FOREST
— to represent your life in the present
The trees are tall and magnificent, with bark of a luminescent white shade and branches that hang low with the weight of glowing leaves of icy blue, pale violet, and clear white shades. Behind me the trees fade out of my vision, somehow, first to grey then a dark river of black until my imagination sees no more. All I smell is mint and crushed leaves – a scent that becomes ingrained in our beings almost without one knowing. I taste ginger – I am suddenly reminded of Christmas, and snow, and a warm puff of air leaving my mouth to form a cloud of condensed whispers in front of me. It becomes cold, but I can still hear the steady running of water and the sound of my feet as they stamp a path through the freshly fallen leaves, bushes, and other plant life. Part of me feels complete, but there is something missing.
BEAR
— to represent how you look at and react to problems
The bear is a crisp white, it is huge, and I have made eye contact with it. It’s eyes are staring through me, I feel. It suddenly tenses, and stretches its claws, before turning around and walking steadily off to the right, until it too disappears from my vision. I feel no fear.
KEY
— to represent your self-image
The key is old and decrepit and I feel it may crumble if I touch it. It does not fit in with its surroundings, which remind me of a gawdy display advertising a department store’s winter sale – all shining silvers, twinkles of light, a sense of something ungenuine about it. I lean down and pick it up, moving onwards, the rough texture of the key carving its memory in my palm.
WATER
— to represent your life source and inspiration
I expected a calm brook, moving slowly but pleasantly, but instead there is rushing rapids, moving so quickly and shining so glamorously it almost hurts to look at. Blue tumbles over white, white over blue, all moving together in such a way that it is impossible to see where anything begins and everything ends. All is one, moving forward, storming together.
CUP
— to represent your attitude about love
It is a tea cup, made of delicate china, almost blending in with the surrounding visage as a result of its pure white colouring. There are small chips in it, nothing truly devastating, and it is still half-full with a cold, dark green tea. I don’t touch it – it’s imperfections belong in this seemingly ideal land of snow and whiteness and never-changing river that storms forward and forward.
FLATLAND
— to represent your perception about old age
In this flat land, everything is in shades of faded yellow, pastel and comfortable and old. I smell fire, but it has burnt out, and the ashes have become a part of the landscape and a part of this world. Grass – old and yellow and comfortable – reaches my knees, and it is soft to the touch, and I could lay down here and sleep forever and everything would turn out alright. Faded (and old and yellow and comfortable). I could sleep and not worry about bears or teacups or keys. Everything is alright in this flat land of old ashes and yellow shades.
BUILDING
— to represent your perception of death when still alive
This house is tiny, and almost perfectly square, and blends in with the flatlands with its pastel yellow colouring. A strip of dull green is painted to go around the house, slightly higher than the height of the door. No windows are visible, and I am excited and scared and I hope that whatever may happen, from here to forever, turns out alright.
ENTRANCE
— to represent your willingness to accept death
It is a dull brown door, common and ordinary, and I am overwhelmingly excited. Yes, I choose to enter.
INSIDE THE BUILDING
— your perception of death once you truly die
The door opens easily, I step in, and the room is empty and dull and I am very sad about that. The room has concrete flooring, which, along with the walls, are cracked. In here, it smells like cobwebs and forgotten things. Things are forgotten here, forgotten things go here and they die here and there is nothing that can be done about that. Forgotten cobwebs and the spiders that died making them.
WINDOW
— your perception of the afterlife
There are no windows. Because if there were windows, the spiders would see the simple beauty outside and hope would grow, but they would never be able to leave this small, empty room. If there were windows, they would die hopeful and excited and lied to, because they could never escape. They die with no hope, but they have lived with no hope for this outside world. The spiders do not know any better.
And that is okay.
This short, personal narrative was a process in class in which we are taken through a journey – from a forest, coming upon a bear, discovering a key, coming to a river, finding a cup of some kind, arriving in a flat land, seeing a building in this flat land, the option of entering or not, examining the inside of this building, and describing (if there were any) the windows. they all held representations for an aspect in our lives, as shown through the subtitles to each section.
claire b.
pic credit: tumblr