Before ever drawing things, I remember visualizing things in the darkness. Lying in my bed and staring at a ceiling too dark to see. Just staring out into the endless darkness, until faces would emerge out of nothing.
At a very young age I was not afraid of these images. Later that would change, but not yet, that will happen later in my life.
The most impressive experience happen to me when I was 6 years old.
And so the story begins...
My mother was abandoned by her own mother, she grew up with her grandparents and her grandmother became her mother. The most important person in her life. She had left her behind in Germany, and never forgave herself for doing so.
It was a sunny suburban day in Rooty Hill and I was sneaking around the front yard of neighbors, in search of flowers for my mum. Something I would do very often that made myself quite unpopular with the neighbors. But my reward was the smile on my mother's face when I handed her a new bouquet.
On my way back to the house I met the postman and he handed me a blue envelope. I already new, that this was special and it meant Luftpost- good news from Germany for my mother! Excited a ran in the house with my flowers and the blue luftpost envelope that I proudly handed to her. She sat down placing the flowers in her lap, smiling she torn it open and began reading. Suddenly tears rolled down her cheeks slashing onto the flowers, and following the tears came an animalistic scream that made me shudder with horror.
She would always read the letters her grandmother sent, but the last blue letter that ever came was not read to me. Her grandmother had died.
After that, I only remember my mother crying herself to sleep for years, it seemed to me. And It was during one of these sleepless nights that I wandered out of the house to gaze at the stars from our porch. I loved the twinkling stars and would stare at them for hours. But this night was special and I experienced something I never experienced again, since that warm summer night on the porch in Rooty Hill.
Gazing at the brightest star, it suddenly began to expand and it's rays formed a tent around me and the porch. I began trying to look through these rays, as I heard strange sounds coming closer around me. It was like staring into strobe light, I could only see something moving. Then my eyes wandered back to the star above. Inside of it, there was also something moving. Slowly it drifted towards me and I began to see the body of an old woman. Her face came closer and closer, until it was right in front of me and then she spoke 'We are light, don't be afraid'. She smiled and began drifting back to the star. Her smile was like sunlight, it felt warm and soothing. The light rays around me began to dissolve and I could see clearly a group of insect-like creatures all around, they must have been double my size, but I was not afraid. Her smile had a warm lingering effect... I felt no fear. The creatures began glowing like rainbows and slowly disappeared. I went back into the house, went to bed and fell asleep. But I never forgot that night.
If it was a dream?... I use to ask myself as a teenager... It must have been my first dream?
Thirty years later... I told my mother. She said it was a beautiful dream, because her grandmother used to tell her as a child, that when people die, they turn into twinkling stars.
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream - Edgar Allan Poe
Goodnight