Guest post by AFK, the beautiful, scary-smart rock in my life.
My grandmother’s old house was my
childhood haven. It had everything a child with a wild imagination could ask
for; a garden with easy to climb trees, French windows that opened onto a
backyard which had the same forbidden feel to it like a sultan’s harem, a
locked up attic which I was told housed a lost soul (Nani told me that they
were people who had died, but did not know it so they just kept on living like
nothing happened), a big store room full of old family furniture; but the thing
that fascinated me the most was this gorgeous silver antique jewelry box. One
of those musical jewel boxes with a ballerina dancing in the centre. There was
a wilted tree pattern along the edges and a dark blue emerald stone set on the
lid. The key was a rustic silver color with an alloy blade and a tiny scepter
for the bow. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on.
The jewelry box with its haunting
music and the ballerina with her sad eyes would leave me enthralled for hours.
I envied her. I envied her for this beautiful cocoon she lived in. I wanted to
be her. I wanted to lie in the soft, blue velvet cushioning inside and have
someone shut the lid. But as I grew older, it became an object of revulsion. I
felt nothing but pity for the ballerina I had once desired to be. The
realization that the box was nothing, but an illusion; she was doomed to exist
forever in this prison; albeit an aureate one, but a prison nonetheless. She
could never be more than what the maker had intended her to be, she would know
no other color except the blue and silver of her world. She would know no other
music except what she danced to and what was worse, she would dance forever to
someone else’s tune. I wanted to take her, smash her against the ground and end
her misery. I think my grandmother saw how agitated it made me; I went to her
place one day and she had had it locked away. I haven’t seen it since.
But this afternoon, I dreamed
about it. It was around dusk, I was sitting alone in her lounge near the French
windows, staring at the ballerina swaying. There was no music, but she was
still dancing. And all those feelings I had years ago, the pity, the rage, the
need to free her from her mindless existence, came crashing back.
I sighed. “I feel sorry for you.”
And then, it happened. She
finally stopped spinning and stared back at me. The look in her eyes sent a
cold chill down my spine and made me feel sick. She was staring back at me with
the same sympathetic look I used to give her.
“We are all dancing to someone else’s tune”
I picked her up and threw her on
the floor, the fragments of glass a reflection of my own shattered reality.
AFK's own blog: http://breeblues.blogspot.com/
