The Lived Canvas

a short story

“And that, my friends, is how we’ll transform this world, one school at a time.”

She stood in the company of a pile of books, scattered papers, and a dozen beaming smiles. A dark room this was, but it would birth something unimaginable. They were just getting started.

The books, some worn and ancient, some new and shiny, some open and tabbed, some with highlighter streaks like rays of sun illuminating the pieces that would become their creation.

This creation of course, is never done. It’s not mechanical, but it moves. Not matter, but it changes form. This creation sought to paint perhaps the most ambitious canvas of them all.

Lucy looked around at the faces gathered here, sitting at desks they’d moved to form a circle. Everything had led to this moment. From the moment that sparked her journey, a mentor who had shown her she could think for herself, to the realization of her own abilities. A world that seemed bleak and obscure had over time been transformed into a place of magic and wonder, as she had learned her own unique power.

Her power wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t speaking loud, or even being all that charming. She wasn’t a genius, but she studied hard. She wasn’t Picasso, though she tried to make things beautiful. Her real power was to see the hidden strands connecting people, and now, to bring them together like a star-magnet sending pulses into the void, beckoning the stars to form a new constellation.

But it wasn’t just people. A particular flower-color book caught her eye. The text was interrupted by the flowers which caught her attention. Something subtle could break routine, just like the book itself. It was there she came across a quietly radical idea that lit up her canvas’ background with a streak of yellow.

“It is with acts of attention that we decide who to hear, who to see, and who in our world has agency” (Jenny Odell).

Lucy first read this line sitting at a round table, alone. 11th grade, and the cafeteria roared - kids threw food, joked with each other, and gossiped about the latest romance drama. “She did what?? Oh my garshhh!”

Lucy wasn’t weird in the sense that everyone avoided her. She was friendly enough to fit in and make friends. She was just the kind of weird that she chose to be alone. She had learned that being around others sometimes meant giving up something special to her: her values themselves. She wasn’t strong enough to speak out, so whenever anyone would gossip behind each other’s backs or pass on schoolwork to skip school, she would quietly suffer.

That was, until she realized she didn’t have to be in a group at all. She still secretly yearned for companionship, but at that cost, it didn’t seem worth it.

Now, Lucy was rewarded for her courage as she sat at the table with the rose-cover book her history teacher had gifted her. Her eyes widened as she realized what this line meant: “we decide… who has agency.”

We decide who can act.

We decide who has power.

And our attention is the light that expands it.

It stirred something deep inside her, a half-formed desire that she didn’t quite know how to articulate. It was like a tugging in her stomach, but soft, like a flower brushing by as it yearned to drink in the sun. The feeling faded, but her vision was left brighter.

She looked around at her fellow high school students, many of whom were wearing masks. She didn’t have to guess, because she knew. She knew as she looked at Becky, who had once confided in Lucy that she dreamed to be a lawyer who defended those who couldn’t speak for themselves. But now Becky sat at a table, smiling and nodding guiltily as her friend’s slimy tongue belittled “losers with no friends.” She knew as she looked at Mark fondling his golden fountain pen, who hated every second he played football and would much rather write stories, yet he sat at a table of football players because his parents had put him in football since grade 7, and he didn’t have the heart to tell them.

If that line meant what she thought it did, it meant that she could return power to Becky and Mark just by seeing them for who they were. And even more so, it meant that if Lucy gave enough attention, she herself could actually do something about it. She could act in ways she hadn’t thought possible before.

Her heart quickened at the thought, and she shivered. She was more comfortable in the books than with real people. But soon, she would test the challenge this book had given her: could she show herself that she had agency?

Now back in the present, her senior year of college, Lucy sat in a wide circle of individually-moved desks. They had been facing the front, but now, they sat facing each other. Their masks lay on the ground next to them. Not discarded of course, because they had learned masks could be useful. But here, they were of no importance.

The circle spoke in a vibrant dialogue, multicolored aspects of light splattering into being in the space between them, like bridges of sound waves with a synchrony like paint.

A pause. A curly-haired boy pointed his fountain pen to his chin in a contemplative gesture. “If it’s possible for us, then why not for them? We could show them. Just get them in the door by masking ourselves at first, but then inviting them to drop their masks inside. Then, maybe they’ll finally understand what we mean.”

“That’s it!” Lucy mused. “And we could invite other teachers who can model it, people like Mrs. Solomon.”

“AND!” a green-eyed girl shouted, “we could INVITE THE PRESIDENT!”

A pause. Lucy rolled her eyes. “That’s silly, Malaysia, beca-”

“-but Lucyy-”

“Because next time we’ll be inviting her, and her whole university cabinet if this works out,” Lucy winked. “We need to do better than shooting for the stars, we need to bring them down to Earth. That requires a little more intention.”

A round-rimmed boy raised his hand. Only a freshman, and a quiet one, but he spoke with a weight beyond his years. “Yes Leon? You don’t have to raise your hand you know, you can just speak”

He blinked twice, and said “oh.. yeah. Well anyway, I was thinking, this is great and all, but why just teachers? Why not do this with other students too? We could even start in high schools - I could imagine back then something like would have changed my life.”

Lucy gave him a knowing glance and smiled. “The only thing holding us back from doing that right now, is that we’re stacked to the brim. Everyone is doing a lot, and it’s hard enough to keep up with classes and other responsibilities. But that’s just us, at this current moment. No one is stopping you from doing it.”

He sat silently as a green sprout of an idea seemed to grow in his mind. Lucy continued to water it, “I know a grant that Mrs. Solomon herself helped establish for projects just like this. If you apply, and maybe gather some other freshmen, you guys could really make a difference.”

He glanced at the book on his desk. Then, suddenly, he smiled, a spark in his eyes. “You’re right. A brushstroke is just bristles of moments bundled close enough to make a difference. And you’ve shown me I already have them. I can do it. And I will.”

“aaand that’s how a dozen nobody, unseen kids brought the bundles of hot steaming power back down to Earth - One school at a time!” Mark announced with a grin.

“for education is not the filling of a vessel, but the kindling of a flame” Leon said in a socrates-like voice.

Lucy rolled her eyes, then a deep laugh escaped her and cascaded all around the room as others joined in. Leon hesitated as if surprised at himself, then chuckled and mouthed "thank you” to Lucy. Malaysia stood up suddenly and started fist-bumping everyone with gusto. This was where Lucy belonged, where they all belonged. She wrapped her arm around Mark, who smiled as he doodled a comic. When she looked at it more closely, she started to tear up.

It showed them all gathered on the tallest building on campus, brushes in hand, twinkling starlight emitting from within the buildings that had been transformed by their brushstrokes. A mural, a story, of what could be.