Lost Love
Creative Non-fiction
I walk around the brightly lit mall as several sounds mingle, giving birth to a uniform noise.
As I peruse the huge display windows of some apparel stores, my eyes wander to another store. It opened some time ago. I still haven’t had the chance to check it out, though the urge has been there.
I know it’s inside. I cannot figure it out yet from the entry point, but I read some advertisements about it at the entry some weeks ago.
It’s another lazy evening, so I decide to explore it today. Just another brisk walk to spend a few minutes.
I enter and walk through the short aisles, glancing at decorative pieces and stationery neatly stocked on the shelves. I pass some dolls with odd colored hair but still don’t find what I came looking for.
The medium size store appears to be coming to an end, and it is at the end that I find what my eyes were searching for. It feels like a tiny room filled with all the art supplies one can imagine.
I move to the nearest corner and grab something that has caught my fancy lately, a box of acrylic colors. My eyes battle between the price tag and the cover full of beautiful descriptions.
Still don’t know who won the battle.
As I consume the tiny information, my fingers carefully return one box to the shelf and pick another. I am not purely exhilarated, but not truly uninterested.
I spend a few minutes exploring different shades of acrylics, oil pastels, and watercolors. Boxes and boxes of colors are left open, eager to entice their visitors.
As my fingers brush against the flimsy plastic films of these open boxes, a silent question pricks me.
Has my life been so devoid of art that I am secretly drooling over these art supplies?
The answer is a simple no.
I have some tiny bottles filled with basic color paints, a couple of staple brushes, and some cheap oil pastels stacked carelessly in a dusty corner.
I am a proud owner of a few sketchbooks whose pages I sometimes fill on a rare free Sunday. I also recently purchased a 2B sketch pencil.
But as I take another turn, I come across stacks of pencils etched with letters and numbers I never knew about: 7B, 8B, 9B. There are so many. I pick a few one by one, adoring them, and then I put them back.
They are sharpened already, these pencils. But their tips are not pointed. They seem ready to glide on any blank paper.
Some ideas come to me later, a lot later. Ideas about sketches these pencils could create. Strokes that will be lighter than threads and then some that will be darker than the night sky.
Lost in thoughts I come out in the clearing.
At the end of the store, on full display, are canvases which I have never been lucky to touch before.
I imagine for a moment how it will feel to paint on one of these big canvases. To fill it with a variety of colors, to play around with different brush strokes?
And even in imagination, perfection taunts me. What if I ruin this pure blank sheet? What professional knowledge do I have?
All I have is the basic art knowledge imparted decades ago and the creative intuition that sometimes guides me.
I circle back to the acrylics again. I have never worked with these before either. But I have seen their amazing work, have relished several videos online.
As I take one more curious turn, the brushes catch my eye. There are far more than I have ever seen. I have been to stationery stores before, but I have never experienced such a variety.
There is a brush for every kind of stroke, from huge thick ones that can make work quicker to thinner ones for intricate effects.
I loiter for a few more minutes and then time catches up with me.
I don’t put anything in the shopping basket; I don’t check anything at the counter.
Those weird-haired dolls stare at me as I make my way toward the exit. I walk out empty-handed as my mind wonders what was the reason.
Maybe because my money is too precious to waste on these useless treasures.
Maybe I don’t have the physical space to give them the respect they deserve.
Or maybe I will never find the time to indulge in something so fancy.
Whatever the answer, it never finds me.
