The Opus

My fervent dream, for as long as breath has expanded my lungs, has been to be the creator of works of rapturous resonance. My early work, rendered by means of the effluence of felt crowned tubes of coloured dye, offered no assurance that the avenue best matched to my talent would be the ocular arts. Rather than the tears of pathos my youthful heart yearned to see, those who gave themselves over to subsume personal responses to the world and apply themselves wholly to understand my own commentary through the lens offered by my art, would often express tears of humour that could not be countenanced by my thus wounded ego for long. By the age of eleven my pens, brushes and paper, as well as my many drawn works, were put away and my parents, made only too aware of my angst at the loss of my route to my expected elevated status of “great maker of art”, placed me before the church organ. Here, an elderly man named Mr Manners sat such that the shoulders of our polyester jumpers rubbed together as we reached for the keys, week upon week, as my lack of natural rhythm became an untenable blockage to the perusal of aural excellence.

Shortly before my fourteenth year, the church organ, too, was peacefully set at my back, and my hopelessness began to take root throughout our home. My mother was at a loss, and my father only asserted, preposterously you must agree, that perhaps the world of splendour and romance offered when one enters the arena of great art to unleash the prowess my mother, at least, acknowledged must surely have been bestowed upon me by the fates, may not actually be a better path to pursue than law, or accountancy. Though aghast at such an offence, my deep love for the old wretch, made dull though he was by years worked as a college lecturer on the subject of archaeology, allowed me to forget the affront and go on to seek my muse at new endeavours.

Sports proved to be a poor match for my generous nature. The ball would no sooner approach my bat or my foot, than my want to please my fellow man would prompt me to surrender the accursed sphere to the nearest man who appeared eager to have a turn. Defeat conceded, repeatedly, for several months, the gruffly curt coach suggested that an excellent career may be made as a clergyman, and my mother took me once more to the church to speak to Father Martel, who made short work of my new found zeal when he told me how much a man must forsake to serve God as he ought.

Rudderless, the vessel of my future lustre rose on the ocean swells and sank between her bosomy waves, pulled here and there as the gods would send me, before eventually, that oarless craft ran aground and stranded on a beach so barren and desolate, that all my dreams abandoned me. For every man, a levy can be made upon the soul we nurtured as wondrous youths, and my hunger for the comforts afforded the possessor of monetary funds drove me to take a job as a toll collector and usher at the theatre.

A sage man once told me that often, only when we cease to search, do we encounter what we need, and thus my fate found me on the day my narrow torch conducted a patron of such gentle beauty to her seat that my purposefulness of thought was nearly ruptured. Had her eyes been but one shade more blue, all may have been lost at that moment! But fate would not have the world lose such a lustrous gem as myself to mere lust, and at the last second of my mental control, a mole upon her neck appeared to me, and her enchantment of me was undone. No, no woman came between myself and my fate that day. Only, as she took her seat, the usher stood by to ensure her comfort as was my duty, a truth was revealed before my eyes. The greatest present the world could take from me was for me to take to the stage as an actor!

Gleefully, my hopes renewed, my attendance at a workshop led to my acceptance as part of a company of actors, who toured the country to perform key scenes from the plays of Shakespeare on a new stage every eve. The theatres we played to held upwards of twenty people, and as a newcomer, my parts were often small. Never the less, my excellence was attested to by both my mother and my colleagues from my days as a regular employee, who saw me perform as a banquet guest at Macbeth’s table once and as “player three”, of the troop of players Hamlet adopts for sly purposes. Sadly my father had to work many hours long past the standard close of play for the humble wage slave at that moment of the career he valued more than he valued me, and never enjoyed my talents. Alas, though my loyal fans heralded me a chameleon and a joy to behold, my esteem as an actor threatened the company elders, and a request was put forward that my mother construed as a no fault chance for me to depart the group, ready to take advantage of any opportune call that may be put out for better parts of greater grandeur.

There are events that shape the future for the worse, and those that offer bounteous advantage, and the latest change of pace thrust upon me falls, you shall agree, on the latter ground. For where my talent as a story teller has yet found no outlet upon the stage, the slanted shaft of heavenly awareness falls now upon the page. At last, we have found one another, my soul and my fate are one, and together we shall cast a world of hues of warmest orange, subtlest gold, and a thousand shades of blue. Were not doubts allowed to run amok about my thoughts when pen deflowered page one of my notepad? Of course! But there are those who read my work and offer such sage applause that to deny my faculty for word play would be to deny that the water of the ocean can be no other colour but blue! My bent for language has no parallel, as you can see, and though my father accuses me of unnecessary employment of twelve words where one would do, my mother assures me that envy moves a festered heart to turn the arrow upon another, and the use of seventeen words would be preferable to a measly lone syllable at each and every sentence, or part thereof, crafted by a creator as voluptuously capable as myself.

My dream then, the fantasy of my many years, shall no longer be a fantasy, but shall become now as real as the worlds created at my hand feel to the reader. My prose, as here, gleams resplendent upon the lens of my reader’s mental eye, and my poetry beckons the soul of the hurt, the free and the brave to a longed for resonance seldom felt amongst people even of the same clan. Some say arrogance has coloured my reason, that my prose tends towards the overblown, and my poems are opaque, but all concede that my work engenders awe for all, from gentlefolk to the lowborn who cannot themselves make sense from the symbols on the page.

And so my opus must commence, and the world shall remember my name evermore. My start then:

At just one moment upon a passage from golden past to untold future….