With great force Lucinda slathered scarlet red paint across the pine plank's fine ground grains. Almost careless, her hand continued its plight as she plunged her brush back into the brilliant brights spilled across her palette. Frantic, yet full of focused intention, she sent another whipping backhand striking against the boards of the birdhouse, decorating it with bloody splatters of pigment.
Lucinda let loose. Succumbed to a side she was prone to Hyde, she lost herself in channeled rage and worked through her seething emotions divorced from her actions. Her mind sat numb and humming far from her body, beyond her workshop as she bathed the small fragile frame in poetic torment. Strikes, scratches, blacks and bruises, buried the fury, and unearthed beauty. Slow, shades marbled, and a colour gorgeous enough to cause pause emerged. Out of breath, Lucinda wiped the perspiration from her forehead, soaked her brush in turpentine, left her palette to rest, and moved to another workstation.
As she crossed the garage Lucinda selected an armful of wood cuts from a giant green bucket kept beside her tablesaw, grabbed a fistful of nails, and teetered to a dedicated work bench. Dabs of glue helped give shape to vision while she puzzled together a new structure. Lucinda gripped the smooth sweat polished handle of her hammer, pinched a steel pin, and closed her eyes. She conjured their words, their lies, the ocean of unabiding hurt within, until her vision snapped open.
Without lag or hesitation she swung.
Rhythmic, ruthless, her relentless hammer drove each spike home with the calculated spacing of a metronome. One sharp tap placed each tack before her mechanical swing. The momentary click of steel against steel indecipherable against the solitary bang as the hammer's face kissed the wood. Her breath was steady, her gaze limitless.
In under half an hour she'd joined three more birdhouses. Microscopic particles stuck across her sweaty brow, clung to her hair. Lucinda stood head to toe in sawdust, paint dotted her denim working apron. A quick check on the drying coat's progress told her there was time to kill before she could continue decorating.
It was an opportunity to stretch. With her mug of, now temperate, tea Luci stepped to her garden and let a breeze sweep some of the filth from her shoulders. Sweet summer spiced the wind, and more than its cooling grace, it gave ease. Cold peppermint rinsed away remnants of her well practiced cathartic dance, as Lucinda let her true self reemerge.
Outside was an orchestra. A choir of chickadees, robins, goldfinches, flickers, and swallows sang and twittered over the percussive zipping beats of hummingbird wings. All manner of species fluttered and flurried around her utopia. In every corner, off every branch, their homes littered the yard. Wooden frames extended from climbing walls, stood from corners, ordained branches, and arches, crafted with care. A metropolis built from elaborate birdhouses birthed from Luci's garage.
No birdhouse was the same. Though no matter how brilliant, nor astounding her brush's colours, the paint paled compared to the symphony of her garden. A degree's worth of research and deep contemplation had gone into her Eden. No leaf or petal went unconsidered. Harmony. Balance. What aided and attracted her favourite flyers, pleased her beehive, what pollinated when? Her inquiries crafted chorus's, blooms in verse, until her yard rolled through the seasons like a song. Jasmine, Moon Flower, and Four Clocks peppered the fringes. Fragrant evening blossoms to celebrate the celestial shadow, scenting beautiful safe heavens for the night, for nesting. Feeders hung out of reach from squirrels. The holes in the houses intentional, too small for invasive critters, perfect for her feathered friends. A dreamworld for her dreamers.
The level of care Luci longed for from others she poured into the garden. A blueprint for not only the world she begged to live in, but the serenity she clawed to have inside.
The tiny homes an obsession that had started long ago, introduced by her grandfather, and grandmother when they'd taken her in. A quiet pass-time between the two crafters, one fascinated in structures, the other in ornate details, and patterns. Blue collared hobbyists, that dreamed of architecture and far away lands, content in escaping to their yard, and leaving their mark on their kin rather than the skylines.
With another pull of peppermint, Luci sent her sights skipping to the old estates they'd crafted together when she'd first arrived so many decades ago. Complex structures conceived by an adolescent and refined by her elders. Areas of the garden had at one time been themed as continents, both known, and fictitious. The aging couple's hobby taught Lucinda skilled crafts, theory, patience, and planning. Evoked conversation, and striving. Through their guidance she learned the power of charity, the self serving satisfaction of giving, and a reverence for nature.
They'd passed in short succession of one another before she'd graduated. Lucinda shielded herself from the flaying grief in a blanket of numb, a parasitic soother that stole years. For close to a decade she shuffled in the emptiness of the inherited home, and became more of a ghost than those she missed. It took the snap of a rotten piece of twine bearing a favoured birdhouse to break grief's spell. The crash and cawing from the now displaced finches, brought her scrambling to the yard. The final loss of the relic ruined helped her cross a threshold. With the pieces of the broken home in hand Luci made a vow to fix it. To repair it all.
It wasn't an easy task to start. Anxiety drizzled its doubt and progress inched. The garden had come first. The soil and earth healing like a suave. Sweat pulled the sorrow. Seasons circulated, and with time Luci blossomed. Her inevitable return to their once bustling garage received a royal welcome. Carpets of dust, and streaming cobwebs. Undeterred, each day the bolder raised the boulder. The saws oiled, surfaces swept, tools sharpened, machines calibrated, and space readied. Luci's journey began with refurbishing the weather worn heirlooms found amongst the yard. Days where the atmosphere wouldn't cooperate worked as a cocoon. And the ritual became a channel to her past.
The meagre suburban estate transformed to an outdoor museum showcasing her emotional biography. A gallery where Luci relinquished everything. Joy, hopelessness, wonder, rage, melancholy, indifference. What she gave from the held hurt in her heart she received in trickles of serenity. In memory. In purpose. By and by, the birds returned. Her crafting excelled with her imagination as a city birthed. Baths. Garden beds. Solar powered lanterns weaved through elaborate archways. Nesting materials left for those brooding. Her planting became more intentional, Bee Balms, Lavender, dramatic Delphiniums, crawling Roses, sneaky Snapdragons. The bees buzzed, hummingbirds hovered. Feeders filled, fountains sprung.
Slow change went almost unnoticed, but in time the tranquility she conducted outside permeated within. That peace brought people. It wasn't long before her hobbies spilt across the front yard. Birdhouses overflowed into the trees lining the road, to the nearby park. As welcoming gifts to new neighbours, and presents to old friends. Their decorative street became a local legend, a beloved destination for walkers, cyclists, and tourists. Deadened days moved to the past, while Lucinda and her creations became a fixture in the community. With deep affection, they called her The Bird Lady.
Various articles regarding her works documented in papers, and magazines both local and national hung with pride in the corners of her garage. Collected amongst tote bags, t-shirts, and prints other artists had created inspired by the avenue. Yet the change of cheer did not solve everything. Goodwill, and gifting did not keep her inheritance from draining. Lucinda's reintegration with society brought a litany of new experiences. Good, bad. Friendships, and fiends. Betrayals, heartache, heartbreak, a return to the excessive weights of grief.
She'd stepped from her garden, not yet healed herself, only for new afflictions to rise. Learned lessons eased the slights. Before tears fell, fangs flashed, and horns raised, Lucinda returned to the workshop. Chaos became crafts. Luci unmasked to Kali, breathing her destructive fire into the light of creation. Her flaming anger coalescing to the brightest star, feeding her oasis, feeding herself. A channel, a filter, Luci exhaled. The burden of kindness heavy on her exhausted frame. Her shoulders ached.
Battled in silence, the quiet war within raged. Her victories medalled with appreciative waves and sweet trite conversations from her neighbours. It wasn't that she was misunderstood, only that she wasn't known, and that was ok. They, like the birds, and flowers, did not need to know her full nature, when they knew the purer side of her self. More than her shadows she was the rustic enlightened one that gathered her pains, and sins, and eviscerated them in the kilns of creation. She was building a cathedral, a home for her heavy heart.
Tea in hand, Luci waltzed through her garden. Each step through the channeled colours of her biographic past quelled her fiery twin. Calm collected, and Lucinda pacified. Her fingers trailed across brushstrokes she couldn't remember making, representing emotions all too alive. Affront to their towering strength she knew the power of pouring them into the positive. As she walked she spied an invasive flower, and rooted it out without malice.
Luci tried to accept them. She saw herself in every part of the garden, in the flaws, the weeds. It was part and parcel, not unexpected, something to embrace. A deep understanding that there was only perfection in the practice, not the destination. The laborious stone would make it to the peak only to tumble, that there was peace in the repetition, not futility. Cancerous thoughts were opportunities for transformation, her workshop the treatment. Lucinda's suffering left the world a better place. That the best part of smiling was the path to it, the relief, and thrill of harmony. Placing the sprinklers, crafting a free library along her fence line, planting new teenage bestsellers for the local kids to discover, dropping personalized arrangements for birthdays, funerals, and showers. These acts transformed ache and rot within. Drying flowers to gift through the colder seasons. Bad feelings met with a bouquets.
No feeling went ignored, nor belittled, only taken to task on the bench, cocooned in the shop. Emotions and the monster within leaned into and embraced, utilized instead left festering until they overwhelmed. Blades, mallets, nails, and saws. Problems dismantled, and solutions assembled.
Braver then facing the dark, and darker sides of self was allowing others in. To her life, even the garden, her secret sanctuary. The gated alley entrance guarded by a small coded spindle lock, 4673- hope on a key pad. Known to a few kind ones, neighbours and acquaintances that needed a breath, an oasis. To read, to weep, to write, to pause, to collect. She hoped that as she invited others onto her path to peace, they'd embrace, and emanate more alongside her.
Rare was the space abused, though it happened. Tough conversations would come as a consequence, and more birdhouses would surface. While she had no problem standing up for herself, the incidents drained her. Pot smoking teens, gossipers, thieves, people blaspheming the space's aesthetics for their socials and dating profiles played at her patience.
And yet, the efforts were worth it. Internal knots would unravel. Compliments, meaningful heart to hearts would come, and the well within would replenish. It wasn't admiration for the work that filled her, it was knowing that something she'd created caused a moment of pausing joy or wonder for someone else. A spark of home, shared from the fire she'd spent years rebuilding. Luci remembered how those embers felt when she discovered her grandparents' creations. She could still feel it revisiting their refurbished works, running her fingers over the textures of the wood, listening to the squawking squatters.
The world, the workshop, the garden. A transformative cycle. Each effort a happy boon to the floral palace where Luci released the hurts. From the young parents that had left her in the capable hands of her grandparents to the frustrations growing up in a culture that she didn't understand, nor understood her. She released the self inflicting stabs, and those poisonous thoughts. Horror, fear, neglect, defeat, reframed into awe, kindness, and homes through her hands, through her work. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Again and again.
Two bees bumbled past her nose, and Lucinda smiled. The heaviness of the week's compounding trespasses had released. The ocean inside lulled and rolled, waving away evaporated emotions from the depths returning them to the atmosphere. Not everything could be solved in the garden, but a lot could shift. In the sun's rays she found gratitude. Luci's work tuned harmony in her home on a street she hadn't chosen, in a town she didn't particularly love. Within herself she'd found balance, a balance which she shared. A purifying loop, filtering emotions into creation, creations to contribute joy, and rained inevitable gratitude calibrated a concord between her selves. Turbulent disturbances would come, and Lucinda would not only transform them, but use them to shelter others.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out the previous 12 part collection of Zoditraxx, and consider the other side of subtle dualities.
-Mr. Write
PS: Be sure to check out Exaggerated Shadow’s new release for Gem in Eye on all your favourite streaming platforms! As well as the first collection of the Zoditraxx, Sol Bathing!