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 Chapter #19 The Clairvoyant Dance Contestant
The train clicked down the track with a constant rhythm for my first trip alone away from home. Before this, I was shackled by the judgments of those who knew or heard of my father or older sister. Their boisterous anger preceded me everywhere I went. I was his daughter or her sister, but now I was free of that association for the first time. No one knew them before they met me. My possibilities were as open as the landscape out the train windows.
Finally, now that I could be anyone I wanted to be, who did I want to be? Did I want to be a famous surgeon’s daughter, or from royalty or diplomats, or the daughter of a well-known artist, or a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, or a chess champion, or a world-renowned violinist? Maybe I should be an orphan or a descendant of a silent picture star, or a president, or an Indian chief. Of all the lives I considered, the only one I was intrigued by for more than a moment was being an orphan in search of her true identity. But who I really wanted to be was simply me.
Clare Cooley
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