GESTALT IN POLYCHROMASIA

(Musepunk)

By WilliamJJackson

SEMIPRECIOUS DAY

Forja blushed a chagrin cherry as her peers laughed her out. Ridicule greeted the tender young street painter every Myrmidon Day. The Students of the Bricks were an onerous lot, had been since Rufus Nightloss splashed cool prismatics along the rowhouses of Slausson Corner back in what Telestics termed the Reawakening. Those were the days, as some say. But today should have rung a different size of bell. One for her. Forja Day. Victory at last! Alas.

It certainly got off to a rousing start. She arose from a proud, infectious magenta dream, a breakfast of glistening yellow omelet folded over cinnamon toast by a loving mother. Forja tried coffee for the very first time, Stone Easel, and allowed the initial scalding sip to whisk her away to an imaginary desert oasis of chuffed dromedaries and chanting pilgrims. A quick change into the iridescent orange skirt. A tangerine turtleneck sweater under a yellow painter's jacket. Pockets! Stuffed! Paintbrushes!

At a turn, the day raged against her. Verona. Meanda. The usual suspects at the fore of the Clique Dujour. This time they came with a more concentrated form of their social venom. Her father's unemployment. Mother's disability. Your Method is always the SAME! Forja's clear cut focus dithered off a cliff in her deteriorating frontal lobe and down, down so far down did her esteem plummet. She dropped the blessed paints and bolted, only to run out on the streets of Polychromasia, summer green urine leakage under sonic guffaws of geranium faces and pointing, jabbing vermilion digits.

You don't have what it takes!

Neither does your entire family!

Does she even KNOW there are colors outside of orange?

Her swishable skirt flatlined. Skin paled further to a flagellant pink as she stepped away from the invisible blitzkrieg of thorns called harsh words. Jophia laughed loudest, she who lacked Method but mastered keeping flocks of the unimaginative attached to her like a great artisanal magnet.

Not even close! Not even close to done!

So she fled, as any outflanked person would from ridicule most murderous. Fled from her own Method on the wall. True, it was only a third complete, just an eye in five shades of orange looking for a face along the aged brick wall, paired with a thick eyebrow in lines of bold maroon and slender taupe.

Really, the students were focused on breaking Forja's resolve.

But to attack art is to attack artist. The vice is in the versa.

Here in the Bricklands and the entire versicolor world Art equated to existence. Nature is color. People were hues and shades animated people. Simple knowledge. Born from the primordial waters of variegated chemistry, emotionalism. Psycho-evolution. Every plant had it, animal, and person. Life equals mood equals Art. Everything is Art, from day one when They mixed it into the sea. Talking is Art. Hobbies are Art. Building is Art. Heck, what is science except Art as anal-retentive ouroboros?

Why did the mind pulse in rainbow whiplash random thought strands while on the run? Curse a panic!

The Old Country well, they mastered the First Works. When Giuveld realized he could imprint his own shade onto matter, finger as a brush, well, the whole world gushed. You can still go over there and see his works in the finest of detail. The Lady Of The Psychotic Embrace, Four Children In Form, Abigon's Nowhere, and thousands more. The Old Country is living Art, breathing lore. Dear Sun of Blue Opaline, they made the grass in Fontainjeune stark mustard! Now that's dedication.

Dedication how can I even think of dedication when I ran I just ran from my own Method can't believe I let them scare me off it'll be even worse tomorrow of God oh God oh God

Forja stopped in an alley six blocks away, where potted plants bragged in the form of succulent flowers, purple under red under suave gold. She noticed, and their ambiance helped the young artist to slow breathing, regain imaginative insight.

"I...have to go back. What if they deface it? I'll have to start all over from scratch."

She shrieked. The blush deepened into a virulent crimson. Forja felt the wall behind her collapse, enticing her to jump away. She found a door, not a wall, that she had been leaning on, and watched it open with yellow-eyed terror. A bell inside the door chimed a series of happy notes. The man opening the door lacked the bell's fervent optimism.

Thin, balding, glasses shaded yellow and thick as a thumb, the butterscotch man smiled at Forja. He appeared jovial, content, simple in a green vest over a purple dress shirt, forest green trousers starched and pressed. He contained within him all of the hopes and wistful verve Forja had lost moments ago.

"A pleasant day for leaning, isn't it?" he asked.

"Oh! I'm terribly sorry." She looked down at the street and its chalk art done by youthful hands.

"Nonsense. Leaning on a door does no harm to it whatsoever. I mean, perhaps if I were on the way somewhere it might have been a minor obstruction, but no wrong committed." The smile broadened. "Would you care for something to drink?"

"No. No, I should get going. I have a Method to perform. Really busy right now. My class wants to see it very badly, so..." the head remained downcast.

"Myrmidon Day. Oh, yes. It is today, isn't it? Well, the streets will be more colorful than usual. If you like that sort of thing."

"I love it!" Her head shot up, along with a strong yet temporary look of sheer joy. "This is my spotlight day. It will be. I mean, it was."

The man watched her head sag again. "You must be overflowing with artistry. You can barely withstand the weight of it in your mind."

Forja flushed. "I'm not that heavy with it."

"Well, young lady, around here we hold our heads up when we discuss our Method. So, none of this worm-slithering, duck-and-cover shame. I take it things have gone awry?"

Forja half twirled as grief twisted her insides. "It's nothing, really. It will pass. Just have to suck it up and, get the work done."

"Oh, it's that bad, is it?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You didn't call it Method, Art, or joy. You called it the most dreary word ever devised. Work."

Forja grimaced in pink woe. "Huh?"

"Method is when we build real dreams and sing doing so. Work, I mean, it's what we're made to do, like it or not. You lost your heart somewhere along the way today."

She dropped a tear. Then two.

"Okay. I'm sorry. Didn't mean to make you cry. Let me get you a--"

Forja spilled over. Tears and the entire red-faced affair. Callous peers. Yellow terror. Personal peril in purple-taupe pinstripe mental prison bands holding back her creative flow. She broke down, tears smearing the childish chalk wonders of zippy cats and quixotic unicorns on trikes.

The man slipped into his house only to return with a periwinkle box of fluffy primrose wipes. He gave the box to Forja, who put them to use.

"There, there. I'm sure you're a fine artist, especially since you go to a school here in the Bricks. But, children have always been cruel, and the society we live in often invites such cruelty into the sacred space of Methodology. But if I may, why were you the object of their ridicule?"

Forja seasoned her previous rant with the bitter herbs of poor parentage mixed into the sadness stew, then dropped in a bundle of monochromatic herbs. She loved orange. Every single solitary blessed shade of it. She wished she could peel back orange layers in the sky until finally the one, true original shade, Orange the All-Mighty stood revealed before the world!

Admittedly she did a spin saying that part.

"Mm-hmm," the man replied. "Would you like to come in? Just for an important moment. I believe I have something that can give you the upper hand."

"Well, you're a stranger. I shouldn't."

"Oh. Yes! You're correct. I'll bring it to you. Be right back. Oh. Make sure no one is around, eh?" He vanished inside.

Forja played the role of intelligence, wistfully turning back further down the alley to sit at a shaded table. Soon after, the man arrived with a bulky mahogany box under his slender arm.

"Here we go! Now, you open it, but only halfway. Inside is a gift from the past, a veritable humdinger of artistic expansion!" He giggled.

She eyed him with fear, the box even more. However, Forja opened it. Inside were chalks, paints, inks. Nothing appeared cheap, top of the line all the way. But their colors made her heroic heart sink. For they weren't really colors.

Black. White. Gray.

"The Vile Values." The man whispered it in a cerulean shadow.

Forja gasped, slammed the deceptive pretty lid shut. Her eyes gibbous. "These...these are banned. Everywhere."

"I understand. I understand that those who have done so are wrong. These are not vile, but valid, in every way as much as the star crackling colors enlightening everything we see. However, I am aware of what I've done. I have introduced a child to heresy."

As he spoke, Forja's emotions rose and fell. She shoved the box away, only to snatch it back and peek inside. Slam! Peek. Terror. Reason swore off this entire situation. Her heart swelled from the horror of being caught here with this strange friendly fellow and his box of blasphemies.

But Method. Oh, now that part of her began formulating ideas.

"I'm in a fit right now." She stood. She sat down.

"This is my fault. What have I done? I'm corrupting a minor! I thought it would help, but no. This is crazy. I'm sorry, Miss. Here, let me take this and go and you can walk away, deny the whole thing."

But when he went to obtain his box, Forja's small hand kept it in place. "Wait. Tell me about it."

He paled to a wilted daffodil. "Are you sure? I know their worth, the true lore, the anemic lies. But yes, this could spell danger for you, for your folks. I wanted to help. I got ahead of myself."

"We're here now," she whispered, "give it to me."

He sighed and took in a deep breath. "The Old Country Artisans set the standard, as you know. Color, color, color! Yes, it's all very lovely. But we live in a world where Art has become a bit of a cult. Professors tell us how to view color, not life, not our feelings. I think that's why they poke fu at you, right? You're more intuitive. You shun the more academic stringencies and it shows. They see, and it makes them nervous."

Forja twiddled her fingers. "How do you know? You just met me."

"Maybe I knew somebody like you, a long time ago. Anyway, how are they teaching the Values these days?"

"Wicked. They define nothing more than oblivion. They kill hope." She remembered the day in class two years ago when Instructor Merrymist punched his desk, a vehement display to hammer into the students how terrible the Values were. Abstain from evil! Report the transgressor foolish enough to blight your senses with the blank slate of the universe before the splendor of Spectrum graced everything! His tirade, to be honest, had scared her into a mint mood for an entire week.

"The same, I see. How quickly we forget. History is written by the victors, and believe me, the Spectrumists won the world. Overall it's fine. However, Values were forbidden. But that isn't actually true."

"Oh?"

"Open the box. Under the inks, you'll find a booklet. It's old but sturdy."

She did as instructed and found a booklet titled Funny Matters From Days Gone By written by Stilden Guldangola. Forja flipped through it, this smattering of historical oddities little known in the public sphere. Her appetite for sweet morsels of secrecy deepened. She devoured page after scrumptious page, moving at a fevered pace as the man watched her and managed a smile.

"Hold on!" Forja slammed the booklet shut. "The Artisans had no problem with Values? They only cut them out of the Method Studies due to..."

"Mixing," the man broke in gently, "yes, a simple disagreement over how to mix the absolute black, purest white, the shadiest of grays. I don't know why the values received so much contention. We shade every color in the Spectrum and continue coming u with newer swatches so close to another only the finest eyes or scanners can tell the difference. But there you have it. A closing off of shades became a total ban on all three, flat out."

Forja returned the booklet, closed the box, and slid it to the man. "What happens if you use them?"

"Nothing at home. I use them. I've known a few who do, folks who love experimentation."

"No, I mean, in public. What if you used it for a public Method?"

The man almost choked. "I...don't know. No one has ever been exiled for using them. I always felt the fear of them alone has done the job well enough. Nobody has bothered. Why?"

"I mean, you showed me this to use them, right?"

He gulped. "Oh. As I said, I got carried away. I wanted to show you there's more to life than, I mean, I wanted to expand your horizons but not in such a perilous way."

She got up and hugged the beautiful brown box to her chest. "May I take it and try them out?"

"Will you be careful not to flaunt it? I don't want you to get in trouble. Every artist should get to choose their mediums. Nothing should be taboo."

Forja nodded so hard her chin hit her clavicle. "I just want to do great Art."

"Okay. But bring it back if it's too much trouble. But if you like it, if it speaks to you, you may have it."

She grinned. "I'll let you know how it goes!" She darted for the street but then whipped back around. "Oh, sorry. I'm Forja Day. What's your name."

"Coal Pewter."

"Now you're not a stranger." Forja took off for the picturesque confines of home and her room. Bullying made her a recluse, no matter how many times she jumped into a new day sunshine bright. But now a kind butterscotch savior chose to give her a reason for hope. Certainly, he did. It's what adults do, keep parsing out phosphorescent teal lights of 'it will get better' for those kids who only knew of victory as the most faded of mythologies.

To the Void with hope. Forja was a victim of social distortion. As of today, she had the key to revenge. She possessed the best form of better, Values as ammunition. Weaponry!

She intended to open fire on the haters and the doubters in the Bricklands.

SURREPTITIOUS NIGHT

The Bricklands district under cover of dark is quicksilver ebony absentia. Not a soul stirs. Polychromasia basks in Art, not Harm. Black skies form constellation white wards locking Spectrum lovers in the rainbow security of home.

Forja didn't know it before this evening. But she had been unleashed. Noir streaks on gilded paper removed the shackles. Experimentation by day within four walls, Colors betrayed by the secrets of a black universe, the whispering of white light stars. She descended upon the brick walls in a faceless masquerade of slate-white-charcoal, en eyeslit curved up, the other down. Forja the Color Contrarian, lover of Orange, rushed down the streets, slowed only by the hiss of a cat or a fizz-pop BANG from a shoddy transformer.

She found herself in the broad streaks slapped on the walls. Her paint cans dripped, brush sloppy splattering black on red brick, ochre door, maroon cobblestones. A slip of cardboard dipped in ultra white flicked spots in innumerable sizes on clear windows.

At last, she reached the location where her unfinished mural gazed out in a cyclopean stupor. Orange by night muted into a toxic misstep. Forja visualized it now, the truth. Not the banal hyena calls of the masses, but an inner chorus whose reverberations could now shatter the petulant ceiling holding back a sleeping titan, Method Amuck. Values were the new Orange. Forja was the new Heretic.

She enlivened her Art, the streets, avenues, venues, and whatever else the paints dared touch until the twinkling from a delivery truck signaled the awareness to leave.

Completion. She fled into the comfort of the forbidden, knowing there would be no turning back. Good! She had been reborn as a child of the Moon, stars, everything ostracized were kin to her and they were infinite beauties.

RESPLENDENT MORNING

Residents of the Bricklands couldn't hold down their sunny breakfast. As they slept, the world assassinated safety. Coloration became a torrid second-class citizen, and mouths were agape. The students under Instructor Merrymist gasped, moaned, flipped out in Technicolor. Verona cried in petty blue. Meanda cradled her malignant head. Their Art, buried. A rebel hand came in the night and laid their Methods to rest without eulogy or reception. Where once the bricks displayed prismatic faces trapped in vapid welcoming grins now showed only their eyes visible between vast shrouds of black. They now seemed to be watching the artists instead of attracting visitors. White specks were snowfall static on the mauve forms of galloping grassbeasts, as if stars fell on them or the universe spat at their existence.

Students sought comfort from elders. Instructors summoned the Artisan Council to investigate.

The identity of the culprit lay right before their sobbing eyes. Isolated from the night-scarred, star blessed uniform Art of the in-crowd. An orange eye beneath the maroon-taupe brow, its sole partner a stylized hand waving upward. In its path, a crescent rainbow upside down in red orange yellow BLACK green WHITE blue indigo violet GRAY. Jophia fainted plum with no one to catch her.

The curvature stretched so bold, so broad as to cross over into the next building. It blotted out two windows, coated a bird's nest in multicolored gaudiness. The Method gave off Maker vibes, the presence of a sinister maestro offering a vision of wisdom none could comprehend. Bricklands felt judged and faces tucked into collars, a multitude of flushed visages.

At the back of a growing crowd of disaffected artists, laborers, and argumentative Telestics, a butterscotch hand scribbled important notations on a rustic red notepad. He pushed up thick spectacles between writing.

SECURE FINANCES- FOR DAY FAMILY

COMMIT TO TWO PAINTINGS BY DARK

FIND MORE RECRUITS

Coal Pewter closed the notepad and slipped it into a lime shoulder bag as Instructor Merrymist stormed his way.

"Pewter, isn't this catastrophic?"

"Without a doubt, Instructor. I'm dumbstruck." Long ago he mastered the fine Art of appearing as the rest while being highly pleased inside.

"They think it's one of my students!"

"Is that so?" Pewter asked. "I wouldn't worry. Nothing has shaken the foundations of Art for ages. This is nothing but a blip in the road. You'll be fine. A few questions and then they'll forget all about you."

"Yes. Perhaps."

"Believe me, life is about understanding. It's never big leaps, but small, critical steps to draw out the few who might have vision. You possess the vision, so it's imperative they keep you around. Kids need to know Spectrum."

"Thank you, Pewter. I find your words often dizzying, but you have always been in my corner."

Pewter smiled. "Everything and everyone creates the tapestry. Don't fret, Merrymist." He turned and went about his day, one which would be best had far from this place. But on the way, he took several dozen photographs.

He intended to send them to the home of his favorite new student, in the most colorful envelope he could find.

Upon a beige shingle roof, a girl in a lengthy Orange scarf and lemon hooded dress observed the chaos below as the sun sparkled a crisp cyan. Under its winsome waves, she felt victory embrace her for the very first time.