When the sunrise melts the blanket of cheese and let the Raclette stream down from bed, the exact lunar chunk of Wensleydale cheese roasted in perfect golden brown, you either know the morning has arrived and reluctantly slide out of bed to cook breakfast (that might or might not include cheese,) or curse a diabolic feline roommate and drag the cheese back to the bed.
Just as peaceful as a morning of every artist would be.
The Statue of Liberty greets the artist by stretching her arm across the sea, over the harbor, and through the woods of cities, close enough to be able to flick him off in a blink. But he can only catch a glimpse of shadowy fingers woven through shades of buildings or flocks of pigeons. When he looks back at her, the very lady in verdigris conceals her face so nobody can observe the emotion she conveys. It is a never-ending, one-sided Red Light, Green Light or hide-and-seek.
The particular heterochromia of a sunny-side up egg and a tomato slice serve as pupils for the empty eyes of the colossus. But maybe it was not significant enough, as he just devoured his breakfast and washed it down with a cup of espresso (the blood of every artist.) Maybe it should have been double-yolk eggs—the polycoria bleeding ketchup and crunchy bacon bone would be more eye-catching.
She can watch him, and while he cannot watch her, he can still see her as he walks down the street of New York, the gatekeeper of the bustling metropolis who greeted him when he landed on the new land, currently going through a renovation.
He has only read a news or two about the renovation and knew not much about the process (something about rusting iron, or so they said,) yet the pride disguised as excitement blinds him with the verdigris-tinted glasses. Every shade between green and blue, from the sky to sea and tree, glows in her shade. He anticipates the Liberty to be renewed and forever shine in her glory, and knowing he will survive another month without starving to death, launches a new project.
Submerged in the bathtub, he exhales the wave that threatens to drown the colossus. However there is nothing that can belittle her, for she bestows the value that can not be numbered with green papers. The colossal hand returns through the open window and turns on the hot water knob to boil him with passion. The artist leaves the tub as one of the many Thanksgiving turkeys that did not turn into edible bombs, ready to stuff itself with crunchy sketches and be drenched in paints of gravy.
Soon it snows crumbled messy sketches and blooms bouquets of paint stains instead of the April shower designated to bring May flowers. His demonic feline distractor pierced through the snowy piles of papers only to leave a coffee-scented trail behind. Both the metallic smell and chemical smell embroidered ruby red firecrackers on pages. He noticed none of these natural phenomena, for he was immersed in building strokes of bridges across the snowy canvas.
He was used to crossing the African savanna to the Amazon rainforest and the Antarctic ocean in a blink. Even when he checked the time only to see the clocks melted like old cheese, he just took out a sharp minute hand to take out a slice (which tasted surprisingly better than expected, yet still not as good as the lunar Wensleydale) and admired The Persistence of Memory. Then he wielded the hand like a sword to cut the sky and let the sun in.
But he has never thought of, not even in his conscious daydream, the metal fingers crawling from the clouds and tearing the sky apart, stretching the full arms with an ominous hum, grabbing the statue, the icon of New York skyline, and
Crushing her.
Screams are the color orange. And yellow. And grey. Their tastes are dust. And ash. And blood. Their smells are metal. And fire. And chemicals. It rained black feathers and snowed white embers, draining the pigments from her verdigris. The metallic skeleton of the Statue of Liberty, the only part that still stands, caught on a fire and swayed in an indescribable emotion. The glorious lamp sunk deep to the bottom of the ocean, for no light, not even the sun, could brighten up the site. The atmosphere hugged the devastated metropolis tightly, as if to protect The Big Apple from everything, or keep the big apple away from everyone, secured in a glass case, so no one would hurt it ever again, not even dare to enter the city, just admiring the exhibition.
The chance of that happening is as low as the World Trade Center collapsing. The core identity of New York, and the entire United States, is meant to be open for all people from the world.
…Right?
He missed the chance to answer that question, as his fiendish feline frenemy knocked the sketch of the New York skyline off from the desk. The scratch marks intricately avoided the buildings, instead creating creases that inauspiciously loomed over the skyline. Without looking at it twice, he taped it on the tiled wall above the sink, pulled out a blank piece of paper and began a new sketch.
At last he created a satisfying sketch: the Statue of Liberty viewed from the New York harbor, the verdigris colossus standing above the azure water, with her glorious torch aligned with the golden sun. No coffee stains or cat paw marks on papers, no paint brushes accidentally dipped on the coffee mug, no uncooperative eraser leaving a tear on the page. When none of these seemingly trivial yet excruciating incidents occurred, his artist instinct reassured him “this is the one.”
He carefully put the sketch in an empty folder and put it in the desk drawer. While he gathered papers and pencils scattered all over the room, the famous colossus herself, who was burning in golden orange as the sun burnt brightest right before sinking into the water, stretched out her torch to illuminate the studio with the crisp autumn air.
And he continued to walk. Walking across the snowy field until his steps became too heavy to move another. Then he ran wild and free over the intersection of subconsciousness and unconsciousness with the danger of slipping to either region. The freefall would push him to wake up in the midst of night to scribble down everything that passed his eyes before slipping back to sleep, given that his devilish feline resident did not knock out the notebook and a pencil from the nightstand (He lost count after 1984.)
Suddenly the snowy field merged into a sea of clouds, and there she stood, the turquoise shepherd gazing over her sheep, the moonstone lighthouse greeting the newcomers from the other side of the world.
Or to be exact, her colossal face was right in front of him. Her tightly closed lips as tall as himself, her turquoise skin as smooth as his. His innate artistic side observed how the particular tints of blue greens and green blues changed in different angles and made a mental note to experiment more with paints to capture the perfect shade of his inspirational muse. Next, he stretched out his arm and used his thumb to make a rough measurement of the verdigris visage—
At that exact moment he was floating in the air, not flying, because he felt no gravity. Only the shade of blue surrounding him, clouds wandering below him like a herd of sheep on a green meadow or waves on a clear sea. It surely was a scene arousing an aesthetic pleasure. When the statue opened her mouth he feared being flown off by her breath. Yet he shook for a different reason when few words left her tongue.
Were those the words he was familiar with? Possibly yes, but possibly not anymore. Even before he learnt to comprehend what they actually meant, the sonnet showed him the lamp beside the golden door and let him embrace its warmth. The moment right before the sunrise is the coldest, not the night, because the air and earth cool down overnight. For that reason the lamp felt warmer than it actually was.
And when the sun rose, the warmth burned into arrows that stung his ears and heart. He clearly saw but did not understand why his parents’ heads hung low as the officers shouted at them, especially when they held his hands tightly as the ship entered the harbor and their eyes were glistening with hope and confidence as they watched the colossus with lamp. They covered his ears away from the sneers with exaggerated accents, but even if they didn’t, he wouldn’t understand what they really meant anyway.
He spoke no single English word—nor that he had learnt any English word at all. The stares are deeply inscribed, no, scarred in his memory; what adjective could describe them if “disgusted” cannot? He was chastised for not speaking English at school and thrived under the teachers’ icy cold stares to comprehend this foreign language and sound not as broken as possible. He essentially learnt English to survive, not just physically, but to live as a decent human being.
When the motive is survival, the growth rate is impressive. His English improved significantly over only a few years—in exchange for his mother tongue. He subtly expected it as he spoke English everywhere, even when his parents could not understand, but was not certain that English sounds would come to wipe off the mother tongue from his mind. In their first year his family communicated with only their native language. A few years later he was only talking in English to his parents. He grew from being ashamed of not knowing the English language to being ashamed of his parents not speaking English well after years of living in the US.
So when the guild took the form of his younger self and knocked on his back, was he supposed to act surprised? Knowing the answer to that question, he did not turn back and tacitly let the small hand push him under the sea of thick clouds. He could breathe but still choked till the darkness blinded him.
And he was on the floor, one leg on the bed and another bent at perfect 60 degrees of an equilateral triangle, and his satanic feline stalker purred on top of his throat, staring at his soul with its piercing amber eyes, judging his surreal subconsciousness.
Maybe he needs more coffee. No, he does need more coffee.
As he stirred coffee and stared at the reflection of his vacant eyes on the swirl of milky white and dark chocolate, he intentionally drowned himself in a sea of thoughts. His body could still breathe to let the oxygen in and out from the lungs and veins, but his brain perceived nothing, frozen in an iceberg of questions he can answer but cannot verify.
Liberty, what is liberty? The idea this nation stands upon? This land of immigrants? But he has seen how immigrants were treated in the land that was supposed to be their new home. The immigrants had to relinquish their non-American identity in shame. Essentially the United States has become the land of immigrants without immigrants. Which leads to even more questions—Does this land allow genuine liberty? Or is it just an “Americanized” version of it that lured people? Almost as if Liberty is valuable to be stored in a glass box and shown off but never to be accessed to the people who are not worthy of it, but simultaneously the ones who need it the most? In that sense, what good can a restricted liberty do? How can you restrict liberty in the first place? Via legal policy or sociocultural trend? Is it possible to physically restrict liberty?
The chill from uncertainty and distant fear of not knowing the definite answers to those nor the future, numbs the body. The frozen body sinks to the abyss of subconsciousness, deeper than the bottom of Mariana Trench. Unlike an iceberg that floats above the horizon, water being a unique substance that is denser and heavier in its liquid matter than solid matter, the mind sunk deep to the point where it could perceive nothing.
Then the heat of blazing desire, burning passion to create reaches out to him, wrapping the body with a warmth that can only be cooler than the first hug from the motherland. Since hot air rises and cold air sinks, he slowly floats back toward the surface in a blink of an eye. As invisible colossal hands scoop him from the blinding abyss, his eyes adapt to the darkness and soon spot a light in the dark. And when the tip of his nose hits the surface and his hands grab the light,
He chugs a glass of icy cold water to chill his heated, almost feverish, daydream. When he unconsciously dunks in one of dirty paintbrushes, the pigments freely dissolve into the solvent, yet the glass prevents them from moving more freely.
Potentially ironically, the idea of restricted liberty released artistic liberty.
He picked up another brush and put it to his temple. When he connected it to his brain, the vision that was only visible in his mind traveled across his intricate nervous system to be visualized. Wielding pencils and brushes like violin bows to sketch down ephemeral ideas, pressing tubes like saxophone pads to squeeze out paints, at this moment he was closer to a musician than a visual artist, performing a genre of painting.
He was not running out of time—the time was running out of him. For the first time in weeks, he was finally winning the race against time. Even if he would not live to see another day again, he would not hesitate to shout at The Death waiting in front of his room, chastising the ignorance of the life that leaves history to judge the art.
Every early morning blue and purple climbs down the stage to make a spot for orange and yellow to shine. Humans decided to call this phenomenon the break of dawn. At dawn the air glows yellow, not just in terms of color—the early morning air is heated up in the energy of yellow. And everything looks new when it shimmers in the gold warmth.
So when a dim light of early morning stroked the canvas, and for the first time in weeks the room glowed in the shade other than faded verdigris, as he slowly woke up from a hazy sleep, he knew his piece was complete.
