Once upon a time, in a large city, in a tall block of flats, in a small apartment, there lived a little obedient girl. One night she had a wonderful dream. On her plain bed with a dull stripped duvet sat a strange bird — it looked a bit like a winged book.

“Come, let’s fly away together!” said the bird to the little girl.

But alas, the bed did not even have legs, let alone wings and thus the little girl could not fly away. The bird fluttered its wings sadly and flew away. The little girl wept into her pillow night after night because the bird never came back again. But then, one day — it was the little girl’s birthday — her Aunt Agnes brought her a present. It was a book. The little girl’s eyes lit up with joy and within a few weeks she learned to read. She devoured one book after another. She read the entire home library and half of the local children’s library. 

Books, however, were not a good influence for the little girl. The more she read, the more often she hovered a few inches above the ground.

“Get down from those clouds!”

“Keep your feet firmly on the ground!” her parents reminded her angrily.

But as for books and dreaming, the little girl was disobedient, I am afraid. She couldn’t do it. Or maybe she didn’t want to.

Years have passed, the little girl grew first into a big girl, then a little woman, then a woman and finally into a woman with a household. But she still couldn’t get her feet firmly planted in the ground. She suspected herself of remaining a little girl inside.

 

One day a book came into her hands again. How many she had read before, a few hundred or thousand, we don’t know. Numbers are not important here. This one was even more extraordinary than the ones she had read so far. It throbbed strangely in her hands. A piece of the picture was missing at the front.

“The author’s name!” curiosity ate at her.

She read what was left: “‘…aniel He…” Heaven? An Angel of Heaven? That’s strange.”

She opened the book and found a key in it. It fit exactly. It unlocked her head and her heart. Her liberated thoughts and emotions greeted those in the book as if they were meeting old friends. The girlwoman watched them in wonder as they swirled in a joyful dance forming sentences, paragraphs, stories, and then regrouping into new adventures.

“…Oh, dinner must be getting ready!” the girlwoman remembered, and closed the book.

Like soft snowflakes, wisps of words fell silently into her mind and heart, tasting refreshing. 

“I must meet that angel of heaven!” she promised herself.

She reminded herself of that promise from time to time, but there were dinners to prepare for an ever-increasing number of children. There was an ever-increasing number of things to take care of and an ever-increasing number of responsibilities to attend to. She enjoyed herself tremendously watching her beautiful girls walk, talk, dance, draw and joke and she did it all with them. It was splendid, but Time to Dream was shyly crouching in a corner, waiting with a longing expectancy in its eyes. The girlwoman observed her feet sadly as they grew heavier year by year. Her soul was wearing down, it was grayer and grayer. She kept repainting it nicely with bright colours but somehow those faded quickly.

“I must meet that angel of heaven!” the girlwoman slammed the paint bucket into the corner. She was resolved. She knew it wasn’t enough, so she started to pray.

One freezing night in December — I think it was the feast of St. Barbara — the window in the girlwoman’s room opened with a bang. The girlwoman jumped on her bed. She looked around. Strangely, no one else had woken up. 

There was a man sitting on the cherry windowsill. But — he had wings on his back —  An angel!?

“Well, I came,” he said without a greeting.

“Angel of Heaven!” somehow the girlwoman recognized him.

“But I’m not an angel at all. Don’t you know that ‘angel’ is spelled with a ‘g’ and not an ‘i’? I’m Daniel. The “D” was ripped off.”

“I see…,” the little girl understood suspiciously. “How did you find me?”

“You’re the one who found me. You unlocked the way to me.”

The girlwoman was thinking quickly. She did not know what to say. In the end, what if it was just a mirage? She hasn’t been able to see into the clouds for some time.

“Well… how can you write such wonderful books?” finally she asked.

“I have good eyes. Here…,” he pointed to his eyes “and here…” he pointed his index finger at his chest. “And besides, I have a gift,” he winked one of his good eyes.

“Ahh, wings! Sure, you can get where you want. No wonder it’s easy for you to write,” tried the girlwoman.

The angel Daniel laughed. 

“So, how come you’re writing a story about me now?”

The girlwoman looked at him with her head a little askew, like a psychiatrist at his new patient.

“At first, my hand began to itch,” the angel continued, “I had to take a pen and write. And then my back started to itch… Sometimes it almost hurts. You know, the weight of the world…” angel Daniel’s thoughts wandered somewhere far away. “They just grew,” he shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t you feel anything?” he asked.

The girlwoman suddenly felt a sort of tickling on her back. She quickly glanced over her shoulder into the mirror. Two tiny wings were perched between her shoulder blades. The kind of wings baroque angels in churches have.

“Shall we fly?“ Daniel, the angel, held out his hand to her.

“Are these to carry me?!” doubted the girlwoman.

“Are you afraid?”

“No,” she made up her mind. She grabbed angel Daniel’s hand tight and they flew out the window into the night.

They plunged into silence. It was incredible! The little girl began to see, hear and feel for real at that moment. Suddenly that empty place in her soul, more spacious than the universe — for that is how it is supposed to be — began to fill with the unperceived hidden reality. Life was given just another layer of meaning, prayer found its Recipient.

And God laughed. Happily and for a long time. Because that is how it is supposed to be.

That girlwoman is me. And so are you. Or you can be.

 

N.B. 1: The Slovak writer Daniel Hevier has had a significant influence on my ability to think creatively.

 

N.B. 2: Just as with books, I have the same problem with visual arts and music. 0:)