There is a Road

They say there is a road.

A bridge, really. Kinda, sorta. It is where the mists part and the way is clear.

My grandmother, she was ninety-four when she traveled it. She had been one of those people, they were called smokers. A bit of rolled paper concealed a substance called tobacco or maybe it was taback because I certainly don’t know anymore and you would light it and inhale something. No one these days remembers what that is, but it was just something you breathed in and, I suppose, got some benefit from. No one really remembers, now, what that benefit was. Or maybe they all thought it would look interesting, or be fun, or something. But she was my grandmother, and she was ninety-four, and I scarcely think that fun or appearances mattered to her that much anymore. But she was still a smoker.

And it brought her to the road.

My father, he was sixty-one. He was piloting. He was a transport flier, a professional; he used to like to say. I remember him, with his big green uniform on, with the cap and the fake medals on it, giving him a vaguely military appearance, although he was as military as my grandmother had been. He was high up, over Proxima Centauri, and a small child was crying in the back. Its mother tried to shush it. You know how mothers are. They want their infants to be quiet, but they just don’t want to be too loud or unsubtle or angry about it. I imagine the female asked the child nicely to be quiet, but asking makes no sense when it’s so young a child. The child, of course, ignored her. She had asked again, and again, and the other passengers had become annoyed. At least, that is what the black box recording said. My father was distracted and angry, and tired. He had had one too many, they say, that’s what they say, isn’t it? One too many? Or was it five too many? It hardly matters now.

He was flying the transport, and the child was crying, and the female was inadequately shushing it, and the ground came up far too quickly and the inquest said that he was almost one hundred percent at fault but I say that kid was at least as much at fault as he was.

And so my father was brought – or I suppose he brought himself to it – to the road. As were all of the passengers.  And that female was brought, as well – sentenced, I expect, to carry that bawling child along for all eternity.

And here I am, at the start. And I shall tell you my story.

I am an artist. I paint with light and shadow, with chemicals and pixels and metals, working them into fabric and canvas and paper and stone and glass. My work is not that popular. I am hardly recognized beyond certain art circles but I do my best and I leave it all out there. I hold nothing back as I create figures, both realistic and wholly imagined, and try to make sense of it all.

Have I made sense of it all? I suspect not, for to make sense, I think, implies knowing the mind of God or being able to see the face of forever. And I am but an artist, a transport driver’s child; a smoker’s grandchild. I am no one.

Yet here I am. And I am about to start on that same road.

I do not know how I got here. One moment, you are mixing chemicals. And in the next, you are here. Perhaps there was a spark. Or the fumes, maybe they were too much. I am not always careful. I know this. I blame no one.

And now I find myself on the road.