A Simple Proposition

Something important has happened to me lately.

To tell it with the usual who-what-when-where-why-how procedure would be as black and white as the words on this page. I propose a different approach for this announcement.

If we closed our eyes for a moment, this page is still imprinted in our eyes. This is the same page, our eyes are closed, they see a new perspective of the page. Extrapolate the closing-one's-eyes to orthodox writing rules and the who-what-when-where-why-how is now defunct.

Did I catch your attention or your interest?

How can we enjoy a story without the rainbow of who-what-when-where-why-how?

By interpreting the black characters on the white page literally laid on the table (learning) or figuratively imprinted in our closed eyes (imagining). This simple trick is called reading, a cognitive process of understanding a written linguistic message.

And no, this is not what has happened to me lately. We're getting to it.

This is an allegory attempt if you would to shake up the mind's normal processing of information. This is a fictional distortion to make sense of reality, a reality based on causality but regrettably colored by our perception subjective habits.

I could tell about French-kissing a polyglot – one who navigates many tongues: globetrotter, womanizer, someone with as many tongues as those (s)he speaks – say, in a Muslim monastery at midnight or as they say in Poland: on a nice and warm day. But what I'm about to relate in a figurative fashion happened on a lag-day in Belgium, which everybody knows is divided into two tongues, thus putting our impervious conformity at odds with regard to the above-mentioned polyglotism now affecting us with the imagery of Flemish-kissing someone... anyone.

Nothing to do with the formal who-what-when-where-why-how color scheme, right? And yet we can't stop ourselves from wondering, not what is a Flemish kiss, but how to Flemish-kiss.

My point here is to start with a blank slate, as at birth – tabula rasa, in Latin – and fill it in by steps as life does to our minds. And besides, the adult in us has to leave the room to let the child dream, there is no who-what-when-blah-blah-blah in dreams. Follow me, this is 'live'.

Blank slate, birth of the story, the white page in front of me. With open or closed eyes, the page is still there. White, blank. Or so I see it until the usual typed characters appear. I expect them on a page. They are undefined, blurred. Why?

Because my figurative foetus mind can't just read yet.

My imagination comes to help. It transposes those printed characters into shadows which morph into drawn characters, say, of a couple sitting close together. He's black, dressed in white. She's white, dressed in black. Opposite gender colors. Inverse clothing colors.

I know, how can I refer to black and white as colors? You're right: they are achromatic, like grey. So, what do these black and white attributes imply?

For simplicity's sake at this early stage of inception, I'd say the skin colors could represent the couple's foreign origins, their clothing may pertain to the imagery setting. Or their complexion reflects internal thoughts, their somewhat formal dress alludes to mutual intentions. Perhaps this is an oneiric allegory. Details can derail our vision of reality, especially the vision of its fictive depiction – our mental image. We can't jump to conclusions. Instead of looking, let's study closer.

Drowned among the tones and shades of the posing couple emerge the form and shape of a black and white dog. The significance of his being in the drawing can't be accidental, there must be a reason. The acuity of your perception matches the acuity of your reasoning, you notice the dog's typical harness, one worn by blind dogs. I mean, dogs for blind people – although the opposite could be true. Whose blind dog is this, then?

She holds the leash, he holds the animal. Too easy. And, as we know, appearances can be misleading, minds are potentially inclined to mental laziness. Not today. My imagination comes to the rescue again. The newborn image is now a real drawing on a real white wall in a real white room of undefined size and contour.

Scouting these visually-empty new surroundings, I encounter three concave corners, what appears to be a door frame, another not-convex corner and I'm back to the drawing on the wall. This time, with an added door. An improvement to my scene, although there is no visible knob to open that door and exit the room. Mental inhibition or writer's block?

Puzzled, I call for help. The walls, floor and ceiling are made of special materials, my voice is instantly gobbled up by the white cubic room. A frightening thought invades my mind, I must be deaf, dead or locked up in an asylum cell – no, that's not what has happened to me.

I need to control my galloping imagination and pay more attention.

And sure enough, my leading idea in the drawing, turned painting on the wall, pulses now with added life, manifestly derived from my agitated mind. There is a faint heartbeat, perhaps my own I finally perceive. Maybe my senses are more responsive. My imagery projected on the wall feels alive like a foetus in the uterus. This little thing I just conceived from a fancied blank page is now sucking its food through the umbilical cord of my very being. It is growing – it must, like ideas and parasites. But who what when where why and how?

There is no fluke, nor any coincidence in what has happened to me. Think of the initial mental drawing as a self-portrait, the imaginative painting on the wall is a natural transposition as to immortalize the moment. The parallelism lies in the scene I dreamed so clearly that it became real – hence the striking reflection between this and that. In black and white.

My imagination must be showing a film negative, a black and white snapshot of the so-far phantom event, a reality to unfold in more colored details. But our stakes are to abstain from fashionable technique. Therefore the mirror mirrors what's in front of it. To make sure, I must turn around.

Dream or reality, there is nothing more natural than to see a couple, say, in a museum, sitting close on a bench with a dog, gazing at a painting representing a sitting couple with a dog looking likewise at them.

If a dog in a painting is an inherent possibility to an animal-lover painter, one could question the presence of a real dog in a museum but we've seen that he was a blind dog, so it's okay, even in America where animals generally aren't welcome in public places.

The only strangeness comes from the exact opposite colors between the painted black and white trio and its real life white and black counterpart on the bench – perhaps harder to notice with the blind dog, but still. So, what does all this mean, you'd ask.

The intimate couple in the painting faces the reversed-colors of themselves – be it in their past or upcoming future – now in a different posture, as if the painting had changed again, suggesting a definite progress. The man appears to be fidgeting with the dog leash he took from the woman, she seems to be stroking the fur of the animal now on her lap, the black and white blind dog blending in the variegated folds of her white clothing looks like he is staring at the real couple and his own living alter ego posing on the bench as for a picture that has already been drawn on the wall.

The inactivity of his pictural stance must weigh on him for he jumps off the painting onto the lily-white marmorean floor of the museum, at once joined by his white and black counterpart. They sniff at each other's wagging under-tail and merge into a more precise image of a dalmatian whose retractable leash links the black and white painted people and their white and black living twins on the bench.

"Are we done here?" softly barks the new dog entity – the room doesn't gobble up his voice, interesting improvement. Both couples sit still, deep in thought. The dog doesn't have the same preoccupation as these humans, painted or not. He lurks near the white frame of the white door on the white wall, speculating on whose ill-creative nature turned him colorblind – although daltonian dalmatian is a colorful consonance, funnier when applied to a blind dog – wondering whose demonic nature made a door without any opening, say, to go and check out the next fire hydrant. He turns to the real couple on the bench. "I have to go."

The real white man dressed in black pulls on the leash (as if to say quiet) and at his collarless shirt buttoned apparently too tight around his neck. The real black woman dressed in white pulls her lacy garment over her bosom, wiggles on her tush and tips her head as if pouting. He shakes his head, points his chin to the animal.

The blind dog slowly sits at the fictitious threshold of the white cubic room, "I'm listening." The black and white spots of his white coat look like tiny butterflies at rest or gathering nectar on the white floor. Causality, instinct or reflex, the blind dog traces a scent, then two, five, eight mixed smells emanating from his right hand side. The butterflies of his coat move to the morphed painting on the wall where the painted white woman dressed in black holds a black and white small bouquet; more importantly, the white background has turned into an electric grey hatching, modeling through variations in the tone. "This is unreal."

And he is right on two accounts. The obvious one being that a painting on a museum wall doesn't change at will. Second, a dog doesn't know the words of the Ancient Elders but his senses know that the reality of this universe is made of four elements.

He's on earth, real, alive. He turns his blind dog's incredulous eyes to the real and alive couple at the other end of his leash, and shivers: the walls of the cubic room brightly color themselves in red to the right, green facing the painting, blue on the door side – at least he is not a daltonian dalmatian. The couple on the bench seems impervious to the changes or sits as if they had forgotten how to move. The blind dog holds his breath and bladder, wondering if those people weren't there for a more important reason than his own primary physical needs. He barks, "Get on with your business, I need to do mine."

The air is cold, the atmosphere so quiet. The man tenderly wraps his arm around the woman's shoulders largely uncovered by her lacy white shawl, she cuddles against his chest. He tells her sweet nothings, she smiles and replies. The dog can't hear what they say for the room swallows the sound of their voices. His sensitive canine snout dilates at the warming of the room now permeated with the sweet smells of blossom. The couple kisses passionately. The painted walls wrap tongues of colors leaving a prismatic palette of secondary violet, orange and yellow in their passage. The blind dog shakes of surprise, the black and white butterfly dots fly off his coat, they haphazardly splatter around the painting on the white wall in a soft roll of drums, their cores bleed out tiny tails under the impact.

The woman pulls away from the fire of their kiss, her cheeks are reddened, she is breathing heavily. The man gently takes her hands and mutters sweet things. His words are at once sucked up by the cubic room now flushed with a potpourri of moist earth and tropical spices, the painted walls polka-dot each other with tertiary flares of rose, magenta, azure, cyan, spring green and chartreuse green, a nice addition heating up the atmosphere of the cubic room, making more black and white butterflies fly off the blind dog's coat and willy-nilly stick on the wall of the painting with percussive sounds.

The man moistens his lips and then a flow of words pours out of his mouth, they must hold water to the woman, she wipes her misted eyes. He kneels in front of her, she glances around, panting, the temperature raises with heat waves, the air bathes in fragrant exhalations, the painted walls splash a myriad of mixed colors from invisible swimming brushes turning the background into a seascape à la Jackson Pollock, the blind dog is all excited, he dances around, the last marks of his coat fly off to the wall of the painting, lining up with the other butterflies in rows of black and white dots like notes on music paper.

The couple slowly stands up, hand in hand, the painted walls unravel a bucolic scenery swinging in the nice and warm February afternoon in the tropics, flowers, plants, bushes and trees become dancing musicians playing the chromatic scales from the symphonic partition on the fourth wall, discharged of the black and white dots on his coat, the blind dog is now invisible, a heady earthy musk fills in the cubic room that was there before, a magic loom weaves a spiderweb of sounds, colors and scents around the couple, the man appears to be at the apex of his tension, his words mute to others have been heard, the woman shakes her head in disbelief and then nods, "Yes, I'll marry you."