Following the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines
I heard this story from someone whom I trust, and who collects paintings in his huge apartment. My friend likes to look for very specific paintings that are not familiar to the wide audience. He usually collects those that have creepy urban legends associated with them. He once told me a story of a painting that he wanted to purchase. It was a very famous painting by some Italian artist who created it in 1950s. In the painting, there was nothing but a light haired and blue eyed boy dressed in poor clothes. It was a medium close-up portrait, and every feature of the subject could be very well seen. It wasn’t as simple portrait of a boy, however; the boy in the painting was crying, and the artist did a great job showing tears running down his cheeks. The subject looked really unhappy; he was staring at the artist with some kind of childish hatred. He seemed to feel like kids usually feel when they are not given what they want. When I saw it first on the Internet, I thought that it was just a naughty boy that often misbehaved. But my friend told me that there was a more complex story behind the painting.
It turned out that the artist was the boy’s father. Their family was very poor, and the artist had to earn the living at all cost. He wanted to be rich, and the happiness of his son didn’t really matter. His son was afraid of fire, and in order to create a painting that hadn’t been created before, the artist lit candles in front of the boy and forced him to stare at it. The boy couldn’t refuse, because his father was very ruthless and would beat him if he did. So, he kept looking at the fire, but he couldn’t stop crying, because he was so scared. The artist spent a lot of time creating the painting, and every time he had to force his son to cry. Once, his son couldn't stand it anymore. He screamed at his father: “You burn!” and died from an unknown disease a month later. His father didn’t seem to pay a lot of attention to it, but several years later, his studio burned down. He died, and the only thing that surround was the painting on the crime boy. Since then, the painting became an urban legend: every single person who owned it had a fire burning down their houses. The only thing that remained intact was the painting. It became popular among firefighters, and they were sure that it carried a curse. A lot of people were willing to buy the painting, but it kept burning their houses. The painting is now pretty popular on the Internet and serves as an example of the fact that the dead are capable of carrying negative energy and bring it back to the living world, where they are mistreated.
The story for me is a great example of the interaction between the dead and the living. Many people think that if energy doesn’t have any weight or volume, it doesn’t physically exist. And when we are arguing with someone and let our negative energy out, it stays in the atmosphere. If a person (especially someone innocent like the crying boy) is mistreated and dies as a result of adults torturing him or her, the energy doesn’t disappear. It is so strong that is able to overcome death. The crying boy experienced so much cruelty and meanness from his father who was supposed to care for him and play with him, that the energy that was in the air when both of them lived, remained in the painting when they died. It couldn’t dissolve, because the father had never realized his sin. It is frightening to realize that even nowadays, the painting keeps carrying the curse and killing people that are associated with it. It is not clear why innocent people are paying for the sin of a single person. I think that the point of the curse is that anyone who enjoys looking at a crying boy has something from that artist, and thus, relates to him in the understanding of beauty.
We claim that death separate living and dead, but this story shows that they remain connected. Everything that is done in the living world keeps existing after people die. Of course, this story is very scary but it is also very informative. It talks about a life of a child who had never been happy and died in fear of his father. It also points out the fact that we have to think many times before doing something evil to another person. The evil doesn’t dissolve in the air but stays somewhere keeps producing negative energy that may even lead to death. I guess, this is the lesson and that the crying boy is teaching us.
