by Kai Strand -
Spending a Saturday afternoon in a museum was not Madison’s idea of a fun time. She wandered from painting to painting wondering how long her mom would stare at each one. She’d made three circuits of the large gallery room in the time it took for her mother and little brother to proceed halfway down one wall of art displays.
Madison still hadn’t figured out what the sculpture titled, “Persistence” was supposed to be. Was it a person stooped under a heavy burden? Was it a man pulling the lead rope of a stubborn elephant? Was it a huge spider sitting on the earth? She just didn’t understand art.
A doorway tucked into the corner of the large room caught her attention. How had she missed it on the first three trips around the room? The sign above the door read, “The Persian Window.” Madison peeked into the small room. Only one piece of art was on display. A large, multi-colored glass bowl, propped on its side, was perched upon a turntable on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Natural light streaming through the windows along the tops of all four walls sparked off the bowl like indoor fireworks. As the bowl slowly rotated, the full spectrum of color swirled and ebbed around the room in an intoxicating rhythm, like waves lapping on a beach. Madison swayed to the silent beat.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw her mom and brother studying a display on the far end of the gallery. She stepped into the room and color washed across her. She held her bare arms in front of her and watched them change from red to gold, to green, to blue. Each pulse of light against the walls and on the shiny tile floor mesmerized her further. She was drawn to a spot of shimmering darkness just in front of the spinning glass bowl. It seemed to be where all the color converged. The glistening spot rotated in a circle in front of the bowl. Madison skipped along behind it, longing to capture the beauty in her hands.
She reached toward the dark epicenter, and as if in a dream, she stepped through it onto the top of a rainbow...
