Abstract Writing

The Silentraveler

He is a traveling painter who eats a lot and sleeps a lot. She’ll paint for you in exchange for rare herbs, minerals, information or a great song.

He has no gender and she has no age. There was no time where he was alive but she have always been and will always be just there.

It all started 274 photographs ago. When the world was too busy to look up from their virtual worlds, she was conceived. Next thing he knew he was having the oddest combination of Tilapia in creamy spinach sauce with the side of sweet fluffy pancakes. She was alone in an iHop with no one to talk to so he watched as the people conversed with her by their actions.

The waitresses who were huddled up by the entrance didn’t notice when she came in nor when he left but I doubt that anyone even cared. As she was strolling mindlessly around what’s there to Sea by the See. She found a tea cup that made into a chair. Or is it a chair made into a tea cup? With no other purpose greater than aesthetics.

There was a man who was sitting on an outlook stretching further than the shore. The silent traveler steals a painting from that sad scenery not knowing who that man could be. Nor will that man know who she should be.

Distracted by food, and lots of it, you can often find our mystery watcher sitting quietly in a cafe. Most of the time next to you when most probably you thought the seats were vacant all this time. She is small of stature and he bares the look and curiosity of a child.

He indulges in steaks and cakes which no one would ever knew where to find. She follows the abandoned train tracks that lead to the ocean covered in moss and memories all the way home. She likes to yearn for beautiful things but never wants to posses such burdens. The desire is more rewarding than the actual objects.

She paints an old faded painting and burns the shadows in harsher black. Turner. He copies Turner. She paints a friend’s dog in Sherlock Holmes’ garments smoking a pipe that spins out smoke in forms of letters and strings.

Then again, what is a friend? A robot he passes by on her way home. The only creature that never fails to notice when he’s right in front of it.

“Hello.”

Her large dusty bag is filled with potions. He uses them to paint photographs and capture portraits. She owns a small book of spells which words are never spoken but always recorded.

Shrimp. There is a food truck in the middle of the mountains. Who ever discovered it first? Now hundreds of customers climbs just to have a taste of mountain shrimp.

There is a bird cage filled with tea. With the bird latched on the centre of the iron bars, as if inviting you to try her freshly brewed citrus iced tea in the peak of the hottest summer that’s evaporating your soul.

He makes his way back to the city. Millions of people come and go yet not one dare to stay. This electric town sells dreams and love that’s made up of light and pixels. Once she made it out of there there were no more jewels left to spare.

But instead he finds a bear made to blow bubbles out of a pink bowl in her satchel. He finds a way to get back on the road, her work spilled on the floor full of stories and humor. What and where can I exchange these thin slices of trees with splattered ink all over them? How can I convince somebody that they are of value. The traveler asks herself.

Soon he finds a desperate group of foreigners trying to find a place to belong in a place where they don’t belong. She sells them a future in exchange for the sakura petals that have fallen on their heads. He’s made enough to enjoy a fine dinner. Complete with a sweetened green milk compliment.

Days follow and she fills her days with pork cutlets, bread and coffee, and some eel. Next thing he knew he finds himself in a boxing match. Would there be anyone willing to buy her art today? He scribbles down the movement of the fighters while selling the tastiest drink which is Ginger Ale.

Vacation’s over for the quiet explorer and she looks out the window only to be surprised by his own reflection. You see, when you look out the window there is another building made of glass right in front of it. The only view is yourself and the building in which you are standing. Accidentally she learns a secret his instructor was hiding. For in that reflection she sees him in another room smoking when he should have been where he was, teaching. The building taught me a secret today she thinks to himself.

His peers were asleep or watching their phones once again. Why are we all here in the first place? To make art or to embetter our attendance record. If so, it should have been enough to check our names off the list and go home.

The traveler left class and walked down the city streets to find that the ferris wheel was starting to get covered in a blanket of cherry blossom trees. Soon the day turned into night and he spies a young couple strolling under a moon staring back at her.

It’s almost the time where leaves have to die so he paints a small boy. As small as her pinky, hiding behind a leaf. Satisfied with his small scribble she eats and eats once again and enjoys his company of soft bread loaves to keep her warm at night.

The next day he spends a fast morning with running horses with archers bobbing behind their backs. A few misses and a couple break planks that made petals scatter.

More food and a cat with a bottle of Cassis potion. Get drunk for tonight my friend. She sticks out his leg and starts to paint an eye, followed by a lady and a dragon, then some flowers and millions of pores. This is my tattoo for tonight she nods.

More days pass and again nothing but food. A meal after another. So sweet they were. But so gone they are.

He chows down and notices maybe it’s time to stop and think of my appearance even though no body really sees me. She picks out some dresses and tries them on only to find out that they look better being painted than worn.

After his birthday, she goes to the graveyard. Paper pinwheels spin almost violently as the wind follows him around today’s journey. A merchant selling power stone knives brag about their beauty but warns her never to use them. What is a knife for but for cutting?

Glowing bread lamps beckon in the night. They looked so real you can almost eat them. But sometimes things are meant to be just pretty but unfortunately die as ugly. The flesh rots and reveals a dreadful skull. But not to worry, fashionable shades are properly in place to keep things ever so beautiful.

She buys himself a box of chocolates on Valentines day. They were just as sweet but maybe missing something that wasn’t ever there. An unknown mechanic sells the traveler a funny little robot who only knows how to dance for 5 seconds after you wind him up. But it’s enough for a long time of laughter. How silly yet tirelessly amusing.

She paints a swordsman who wishes to be a mage and a magician who dreams to be a warrior. The night comes once again and the only light comes from not the moon but a circus merry go round. How eerie yet captivating. You can almost see the lost souls of the children. Or the children of lost souls. How they use to smile. How they now wear black suits and ties that tie them to their desks.

There were stools on the furniture shop that looked like dogs. Fluffy little puffs of seats. He arranges some towels in the store with letters embroidered on them to spell her name. Will anybody notice him now?

A cold coconut coffee in a cooper mug. Today his art will exhibit in a prestigious gallery. Although compliments she received, words cannot feed him for tonight.

So when all said is done she finds himself staring into a glass case of sausages rolled up like lollipops and stabbed with a stick right in the middle. She looks up at nicely lit cafe where the rich enjoy their dinner with aching hearts and tearful smiles.

The next day he was tossed a fruit sandwich which she joyfully and gratefully ate for breakfast. Lunch was a frangranceless pot of mist. So he drew herself a maid and protector who had a rolling pin that hid knives. Then he dreamed of an astronaut caught in flooded Mexico with lime green toxic wastes. A group of mutated mountains were after him and the only comrades he had were white fleeting fish under the shooting stars.

The silent traveler makes an unlikely friend. A crusader who was as gluttonous as he was. So they spent a few nights traveling together enjoying good food but the same isolation. The only thing new was that she tried is best to mirror the crusader’s smile. But soon they parted ways and the traveler shrugged. Maybe company isn’t so bad. But it was tiring.

So he painted a swordsman refilling is water jug with swords. Behind him was a German Shepherd the size of a horse patiently resting with his master. Soon a telegram arrives from Greece. Looks like a wonderful place to travel she sighed. But alas he was in Asia for now and no amount of walking can make her fly yet.

The years are ending. Soon he’d have the choice to stay or go but she’ll never be able to come back. Or if he does, she’ll never be the same. So he stuffs her face like it’s the first and last kiss he’ll ever taste.

Food is happiness. No matter who you are, where you are and what you are.

Since it’s the last few hours of her stay, he paints a picture of a pale blonde Arabian child combing a sleeping tiger under a water fall. And another, a violet headed boy protecting his friend from a point of a sword with the moon shinning above his head like a halo while an airship paddles its way above the stars.

Lastly, for her last piece of art in his journey. A wall flower. A girl crowned in pearls with a red rose growing on her mouth. She is embedded on a brick wall as she coldly stares at your soul as you pass by.
Her attention was soon caught by the reflections of her own words reversed in a coffee mug. So he found herself painting a hidden piece. A haunted clock tower of a red headed puppet under an upside down crescent moon.

Good bye to this busy town with soulless robots and heartless humans. He takes her hat off one last time and bows as his last farewell. She enters the station and as he waited for the last train two more works of art escapes his hands. A student in an orange and blue floral hakama riding a giant turtle surfing the waves. Lastly, a snake in form of a beautiful white haired woman sitting on a palm of a blue genie.

She looks up at the Japanese moon one last time and flies up to the sky. His next destination is France. Before the place touched the ground she painted another piece. A boy who looks so much like his brother stepping on a pile of skulls as he adorns one special pristine skull with a red ribbon.

Then on to France she laid on a garden chair with a book on his lap that she never read a word of. The waves stopped in mid air and the water shatters into small droplets forever separated in time. Soon a silhouette of a butler in appears on a dish adorned with one purple rose and millions of demonic thorns. Aesthetics my friend. She drifted off to a dream and woke up as a sad middle aged man in reality.