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One Layer Below: Invitation to Write #6

For Writers:

When we were in the market to buy a house, our Realtor didn’t plan to show us the small ranch-style house we eventually ended up buying. My wife saw a picture of it on the office’s bulletin board, and we had to convince Sam to take us out there.

After driving way out into the middle of nowhere, past graveyards and the local garbage dump, we finally arrived. The house was only six years old, but it hadn’t been lived in for three years. Layers of dust and animal droppings covered everything. What we were to find in the back bedrooms, though, was what certainly caught our attention the most.

The woman who had lived there before like to paint, and she had made the walls of the bedrooms her canvas. One mural was of the sword Excalabur rising out of the lake. In the room that would become our bedroom, she had painted a magical forest, with a huge unicorn as the central focus. It almost looked like it was running straight out of the wall.

After we purchased the house, we set out cleaning. Soon the layers of dust were gone, but what to do about the murals? They were cheesy, but it took a while to decide to cover them with a layer of light blue paint. The murals remain, but they were hidden one layer below.

Today, think about something that’s right below the surface. It could be something in the physical or mental realm. Would it be better for it to stay out of sight? What, if anything, would be gained by bringing it to the surface?

“Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.”
Henry David Thoreau

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