Sunkiss
I come from a bilingual family; both my adoptive parents spoke English as well as French and both were proud French-Canadians from the
I’m telling you this so that you understand why my French father --whose name I share since I’m a junior—nicknamed me Sunkiss like the oranges.
I was kid a lot at school because of my name so I learned early in life not to care about such a trivial thing as an unusual or a funny name and I also learned to defend myself as well as protect those around me, who were weaker or more susceptible than me, against bullies who didn’t seem to know when enough was enough, when to call it quits.
Now before I get too carried away let me get to reason for writing about “Sunkiss”.
When I was about seven or eight years old my parents had sent me to a summer camp for a couple of weeks, it was about 150 miles away from where I lived and actually across the border in the state of
I didn’t like the routines of up at six, prayer and shower, breakfast at eight, swimming at ten and__ I think you get the picture. So every day was hell to me, I did what they wanted me to but I hated every minute of it. You’d guess I was a spoiled kid but not really! I started working at eight as a news paper boy and that was easy but the following year had me working with the seniors; I was a painter for a contractor my dad knew. Because I was pretty strong for my age the next I was an apprentice plumber so I don’t think I was ever a spoiled brat, I just had my ways.
Getting back to the story, one morning as I was swimming in the big lake with about twenty other kids who, like me, didn’t need to take swimming lessons; I had already earned my red cross life saver certificate. I knew how to swim quite well but unlike the other kids there I just didn’t enjoy going in the water to swim around like a fish in a bowl so I was rather bored and just stood there waiting for the whistle blow to be allowed to come out of the water.
That’s when I heard the familiar voice calling “Sunkiss, Sunkiss!” I knew it was my dad, I recognized the voice and he was the only one to ever call me that. My heart started pumping and my breath was cut short, I don’t think I’d ever been so excited before in my short life. He’d come to save me!
It had to be my dad, I recognized the tone of voice, nobody else knew about that name so I rushed out of the lake, I didn’t care about the rule that said I had to wait for the whistle. My father was here to answer my prayer, I was going home, it was wonderful.
When I got to the beach I looked all over for my dad, I knew he was playing a trick on me but I’d find him, he couldn’t hide from me. The camp guard whistled and yelled at me to come to him but I didn’t care, I was going home with my dad. I never knew how much I loved my old man before. Marcel, Marcel, come back here right now! The monitor yelled at the top of his lungs but I didn’t pay him any attention. Now I was too out of breath to yell’ Dad!
And three monitors were chasing after me and finally caught me. I remember feeling as if I was an escaped prisoner being caught by bounty hunters or vicious guards. They really didn’t seem to mind what I was saying. My dad’s here, he’s come to take me home, my dad is here! They just carried me to the prison camp, a little place where they kept the bad kids who did abide by the camp rules. They would keep you locked up for about an hour usually and that’s what they did with me. It gave me time to realize my dad was not going to save me. What had they done to him? Could they be so mean to have killed my father now? I didn’t like them but that was meaner that I thought they could be.
When they came to pull me out of the cell, I refused to go unless they called my home so they left me there and another hour later they came with the nurse, and two other guys who claimed to be in charge of the camp. I wouldn’t budge until the promised to allow me to talk to my parents. They agreed and I went to the office and called home but there was no answer. They saw how shook up I was and I told them my story, I told them what I’d heard then I did something I had never done in public before. I cried! They promised to try to reach my folks in the evening and I stayed in the office, even refusing to go out for supper. They eventually reached my mother and I got to talk to her.
I told her about what I’d heard and described the whole scene to her. She started crying and said my dad had phoned her in shock earlier. He had told my mother that around break time which was at about twenty minutes past ten—exactly when I’d heard him yell my nickname—he had seen me walking with a stranger and had yelled Sunkiss at the top of his lungs twice and seeing that I didn’t seem to hear his call but kept on walking away and turned right at the street corner thus disappearing behind the building. He ran as fast as he could to save me from what he thought was my kidnapper and when he got to the corner and turned around it. Nobody was there. The building was a brewery with no doors or window for at least a couple of hundred feet so it was like my abductor and I had suddenly disappeared.
My mother told me later that my father was in shock that day because not only did the little boy he'd seen look exactly like me but he had the same voice since that had been what had attracted my dad’s attention and made him rush out of the building --where he worked --to see me or some little boy that looked exactly like me.
I am an enigma even to myself
Often I tried to dig for answers
All I managed to do was to bury myself
I was once precious gold, shining ever so brightly
When I began to tarnish instead of wearing jewels
I wrapped myself in canvases and parchments
So that people wouldn't notice me anymore
Soon I realized my voice could no longer be heard
As the sand slowly covered my skin and soul
And I had turned into a most desolate desert
A great wind rose out of nowhere to dig up bones
Followed a scorching sun distant yet blindingly bright
That made me once more impossible to see
Then only I knew that I was still there
Alone and abandoned like yesterday's gods
Then only I knew how much I had cared
Alone and abandoned like yesterday's gods
MIRROR LIES FROM PAINTED DIARIES OF A DREAMER
I often sat in front of the mirror wondering if what I was seeing was true.
Was the image in front of me real or was I real?
Now I couldn’t be in two places at once.Could I?
So my guess was I had a choice to make, a decision to take and it was important.
Where was reality? Was it across the glass of the mirror or was I part of it?
And if so, did I really have a choice?
That was a lot of interrogations for a nine year old with a curious mind.
Nobody around seemed to wonder about such things, I felt isolated with such thoughts and I knew that if I wanted answers, I would have to find them myself.
The more I looked into the mirror, the more I was curious to know if I wasn’t looking at somebody else who just happened to be staring back at me and wondering about the exact same thing.
Could it be possible that like every other living creatures on this planet I had a twin who was a prisoner of the mirror world?
This question was on my mind for a long time and although I never really found the answer that would satisfy me. It became an amusing thought and a concept I would later use in the creation of artworks.
I did eventually come to a conclusion that eased my mind.
Bodies are material and material can be shaped so can minds and the mirror helped me shape my way of seeing the world or what we call reality in fact.
I came to view reality as a mystery, an intriguing one at that, yet one that would determine the rest of my life and give shape to my goals.
My science is now one of acceptance as opposed to questioning and in my laboratory I am the guinea pig.
I observe as I am observed by others thus I gather impressions and foolishly abandon myself to the strongest of all impressions; the one we call life.
I don’t believe all that I see though I always appreciate seeing it, just as I don’t question what I don’t see but I never reject it since that would deprive me of wonderful impressions. Wouldn't it?
Mirror lies, yes! But only if there's a single truth inside of you.
I don’t question life anymore, now I paint and write my own truth and whether people agree with me or not, doesn’t really matter!
LorAnge
I vividly remember when my biological mother’s spirit would come visit me. She’d pick me up and carry me off to my bedroom in the evening when there was no one around to witness the strange occurrence. My step father was already sleeping while my stepmother was usually listening to the hit parade playing on the radio and reading one of her many fan magazines in the kitchen way across the house. I can still feel my little body rising and suddenly going limp as all my muscles refused to obey my brain even my tongue and throat became inert and left me voiceless.
Of course when these episodes started I recall being in a total state of shock; my body frozen in complete panic. I had no way of knowing what was happening to me and even less why this was happening to me. But in my four year old mind after this had gone on a few times I slowly began to accept the inevitable phenomena that I of course couldn’t understand. I soon realized this wasn’t death coming to take me away to some strange land of lights and shadows. After a while I knew from experience that once I would be carefully laid down in my warm bed; my eyelids would close and thus shut my infantile consciousness. But not for very long as only a few hours would suffice to bring me to a complete and amazingly beneficial state of rest. My eyes would quickly open but could barely see past my oak wood bed post, that’s how dark it was when all the lights in the house were out!
I would awake feeling wonderful, get up off my bed and make my way towards the bluish night light. Indeed I would always spend the remaining couple of hours of night on the deep windowsill at the far end of my bedroom. I loved sitting there four flights above the world watching the stars and her majesty the moon glowing like diamonds and silver. I had no recollection whatsoever as to what I’d just been through at that time; I remember quite clearly feeling nothing but amazement on my ledge between the sky and the ground, this was my private balcony. It felt wonderful to be alive up there just watching the light slowly appear above the horizon and then rise as the deep blue curtain of the night was lifted to reveal more and more of the vast stage on which the intriguing play of life was about to begin. How mysterious life seemed for me already at that young age.
Experiences such as these unpredictable early nocturnal visits from an invisible guest opened my mind to realities that aren’t easily described yet they can’t be denied by one who has lived through them. My unexpected guest visited me many times during the next few months and I can’t say that I ever really became comfortable with this presence or with the fact that it could come in and out of my life without ever even asking for my consent
Part 1 from the trilogy
Diaries of a dreamer
By LorAnge
--- INTRODUCTION ----
What you are about to read is a true story however some names have been modified out of respect for those who wished to remain anonymous but the events recounted as the emotions conveyed are true to reality or should I say to “surreality” or the absurdity of life in this case.
So here I am writing this while hopefully other people are living their dreams instead of dreaming their life like I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember.
This is not a complaint by any means; it’s simply the realization of what my life has been and unfortunately continues to be, that is somewhere else!
A foggy zone where I spend most of my time by myself at the threshold of an imminent dream or on a long and narrow dock line fishing for inspiration with time as my bait. I’ve always been a specialist at being there but missing.
You see, I am the child who never belonged, the kid who still refuses to grow old after half a century of taking the wrong turns. I’ve had my fun and can still hope for some more once in a rare while but the illusions that I used to feed off are becoming awfully rare and that is a real shame. Now if I was crazy, reality’s little imperfections would be that much easier to accept, I would never be plagued with the heavy burden of choosing sides. I wouldn’t question anyone or study anything to find the right way or escape from the wrong one. My disease is not contagious, I assure you, artists usually move out of everybody’s life and find original ways to shrink until they completely vanish to make room for the next poor soul. I used to be busy all the time most of it was devoted to others. Writing songs and poems, composing music and playing it, painting illusions and dreams as I forgot myself.
Somewhere else! Where was that?
What if my biological mother had been right in giving me up for adoption before I ever got the chance to taste her sweet milk? To this day I’ve been asking myself why I love chocolate so much; wondering why sugar is a drug to me still. Why is it I never belonged? I never played with other children, in fact I don’t remember playing as a kid, I preferred sitting in my little rocking chair and smoking my little plastic pipe; imagining clouds of smoke escaping from its chimney.
I never even had any imaginary friends since I didn’t need them but I guess I needed enemies cause I had a few of those imaginary creeps . I was a witness of this side of things as well as of the other. I saw life as a mirror but one with double realities, both of them all too real. I believed mirrors to be doors that offered us a choice in planes of existence. I also loved to eat colors preferring reds to all others because they were sweeter of course.
Bravenet Blog 
Blog Community
Get a Free Blog
Manage your Blog
bravenet.com