"Please remove your shoes and wait while your eyes adjust to the darkness and your browser pre-loads the gallery. While you wait, let me tell you a story...."
As your eyes gradually adjust, you can see a small woman in a green silk kimono embroidered with golden ginkgo leaves standing by a door flanked by white paper lanterns.
"Once in my travels I happened upon the Jade Chimera, a strange creature born of myths and it's own imagination...or so it told me. For a time we traveled together, and over many a cup of tea the chimera would tell me of its own travels. As it spoke, images would form in the air between us, so real I felt I could reach out and grab them. One day I did try to grab one of these images and found to my surprise that it had become quite solid and real. From that point on, I collected the images from the stories the chimera told me."
"The Jade Chimera gave me permission to place its images in a gallery, and I have collected a few here to share with the rest of the world. While in Japan I met a woman named Keiko Sato who lived in an enchanted kaleidoscope. She gave me some magical lanterns and allowed me to light and hang them in this gallery. And now, when you stand before one of the Jade Chimera's images and look closely enough, you can sometimes step right into them, seeing them as large as life."
"During our time together, the Jade Chimera spoke of wandering the green coasts of Scotland, visiting cemeteries carpeted with tiny white flowers like seas flowing past worn grey stone mausoleums. It told me of a small rural cemetery by the sea where an old stone bench sat right against a gravestone, making him wonder who might once have sat there, and what their story might be."
"It told me of traveling in the western states of the U.S., where the sky seemed to go on forever, and the hills rolled in soft waves caressed by golden red sunlight. It told me of walking in northern forests carpeted with moss and laid with soft flowing streams with water that tasted like silk."
"(I have never drank silk, but I try to imagine what it might taste like to such a creature who transcends the laws of normal reality. And I wonder, what would it be like to travel forever, exploring lonely places and teeming cities for year after year, never staying long in one place. Is it lonely or is it, perhaps, the only way such a creature would consider living?)"
"One of the things that struck me most about the Jade Chimera's existence is that it told me once that it sometimes slips through time, skipping back a bit and forward a bit, so that when it chooses, it can always walk under blossoming flower trees, their branches laden like clouds, and cherry blossoms drifting down on its head like rain when the wild blows. I would like to someday spend a year walking beneath showers of blossoms, myself, someday...."
"I should go now. When you have finished pre-loading, you may enter the gallery."
As the woman departs into the shadows, you see several apple blossoms drift down to the floor in her wake, and you wonder....
A small plaque on the wall reads:
"This gallery best viewed in 1024x768 resolution, although 800x600 will suffice."
© 1999 Jade Leaves Designs
