Day 5: Picture

Photo courtesy: Denis Collette...!!!

To paint a picture

You must master yourself;

Anticipate the esteem your personality will fetch ya.

You require a set of principles that will divide bone from flesh.

Every morning as I step across my bedroom’s threshold into the day

I’m quietly, brushing on the canvas of reality an impression:

This is who I am; I’m making an introduction.

I’m etching the memory of me into the memory of existence.

My dream is to steer my course clear of wanton distractions

And turn the vessel in towards harbor thro the itinerary of elegance.

To etch a name on the marble of time

Implies to awaken into joyous daybreak from a long, terrible night.

The first opening of the eyelids is a decision between life and death.

You experience triumph in every intake of breath

Cause you unveiled the purpose of individuality.

To paint a picture

You need much more than a white sheet of paper;

You require an in-depth knowledge of culture.

To paint a picture is to become a shape-shifter.

You must reach beyond who you are and bind with a new nature.

I often sit and around and ponder

How much my life has evolved thro the years,

The tests which have come and made me stronger.

I’m a variety of a man who has curbed his fears.

I haven’t been crippled by what’s happened to me.

But I’ve changed, mutated; I’ve been made better.

Life has not treated me fair but I take everything it deals

In my stride. I gotta keep going one way or the other.

To paint a picture

Take it one day at a time, test the waters, test the texture.

One thing is needful. Fairly run-of-the-mill to be dismissed

As trite. I have grappled with the nature of my destiny;

It’s a delight being myself, I have realized.

And every time I take a step I seek to express the I.

This is all I live for; to achieve, to obtain, to become.

To advertize the person I am as brand,

To promote the content of my character as an item to live for.

Life can be sweet and beautiful and grand.

It’s what I tell myself

And I try to make myself see why I’m in the middle of it.

This is a world I created straight off the shelf

This is sole reason it’s a pleasure to bleed.

To paint a picture

Is to grapple with what men have grappled with for ages;

To come to inevitable outcomes and still find grace to conquer.

You have to make sacrifices and feel your way thro unique stages

Of change as you erase obstacles and erect a standard.

I am who I am because I set my face like flint.

I’ve been feeling so good playing by my own rules

Each morning the sun rises to witness in my eyes a glint;

It’s the miracle that I am; I’ve got nothing else to prove.

To paint a picture

You must define the difference between what is real and what’s unseen.

You must streamline the consequences; align faith with adventure.

Make every stroke of the brush count. Match it with your heartbeat.

Take your time, survey your environment, immerse yourself in your creativity.

You got this one shot, break new grounds like Picasso.

Keep in mind who you are, let it guide your choice of tone

To paint a picture

Is to define your essences and illustrate your existence

As a conscious deliberate, life-altering process,

It signifies to unravel the simple, minuscule precedents

And convert these into the most enchanting, glamorous moments.

This is the picture each individual is committed to create on life’s canvas.

One brush, one painter, one canvas, one landscape. It’s not math,

It’s a spiritual thing; a state of mind, like traveling with a compass.

I paint a picture

With every step I take, I aim for the portals of the future.

If the details of my life were writ in water,

I’ll freeze it up and create carvings like hieroglyphs on the Rosetta.

I am the image of One far exquisite than everything the earth has to offer;

I rep this Entity, my every action denounce His unflawed character.

When I smile I’m saying, “I can take this.”

I feel élan course thro and I know I can handle this.

All God’s creations surrounding me form the background of the painting.

My heart is strong; I’m equipped to write my own story.

Akpan

The Purpose of the Imagination

If I had to paint a picture...

It would be a reality,

‘Cause it’s only what’s inside of my heart.

Billy Ocean,

Color of Love

This, I think, is the second time in my blogging history that I will shoot off a post from lyrics of a song. Each of these times, I’ve had a rare sense of fulfillment lifting words from two of my favorite artists through childhood years. The lyrics have opened a new way  of seeing for me, one that appeals fiercely to the child within, the kid who heard those songs spun from records off the needles of his father’s Turntable long before the dawn of CDs.

Billy’s, for one, is an album I promised myself, in those days when large, black flying saucers called records were the vogue, I’ll add to my personal collection when I got old enough to foot the bills. I think I made the grade. Not with a record though, but a ‘2 CD’ special edition produced by some Shandong Chinese company. That don’t mean it’s a pirated copy as any Nigerian would willingly bear witness.

Now, on what I was saying before I interrupted myself. Billy’s song is a nod to the work of the imagination in fiction writing. Here’s a paraphrase of the last two lines in case I left you out there in the dark, “reality is only what’s inside of my heart”.

There are some genuine curiosities here. Remember the time pictures never lied? Those days are now stowed faraway in the dark and water-clogged basement of history. No thanks to the computer and two thumbs up to you tube. In fiction, it’s still true that pictures don’t lie. Strips of film flickering on the walls of our mind are never false, no matter how weird they may appear. Ever since the first moments I glimpsed the Spanish artist’s biography on Wikipedia, I find it difficult to quit his quotes and thoughts entirely. This one sort of brings the subject home,

Everything you can imagine is real. Pablo Picasso

The Fiction Highway doesn’t take you down Beyond Reasonable Doubt Avenue, yet it gives on The-Truth-The Whole-Shebang-and-Nothing-But-The-Truth Intersection.

I’ve never held much of a brief for reality, at least in my written work. All too often it (reality) is to the imagination what ash stakes are to vampires. Stephen King

Realism smolders the flames of creativity. Common sense cripples our imaginative ability. If it is your dream to thrive in fiction writing, quit playing on reality’s team. To be sane, level-headed, practical and logical as it applies to fiction is suicide. Being realistic is to be short sighted, reality at best is a distraction.

Good writing – good stories – are the imagination’s firing pin, and the purpose of the imagination, I believe, is to offer solace and shelter from situations and life-passages which would otherwise prove unendurable. Stephen King

A universe without walls exists within the boundaries of the individual mind and the key to this excitingly new realm is imagination. That’s the tangent where the river (imagination) leaves Oklahoma (reality) and never looks back, not as much as a passing glance. All the strings of weird thought wired up to create an atmosphere that is way beyond what is generally accepted reality yet not less real and of course, wielding power and influence over the physical.

The minute you sense those weird thoughts rowing downstream on the creeks of your mind, that’s your ticket. Take it. Run! And never look back.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Related articles

• Picasso to Hit The Road

  ---

• 10 Reasons Why Billy Ocean's "Loverboy" Is The Best Music Video Ever Made [Video]
• A Defense of Stephen King, Master of the Decisive Moment
• The Grand Stephen King Experiment: Different Seasons(1982)