I dreamt that I wanted to paint a picture.
I did not have a canvas, so I cut a piece out of a bed-sheet and stretched and tacked it over a frame.
When I commenced to paint, the sheet was soft under my brush, and the paint passed through the cloth. Not to worry, I put the paint on thick and built up paint on paint.
My subject was an old man. He had once been a boy and then a middle-aged man, before growing old.
Now you know yourself that the marks you put on the canvas are seldom the same as what you intended. When I reviewed my progress, I was alarmed to find that what I had painted was the boy. I grappled again with the task. Now it looked like the middle-aged man. I struggled on and finally captured the old man
I depicted the right hand as raised and the left hand across the waist. The fingers were to be stretched out, but they looked folded in. Not to worry, I worked over them and stretched them out.
A man, whose name was Seamus O'Reilly, was there. He looked at my picture and asked me,
"What is it?"
What a question!
I looked at the picture. It was not a single solid image. Before my eyes it kept changing: young man, middle-aged man, old man. The hands kept opening and closing.
"I suppose you could say it is an optical illusion, " I said: "I offer the viewer conflicting visual clues, so (s)he will see as if the subject is growing from boy to man to old age and grasping at life."
We were in a Community Centre. The people were taking little interest in my creative work, regarding it as one would regard a child's scribble stuck on a fridge.
"It should be in a museum of Art," I said. " It should be in a room of it's own, and patrons should be charged a fee to see it."
Interpretation: no need for psychics; when I look in the mirror, I see a boy or young man, but that's no what is really there.
