This art featured in my memoir, Incandescence Rising Above Darkness is included as a moment of serenity between chapters and does not necessarily have any literal connection to the story.
Incandescence: Rising Above Darkness excerpt from Chapter #14 When The Goddess Looked Away
Everything is normal. My father is passed out drunk, my mother is at the factory working, my older sister is looking for drugs, my brother is in his room reading, my younger sister is pretending everything is fine, and I am lying on the living room floor looking at an oceanic picture book transported by the strange beauty of creatures that live deep in the sea.
Whenever I cannot be in nature, I imagine myself someplace natural, where everything is dignified, even death. Dwelling in these realms, I do not feel lonely. Dreaming of cranes, waterfalls, sunsets, space, and the sea, I am free and happy. As I look at photographs of creatures living in the lightless depths, I am fascinated by their unusual elegance. To me, everything in nature is beautiful. I see loveliness even in the ones who frighten me, like the fish with a single light on the end of a long bobbing spine protruding from its head, a light not meant to illuminate its way through the dark but to lure in prey.
A knock at the door shatters my deep-water trance. My connection to these ancient ones evaporates as I open the door to one of my father’s barroom buddies. His baby face does not fit atop his massive construction worker’s frame. He looks uncomfortable and unnatural, like a child trapped in a man’s body. I feel compassion for him. He asks for my father while fidgeting with his buttons. My hand twitches, wanting to close the door, but my mind says, let him in. He can wake my father from his intoxicated slumber before my mother comes home and discovers him there. I do not want my mother to find her ex-husband there two years after their divorce! Reluctantly, I open the door without speaking and go back to my book on the floor.
Clare Cooley
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