Addicus made his way down the two flights of stairs to the street. Each squeaked with an uncomfortable groan. Addicus didn’t mind the stairs. He could hear those who where coming and going and it added character to his place. As he stepped outside, the warm rays of the sun hit him instantly. The clouds, previously overhead, had vanished, evaporated from the heat. It was turning out to become an agreeable day for a morning stroll. Addicus paused and took a deep breath of air and started on his walk.
There is a park called Immortal Stone a few blocks away where Addicus goes to brood on his thoughts. This park is located the park on Stone Way Dr. The park was created before Addicus was born. The founder was a man by the name of Oscar Mandel. Oscar Mandel became very fond of art. He was a widowed man whose spouse, Marian, had died of a brain tumor. She was an art teacher at the local school and she had always been fond of collecting art; a borderline hoarder. Oscar would scowl at times when she would bring some random piece home from school or the local art fairs in town. In response she had always told her husband,
“Art is a time capsule. It preserves the human experience. Art my dear, tells a unique story. One that we can look back on and wonder what was happening to inspire that work or art can even inspire us or heal us in difficult times.”
He would grumble back, “Art is a time capsule, but our house is the capsule!” We are going to need a bigger place if you keep bringing this stuff home.” In response she would tell him she would sell some of it eventually, but the day came when she was diagnosed with the brain tumor. The tumor took over her brain fast. She passed away about three months after her diagnosis. After that Oscar continued her legacy of the love of art and created this place; Immortal Stone. He used most of their life savings to create the park. He placed local artists work throughout the park, each piece having a unique story to tell.
Addicus came to the park quite often not only because of its convenient location, but for a more deeper reason than that. It was because of the artwork scattered about it, the people he watched discretely wandering through the labyrinth of pathways through the park. It was the help of these individuals that helped to inspire his work. Everyone has a story only they can tell. Addicus entertains himself by imagining what their stories could tell, but only God knows each page of man’s story.
Addicus was enjoying his morning walk. His headache started to dissipate and he could clearly think again. The main thought in question was what he wanted to write about. This was always the most difficult time for Addicus, starting from scratch to create new characters, a new plot, a new ending. He called it his time of axonal injury; his writing coma. His mind was occluded to any ideas; he needed some divine inspiration, a revelation. Some transient thoughts flowed from the deep matter of his brain, but was unsure of what he wanted to bring to fruition. Thus, the reason he was headed to his secret place in Immortal Stone.
Addicus took in his surroundings. There was slight breeze this morning. The movement past his skin was keeping his body cool in the warming sun. He could feel the air brush past the hair on his arms as each nerve ending related the feeling to his brain. With each step the gravel under his feet crunched and rattled. The grass waved at Addicus as he walked passed, occasionally trying to reach out and touch him, enslaved by the wind, obeying its every command. As he made his way down the pathway Addicus came to the first statue. It was a depiction of a women splitting in three directions. At first one would think she was a three headed monster standing in your path, but as you looked closer to this grotesque piece of art, you would find one looking at a women’s life. Starting from the left you see an innocent childlike head. The expressions of her face were that of a newborn; eyes squinted shut, mouth open in an unending scream welcoming her to this earthly world, not that of the womb. Her body was smaller in comparison with the rest of the statue. As Addicus continued to observe this piece of art he came to the middle women. This women was the most beautiful piece of the statue. Her hair flowing over her shoulders, smooth and sleek, seeming to fall perfectly as nature had intended it to do, her physical appearance matured from the latter. Addicus stared into her frozen lifeless eyes and saw what the sculptor had intended to portray. It was the beauty of a women in her prime. The physical, emotional, and even spiritual aspects of the women poured out of the stone like it had life moments before Addicus had arrived. Then the last part of this sculpture brought out the damage that Time can do to the human body. Years of Time’s wear and tear on us as it does the rocks on the bottom of a stream, or the canyons in which wild waters flow. The decay of physical beauty had taken their turn on the last portion of the women sculpture. Her hair now short and ragged, not flowing smoothly as it had just previously done. The skin on her face now scared with age, was weak, having lost its elastic rigidity. The wrinkles and droopy eye lids and other effects of time contorted her facial features and physical beauty. It even seemed to Addicus that her color was off, almost paler than before. In her old age the sculptor gave her a sense of finality. One that acknowledged that she was content with the life she lived, before and even now, at her end. She had accepted her next stage of life which would be the inevitable death we all will face one day. Addicus stared at her eyes wondering what he would see in them. It was the look of wisdom. A wisdom that one only receives after fighting Time itself in this world.
Addicus was always impressed with the creativity artists bring to the world. They grasp the reality of life and freeze it into the reality of their art. He would enjoy that gift, but that was not his. His gift was to that of pen and paper, not of molding clay. He continued on the pathway and as he was walking a squirrel was wondering aimlessly in front of him on the grass. Frantically trying to remember where he buried his last nut; having no success.
The next statue that he came upon was much less complex than the three headed women. It was of a dog. A simple looking dog much resembling a golden retriever. His tongue hanging loosely out of his mouth. A dog-like grin with of course a tennis ball at this side. Addicus felt the dog was looking directly at him, waiting for him to pick up the ball and heave it out across the green field for him to chase. Addicus looked back up from the frozen dog and noticed the squirrel had found his nut, but was now being attacked by his squirrel friend to fight for the long lost golden nugget.
Addicus made his way further down the path and finally arriving to one of his favorite places to reflect and write the ideas in his head. It was a simple bench. The bench was surrounded by a wooden lattice fence. It was in a circular shape and it changed with the times of the season. Spring brought out the vines that would race to the top, growing, growing, growing and eventually creating a wall that would shade him from the beating sun overhead. In the fall the leaves would turn a crimson bronze and eventually fall from their threshold back to the earth and blow away in the breeze. It was here that Addicus enjoyed to think, to ponder his thoughts. It was where he let his mind run wild with ideas and thoughts. Addicus took out his gel tipped pen and his trusty notepad and began to write. He wrote down what he was feeling, what thoughts jumped into his mind. As the sun overhead moved across the sky, Addicus Moore was starting to form an idea in his mind that would eventually make it to the screen on his computer back at his loft. It is to be hoped that that one day the dead symbols on his paper become a reality on the stage.
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