The story begins with faded memories that lived in his mind like ghosts quietly looking on while inhabiting an old house that needs repairs in every corner. The memories are of following others and their instructions. He vaguely remembered dutifully doing what he was told and while watching his siblings carry on with what seemed no instruction at all felt like he was picked out to be the laborer and to take on all responsibility for things that needed done being done. Indeed, if things were not completed satisfactorily he would feel the pain that was the cost of things not being done.
The system that he was forced to exist in made him search for a peace that he could only find by being by himself and so he became a hermit in his own home and no one noticed. Retired to his room after the days work was complete, he would lock himself in and the world out with books or music and most times both. In the books he found a wealth of knowledge whether they be fiction or non-fiction. In the music he found the soul of the artist and at the same time discovering parts of his own soul from theirs. It was the arts that he decided to claim for himself. Books, music, drawing and painting and sculpture all brought with them the soul of those who created and it seemed that there was always a tiny bit of those old souls that seemed to fill in a piece of the puzzle of his own soul. He began to discover who he was.
With the newly discovered parts of his own soul he began creating art that brought out parts of of it. He learned the piano and how the notes, the different keys worked together to create music and music would define feelings, moods, wants and desires. He began to write and learned how words mean things no matter how small the word. A set of words put together could cut like a knife or soothe like a warm spring. Words could bring forth ideas, both old and new, and could explain the thinking process he would learn to be philosophy. Words, he would learn, are the most powerful weapon or tool devised by the civilization of man. He tried to draw only to learn that the art of expression through shapes and colors, the cool blues and the hot reds would not emanate from his newly discovered soul. He felt betrayed by the art of pencil or brush on paper or canvas. His soul would not reveal itself in this way and so he went to search for a way in which it could and found it in what would become his profession. He discovered the delicate art of drafting and designing with a board, a straight edge and a triangle. With these three tools he would be able to create things that his father would bring to life from the drawings that came from his soul onto paper. He now has about forty years of these artful drawings stored away in various places, in company files that people he does not know and never will meet will look at and appreciate what his mind and soul created.
He finally felt for the first time in his life that at least a part of him was complete. He had discovered his soul and was able to impart it among others. Once discovered though, very few saw the parts of his soul he had discovered and had molded. He held them within, selfishly for himself for he knew in his heart the depictions that he created would not be appreciated and he was correct in his thinking on this point for the most part.
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| Drawing Hands - M.C. Escher |
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