Meditations On Matilda : Chapter 1.
The first chapter of a fictional work I started writing in 2010.
Chapter 1. 'Dali & Digressions'
Dali was a charismatic young gun. He had deep brown eyes with pinpricks of hazel, and a gaze verging on hypnosis. Although soft-spoken, he held a mild arrogance. I was intrigued and frustrated by Dali the moment I met him. He irritated me and fascinated me at the same time, like Charlie Chaplin in the silent films. Dali liked to paint, his father was an artist and named him after the great Salvador, so he appropriately had followed in the noble footsteps, and become very fond of inks and oils. His life revolved around patterns and palettes, a day with Dali would open your eyes to new dimensions of detail, sometimes I could hardly keep up. He would commentate a walk by the river, outlining the saturation in the sunsets for me and intricate variations in tones from one tree to the next. I loved to see the world through his eyes. My own perception was filtered through words and grammatical nuances, although I'd grown fond of my fruitful mind, it could become awfully claustrophobic. There was something so tranquil about Dalis' outlook. So calm and controlled, as if the world around him were simply a vehicle for communicating the deepest and most profound truths. Nature was just a series of sketches, he said, to aid the explanation of life. Like a painting, the brush strokes in the sky could carry all the wisdom of the world.
I met Dali almost 4 years ago, at a friends' birthday gathering. Leslie knew Dali from school and she had spoken to me about him many times before. I remember my idea of Dali from her whimsical descriptions. It had been hard to muster as she never spoke of his physical appearance; Leslie strongly believed in judging a person by their inner qualities before creating an idea of their outward shell. She said the lustful tendencies, although important in creating a chemistry were actually the least permanent, and the love of a man’s soul first, would provoke a lengthier and more stable sexual attraction. I saw the fruits of Leslie’s theory, she had vowed to never sleep with a man unless she was married to him, and as a result had acquired many deep friendships with the opposite sex. She truly had the ability to engage with a kind of purity I could not, away from the harsh shadows cast by sexual impulse which often cloud the clarity of a first conversation. Where my eyes slowly dropped to the outline of a man’s torso, hers would search longingly into the character of a stranger, noting their wisdom or kind spirit before anything else.
Despite Leslies' advice to veer from fantasizing the physical, I had envisioned a strong, dusty blonde with pastel green eyes and a humble face. I had seen his artwork and thought I had Dali worked out from his boisterous approach to texture and shading, but it turns out this artist rarely left remnants of himself in the paintings. In fact Dali’s art encaptured a world he lay far outside of. A world he only delved into in his quieter moments. For the most part, Dali was the life of the party. He spoke with an air of authority and a bulk of dancing hair would engulf his face whenever he turned too fast, causing it to fall heavily across his forehead. But despite his childish confidence, Dali had an inner room, it was not often he allowed it to be lit but I surely saw inside. I am not sure why it was I who saw him in the way I did but perhaps I recognized something of myself in him. A romance for hiding behind art. I knew it all too well. To the wobbly half-liqoured women, he was a charming and carefree character, a serenade seeping from every cinnamon word he spoke, but I couldn't buy it. I felt a depth to Dali that he himself seemed reluctant to share. Why do we strive to appear so at peace, when we all know what weakness lies at the core of every man? I wanted to break him. Every single part, until the corpse lay exposed, glistening in the sunshine. I wanted to know what really lay beneath, no matter the cost.
Dali was 24 when we met. We spent two summers of absolute bliss, he was the first man to capture my heart wholly, I was victim to him in every way, I knew it too. So it came as little surprise when Dali began to turn cold towards me through the winter of 2004. I was at the whim of his desires, like a reed in the wind, subject to all kinds of storms and temperaments. I think they call this boredom, no longer seeing what you once saw and feeling the need to detach from life's comforts so to see the world through another lens. To see if the sun is brighter or perhaps less harsh without that person as a compass and accessory to every snapshot of life.
And so it went, Dali left me. He was accepted to study in London at one of the most prestigious art schools, under the teaching of his Fathers contemporary, Professor Howard Burling, an opportunity unmissable. But looking back, he would tell you, that I was the opportunity he risked missing. It was not that Dali left, for I would have always encouraged him to pursue his studies. It was the way in which he left without warning, and without contact. Cutting the rope quickly is always preferable I suppose, to unravelling it thread by thread. But all I had come to know of love and loyalty was thrown into the fire and returned sorely wounded and burnt. To reflect on this cold loveless winter seems like a flashback to some ancient world war, I was present, a cook or infirmary perhaps, but I wasn't really there. I don't remember the blood, the gunshots, just the tight feeling in my stomach, the anticipation of night approaching and the fear of being alone with nothing to mediate the conflicting thoughts and memories of intimacy beneath the sheets. It seems so long ago now, but an imperative part of the story I suppose.
I moved on, even began to see a new man who turned out to be awfully clingy (perhaps a mirage of the woman I had become around Dali, and a clue to why I now loathe this attribute in others it seems) whilst Dali struggled on through art school with an aching regret of his decision to shut me out. I quickly received the news that Dali had taken up with someone else within the same week of dropping his bomb on me, it wasn't pleasant, nor easily forgivable but, to avoid lengthy digressions, let me cut the story short. Dali came back. After months of hard work trying to soften the barricade that had been built up, I melded. He brought me into his inner room which I so longed to explore, and perhaps the place Leslie wished I had paid more attention to rather than his oh so wonderfully arranged exterior. He was a sight for sore eyes, as my mother would have said, and I won't deny this had slowly lessened my desire to seek out his deeper tendencies when I had become so used to the comfortable cycles of our passionate and often anti-social, whirlwind romance.
As the winter gave way to a new season, the space where Dali so easily sat in my life grew ever more yearning and despite my attempts to shut him out completely, he had found his way back in, like he himself were painting a new love story for us on the exposed parts of my limbs. I'd left very few exposed that's for sure, but in this new sketch of himself, I saw beauty permeate into the forefront of his character, while the darker side, the fear of commitment, the reluctance towards transparency and our endless other battles began to dissipate, replaced with a sense of loyalty. And on my return, came a stronger character, no longer reliant on the fleeting nature of childish feelings.
The tables had turned it seemed. I was now the one gravitating towards solitude and a sense of independence. But with spring approaching, we had come closer than ever and there came a point where I could no longer fight the urge to re-write our broken love story. We decided to try our luck at mending the puzzle pieces, all jagged and almost unable to fit together again. With time, we found our place, we could start to make out shapes in the moving tectonic plates of our familiar bodies. The puzzle was starting to make sense again. Where we'd been secretly both looking for ways out, we now delighted at thought of stability in each other. We were like lost ships at sea, each with our own compasses seemingly leading further and further away, then somehow washed ashore on the same beach, seasick and mildly injured. The swaying seas had sent us into a dizzy ecstasy of infatuation all over again. I loved Dali, I did.
Till next time,
woah
And then…