The Eden Of My Mind

This all felt very familiar to me. It had been more than three years since I’d last summoned this man in my mind — this man who made me feel as if I had something good to say or write. He’s always brimming with passion for words filled with fantasy and even literary shadows, but because of his pet — incapable of fending for itself — he was prevented from letting time and creativity grow as much as that pet, or rather, that dependent calamity. At the right moment, I even began to think it was a bad idea to invite this good man back into my thoughts, given the terrible company his presence brought. He began, as always, writing at a syrup-colored wooden table with burgundy-red streaks that made it stand out from any wooden table I’d ever seen — was I just imagining it? I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t, so I kept watching him without any admiration or interest in what he was doing. I left him there for a while and went to another part of my mind, and just this once I felt guilty for not caring about what this gentleman was going to do. I clearly said to myself, I don’t know if he heard me, but I would come back later to see what came out of those wrinkled hands.

I left that place, which I had always viewed with suspicion, and went to another corner. This corner is different; there is water everywhere and vegetation, but I would never call it an oasis. It would be more like a natural habitat for some animal, close to the perfection illustrated in the Bible. I wandered around for a while looking for some trace of life other than the plants of different colors or trees with different leaves that my imagination designed and I interpreted, aware that it was myself seeing myself or my own ability to create beautiful landscapes within my mind. I continued exploring the place, now simply enjoying myself and no longer searching for that animal, specter, or presence that might inhabit this place — which, to me, was idyllic for an Adam, if it were fitting to imagine him there. After dipping my feet a bit in a river and letting my toes wrinkle, I went to see the man.

Without much hope, I reached the empty section where the man was sitting with his pet next to the table; now the pet looked old and worn out, as if it would never again depend on the man at the table with its beautiful surface and materials. I thought I would find everything just as I had left it, this is the only place in my head where I can’t control what’s interpreted there, because every time I try, it goes back to being the same — the only difference being whether the man is sitting there with his pet or not. There are times when I think he’s chained to that place when I invite him back into my mind, but no one is happy without freedom of mind, soul, and action. I also wonder if he’s happy with his pet, and if sitting there doing nothing beside it is what allows him that happiness — because of the comfort provided by that creature dependent on him. By the way, I’ve never decided what animal or thing this pet represents; I just see it as a harmful presence that prevents this man from writing, painting, or even singing. Very rarely have I depicted the pet not being by the man’s side; that is when he tries — and fails — to find happiness through art, that is when he worries about doing something he mistakenly believes in and breaks down crying out of desperation and melancholy toward his pet… Wait!! That’s it — it’s not that the mascot is dependent on the man; it’s that he actually wants his mascot to always be by his side to feel comfortable, as if nothing else were needed given how dependent they both are on each other. Thinking about it, I find a solution for my artist where he can exercise his talent and creativity while being happy with his pet but also doing something with his artistic abilities. Let’s not forget that the pet is in precarious conditions and the man is in exactly the same situation — that’s what my unconscious is trying to tell me through the moods of these two characters — and why on earth can’t I imagine them and make them both happy?

A few hours have passed in reality outside my mind, but inside it, I feel like it’s taken years of reasoning to reach a solution and conclusion to this problem involving the two individuals: the artist, who possesses the greatest gifts for art in general, and the pet that accompanies him — so that our artist doesn’t die of despair on the table I imagined for him. Should I add something else to that section, or remove one of the two? I must find a solution to this problem that has me dwelling on things that are absurd in reality. I come to the conclusion of taking the pet to that idyllic place, to that section I visited after my visit and supervision of the two of them; this time I put a window between the two sections so that the gentleman can see that his pet is in an excellent place full of beautiful landscapes instead of that white room that I myself named a mental void. I carried out this test, and the first thing I realized was that the presence I had called “the man’s pet” — though also “dependent trash” — had transformed into a copper-red horse that leaped like a goat among the small hills, and as it stepped on the little streams and water droplets, its coat shone with the light I had wished (or so I imagined) for him; even I liked that my unconscious had transformed what I found so detestable into something so fitting for such a beautiful place — it completely made that pet the life I was seeking on my first visit to that section of my mind. Now, on the other hand, there was the man with a brilliant but deranged mind because of his pet, who hadn’t yet noticed the window I’d set up for him. He focused on what I mentioned earlier, writing until he was exhausted, nothing but epitaphs about how that pet he loved so much had disappeared, and he tried to recreate a painting of it. the most curious thing about that painting is that it was also a horse, but skinny and full of sadness within a lifeless and emotionless environment surrounding it. I couldn’t fathom in my deepest thoughts why he didn’t notice the window until I decided to move the table to the front of the window myself.

What I had hoped for from the very beginning came to pass: the man could see how that pet he cherished so dearly had transformed into something beautiful, and was very happy even without him. He was confused; he didn’t know how to feel — whether to be sad at seeing the happiness of that being he felt was his own, but which was actually mine, part of the universe I had consciously and unconsciously wished for them; or happy to see that, even without him, it could be a wonderful being and belong as if it had been born right there in that place — a place I never expected it would one day belong to forever. I speak, of course, as the supreme being of these two individuals.

The man touched the window with such “love” that I felt very sorry for him; something inside me told me that the saying “divide and conquer” didn’t fit anywhere in these two sections and these two experiences — products of my mind in general. I felt bad for the man, but even so, I waited to see what would happen to him and what he would create from that experience and total shift in perception of what his existence was to him. His drawings and paintings depicted himself in that place riding that animal he still considered his pet; those visual artworks he showed me in my mind were beautiful. He had finally found his muse — his pet — and saw her happy without him. It didn’t matter to him the whole time I kept him away from him; at one point I even took away the window, and he continued to create paintings and poems about him. I was fascinated by the experiment I had conducted with these two creations in my mind until I decided to bring them together in “The Eden of My Mind” so that they could be happy forever within my mind and exist there whenever I thought of them.

The End.