Blue Period

A short story
by Cyndie Goins Hoelscher

It's Connie who thinks I've lost my mind, and she constantly reminds me of her diagnosis. Not that she's a qualified counselor, but she maintains the right to certify me since we work together on a daily basis. We are student instructors at the university, teaching remedial classes to students who cannot advance in their higher education goals until they pass a state-mandated, minimum skills test. Connie and I are sojourners, not unlike the ones tapped by Quan Yin, the Bodhisattva in Journey to the West, to serve a higher purpose. We travel the Purple Path in our effort to help others find the path to enlightenment—or at least pass the test at the end of six weeks.

We share an office in room 214. On one gray wall hangs a painted paper opera mask of the rebellious Monkey King. On a whim, I add red streamers on each side of the mask, and they bleed down the wall. It's supposed to look festive, but it looks more like suffering. I decide to keep it because suffering is necessary on the path to enlightenment. Connie has a bright watercolor poster with tulips taped on the opposite wall. The Monkey King scowls at the contemporary wash of rainbow colors, for any enlightened person knows that flowers can shackle you. Here, we plan our strategies and I defend my position that my mind is not lost. It is merely wandering through a wilderness without breadcrumbs.

After grading a paper and counting the mistakes, I compare the numbers with a memo detailing the new uniform grading code. I shake my head. "I can't assign a negative number to this work. There's energy and effort here. That should amount to something."

"Well someday, professor-to-be, you will have to work on what counts and what really should count," Connie says.

"I'm not going to be a professor. I'm going to be an artist."

"What have you been working on?" She's merely being polite. Connie Chavez is not really interested in art, or at least not interested in what I call art. She enjoys sophisticated, classical pieces that make timeless statements rather than my off-the-cuff stuff. But I seize the moment.

I roll my office chair toward the wall, and flip around a canvas depicting symmetrical Siamese cats with blue fur, sleeping on blue carpet, in a midnight blue room.

"It's very blue," Connie says.

"Yeah, I've been in this Blue Period since Charles died," I admit. "When I first envisioned the project, it was going to be black-and-white cats sleeping back to back, floating on a red background. But in the end, it sort of came out . . . well, blue. I had a dream and Picasso told me it's okay."

"He told you that did he?" Connie replies. "I have a class now, but if you don't mind me saying so, you just aren't a blue kind of person, even if you have lost your mind."

As she leaves, I stare at the memo and the essays. "Who came up with this?" The Monkey King would challenge this action and lead a rebellion against the feudal rulers, wreaking havoc in the heavens.

I think of Charles and my heart aches. I haven't lost my mind. I've just lost a close friend. He was a childhood chum and schoolmate. But now that he's gone, I realize he was so much more than that to me.

I jot a poem on a sticky note. 
Butterfly dances . . . 
above my fingertips,
high above.

Ghosts. The ghosts I've encountered do not conform to the normal activities of those who take haunting seriously. They do not skulk around in the night, rattling chains and moaning in pain. They are not skeletons with rickety-rackety bones that hide in my closets. The ghosts I've encountered do not seem to be trying to find their way to another place and do not lament the loss of their life. Monsieur Picasso has graced me with his presence, although I did not summon him. He just showed up one evening while I was painting. I do not understand why he hangs around so much or why I can't summon lost relatives and friends who have left gaping holes in my life.

"Believe me, you can't mess with the heavens," the Monkey King warns me.

"Who asked you?" I irreverently pop a rubber band at the mask.

Later, in a studio in the art department, I choose an assortment of gouache paints. Arranging a palette of red, yellow, purple, green, and blue, I tape up the borders of a watercolor sheet and casually sketch five flying fish. The project is my attempt at painting hope, or freedom, or maybe just remembering the time when I first saw some flying fish. The mythical-looking fish were racing in the frothy wake of our boat during a vacation in the Mexican Caribbean.

The excursion still haunts me. I recall the breathtaking, blue waters appearing young and playful, as if the seas are reborn, instead of dying each day.

I stare at the five flat flying fish on my canvas. Why did I choose five? Is it a random number? There should be significance to the number five—something methodical and meaningful like the verses in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Is there perfection in my five fingers and my five senses? And will perfection manifest itself somehow in my project, so the pilgrims will note it and nod their heads in understanding? Perhaps I should weave the fish in an interlocking pentacle—five flying fish jumping within a five-sided sun? The thought seems too medieval to fly. I plant my brush on the canvas. Perhaps I chose five fish simply because I have a small canvas.

"I could walk the Purple Path as an artist," I muse, squeezing more purple paint on the palette. Closing my eyes, I envision rainbow wings and a burning orange sun lovingly bestowing golden kisses on cool, Caribbean waves. But the Monkey King is hanging from a threatening cloud, trying to trick me into believing that I am the one who has been stuck in a stone for five hundred years.

Several hours later, close to the bewitching hour, the semi-finished project portrays five blue flying fish with blue wings, soaring into a cold, blue sun, suspended eternally in a watery, blue sky.

"What's wrong with this picture?" I sigh in frustration.

"It's okay to have a Blue Period," Picasso whispers in my ear.

"But I dream in color," I protest. "Why does everything come out blue?" I hesitate, waiting for the master to reveal a soul-shattering secret, a key to freeing myself from the overwhelming blueness in my life.

"Perhaps you should sleep more," he suggests.

The next morning, I browse the hot breakfast offerings and pass on everything. Instead, I end up in the cold cereal line. I am mildly surprised that Connie is waiting for me.

"Aren't you missing your cartoons this morning?" I tease.

On a more serious note I add, "Did you finish grading yesterday's diagnostic essays for your classes?"

"Yes, and the scores are miserably low. They were low enough before the new uniform grading code, but now I'm embarrassed to hand the essays back to them." Connie flinches, sipping scalded coffee.

Four sirens claim the table with blue-vinyl chairs next to us. I can tell they are music students because they are singing their entire conversation. One of the sirens has an amazing soprano voice. They are not singing loudly, but the fact that they are communicating in octaves and notes instead of the normal cadence of voices singles their table out. My ear continuously seeks out the enchanting music being created. The sirens must be using a secret musical language; I have difficulty deciphering the conversation. I don't mean to eavesdrop. It's just that it appeals to a rather dusty and unused portion of my brain. More noteworthy is the fact that the creatures are openly defying the integral laws of the songwriting universe. There is no repetition. There is no chorus, only verse after verse of individual stanzas that spontaneously leap like flying fish from one theme-wave to another. It is surprisingly beautiful in its unrestraint.

Connie seems annoyed with the impromptu symphony, "Some people must have a big test today or something. Let's go."

Back in the office, a shadow quickly darts past the threshold of our open office door.

I run to the door and yell down the hall, "Hiram! I need a math tutor!"

He looks reluctantly at the door to the Math Lab. He had almost made it to safety, but now I'm drawing him back into the wilderness area.

"Good morning," he says with a smile. "I'm in a bit of a hurry."

Hiram, a student instructor from Turkey, tutors in math and computer sciences. He vows that the world of equations and logic is far safer than the realm of poetry and art, yet I respect his opinions and observations. He is a man of reason after all.

"We have this new uniform grading memo from the powers-that-be, and we are trying to do the math, but the answers seem so wrong," I explain.

"Everyone should subscribe to a uniform grading system," Hiram says in his clipped English, accenting the last syllable of each sentence. "It establishes order and fairness. The answer is absolute with no misinterpretations."

"So you either get it or you don't. But that can't be applied to the art of expressing oneself."

"Sure it does. Music is a prime example of expressing oneself within the strict confines of mathematical discipline. Without the laws of mathematics, music would not be music."

"But only this morning I heard music which broke every law of the mathematical and musical universe . . . and I liked it."

Hiram looks at me like I've lost my mind. "It wasn't music then."

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" I ask him.

"I'm already grown up," he states matter-of-factly. "I visited the job fair yesterday and a firm out of Massachusetts hired me. I'm will miss graduation ceremonies, but they are paying my moving expenses and I will start out earning a handsome figure."

"Wow, that's amazing," I choke out. "What will you do?"

"I'll design custom software based on the individual needs of corporations whose visions and practices are more specialized than the general over-the-counter software can provide."

I slowly digest all of this, "Wow. That's wonderful. But what if they ask you to write a program for poetry?"

Hiram slowly backs out of the wilderness, heading for the safety and beauty of the Math Lab. "Stick with the uniform grading system. Those are only diagnostic scores. The grades will ascend as they learn."

I yell down the hall as he reaches the doorknob to his sanctuary. "Hiram! I've an art show preview on Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. in the Gallery. I hope you can come!"

He waves and shuts the door.

"Well, back to square one," Connie says.

"Yeah, I guess so. What about you? Do you want to come and hold my hand on Thursday evening?"

"You're going to show the Blue Period paintings?"

"I don't have any others right now. I think I'll wear my blue velvet dress."

"If you wear the blue dress, you will merely fade into your paintings. No one will know the artist actually survived."

"Okay, I'll wear my black one," I say. "Then they will know I survived, just barely."

"Will this be a judged event?"

"Yes, that's the point. I will be graded for composition and use of essential elements. I'm really nervous about it though. What if they don't get it?"

Connie shrugs. "Why do you even do it in the first place? I mean, you paint a picture, but you can't explain what it means because the audience is supposed to get it. But then some judge comes along and says, 'I see this painting, but what you intended for me to see is not what I see; therefore, it isn't.'"

"I think only a person who has lost their mind would say something like that," I answer, not quite sure of myself anymore. Yesterday I was a deity, a rebellious Monkey King who felt one with the universe. Today I suddenly feel I can't hang my canvas in the gallery.

"Why do you display your soul for everyone to judge?"

"I usually don't. But that's what people do. Not just me—everybody."

Picasso whispers in my ear, "Art lies."

"But my art is not a lie," I whisper back.

"No one said that your paintings are lies," Connie says, oblivious to Monsieur Picasso suddenly in our midst.

"Picasso once said that art lies so we can discover the truth for ourselves, or something along those lines."

"So artists lie and poets tell the truth?" Connie asks. "I know you're eager to break the mold, but you have to master the mold before you break it. The more your rebellious Monkey King practiced, the more he understood. And, he only spent five hundred years locked in stone before he was given a chance to walk the Purple Path."

"Am I addressing Connie Chavez or Quan Yin now?" I ask, suddenly wondering if the goddess has decided to join our threesome.

"Well, you would have figured it out yourself if you hadn't already lost your mind."

The three of us walk, side by side, on our way to the art department to hang blue canvasses. Connie's wavy, blue-black hair bounces with confident energy and her eyes shine like the Asian goddess's. Blue flowers blooming on both sides of the sidewalk weave like twin rivers flowing to art heaven. I blink, and the blue flowers turn purple. Monsieur Picasso lags behind to sketch them.

Copyright 2006 by Cyndie Goins Hoelscher