It was all pretty confusing to begin with. Who would have thought that a simple, apparently trivial, journey by tram, could throw me into such disorder? It was an obscure situation: an incursion into the unknown. It seemed to me that all of them were there for a reason. Destiny decided that the staring-straight-ahead lady would sit on the fifth seat from the window. I was asking myself what had happened to me. Was this journey so important?! The unknown had been striking me with no mercy until now. This was the moment when I realized what I hadn’t be able to understand in 25 years, since I first opened my eyes in this world. Suddenly, unnaturally, an image that grew from concrete allowed me no peace of mind. It was like the most beautiful red rose had risen from ruins. I just couldn’t perceive the significance of the numerous feelings I had. I felt my body melting into the image reflected in the window.
A painting was revealing itself to me. It was a young, exuberant artist’s work. He was so young… His tone had a specific strength. I could see the freshness of a mysterious spring.
This image is coming back to me. It’s encrypted on my feeble retina. I’m trying to pass beyond the everyday world and discover this miracle’s secrecy. With fear, I’m stepping into luxuriance, a labyrinth full of twisting curves and crooked paths. Step after step, idea after idea, light after light, I’m drowning in my life. This movie’s première is an unprecedented thing. It’s the first time I have seen this script. You would be blessed to see the première.
I already knew that my soul is an unexplored field, but I didn’t realize there was a battle. The war of my being: the antibodies of ideas struggling with the mess outside. This frame is showing me everything. It’s the best banner ever made. It’s so beautiful. In its monstrosity it’s even something sublime. Do you remember the end story of a movie? The names of the actors appear one by one. I don’t know this painting’s characters. Am I that innocent? Why am I running? And where? I’m scared. This experience could take my entangled fate to a place with no escape.
I want it to leave. I want it gone, and out of existence. I’d like it to stop. “Don’t call me anymore!” This voice sounds like the 5 p.m. train’s whistle. I’ve always asked myself why the train always whistles on hour’s point. I’m afraid of the same, inconceivable fear. One day it will take me into its arms again, intoxicate me and make me forget my existence.
But still… it’s not the fact that I could lose my existence that hurts me. I want to freeze the moment, so I can see again, as a piece of art, that day’s photo.
The painting’s words had in their gentle substratum, silent pleadings and ignored frustrations. When I looked at it, I don’t know what deep forces made me vibrate like the stretched cords of a violin tortured by a grave and threatening song.
I saw trees and heavy leaves. It was all like the planet’s birth, when the Paradise’s souls didn’t want to come down on Earth. They were running away from their own Creator because He had already written the story of their future lives. If I were a traveler-soul, probably I wouldn’t give up a saint’s life. In other times I would have been happy. But not now. The Earth is too sad, too worried. Humans don’t know to smile anymore.
It’s quit now. The trees are showing me last centuries` people. The souls are not lingering around the Globe anymore. They are ghosts that shadow our presence. Probably they are my immortal ancestors. Am I that soul who’s running to the light? She’s down now. She’s in the valley, running with the wolves. Why? She’s seen what crime means. She never thought that a tree could tell more than the sky and its stars. The light behind her is confused. She’s running for light. The trees inhabit in thick trunks like blocks of rock. They look like an armed cast guarding a world. The big tree in the centre is hiding something. Or maybe it’s the leader of the cast. The innocent girl is my nature. Could my soul be embodied in her? Then, I would consider myself superior to everybody.
Could my soul be so blind that it can’t see the road? It’s sad: a vague shade of gray. It’s not the colour’s fault I can’t see. It’s mine, because I ended up guiding myself by instinct. I never wanted this to happen but I followed the rules. When the world is screaming you can hear my voice in its uproar. If it weren’t so, then probably I’d be considered the most unhappy person. But what is happiness? The joy to live is just what you feel, it’s the smile of your body, not as other’s. But we’ve forgotten this for long now. In this way, with no sign of humanity, we can integrate perfectly into the beasts` world. We are always hiding, we are running so fast after the future that if we could we would just forget our past and memories. We are always searching for a breakthrough.
If I could just see the sky in this painting. Then the forest would be the Inferno compared to it. But if …is this the Paradise? The grimmest beings are God’s creatures also. What if this is the Forgotten Eden? the most precious beauty. Happiness and beauty are both wet in the cup of subjectivity. There are people to whom the Paradise is a forest. Their simplicity is grand, is admirable.
I usually dream. In fact, I’m sick of dreaming. I’m always in the quarantine of my ideas. Many persons can’t understand them because they haven’t found the potion yet. You can find it everywhere. The potion is stored in the painting I saw that day, in the tram. You just have to look for it and it will come to you. Then you would be cured.
But this wasn’t a dream. It was all so real that if somebody had pinched me I would have felt an enormous pain. Coincidence took me to this unexplored part of the world. Like a wind, it let me down suddenly and left. There are no coincidences in dreams.
I was in the “steel animal” number 5, the machinery that usually carries me downtown, to work, when I found the answers I’ve been looking for all my life.
I’ve always searched for the moment when truth can be revealed to me, can free my mind and give me wings. I just couldn’t think that a simple painting representing a forest could answer all my existential questions. I’ve finally understood. I’m not afraid anymore. This night would be the first quiet night from now on. I’m not going to wake up being afraid to live anymore.
I’d like to tell somebody about the mysterious image that strikes me threateningly, each time I get on the tram. I can remember that day perfectly. After 30 years, it’s just a dusty date, marked with red on a sheet of paper.
It’s the same, old silence now. The trees, as colossal as in the past, are trying to make me remember the fear. This old painting is not a mystery anymore, but it’s beautiful. Every moment something can come up. This time is a painting that moves: it changes. Yesterday was green, tomorrow-gray. Today is white. Not because something erased my memories. It’s white because white means more then the whole rainbow. I can see shadows, white, vertical and horizontal lines. Have you ever seen a white painting? It’s the best view you can ever see. It changes all the time: it sings, it makes funny faces, it smiles and it cries. Everything that matters is your shadow. This is why this painting is the image of the present. A shadow can not live without its possessor. The light is reflecting its beauty in the best way it can. The first time I saw a white painting I realized that nothing can be more beautiful than this. Art is just an imitation, but a white painting is life itself. Now I can confess: I discovered the secret. I’m fulfilled.

By Oana Iacoviþă
„ Nicolae Bălcescu” Highschool