Regretful Happenings
One fine afternoon while walking along the Museumsufer street in Frankfurt after visiting some of the museums, I noticed that my shadow was tired, it walked too slow behind me. I turned my back and confronted her, “are you tired?” She said yes, so we walked to the Main River and sat on a bench under a red maple tree. Soon as we sat, the wind came and blew some leaves to the ground. They lay on the grass and tried to cover the shadow. Being a shadow is a privilege, it still is on top of everything on the ground.
I saw a stall selling French fries, so I went to buy and then sat back. While eating, I asked the shadow about the regretful happenings in her life.
“Well, regrets, I had a few…,” she said with a long deep pause. “I regretted that I wasted my younger years not doing anything significant. I didn’t work hard enough to put myself on higher education,” she said with a sigh.
I listened carefully and while she talked, I hand her some of my fries. “I could’ve saved money and pay for my education but I did not. Instead, I went partying all night, spending all my money with my friends,” she added. “That money could’ve earned me a BA (Hons) Fine Arts,” she went on.
“I realised it twenty years too late. Then I taught myself intermediate art because basically I learnt the basics in school. Then I learned from multiple art books that I bought, I experimented and wasted a lot of papers, canvasses and colours, to get it right. Right in the sense of getting that satisfaction when I put the last touch to a painting,” she added. “I spent more money to buy art stuff, you know how expensive they are.”
“Yeah, but come to think of it, the money is well spent. If you sell a piece, it’ll be 10 times the investment but of course maybe a hundred years after you are dead, your paintings might worth One Million Ringgit or more. Just look at Latiff Mohidin; his ‘Mindscape’ fetched RM313,000 at an auction in 2019. He is still alive and well,” I said.
“Haha! That is such a big comparison; he studied in Berlin, France and New York, while I…, school of life. You compared an ant to an elephant, not fair,” the shadow laughed. “Yeah, the money actually well spent. I did not regret buying art stuff as much as I regretted spending all my money like water back then and later feeling poor come the 10th every month. I had to borrow money to pay for my fare to work and eat,” she added.
So I said to her, “your friends were there for a few different reasons. Those regrets and those mistakes were really important. You have to embrace it because that is how you learn. You learn from all your mistakes.”
We both agreed and sat there quietly watching the sunset while eating fries together. A flock of geese swam gracefully in the river while people strolled along the river.
While watching, I did not notice that a flotilla of gulls perched near my legs. A policeman approached and told me that my littering attracted the gulls. I quickly collected all the fries and put it back in the holder and later in the bin. I said thank you and left with regret as I had to pay 20 Euro for littering.
This is for Prompt #10: regretful happenings, July 2020 writing prompts.