Watching Carmen: The Third Look

this is not the painting...

"Carmen! You didn´t have to come today" a woman with silver hair greeted Carmen from a counter when she entered a library

"I know, Linda, I just felt like coming today"

"You just can´t help it, can you?" Linda chuckled as she attended someone giving back a book. Carmen waved and walked up the marble stairs of the big building.

Carmen caressed the back of the old books as she walked the long aisles formed by book shelves. Dust particles made interesting patters as the sun coming in from the window cut the shadows of the shelves; she smiled as she took a poetry book and sat close to a window.

I squatted in front of her table, observing her eyes moving along the lines of the poems and the corners of her mouth going slightly up or down as she read. She looked up as if she felt someone was watching her, she smiled, right in front of her there was a picture, a big picture like many others that decorated the place. This one in particular was of a male figure, lean features, long hair that covered partially his cheek and fell on one of his shoulders, he was slightly watching forward with his gray eyes, his eyes were calmed and his expression was unreadable, he was wearing a tunic and a hint of wings had been drawn at his back, he was sat on a rock, bare foot, a rosary tied on his wrist, the sky was of a dark purple tone. Carmen got up and stood a couple of steps away from the painting "hello -she said to it- I have never seen you before... you are beautiful… what were you thinking there?" her velvety words made the left side of my mouth to go up.

"I was looking at you, Carmen" I said but she couldn´t her me.

When you live in eternity you don´t know past or future. The painter made that picture of me as I was looking at Carmen in the beach, he saw me years ago in that day even if that day hadn´t happen for Carmen, it had happened for the painter... artists get that ability to see what other people can´t; they just don´t know what they are looking at and then when they let their visions be seen people are in awe because their brains get that it is real, that it is a piece of eternity but at the same time their brains are too small to fully grasp the concept. Did Carmen saw me too, that day on the beach, today in the library? I huffed at my own question, she couldn´t have. I am invisible for the great majority of human eyes…

"When did that painting arrive?" she asked Linda, the woman on the counter

"Which one?"

"The one were poetry is"

"It arrived this morning, someone donated it… it’s not a famous painting but it has an interesting story" the woman said as if she´d said the same thing many times, she was a story teller after all, she made it sound like it bored her but she liked telling the tales behind all the paintings and the few sculptures in the place. Carmen knew this, she´d been working there for over a year now

"Would you tell me the story" Carmen smiled

"I’m busy, Carmen" Linda said wanting to be asked again

"I´ll help you organize the books" Carmen offered and the woman´s eyes lit up

"All right... That´s an angel" the woman said and Carmen seemed disappointed, the woman chuckled "that was the short version -Carmen rolled her eyes- the donor said that his great grandfather used to tell him that the painting was the picture of a guardian angel, a real angel that the painter saw as he was on a block, he´d gone to walk to the beach for inspiration and he saw the angel quietly watching the ocean, the painter grabbed his notepad and pencil and started to draw the angel, supposedly the angel saw him and showed him his wings hence the only slight visible wings there, the angel kept watching the ocean until he finished doing his drawing and then he went home and did that one that he sold for a lot of money like a hundred years ago but for some reason he never signed this one, so there is debate as to whom painted it"

"What´s the painting name?" Carmen asked eagerly, the woman grinned

"Guess"

"Just tell me"

"You´re no fun... watching Carmen"

"What?" Carmen eyes widened and I grinned, I remember very well when the man slowly approached me and asked me what I was watching. I told him I was watching Carmen, he looked to the ocean but he saw nothing, he furrowed his eyebrows and I asked him not to sign the painting, he frowned and I made a deal with him, if he didn´t sign the painting I´d help him with inspiration, he agreed and I touched his forehead with my index finger. His paintings are famous now; he´s considered a genius but this particular painting is not famous, only because no one knows it´s his.

"Isn´t it cool?" the woman asked and Carmen grinned "ok, these are the books that I need to put back" the woman pointed to a big cart of books, Carmen took about ten and walked away "Carmen?" the woman called, Carmen turned her head

"This is the short version" she smirked and this time it was the woman who rolled her eyes.

Carmen walked her little walk to the hall where the Watching Carmen painting was, she turned a chair and sat, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands under her chin.

"So you were watching me" she whispered and immediately giggled, she got up and walked to the painting, I was standing next to her. “What were you thinking - she asked- you looked so deep in thought.”

“Shouldn’t you be paying more attention to the baby?” Navitas[o1] , Carmen´s guardian angel told me, I smiled with the side of my mouth

“I am paying attention”

“Why would you let him see you?” he asked about the painter who had seen me so long ago at that beach, I shrugged.

“Why are you following Carmen?” Navitas asked after a moment of only watching the woman in question. I tilted my head and shrugged again after a moment of thinking the reason, there was not really a reason for me to watch her… but then there was not really a reason for me going to that beach that day.

“Maybe it is in The Plan” I smirked not believing what I had said.

“I doubt that” he huffed.

---

 [o1]Energy, get up and go