The winged female statue gazes down at me. Red curls of wire cascade onto her chest of slivered mirrors. She stands tall with legs crossed on hoofed feet. My eyes shift around the studio to Muse paintings and Sahu Atman – the half-male, half-female statue with Egyptian inspired breastplate and twisted metal hair. One arm holds the hip; the other arm severed. A cobra wraps around the feet and legs. Sahu proudly presents the autobiography piece covering most of one wall. In front of the desk is a bookcase full of poetry, literary classics, world religions, and Egyptian mythology.
Beethoven’s Fur Elise plays softly. My mother’s spirit is alive in the studio. I feel her presence everywhere. I stand and face Mom’s self-portrait. When she was alive, her last work of art hung in the bedroom behind a door. I never got a close look at it before. Her face emerges amidst blue, green, and purple paint trickling down the canvas. A gold cross sparkles in each pupil, imbedded next to a tiny photo – a toddler in the left eye, a recent picture of Mom in her right eye. I stepped in closer and noticed messages scrawled in the corners, some written backwards: I am here. I am within. I am everywhere. Immortality.
Chills run through my body. I just thought I feel her everywhere. Her painting reveals to me those same words. The more I study it, the more I see. Next to her face is a woman’s profile filled with pyramids, stone arches, and fields. Clouds fill her head. A faint angelic image is in the clouds. Crosses painted and affixed appear in random places.
The words: MORS is written on the top of a pyramid. In ancient Roman Myth and literature, Mors is the personification of death equivalent to the Greek Thánatos. One depiction of Thanatos is a marble sculpture as a winged and sword-girl youth. The Greek poet Hesiod established in his Teogony (the birth of the Gods) that Thánatos is a son of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness) and twin of Hynos (Sleep):
"And there the children of dark Night have their dwellings, Sleep and Death, awful gods. The glowing Sun never looks upon them with his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from heaven. And the former of them roams peacefully over the earth and the sea's broad back and is kindly to men; but the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods."
Sarai is written backwards under Mors. Sarai is Persian for “palace.” There is also a variation meaning: home (Saraa). These interpretations embody my mother’s artwork, passion, and philosophy:
“… As a seeker of truth I believe, through my art, I can be a channel for the wisdom of the ages using symbolism drawn from the spiritual doctrines of ancient civilizations and mythology” … “reminding the viewer of his/her individual mortality and seeks to define a sense of immortality through reincarnation provoking a sense of spiritual quietude.”
Mom is here with me. Her spirit lives in my heart. Gratitude and reverence overflow knowing she continues to inspire and guide me along my journey in this life.
