December 7th, 2009

Tree

I had a dream last night that… wasn’t a nightmare for once. That’s rare for me, if it wasn’t already obvious. It just sort of left me dazed and a little confused. I was really young and in my childhood doctors’ office. In front of me was an easel. He told me to draw a tree. And I don’t know if this is just a dream thing, or if it reflects on my artistic skills as a person, but I just could not get it to look… correct, I think? I could only hear my doctor’s occasional “hum”s and the dull buzzing of the overhead lights.

I came out with three drawings.

One was of a long, slender tree with leaves that stuck up like hair.

One was short, almost shrub-like. There was hardly any bark.

One was cut down. It didn’t bear any branches or leaves anyway.

The thing about drawing with paperless crayons is that if you grip them too hard, they stain your hands. That’s what I was given, though. Old, worn down crayons that had long lost their dignity. But why did they only give me red crayons? Did they just assume that I would draw an autumn tree?