16 - Art and Muse

Life had become so dull and dreary and devoid of all delights. Worst of all, inspiration had dried up leaving an empty void of non-activity and stagnation. For an artist, this was the worst circle of hell and Fred was close to another breakdown. He did not want to be admitted, not again so instead he went back to the outpatient clinic.

His old psychiatrist was there in the neutral colored office wearing earth tones in front the neat desk. Fred sat with the coffee table between them, staring at the unoffending box of tissue and the coasters laying perpendicular on the surface. A wastebasket half filled with used tissues testified to the teary client that had come before him and Fred felt a twinge guilt that he was taking up his doctor's time when there might have been others who were more emotionally distraught, then he thought of his empty sketchbook and suddenly all guilt disapeared.

His doctor listened in compassionate silence, nodding appropriately and making soft noises at just the right points. It made him feel better until he was asked about his meds. He hated taking his meds. He had stopped. It may have been the cause of his lack of inspiration. He did not tell his therapist.

"Try doing one thing different everyday," said the deep voice across from him.

"Like what?"

His doctor considered, looking up at the ceiling as he made a soft noise in his throat, "like walk home on a different path one day or... go to a different cafe or maybe just even order a different drink. Just one thing. It might help with the inspiration." The therapist smiled encouragingly.

It sounded so silly. Fred was disapointed slightly but it didn't stop him from trying it. The next day he woke up, and followed his old routine until he went out for his coffee. Instead of his usual place, he went across the road. He didn't order something different though.

The coffee tasted about the same but this cafe was definitely different. The tables were lower, the couches and chairs more worn yet the whole place had a homey atmosphere. Fred rather liked it but he still felt anxiety. Until he saw her.

She was sitting at the window, the sunlight illuminating half her face. She had light brown hair, glinting gold slightly, pale skin with a hint of freckles and brown eyes. She was wearing a modest sweater and baggy jeans. Her shoes were almost too sensible. Everything about her was so clean and neat. Her hair was in a neat ponytail. Her table was perfectly clean, everything on it perpendicular to each other.She was sitting ramrod straight, eating what looked like breakfast with a cup of tea. Her movements were precise and careful, each seemingly planned out and done with perfect execution.

Fred was enchanted. It wasn't that she was particularly pretty but she glowed with the mystery of everything unknown that Fred needed to know. Fred pulled out his sketchbook and began to sketch. The way the light was falling on her at this moment was perfect. She had to be drawn. The girl didn't seem to notice. She only looked out the window, her face just slightly melancholy. He was so engrossed in shading and perfecting his drawing that after awhile when he looked up, she was gone.

 ***

Amelia was not having a good day. Her anxieties were worsening with with them her moods. Her meds had been adjusted already but they didn't seem to have helped. If anything she felt so much worse. She could hardly concentrate with her eyes alighting on everything that was messy and dirty. The need to adjust and clean and the fear when she couldn't was becoming overwhelming.

She went to her outpatient clinic to see her Psychiatrist. He suggested she wait, the meds sometimes took longer to take effect.

Amelia left feeling worse but she had to soldier on. The trip itself had been hard, she had to follow a routine. The next day, to make up for it, she was extra vigilant to stick to her comfortable ways. Wake up and brush teeth the exact number of times. Turn the light switches exact number of times. Wash her hands afterwards, the exact number of wringing. Go to her favourite cafe and order the same meal. Scrambled eggs, bacon and toast with no butter and a cup of tea with no lemon or sugar. She liked lemon, but it was impossible to find two slices there were the same size and it had been easier to give it up.

She sat at her table, made sure everything was neat, clean and perfectly perpendicular and tried to just enjoy her meal.

***

Fred didn't forget the girl. He went to the cafe the next day and the day after. She was always there. He tried to be subtle but he had to draw her. He worked fast and was able to do several sketches. He started to sit at different tables to get different angles. He worked manicly with silent enthusiasm, loving the way his hands could not stop, the way he could not stop. As if creativity had taken over and his body was just a vessel.

When he got home, he still couldn't stop. He would paint. His work until now had been pretty plain, he used to just do stills of life, like pictures but the mystery of the girl who's name he didn't know was haunting and he painted what he tried to imagine she might be like. What might be her thoughts, her feelings. He created worlds in minutae in the backgrounds, used colours to create her voice. His sketches were his basis, but on canvas, he brought her to life.

Fred painted and painted, stopping only to sleep and eat and occasionally go out to buy more materials. He used the last of his savings to buy bigger canvases and continued to paint and create. He had no idea how much time had passed but when his creativity finally waned, his energy almost spent he had created an entire series of paintings all around this one girl.

The next step was to call some galleries, try and get them shown. It wasn't easy. He had been almost forgotten but his work had to be shown and through sheer obstinacy and possibly the obsessive enthusiasm in his voice won them over. A gallery would show his work.

***
Amelia was feeling as if everything was conspiring against her. It was not just her OCD, she was at a point in her life where she was really truly beginning to consider her future and finding it so terribly bleak. It stretched out before her as an endless parade of hours in the toilet washing her hands. Hours organzing items, hours spent catagorizing, and adjusting and checking. Hours spent on things she herself knew was just a waste of time. Hours that could have been spent living life was instead spent trying to scratch that itch in her mind. That urge that promised that if she failed, only the most horrible of horrors would occur.

Amelia kept going to the cafe only this time she noticed that there was a new regular. A thin wiry sort of man with tussled blond hair. His hands were usually clean, but he often had specks of paint on his arms and on his shirt which was always worn and old. He was not her type. She had to have neat in her life, and this man did not seem neat, but her eyes would frequently wander over and while part of her brain catagorized all the things that she wanted to fix, the other part sighed at his pretty hair, his long artful fingers and most of all, the earnest almost yearning look in his eyes.

He was always working on some notepad of his. Perhaps he was a student or something. She didn't know and didn't have the courage to find out, but she did know that he frequently looked up at her. Each time, she was careful to avert her eyes as if she didn't notice. She was so afraid he might come to talk to her. She wished so much that he might one day.

That thought kept her awake. She imagined what it would be like. The smiles, the easy conversations. She imagined them on a date, talking together, walking in the park. She imagined holding hands with him. Then she imagined the shudder she would betray looking at his scuffy shoes. Worse she imagined him watching her washing her hands obsessively, his face not showing eagerness anymore but disgust.

It always ended awfully, but she couldn't stop thinking about him. It started a dream then became a nightmare. Oh how she wished she was different. That she was normal.

***
Fred's gallery opening was imminent. It was making him nervous and he rushed back to the outpatient clinic to see his Psychiatrist. They talked about his artwork and his inspiration. Fred talked about his muse.

"Perhaps you should talk to her," suggested his psychiatrist. "Perhaps even invite her to the gallery."

The idea was so fantastic and so awful at the same time, it stuck. It didn't help that as Fred left his psychiatrists office and walked out the door, a figure passed him. Hunched over, staring at the ground, careful to avoid the cracks on the sidewalk. Fred almost missed who it was. It was the girl. He was so excited he almost stopped her there to talk to her, but the moment passed and he watched as she turned into the outpatient Mental health clinic.

Fred wanted to wait for her, perhaps even follow her, but people did not like to be bothered when about to meet their psychiatrists. He understood that.

Fred thought about talking to her, telling her about his art, inviting her to his gallery. What if she hated it? Some people might have felt it invasive to be the subject of an entire series of artwork without having been asked previously. Fred was worried but he hadn't thought about it. He had just followed his creative impulse.

At least talk to her. At least... introduce himself.

The next day at the cafe, he watched her come in, sit at the same table and order the same food. He stood to walk over and just at that moment, she looked up and glanced at him. The look on her face was not curiousity or eagerness. It was fear. Fred turned his tracks and walked out instead.

Fear? Because of him? Or something else? He couldn't know really. Only that it had spread to him. He went home and chastised himself instead.

The gallery was that evening and was a raging success. Everybody loved his work. He suddenly found himself being pursued for interviews. His work was photographed, to be published in a well - known art magazine. It gave him courage. He could not be enjoying such success without giving appropriate due to his muse. At the very least she had to know.

He went back to the cafe.

She did not come that day or the next or the next. This was strange. He went to his psychiatrist and tried to ask about her.

The psychiatrist listened carefully and looked sad. For a long time he was silent. Then, "Normally i have something called confidentiality. You understand that right? I could never talk about one of my patients to you."

"But I know she's a patient.. right?"

"There are two other doctors working here," sigh, "I think maybe you might want to know. Her name was Amelia."

"Amelia," Fred sang the name in his head then stopped. "Wait, was?"

"She had OCD and depression. She's been struggling with her anxieties and moods for years. It became too much for her. She had no close family, no close friends. She committed suicide just a few days ago." His Psychiatrist was tense and unhappy. So very different from what Fred was used to seeing. Fred hardly registered the words.

"She had noticed you... said she had seen you here and at the cafe. Said that you had given her a dream that was so lovely that reality became too terrible to bear because she knew that the dream could never come true."

Fred sat in utter stillness and did not move for a very long time.