I was doing some research on our family history, trying to find out more about my great great grandfather, Vernon Strauss, on my mother’s side when I came across a very interesting piece of paper, obviously very very old. It was about the size of a slice of bread, torn from a larger piece of paper. On it was a hand drawn map. It didn’t have any city or state names, but from what I knew about gggdad, he had lived in Sandy Bay, Rhode Island for a while. I got out a map of Sandy Bay and compared it to this map and the terrain all seemed to fit! On the map, there was a big “X”.
Could it be I found a family treasure map??? I turned the paper over and written there on the back was a poem.
There once was an old man named Vern
Whose lighthouse did take a downturn
It started to dangle
At such a bad angle
It got flooded from stem to its stern
So the treasure is in a lighthouse in Sandy Bay, RI! Well, I got excited and immediately booked a flight to RI.
Long story short, I got there, followed the map and it wasn’t long before I got to the coast and there it was! Gggdad’s lighthouse! But as I got closer, I could see that something was very very wrong with it. So much so that I was getting woozy, dizzy. It looked like the whole world around the lighthouse was warping this way and that. The lighthouse, the house next to it, the rock - even the ocean!
The Uber driver could see I was distressed and he said, “Don’t worry. Some days, everything around this enchanted lighthouse is bonkers, even the ocean. It’s not you. It’s believed to have an alien spaceship buried inside somewhere distorting reality.”
I searched and searched the house and the lighthouse and found no clues to any treasure. I stayed the night in the house and , though disappointed, I slept well.
Woke up next morning, I was feeling quite weird. Had flies in my beard, my toothpaste was smeared. Over my window someone had written my name. Said, “So long, we’ll see you again”
The lighthouse and everything seemed normal that morning, so I said goodbye, and came home to paint what I had seen.
- Subject Matter: Surreal
- Collections: Landscapes, Surreal Series, Water, Marine