Day 12: Imagination

Imagination
by
Matt Zurbo

Cielo was no ordinary girl.
(Girl with mop of shaggy hair, in cabbage-patch dress)

Well, in some ways she was. Like many girls, she enjoyed dolls, and running around. But she had a power.

Cielo could see people’s imaginations.
(Cielo, watching person walking by, there is a mist/swirl coming off the person/their head, of ideas, and eyes, and objects and of them as a Viking)

Some people she thought were plain had the most amazing thoughts!
(Overweight lady with 50s glasses, looks grumpy, but her swirl has her dancing with aliens/or (up to artist) leading 3^rd world children to overthrow their oppressors)

Others looked colourful, but didn’t seem to have many dreams.
(Hippy dude imagining himself in front of a mirror)

Some imaginations ran wild!
(Little girl skipping by, her imagination spiralling above her is of music and dancing with gods/flying on giant flowers/up to artist)

Others were obvious.
(Businessman on a speedboat/boy being tackled by five kids but still kicking winning goal)

It could be so overwhelming!
(We can just see Cielo’s little girl head as she looks up at the adults on the footpath around her, their blank expressions, and all their wild thoughts rising off of them, out of view from us)

But at times entertaining.
(A baby boy imagining a dinosaur in a rocket ship)

And at times frightening.
(Scouring bully boy, above him, in his imagination, his arms are in the air as he roars, behind his imagination self, a 100ft tall monster is doing the same.)

Often Cielo felt she could simply walk through a crowd for days.
(double page spread)

There was one group of girls at school Cielo was scared of. Their imaginations were dark.
(Group of pretty girls in school uniforms, sitting around benches under a tree, their thoughts are dark, mostly of themselves as tall, with shadowed faces and red, glowing eyes)

When they called her over, she ran away.
(Their imaginations are beckoning with clawed hands to an image of her as a rabbit.)

It could be lonely knowing other people’s imaginations. That was like knowing somebody else’s secrets instead of your own.
(Cielo passing a suited man and a clown. The man is imagining himself as a clown, the clown is imagining himself in a suit)

Sometimes it was easier to just stay by herself.
(Cielo sitting under a tree on a hill overlooking town. We can just make out the whift of imaginations rising from the streets, but not most details.)

Then, one day, she saw the imagination of a boy that was so bright it glowed!
(An Aboriginal boy with dozen images and shapes swirling into each other, but primarily a glow at the core turning most of them white/yellow with light. I imagine snakes, kookaburras, and wombats, and fish with human hands for wings, and him in the centre, in full Aboriginal tribal paint. The swirl and spirals that join it all have hints of dots and lines of Aboriginal paintings)

Cielo moved closer, to better watch him, and realised he was looking just above everybody else.
(Cielo, watching him with fascination. We can see him, sitting on a wooden apple crate, looking in a slightly upward direction, the swirl coming off him, but his thoughts out of frame.)

“You can see people’s imagination, can’t you?” she said to the boy.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Doesn’t that make you lonely?” she asked.
(them talking)

“Ahh,” the boy said. “It did. But then…” he hesitated.
“What? What!” Cielo fretted. She had to know!
“Well, try looking at your own,” the boy smiled.
(Cielo watching the boy walk away, down lane, waving good-bye over his shoulder. Cloud of imagination over his head.)

(Image of Cielo looking a bit perplexed/thoughtful, to the left of reader, as if watching where boy was)

Cielo went to her favourite place, (on top of the hill) closed her eyes, and looked.

And, behind the dark of closed eyes, oh,
(A light in the dark)

oh,
(Cielo reaching up to a female spirit with wings, rising with the smoke from a butterfly crested flame cauldron.)

how it glowed!
(Spirit’s palms are out, eyes humbly close, as many images we have already seen from other people’s imaginations appear, leaving Cielo in the middle)

There was everybody else’s imagination, and it just inspired her imagination, more and more,
(Cielo running through grass and small rocks, ideas all around her, filling the sky above her head, but there is an image of her interacting in many of these images)

until ideas formed into stories, that led to stories…
(Cielo at home, writing/drawing into little handmade books, while ideas swirl about above her and even down on her desk.

that led to an imagination that glowed!
(Cielo side on, holding little book, pen still in hand, looking at it with pride. There is a small pile of other books beside her. The book she is holding has the slightest glow)

These days Cielo is no longer scared of that group of girls. Their imaginations become villains in her stories for her heroes to overcome.
(Cielo sitting, legs dangling over edge of jetty, writing in little book, while cluster of school girls, half in shadow/menace, linger to the side)

And her stories inspire other people’s imagination,
(Cielo sitting at a small fold up table on the footpath, with a sign that says: Stories 10c, boring man from earlier is buying a book)

that spreads out into the world.
(Final image of book, tucked on angle into pocket of man)

The End