Dream Outlines

Dream Outlines or The Woman in Black
Sometimes it came back more often even recurring many times on the same day. Sometimes it would stop for more than a month or two. Once I missed it so badly that I tried all means to see it again either by going to bed earlier, having a nap or concentrating while awake. But it would refuse to appear as if saying: Look I won’t be commanded. You can’t imagine my joy when it appeared again but unfortunately I could only discern vague outlines of a figure which looked like a woman. I wished I could zoom in on her face. But then it disappeared completely as if saying: I am tired of playing this game. Get up and do something? Now I was completely downcast and desperate. I didn’t know what action to take so I started talking to it: please come back; I would even be content with you as a shadow, just come back. Then I decided to take a camera to bed with me in case she appeared again.

It did come back one last time while I was having a nap one afternoon. I saw a vivid picture of a woman dressed in black, a woman in her mid thirties with short shiny black hair which covered one of her eyes. She was not tall but not short. Her face was raddled. A sad bluish grey eye focused me like a camera for a minute. I immediately got up to get my camera but it dissolved the moment I laid my hands on it. I hurried to the sofa to resume my nap and have a closer look at her but she dissolved too. The only thing was left now was my memory. Although I knew I was not good at painting I took a pencil and a piece of paper and tried to draw a composite or a sketch. I thought writing and painting need the same skills but the sketch I made was vaguer than my memory. I decided to write down all the details and take my sketch to a painter. The details I wrote down were not enough but he managed to make a large painting after answering some of his difficult questions.

She stopped appearing to me completely after that but at least I have a picture now. The painting occupies a wall in my study and it serves as an eye-catcher whenever I have visitors. I still hope one of them would one day say: I think I know her ... My memory became weaker and weaker and the painting lost colour. I thought: I must forget about it now. It is only a product of my distorted imagination after all. No, it seems I couldn’t stop thinking when one afternoon after work I saw the same outlines of a figure on the other side of a busy road walking. Without hesitation I jumped over the road but fell into a coma.

Jamshid
Bremen, 16 May 2007

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