Born Different (12 page)

Gabe went and
checked the outside windows. All were still intact, shut and
secure.

Gabe’s heart
started racing and his hands were shaking as he let himself into
the studio. His mouth was instantly dry with that familiar acrid
taste and Gabe found himself battling the onset of a panic
attack.

The paintings
were all still there, exactly in the same places and positions
where he had left them, as was all his mess and collections. Gabe
gave a huge sigh of relief. He was being paranoid; paranoia was
becoming one of his main personality traits of late. The lock had
just been hit by a branch or something. Maybe his mum had knocked
it yesterday doing some gardening?
Pull yourself together
Gabe
, he told himself. He was not cut out for this. Not one
little bit.

Inside the
usual sanctuary of the studio, everything was as he had left it.
Still, Gabe couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, of another
presence in the room. Gabe triple checked everywhere. He bolted and
padlocked the door shut and put a bean bag in front it as an extra
precautionary safety measure. And only then could he start to
breathe semi normally again. He put some music on and lit a few
candles. He couldn’t be creative under this much duress.

Finally, when
he was convinced that he was alone; totally and utterly alone with
no chance of anyone seeing him or even potentially seeing him even
if they came to the garden, that there was no one hiding behind the
canvases or under the blankets, no one ready to pounce out of the
shadows at him; Gabe took off his jacket, T-shirts and loose
bandages and he spread his wings out wide.

Gabe could only
paint they way he wanted to without his wings all bandaged up. He
could only express himself freely if he felt at least physically
free of the constraints he put on his wings. The bandages acted
like a tourniquet physically and also psychologically. When Gabe
unwrapped himself he felt like he could really breathe again. After
he had unravelled and exposed his wings, he always took a sharp
deep breath in, filling his lungs and lifting his chest as high as
it could go, as he unfolded his wings out wide. And then he could
feel the release and relax in every one of his muscles, not just
the ones connected to his wings.

Gabe tensed his
entire being most of the time and the short act of freeing his
wings transformed him into a completely different person. From the
Gabe who shuffled with his head down, to the Gabe with wings who
could stand proud and look the world in the eye. Only he was stood
behind the blacked out windows of his hideaway. Gabe may have been
trying to look the world in the eye but the world was not looking
back at him. The world and its population could not see him, know
him or understand him.

And that was
it, thought Gabe, no one really knew him because no one knew his
secret. No one could possibly understand because he hadn’t given
them the chance. He was too different, too special. Who could help
him? His mum did her best but she had let him go these last few
years, given him freedoms, but he instinctively knew not to trust
anybody. Even his friends who knew they could trust him, he didn’t
trust them with this or with much else as they had got older.

Before, Gabe
felt like they would have had his back and him theirs but now, now
it was all about the money. About the climb. And Gabe suspected
that they would climb over him if they had to or if he was in the
way. He felt it in their auras and he felt it in their eyes.
Sometimes he thought that if he listened carefully enough he
actually heard it in their thoughts. Their survival was more
imperative to them than his. He understood that and he felt no real
malice towards them.

It was just
that Gabe dreamed and hoped of a very different life. He dreamed
that maybe one day, after he left school and when he started
selling his art, he could move right away to somewhere; somewhere
perfect. Somewhere he could expose his wings all the time.

Then he would
have the freedom to grow strong and muscular and tanned. Ideally,
Gabe thought, he would like to go out and live in an exotic and far
away land where he could live free with all the different colourful
tropical flowers, birds and creatures. Somewhere with soft, white,
sandy beaches and crystal clear, blue seas. Somewhere, where there
were breath-taking waterfalls and still green lagoons. Tropical
forests and local handmade crafts.

Somewhere warm,
always warm so that he didn’t have to wear many clothes.

Somewhere
isolated, so that he didn’t have to explain or hide, so that he
could live free.

Somewhere he
could just paint all day. Able to fly occasionally if he felt like
it. Hell, able to fly all the time if he wanted to.

Somewhere where
there was no grid lock traffic and exhaust fumes to fill your
lungs, no super markets with aisles and aisles of stuff and of
choice of things in cellophane and cardboard, disguising the fact
that what they contained was invariably a different combination of
the same shit. No politics, lies and media control. No power hungry
leaders. No miserable faces and grey skies. He imagined being in
this far away land and even if the friendly locals found him out
they would respect his privacy. The privacy of ‘The Strange Winged
Man’ that could fly and paint.

He fantasised
that they would view him as some sort of talented genius creature
that created works of art and who was always kind to them. Gabe saw
himself bartering with the townsfolk, swapping his art for food and
other necessities down at the local, organic and straight from the
earth, fragrant markets and backstreets. With no cellophane or sell
by dates in site. No tills, no middle management. Gabe daydreamed
like this to keep his spirits up.

When things
really got on top of him and Gabe felt that life was getting too
dark and hard, too hostile and unmanageable, like now. When the
reality of the world he currently lived in caused a dark cloud of
depressive thoughts to shadow his hopes and the ever present black
hole of powerlessness grew so large that it threatened to consume
him whole, then he would dream these dreams. And escape.

Gabe, when he
remembered, would stop what he was doing and listen to his
breathing, in and out, until he was totally relaxed. Breathing out
the stresses and tensions that wracked his body and mind and
breathing in the hope and beauty of infinite possibility.

Gabe took a few
deep breaths in and out and he imagined that all the chattering
voices of opinions; all the internal conversations and endless
thoughts that were criticising him and telling him in a hundred
different ways that he was worthless and ugly and that every other
person that he came across on a daily basis was simply self-serving
idiot and an ignorant wanker; were all instantly transformed in to
fluttering butterflies. Gabe transformed all the unwanted negative
thoughts into butterflies that just flew straight out of his
consciousness. If they refused to go, even as butterflies, Gabe
imagined then that they simply transformed instantly into a
colourful dust that fell down and drifted away to nothing.

Then, when
Gabe’s mind was still, when he had reached that silence that was
always there and that was present between all thoughts, Gabe felt
free. He felt like himself. The himself that he wanted to be, where
anything and everything was possible. This was the place where Gabe
knew, felt and understood was where his soul resided.

It was the only
place where he could be his true self, where he couldn’t be
anything but his true self. Here, where there were no worries, no
fears, no more mental conversations, just his soul, or whatever it
was, his spirit, his light, his birth, his death, his constant, his
essence, his ‘God’ for want of a better word, his higher power.

His ever
present and everlasting soul.

Gabe knew that
when he could finally be himself revealed, he would feel free. Free
of the shame, free of the guilt and free of his self-obsessions.
Free to fly.

The freedom to
be exactly who he was, wings and all. To accept himself even if
others couldn’t. Gabe thought that this was perhaps what true
freedom was; the gift of expressing your true self without the
voices of criticism or false judgements. From yourself or anybody
else affecting your natural need to be yourself.

So to do that,
Gabe took himself to this, his far away land where he imagined
better things and where he touched at the allusive feelings of calm
and peace and bliss.

And from this
place, Gabe started on the sculpture. From this place post
meditation, Gabe found things flowed easily, as if almost
subconsciously, letting him express himself without regret, without
the weight of worry, without that thief of energy, over analysing
or the stronger than gravitational pull of the massive self-doubt
that plagued him.

Gabe gathered
all the things that littered his studio, that covered the floor and
every other surface; in bins, in corners, on walls. Everything that
he had collected and accrued over the course of his life so far;
concert tickets, fancy bottles, bits of material he had liked but
not ever used, labels he had picked off things, bits of jewellery,
pieces of paper with scribbled poems on, notes, warning letters
from school, posters of bands he had liked, old toys he’d had as a
child that he hadn’t wanted to throw away. Anything that glittered,
that had caught his eye, that he had put in his pocket or bag on
his travels and claimed ownership on that had never made it
out.

Gabe was going
to use up all these things that he had amassed over the last
eighteen years of his life to make the final piece. Everything that
had interested him, the little things he had picked up as
memento’s, till receipts, dud lottery tickets, smooth pebbles,
twisted branches, all that he had collected on some of the many
days that had led to here and to this day, were going to go into
making the sculpture that would signify the end.

It would be the
full stop that he needed to pass from this point to the next. The
detritus from the past would build the sculpture and metaphorical
archway through which he needed to pass through into a better life,
the rest of his life. Each collected thing was now just a small
part of a far larger jigsaw. Every one of the items he was going to
use, gave him a memory of that time and all his memories created,
in complex combination of his own reaction and reflection on what
he had experienced, to who or what he was now.

Gabe lost all
sense of time, of place, of ego. He even lost the burden of who he
was. Almost trance like he glued and stitched and welded his
treasures together. Treasures that were worthless to anybody else.
His jewels of the journey. Slowly transforming all that he had
collected over his childhood into what he hoped would be his most
defining work of art yet. It was like every memory and every life
lesson learnt; every day and event that he had lived through had
brought him to this moment in time and went into making who he was
now. It was like all the individual genes that went to making the
unique individual that he was.

No one saw him
but if they had, they might have said that he looked possessed. But
Gabe was just happy to be back in his studio, creating and free,
being his true self for a change.

A deafening
shot and crashing noise made Gabe almost jump right out of his
skin. A bang, like the sound from a gun, followed by a crash as
something landed on the skylight of his studio. Gabe froze, he felt
like a stranger, a foreigner in his own land, potentially caught
out. Like the Rabbit in the headlights. It was as if, all of a
sudden, he was nothing more than a condensed version of himself,
heavy and obvious. The spotlight was on him, like an interrogation.
Guilty. Where would he run if he couldn’t run into his own house
where his mother and her clients would be? Nowhere to run to and
nowhere to hide.

Gabe could hear
people laughing and wondered if he was being targeted again, it had
happened before. One year it had been so bad they had doubled all
the locks and padlocks from the gate to the studio. But it had been
a few years since that phase and he had grown more confident, or
just more lazy and more lax with the security. He told himself it
was just a car back firing and a branch falling, nothing was
broken, nothing had happened.

Gabe felt like
he had had a heart attack but it was just nothing. Just somebody,
or just nobody. Worse way out, he could run into the house, even if
his mum was in there with a client. Gabe didn’t know anyone else
anymore and he realised that it was true, that he hardly knew
anyone in his street anymore. The houses were put up for sale and
sold so regularly and apart from some of the old people, Gabe
reckoned he and his mum had been here the longest. People
downsized, up graded, went over to somewhere nearer or somewhere
further from the city. They divorced or had more children than the
house could cope with. Property prices had boomed and in this area
especially. This area that had once been the domain of artists and
writers, of the bohemians and hippies, was now so desirable that
investors had just renovated and made a quick buck. There were no
evident artists or writers left. Gabe wondered where they had all
gone or if they had all become property developers too, as the cash
had been just too hard to resist for the penniless painter and Gabe
could identify with that. It was a shame but who could blame them?
But now, thought Gabe, now it was time, time for the artist to come
back again. Time for a revolution. Time to bring the real art back
to the people. The Middles could certainly do with it. Gabe knew he
needed to change but he also thought everything could do with
changing, with getting better.