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Dancing With The Angels
“Is this my cause? Should I have a cause in life or can I just paint because I want to paint?” he thought staring at the unfinished portrait. An old woman with noticeable wrinkles on her face was bending down to pick up a piece of bread.
He decided to change the bread into something smaller but less valuable, a coin maybe.
“This stirred the French Revolution,” he thought. “I need something to stir the heart. Perhaps a drop of rain! A pill maybe,” he tittered as the alarm went off reminding him that it was time to take one of his anti-cancer pills.
“I’m ordained dead, perhaps I should act dead. This is the cause, or is it the result?”
He poured a glass of wine, sipped it slowly and lit a cigarette. He watched the smoke spiral in white circles, took a deep breath and puffed the smoke. The first puff caused a bout of coughing.
He stood in front of the mirror and watched his sallow face; wrinkles were beginning to form. He was too young to have wrinkles; he was too young to die.
He picked up the brush and changed the painting again; he drew a match. The old woman lit the match. He watched the smoke spiral in circles and engulf the room. The smoke caused a bout of coughing until he couldn’t breathe. Bread, rain, smoke and fire!
The flames danced around the room in circles. The colors looked enchanting and he dropped the brush; they were the colors of revolution, the colors of life.
The flames looked like Angels dancing to a divine tune.
“This is a beautiful painting,” he thought.
Nevertheless, was it really a painting?
The smoke overwhelmed him and he fell to his knees gasping. There he saw his pills lying on the floor. Pills and Fire!
The angels were still dancing closer, beckoning him to join this celestial Waltz. He reached out to touch the dancing flames; the flames licked his hands. The brush felt hot, the old woman faded away and the painting started glowing with colors, so beautiful and radiant like the French Revolution, like the colors of life and the colors of death.
“I’m too young to die,” he screamed.
“I’m too tired to live,” answered the old woman and reached out to dance with the angels.
These timeless quotations culled from the celebrated corpus of writings by W.E.B. Du Bois are presented with illuminating introductory essays by Aberjhani. Narration of the Audible book performed by Catherine Byers.
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