The year is 1995. Southwest Grand Rapids, Michigan. The tan house with white shutters on the corner lot. Upstairs bedroom. The moon illuminates lavender walls and a pastel quilt.
A girl, age four, is in bed with the quilt scrunched up to her chin. Her blond curls quiver. She is petrified. There is a monster in the closet. Its tiny eyes glint in the moonlight and tangled, stringy fur hangs from its enormous torso. It is wearing a pair of her mother’s shoes in an attempt to blend in.
She considers her options, trying to keep her thoughts quiet because it is likely that the monster can read minds. If she could move quickly enough across the dark room and wrench closed the accordion closet doors, barricading them shut with the heavy canvas bag full of library books, the monster would surely be trapped. After all, who can open a closet from the inside? she reasons.
“The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” Francisco Goya, 1797. No. 43 of 80 etchings known as Los Caprichos.
Full epigraph reads: “Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”
This plan has one glaring flaw: there is also a monster under the bed. It is the same monster that requires her to leap into bed each evening, lest the creature wrap its slimy tentacles around her ankles and pull her into its lair for a bedtime snack. So she is trapped, unable to move without waking the two beasts and unable even to close her eyes, for that is when they would swoop in and take her by surprise. She waits in the dark.
Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.
***
The year is 2014. Southwest Grand Rapids, Michigan. The tan house with blue shutters on the corner lot. Upstairs bedroom. The bedside lamp illuminates pale grey walls and a blue floral duvet
A girl (woman?), age twenty-three, is in bed with the duvet scrunched down near her feet—it got too hot with a computer on her lap. She is thinking. Her blond curls are gathered up in a messy knot, out of her eyes. There is a blank page before her. The cursor blinks unassumingly at the top left corner and the thesaurus waits on the right. She turns down the screen brightness in an attempt to ease her mind.
She considers her options, trying to magnify the tiniest whispers of inspiration into triumphant shouts of “art!” If she could just latch on to an idea and fill the page as quickly as her fingers could fly across the keys, surely the readers would be impressed. After all, they’re writers, too.
This plan has one flaw: or does it? Tacked to the wall near her bed is the etching of Goya sleeping soundly among the birds and bats. She is free, able to move quickly through the recesses of her mind and remember those dark nights when imaginations ran wild. She writes in the light.
United with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.
Abby Zwart (’13) teaches high school English in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She spends her free time making lists of books she should read, cooking, and managing the post calvin.
