Throughout its various incarnations, this picture has always been called Diana.   The Huntress.  Virginal, and wild.  High Priestess of Nature.   Instinctive.  Instinctual.  Moon Goddess.  Dancer on the night winds ... .  I don't even remember when I drew her to me ... only that I did.  A study in form and shadow.  Faceless.  Sexual.  Demanding.  At once was she absurd and perfectly in sync with her world around her.  The full moon.  The shadows.  The Darkness.  A wind snatched at her hair as she turned from me.

Bring out the background.  The moon.  The pale innocence that devours.   And I watched the stones and trees dissolve ... grow ragged.  Or fill her with the solid earth beneath her feet.  Increase the contrast.  Introduce imbalancing colours.  Dust we are ... and unto dust we return.

Still, we could not wed.

So I went to the messenger of the Gods.  Mercury.  Hermes.  Nylathrotep.   He is a cab driver in New York City.  Knows where to find anything.   Where you can go for a good time ... .

He was originally underscored too heavily in blue ... so I adjusted the tone to his skin.  He could not pass, at first, for human.  One had only to glance at the back of his neck in his cab to know he was not one of "us," and this he could not abide ... .   Mercury, like Merlin, is of the Air.  He is of the cold, the frost, the wind ... I added earthtones.  A layer of dust. 

So ... 'Where do ya wanna go?'

By contrast, "Love Sucks" was too rooted in the rich black earth.  It needed to grow.  I shifted, then, the colour balance ... I breathed upon in.  A chill.  I looked, of a sudden, back at myself.

"Wolf" found its way to the cover of The Small Pond Magazine of Poetry.  I liked it.  But when I brought it to the screen it seemed bland.  Indifferent.  I scanned it as a tiff file, then began sharpening it; each adjustment infused it with a crispness a sharp as ice.  I increased the contrast then 'upped' the cold north wind with a gesture ... .  Ice formed.  Snow began to fall ... .  I grew lonely.

I could hear my lonliness echoed.

I grew frightened.  Then sad.  Then quiet.

I drew into myself.  And remembered.

Arm raised in defiance.  A gesture.   Strike!  No!  I dare you! ... speaks for itself ... or spoke.  Once.   When I added the blood wrapping its defiance, the revolution took a new turn.   Anger grabbed up the reins and lashed out.

The image still felt weak.  It felt as though it could not, would not, perhaps. dared not succeed.  I introduced it to PhotoShop and enveloped the image in bright heat.  Desert heat.  Anger wed defiance.  Rebellion.  Revenge! ... and it was Abel who paid the ultimate price.

Who remains to make sense of this?

Copyright © 1996 Eugene R. Gryniewicz.  All rights reserved