Joey: The Art of Creation

    
The young girl the same one that yesterday had a bloody nose bled again. It wouldn't stop. She did not cry like some childish school girl. She was not fearful like a bullied boy. She was almost serene bordering on peaceful. It poured. She watched it as if it wasn't hers. This was her paint.

She spent time wandering the hallways of this museum that space between galleries that everyone else hurried through. It was here that she stood as it gushed from her wrist. The white walls were her canvas. She saw the most beautiful of paintings on these walls -- all a monochrome almost sepia color. She need them to exist, so she raised her arm and brushed blood red with fingers unearthing magnificent lines edged with pure painterly form.

The guards were absent so too were the patrons, so she was alone with her vision and life free to create if only for a moment. It was a freedom she never had outside of these walls. Little Joey as she was the littlest of the Joeys, all duplicates of each other, knew nothing. Her brain had been boxed at birth. She loved instead, and it does reside in her heart. They forgot to box that. Love flowed from her wrists down her hands dripping on the floor in large droplets as she painted and painted and painted.

There were no memories, so she never would know her creator/mother, First Joey. She would never remember that she was almost exactly like First Joey. She always forgot that there was a mechanical box attached to the back of her skull right where it connected to the spine. She didn't know there was a reason she was left alone in the hallway. She just felt. And she felt the most free when no where in particular.

The paint was drying up, and Little Joey was not finished: her heart still pumped. She licked her other wrist feeling for the tenderest spot. Found she bit hard and it popped. More paint. More love. More creation. This wall was no longer blank, and she grew more uncomfortable. It was almost too much like the galleries of her confinement, but it must be finished. She painted through her discomfort.

It was finished that painting, and so too was this Little Joey. Upon its final beat, her heart burst from her chest as if some bomb had reached zero. The once white hallway now earthen. There was only one witness to the sacrifice of creation. She looked just like Little Joey: black -- the color of vacuumed space -- cropped at the chin, equally black eyes with only a hint of starry sparkle, mahogany skin smoothed by carefully controlled environments. Only there was no mechanical box on her skull, and she was not First Joey.

New Joey, born of Little Joey, watched her mother/creator's death from the doorway of cedar. She did not cry or weep or even whimper. There was a mechanical box, smaller than Little Joey's, on her breast. Her left hand scratched it as if there was supposed to be something else there. It wasn't. It had been boxed.

New Joey didn't move. In fact she couldn't move, her mind loved the doorway; it reminded her of something square. It was preferable to the expanse of hallways and the unknown. She was always immobile in the unknown, which meant she had yet to move from this doorway in which she was placed.

New Joey saw all of Little Joey's life pass away. While no emotion passed through her, a new thought came to be: I should copy the life of dearest Little Joey. Her tongue found the sweet spot and she bit. Blood flowed. It was her tool.

Mechanically, she drew. Her lines were static as if drawn by rulers, protractors, and compasses. They were edged with a mathematician's precision. They outlined the doorway in shapes similar to Little Joey's.

Still her heart beat. New Joey licked her other wrist. Pop. More tools. More lines. And then the same bomb burst.

There was only one witness to the sacrifice of creation. She looked just like New Joey: violet pants of stretchy jean, fingernails trimmed by biting, a silver necklace composed of an alpha numeric chain. Only there was a mechanical box on both her wrists. She was Neoteric Joey, born before the final heartbeat of New Joey, and she resided in this gallery.

Her time was spent observing each crack in the wall, each edge of tile, each imperfection in frame. She saw only New Joey's life bleed out out of the corner of her starless eyes. She wept, cried, whimpered, voice escaping lips in its rawest form: silence. Her head throbbed in time with her aching heart. Her creator/mother no longer alive left a void as if heart and brain were boxed. Only they weren't They remained, and Neoteric Joey went mad.

She licked her wrist and tasted its silver hardness. She searched for the tenderness of flesh easily bitten and found nothing. So she bit her metal and scratched her neck. She needed her paint and tool. She was desperate for creation whether painterly or mathematical. There was none.

Above First Joey watched. It was time. This was her curated moment.

The doors swung open, and patrons rushed. They were greeted with unbiased murderous creation. Each patron as they moved from hallway to door to gallery grew more uneased. There were no mechanical boxes on bodies. There was no containment of any sort. Horror sunk hearts immobilizing electric responses between brain and feet.

Neoteric Joey, still searching for paint and tool, grabbed her first patron and licked his wrist. There was the soft space of being. She bit. It flowed. He eased his horror and sang to his knees. There was paint and tool. She grabbed the next patron, licked, and bit. And the next. And the next. And the next. Until all patrons became this work of art, these spaces between tiles and imperfected frames.

Then, Neoteric Joey, surrounded by an unending stream of possibility, broke free of the confines of her boxed reality. Bathed in sepia and tasting of minerals, she started a line in the exact center of this square.

It continued through the doorway and into the hallway. It spilled down stairs and out onto the sidewalk. It crossed streets and divided parks. It traveled the entire world.

First Joey, watching from her curator's booth, smiled. Her work of art knew no bounds. She could leave. As her hand touched the handle, a click echoed through the entire museum. Locked, she was trapped.

A small tinny voice spoke from an unknown metallic box high in a corner of the curator's booth.

"You must bear witness to your creation."

First Joey recognized the voice. It was hers but not.

"This is Neoteric Joey, and I am your creator/mother. Feel your body. This body you believe to be your own."

First Joey ripped off all her clothing needing to feel each piece of flesh chilled by possible mechanics. And there it was again and again and again: skull, chest, wrists. All were boxed.

There was one last whisper from Neoteric Joey as the horror of (non)being washed through First Joey.

"Three...Two...One...Z"

The bomb exploded.

And the art of creation vanished.

Pressing Share

There was a moment when all I wanted to do was to push "Share" on Facebook with the words, "Fuck you, Billy" in the comments section, and for a brief moment the cursor hovered over that button with all my anger contained in the tip of my index finger. Then, I saw it all spiral outward. He would become angry. Another message would be posted. And what was a simple hurt feelings over being forgotten about on the sidewalk as I waited for our date would turn in to a clash of clans with friends choosing sides and gossip spreading like the San Diego fires.

I did press "Share"; then, I immediately pressed "Delete". However, nothing is truly lost in life or on the web. It is simply hidden or misplaced.

Billy saw his message. I was grateful he didn't share his comments. It was as if Smokey the Bear had talked sense into someone. I could learn something here. But I am an American. Most likely, I will need to learn it again.