Enjoy!
кто хотел, дождался! ^^
I will paint you forever.
Others think that it should feel so strange that I stay in the same room alone every day. But I won't tell them that I'm never alone. You are always with me my dear muse, my Gala.
It was the middle of the day or maybe still morning, it is so difficult to say sometimes when you don't have a clock and don't even go outside of the room. In any case, the sun was up and the sky looked too blue for my understanding. Even though I have no need to go outside I still like every once in a while to ask to open the window and spend some time just breathing the familiar from before birth Figueres' air. Catalonia gave me you. I can feel our first meeting in every wind and it makes me jealous – everyone breathes in my memories and God knows who can read them as my very secret diary! I'm afraid that they will steal them – my precious memories and I won't be able to take them back. That’s why I do it less often now when I see that I started to forget.
I turned away from the window and moved to the opposite part of the room. I wasn't in the mood to see anyone - even to ask to close the window. I was struck with an overwhelming sense of fear. I needed to make sure that I still remember, so I reached to the bureau and opened the middle cabinet. Inside of it there were a lot of random small things, so it took me some time to find what my mind was looking for. I don't always know what it wants but got used to obediently following it. My hands were shaking unwillingly, not only because of having Parkinson disease but also due to the sudden excitement. I always have too many thoughts in my head and got excited so easily. What a powerful ability of the brain. At last, I felt in my fingers a small plump envelope and pulled it out of the cabinet.
“Here it is. Oh, the shaking fingers, how distracting they are. But it will be over. Soon. Soon,” I mumbled as I opened the envelope with difficulty, and the colorful pictures with the small pieces of paper fell on the floor. With a great sigh I bent in my wheelchair to pick them up. Why did it become so difficult? As if everything doesn't want to help me. Oh, here we are.
And I put all the collected pictures and notes on my lap.
“I knew you are here”, I said looking at one of the pictures. From it, the young beautiful woman was gently smiling at her thoughts with her eyes closed. On the back of the photo written in small italics was the title “Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder, 1933.” I confess, I looked at it for a while, moving my eyes from the woman's closed eyes to her lips, to the chops and then to a little boy hidden behind the well in the middle ground. I smiled.
The Beauty, the beauty how it is, aren't you, Gala? I remember I learned later why I painted you like this. I've decided to eat the chops instead of eating you. They were as the purgatorial victims or no, no-no, a necessary sacrifice.
“And I was there,” I said out loud pointing on the boy figure on the picture.
I couldn't leave you even then. I always wondered how we fit together on this 7x9cm panel. Here we are so close as maybe nobody would be in their lives. All of the sudden I squeezed the photo and it bruised in my fingers. I was ready to get upset, so I let it go and the picture, with a quite rustle, fell to the floor. My eyes followed its movement bringing me back to the past. I closed my eyes, letting the sudden flow of memories in my mind.
I thought about you, Gala: the first time I saw your smile, which gave me the inspiration for the many years ahead, and about a long way we went together hand in hand. However, not literally - I have always preferred platonic relationships with you or everybody else. Since I've met you, you've been a divine spirit, a daughter of God, a great muse of all my life.
I sighed very loudly and opened my eyes, interrupting my thoughts. I am not sure if I fell asleep or have been daydreaming all along but that sudden loud noise definitely woke me up, returning me to reality. Although I can't say for sure what reality is - the wheelchair and the shaking fingers or the time when we had drinks in Paris and London? I decided to leave this question for later and randomly picked another picture from my knees, not even looking at them all, and brought it closer to my eyes. I turned the photo and read the title, “Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, 1940”. Yes, I remember that time. I painted it just after we moved to the States during the War. Do you remember it, Gala? It was such a wonderful time. At very least it is something to remember. Not as good as you, but better than most memories.
I turned picture again and started examining it carefully. I can't say when the last time I looked at my own works - even though I am a terrible Narcissus I never found it useful to do. I never knew and even now don't know how many works I have painted and how many we have sold and if we sold any at all. I've always been sloppy about these small unnecessary details of life so I left them all to you, my Gala. You masterly managed everything around me. I always wondered how.
The photo of the painting depicted a desert, the mountains, and the ruins of some kind of a building where the slave market is taking place. There is a group of people symbolizing the market - three Dutch merchants, few free man and the slaves, some of which are begging for help. In the foreground there is a woman, sitting at the table covered in red heavy fabric. She watches the others from the left side of the picture. No one can see your face but I know that it is you, my dear muse. You are resting and looking at the slavery madness. I never could imbue the idea of that kind of markets that’s why I painted it in earthly tones - I never sympathized with them. I also remember the feeling of fear and insecurity when I was painting it right after moving to America. The far off land with a different way of doing things always scared me as much as all the changes. It was so far from the good-known Catalonia but you were there with me and I knew I was safe.
“Even here,” I thought squeezing the photo harder “You were protecting me”.
I looked at the picture and laughed happily. I never could stay indifferent to the great people like Voltaire for example. I could read his works for hours and on this painting I decided to include him being under the great impression of his thoughts that time.
"If a viewer knows me and Voltaire he would easily find him in the picture," I thought. Then I sighed and shook my head in disappointment. "Perhaps not everyone can be gifted enough to see it - he is right there in the folds of the Dutch merchants. Their heads are his eyes and the hole of the structure above them is the skull". I laughed again. The small things such as fooling people's eyes always made me excited.
Suddenly, outside of the window I heard a police siren and turned my head in the direction of the sound. Surely, I didn't see what had been happening outside but it, for some reason, reminded me of another period of my life. I started looking through the pictures in my lap searching for one in particular. The one with a boundless sky and water, where a beautiful woman with a child are framed with floating stones above a pedestal along with other small things around such as the seashells, an egg, a fish, a piece of bread, a rhinoceros, flowers, a basket, and angels: "The Madonna of Port Lligat". I found it and looked at it, and shook inside from the memories it brought back. It was filled with many events from my life in every little detail. I remember how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima deeply shocked me and after it many of my works started to include the nuclear element and the structures. This was only the first one of that series.
I brought the picture closer to my eyes and looked at your face. My dear Gala looked calm and concentrated. In her chest there is a rectangular hole and the young Jesus in her lap has the same hole with a piece of bread in the middle. The calmness and peace from only one look at you, Gala, makes me believe again. That time, after the bombing I thought as if all the hope in the world died, and there was no place for God anymore. But then I saw you next to me and at the same time I placed all my faith in you, Gala.
I carefully put the picture away and started to look through the rest of them. Sometimes I stopped for a second or two, and sometimes I examined them bringing close to the sand-blind eyes. Some of them made me frown but some caused a wide smile, usually those were the ones where I painted you, my muse.
I don't know how much time passed but I found myself looking into the void thinking of nothing and everything at the same time.
“One thing I don't understand is why something changed, Gala?” I said out loud looking at the painting in the corner of the room. A small painting with a bluish-gray background, several black lines and two red lines sat there. I called it "The swallow's Tail". Every time I look at it I feel disappointed and empty because I can see that I lost all my ability to create. Creating was my life, as much as you are, my Gala. However, I stopped painting you. Perhaps only Thom is the one to blame for it. I was so impressed by his theory. Clearly, it is the most beautiful aesthetic theory in the whole world. He is a great man, Thom, you know.
I have always wanted to be great – a cook or Napoleon, but never a good painter. I think I was always too intelligent for it. And also I knew that at the very day I would have drawn a picture as good as Velazquez, Vermeer or Raphael I would die. And I didn't want it to happen, so I preferred to live longer even as a worse artist. However... sometimes I am not sure that it was the best idea because I could never paint you as great as you were, Gala. But you know that I did my best even though it doesn't excuse me for wanting to be close to you more than I wanted to become great.
You made me who I am, Gala, you have always understood me, without you I would always have been nothing and all these paintings of mine would be just pieces of canvas with no idea and no reason. You are my inspiration, my greatest desire, and the very best friend everyone can only dream of. You are my life and the true happiness which I didn't deserve, but was gifted to get.
I got sentimental and felt the tears running down my face. I tried to take a handkerchief from the pocket but my fingers were shaking too much that I couldn't do it. I didn't want to see myself so miserable and weak without you around, so I closed my eyes and tried to block all the senses so I would not hear the quite howling coming from my mouth, feel the hot tears on my skin, and feel this shaking body of mine as well.
"This is it. This is the right moment when you'll come and save me from myself, Gala. How you always do. You will come and put your hands on my shoulders, and say something quietly, what I won't understand, but the vibration of your voice will calm me down and I will be able to breathe again. The air around you will warm me and I'll stop shaking. Your words will dry my tears, and with the every second I'll feel more and more alive. Your inspiration will fill me from the inside to the brim and I'll open my eyes as a new person. I'll be full of you and the ideas. I will be painting again. Something important, something desired. As soon as you come. And I will wait. Just a little longer".
Epilogue.
Everything mixed in the mind of the poor artist - the past love and today reality. The past - the youth and middle age appeared as clear as before, but the events of the recent years after Gala left him were blurred in his memory. The divisions of what really was and what could have been melted like that clock - the most famous painting of a poor mad artist.
Work Cited
“Arena” Salvador Dali. Dir. Adam Low. “Arena” series. 1986. DVD.
Artists of the 20th century. Salvador Dali. Documentary. Kultur Video, 2004. DVD.
Dali, Salvador. The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. Dover Publications, 1993. Print.
"Dali’s Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire". 18 Sept. 2008. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.
MoodBook. MoodBook Development, 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
Néret, Gilles. Salvador Dali, 1904-1989. Koln: Benedikt Taschen, 2000. Print.
Ross, Michael Elsohn. Salvador Dalí and the surrealists: their lives and ideas : 21 activities. Chicago Review Press, 2003. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.
The Madonna of Port Lligat 1950. Fukuoka Art Museum. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
Жизнь и творчество Сальвадора Дали. 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. . (Life and works of Salvador Dali. 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.)
Сальвадор Дали: XX век глазами гения. Жизнь и творчество Сальвадора Дали. 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. . (Salvador Dali: XX century from the genius perspective. Life and works of Salvador Dali. 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. )