness was a big circle of light. In the circle Lis been. Feeding the beggar-lady who always know the very minute Lis return from ‘Merica. Lis give she a cup o’ milk and a sandwich. Bake chocolate brownies and share out to security guards at neighbours homes. Wash lice from girls heads at orphanage. Chat crap with gal-pals ‘til dunno what o’ clock. Describe to me, two li’l schoolboys walking home, shading together from the sun with a huge water-lily leaf as umbrella. Dream of painting the broom-man.

But for a long time she ain’t paint. Maybe, even within she circle, she been dimming she light to try and match the dullness of the other. Or maybe, she venture too far from she bright self, go too deep into the darkness of the other, trying to fill he with she light. Some folks though, you can shine all you light into them, it ain’t never enough to make them see inside, to mend, to feel good.

After the divorce, I see clear and sharp how he darkness woulda creep closer and closer into she circle of light, and she light woulda shrink small-small, to a pinpoint, and she woulda vanish.

“At least we get back Lis,” I say to my mother who been making sweet chota...pancakes...for breakfast, after the divorce. I thought Lis was with she mamma, sleeping in we guest bedroom.

“I hear you,” she call out from we dining-room.

Eh-eh, she wake up, I laugh.

Wake up and painting again, yes, and showing she art.

I point me mouse at the other attachment of the e-invite. Click-click. The next side of the invitation open up, flower-scene, grey and white, like morning before day-clean, before sunrise.

If you's in Tampa, near Tampa, please check out she exhibition here.