lazt art helmjay morgans
Even through a good life, tinges of regression are merely human nature. As a young man I longed for the summers of my childhood, as a slightly older young man I sought only to return to my coming of age, and on and on. I look back now upon my time here on this side and regret nothing, but no era of my span has ever struck me quite as deeply as the one I recount to you now.
While the events leading me here to this quiet room in old age with a pen in my hand and a wistful breath upon my lips may seem fantastic, the truth at the core of it all is anything but. It simply was and is, as I---simply---was then and am now.
I have never been a superstitious creature, never paid mind to the supernatural or extraordinary, but I can not offer any real explanation for the man and the events that revolved around him save to say that it all happened and thus, through the merit of its own truth and existence, it is not an astounding tale I tell but one of the utmost simplicity.
I happened upon him, or he happened upon me, one winter evening by chance. Even at this, I still must wonder: And what exactly is chance?
Though my nature often prevents me from doing so, allow me to try to be as precise and to the point as I can manage. There are words between the words of even the greatest and most concise explanations and stories, and my preoccupations with detail and clarity has occasion to promt me to find and use them all. To convey as much as I can before I get back to my own personal business at hand, and to let you do the same, I will try to be as brief as possible.
I cannot begin at the beginning. My life before was a misty blue haze, riddled with misguided shame and confusion. While this may be an ordinary and healthy piece of a person's development, I found these feelings to linger with great strength in me. I hadn't yet arranged or overcome them, and they were threatening to arrange and overcome me.
Born ugly as sin, I had little choice but to take my place in a world centered on becoming, being, and surrounding oneself with beauty. The Dracula complex, the frantic hustle to the fountain of youth, the cinnamon brown skin and half shirts on the women, the same skin covering the alert and anxious muscles of the men; these things were beyond me, above me, and I gradually learned my life without them.
I mention it only because I have come to think that somehow my position may have had something to do with my growth into what I would soon become.
I will not presume to take credit---the truth of the matter is that I would've been born attractive if anyone had givem me the choice. And I won't pretend to be above their line of thinking, either. If anyone had stopped to notice, my envy would have been awkward and obvious.
The saving grace in it all is that these pieces of our flesh world do not endure. It sounds cliché to call it all shallow, but something cannot truly be cliché until it is widely adopted and accepted. As you can probably see for yourself, this hasn't happened just yet. Not for most at least.
Perhaps even worse than the ones who scurry like ants for base fulfillment are the ones who deliberately don't. Nature is nature, and pretense never saved anyone. It's important to be who you are, even if you're rotten to the core. Or ugly. Exaggerating depth only serves to chip even more of the soul away, and trust me, you'll need that soul someday.
A little higher on the scale are the spiritualists, those with an honest gravitation towards what they perceive as other-worldly ideals and aspirations. But that is exactly where they go wrong. There is only one world, one space, one time. It's all existing here and now.
There is no "other-worldly."
I cast no judgements. I know that I too traveled each of those circles, working myself to death on each constant turn. I could not play the game, true---I lacked the looks, physique, status, and social abilities required---but I am man enough to admit that my heart ached on and on with jealousy of those who could. There were times I tried to emulate the ones I saw, there were times I almost could.
It was during one of these times that I met Damon.
I sat at the end of the bar alone, as was my usual custom. I was paying more attention to the pint of lager in front of me than the bustle of people around me, pausing only to notice the ones who would briefly notice me before moving along. The establishment, called simply The Pub, was housed in one of the oldest buildings in town. It was this fact that drew me there time and time again, as the architecture was sublime and the delicate carved woodworkings sprinkled about the place were a treasure found every time you passed one. The clientele, however, was another story indeed.
For the most part all they really had in common with each other was money, which set me apart immediately. Since this obvious schism somehow instinctively prompted them to, for the most part, ignore me without confrontation, I in turn offered them the same honor. Thus, it was quite a shock in my intoxication when the seat next to mine was suddenly occupied by an olive-skinned man in an expensive and finely tailored suit. Even more odd, he was facing me in a way that said he was waiting for me to speak.
"A drink for my friend," I said to the woman behind the bar, loudly enough that she would hear over the dim roar of the animated conversations around us.
"Another triple?" she asked him, eyeing his glass. He nodded, and I winced as she reached to the absolute top shelf behind her for his scotch. So much for arrogance.
He downed the scotch in a fierce gulp and slammed the glass back down, smiling. I raised an eyebrow, but offered no further reaction. He looked disappointed briefly, and he leaned forward. "All right, listen," he said. "I'm going to tell you a secret."
Making a snap reading on the situation, I replied, "I'm not gay."
He laughed again, a surprisingly good-natured bellow that was actually shocking. "No, no, nothing like that. Something else."
"If you want entertainment, buy a dancing monkey," not eager to be anyone's distraction. "You can obviously afford one," I said lower. My answer seemed to satisfy him somehow, and he nodded solemnly.
"I understand," he muttered, twice. He stared into his empty glass for a few long minutes, shaking the ice lightly, and I turned away. "Wait," he suddenly snapped, before I could get back to my drink. "Come with me."
We walked through a curtained doorway just beyond the bar. He somehow had another glass of scotch in his hand, and for the first time that night it occurred to me how drunk I must have been. He removed what looked to be a small vial from his pocket and dumped its silverish, powdered contents into his glass. "You envy me," he said.
In truth, now with some miles to look back over, I'm sure I did, though I denied it to him then with an incredulous expression. "I feel I must tell you my secret," he explained, disregaurding my implication that I needed nothing. "Would you like to know?"
Acting nonchalant, I nodded my head in as disinterested a way as I could, going even so far as to look impatient to get back to my stool. His voice came slow and golden as he whispered, "I am always at the helm. That is the secret."
Seeing that I didn't understand, he handed me his glass. "I can't tell you any more until you drink." I remember being hesitant but curious, and---as was often the case in those hours---the alcohol turned out to be the deciding factor. Sober I would never take such a blatantly drugged drink from an absolute stranger, but in the post-midnight haze of the drunken evening, I did.
He watched with satisfaction as I drained the contents. The scotch was strangely sweet and passed my lips easily. Seeing that I managed to get it all down, he continued. "Everyone has a helm, do you understand?" I shook my head. He raised his finger to his lips, signaling my silence. "Just wait."
I began to feel lighter. I felt my body rock back into the wall. "This is it," I thought, "I've finally done myself in. If I wake up ever it will be in such a state that I'm sure I'll wish I stayed unconscious." I noticed him noticing my disarray, but he just stood and waited.
Suddenly, much quicker than it came on, the feeling vanished. I wasn't even sure if I was still drunk or not. The lights seemed sharper though, and I felt as if I could pick out each word from the many blended conversations in the next room.
"Everyone has a helm," he said again with a slow urgency that chilled me. He paused this time, looking very heavily into my face. "Do you understand?"
Somewhere beyond my vision, or maybe inside it, I could see the millions of fragments that made up my soul, my memory, my passions and my pains. I saw them as red static, I saw them as sparks of light and color, I saw them as furtive glances. I saw them as mountains so gold they could blind God himself.
And I nodded my head.
"Desire is a slick and dirty animal," he said as we reclaimed our seats in the dark corner we had come from. There were more people in the room than before, but somehow it wasn't so loud, somehow it didn't feel crowded. I realized that I was no longer being jostled back and forth by people clawing their way to the bar. I realized that I felt taller.
"The problem with that," he continued, "is that it's also self-contained. It is born inside you, it lives inside you, it feeds of its own devices inside you. And if you're anything less than careful, it will die inside you."
"What could this have to do with me?" I asked, when I meant to ask "What exactly was in that drink?"
"I see your pride," he said. "I also see your shame. You can see now how close to each other they really are, yes?"
I couldn't deny it. Without ever so much as rubbing against each other, the feelings existed in me as one. When I walked through that room of the rich and distant, I was proud of my beaten boots, proud of my sore hands and back. I also hated myself knowing that they had attained with no effort what I was really striving for with my overtime and defeated lust. I was suddenly surrounded by the sparks again. I had to close my eyes, but the lights would not leave me. I heard my own voice speaking in some mathematical language, hard sounds with no curves. Logic told me that I didn't know the words, but the message I understood: The pride in the effort creates the shame of the outcome.
As the message came in with such clarity, the colors and lights fuzzed back into blurry shadows. Most floated around my head and chest before finally assimilating themselves back into my body. The rest stayed somewhat brighter and floated like helicopter oak tree seeds around the room. I had been visited by my own common sense, and I was amazed.
"It works that way with everything when you ride the helm," he said of the realizations casting their glows across my face.
"I was made to be the messenger, that is my place and I accept it as such. In the acceptance I can perform to the limits of my destiny, and in turn collect the gifts my truth in purpose creates without guilt. Everyone has this helm inside them, everyone is a compass. Few ever notice let alone realize. I knew when I saw you that you needed to see, that you were failing the grand scheme of things." He winked with his last four words, and I felt I should be offended at his suggestion. I withdrew into my thoughts far enough to let the angry feeling hit me, but it never came. I agreed with him, and I was grateful. It wasn't so much his words that made sense, but the unity of the sentences.
Not just his---all the sentences.
"What am I then?" I asked. I could think of a few things right about me. I worked hard, tried to be gentle and good to the world around me, I was open and honest. I seldom lied and even more seldom hurt anyone. A healer perhaps, I thought. Or maybe a messenger, as was my newfound friend.
"I couldn't tell you," he sighed. "For all the insight you must at this moment be thinking I have, I'm just another servant." As pretentious as the words themselves were, I knew to believe him. I realized with a speeding certainty what I already knew: I would find my place. All I really had to do was not look.
I closed my eyes and saw light, real light. When I opened them again, the seat next to me was empty. Thinking for a moment that it had all been a sick, sleep-deprived halucination, I saw the back of his meticulously groomed head as he made his way towards the door.
Sparks flew crackling with electricity from my chest and head, spanning the room in two directions before meeting at a single point just in front of him. He turned, and what I saw in his face was horrifying, more shocking than any event of that night or any other before or since. I saw his sadness.
"You won't need me," he revealed, and I could tell that this was true. I could also see very clearly that he wished it weren't so, that this was a moment he lived over and over, despite his fine Spanish looks and obvious wealth. "But my name is Damon, and this night has been my privilege."
He disappeared behind a muscular man with a boyish face who was feeling up the ass of the drunken girl in his bulky arms. She was giggling quietly, but I heard her over everything else. Considering the surroundings and circumstance, she sounded to me like a baby. No, that isn't right. She sounded to me the way strawberries feel going down your throat. Yes, that's more correct.
Forgetting myself and the compassion I had felt for Damon's plight, I leaned forward, almost pressing my face to the large man's forehead. He jerked back quickly in reflex, allowing me to lean further, to lay my partially open lips up on the forehead of the woman still in his arms.
The room dissolved into its own background, the only real things left were the woman---whose eyes had gone soft, alert, and slightly glossy---and myself.
Slowly the room and din of talk returned, and it was as if the moment had never happened. Every piece of my body and mind understood that to the bar and the people in it, the moment never had happened. It was not, as language would try to force us say, "other-worldly," but its existence on our plane was entirely dependant on the existence of me, of her, and of that laugh that spoke more truth than this side could ever hold. Worlds within worlds, and they're all the same world. I caught her eyes one last time, and I could see that for the moment she understood it as well. It was then that I realized what I was stumbling through was no drunken blur. It was very real.
Reeling with questions and answers, I suddenly remembered Damon. I stood on the tips of my toes and surveyed the crowd, but he was gone.
More than gone, he had vanished.
I awoke with the sun in my eyes. I didn't, and still don't, remember leaving The Pub or arriving home. I made coffee, found half of the bagel from the morning before still on the table. I took a bite and threw it away. I sipped the coffee and lit a cigarette. I could not shake that last look on Damon's face. No, I can't say it was a look on his face. It was bigger than that.
For someone who was so drunk that he forgot going home, I felt incredibly relaxed and well. The toxic after effects of so much alcohol had somehow skipped me that time. My senses still felt electric, direct and clear. I walked slowly to my bedroom, taking in my apartment with a sharpness I never had before. There were all my familiar belongings, and yet I felt closer to them, as if I knew them better. I had somehow made friends with my environment.
I searched and searched for a word to describe what I was seeing, a blanket that could cover the scope of all the new angles I was observing from. With great and absolute force a word broke through my teeth, and off every molecule of empty air around me I heard my own voice resound, "Potential."
I ran though the kitchen to the pantry and collected two almost empty gallon cans of house paint. Tripping over myself, I rushed with them back to the bedroom. I tore the top sheet from the bed and laid it flat on the floor.
Eight hours later, as the tired sun drooped down over the mountains bordering the town, I finished my very first painting. I sat against the wall for what seemed like hours, wondering how this dream filtered out through my fingers. It was a six-foot tall portrait of Damon's face, and somehow memory and house paint had mingled into his exact expression as he turned to me that last time.
I can't say that I painted with passion or purpose. It was a liquid act to me, and didn't actually engulf me in until the work was done.
It was that moment, in the fading light though my cracked window, that I knew the directions of my helm. And in love and honor, I gave it title: "The Lazy Art Helm."
I won't blur the issues with the story of my quick entrance and rise through the art scene. Let's just say this; after that first painting I quit my job, and never again had a need to return. I'll admit it involves chance and oddity beyond explanation and leave it at that.
It was neither a coincidence nor a surprise when walking into The Pub became a different experience entirely. Those same bland and chubby faces now rallied around me, and, with my newfound and delightful clarity, I forgave them all, even going as far as to feel a little of their shame for them. It was also no surprise when they all flocked to my first show. They could smell my status without even catching a glimpse of how little it meant to me. Or how little it really meant to them.
The gallery that hosted that first show was the largest and most elegant in the state, The Operant. I was standing in its grand foyer when in the corner of my eye I spotted the sparks. Recognizing them for what they were, yet knowing they were not mine, I followed them around the corner into the main viewing room with some sort of blind urgency.
The thickly lit trail led further and further into the room, rising in magnitude as I neared the source. I was so enthralled with this pursuit and the dazzling sense of the lights themselves that, upon reaching their end, I knocked her over. The lights flashed a shocked, deep red and darted back around and into her, closing up like a tightly woven mesh encompassing most of her upper body. They swarmed there for a moment, then softened in their color and calmed in their motions, caressing the air around them in a light whisper as a champagne bubble does fine crystal.
Regaining myself, I helped her to her feet. She seemed only slightly annoyed, and I apologized as I helped her to right herself on her high heels. "No, no, it's all right," she said, brushing me away. "I'm fine, it's all right."
She was plain in stature and shined with some kind of purity that I almost found disturbing, considering my environment and the events unfolding around us. I almost didn't notice the dark gray tracks of mascara left down her cheeks by very recent tears.
"It looks like nothing's really working out for you tonight," I said, explaining my observation by wiping one side of her cheek with the bottom of my thumb, letting the rest of my fingers trail for one blue moment on the back of her neck.
She laughed suddenly in embarrassment, drying her eyes with her index fingers. "Oh, oh," she repeated again and again, buying time to get the real words. "I usually don't make such a spectacle of myself," she finally stammered, giving up on explanation. "It's just that…" Her words trailed of in self-preservation.
I took her hand in mine and felt its perfection on my skin, up my arm and into my shoulders, until finally it pounded deep inside my chest and resonated there with a power I had never known before.
The sudden intimacy startled her, and her arm twitched back towards her body, but she held my hand just the same. "Pardon me," she said, no longer so shocked and spinning a mock, haughty English accent into her voice. "But you seem to be holding my hand."
I looked down as if I didn't even know I had a hand. "Why yes, you're absolutely right," I said.
"And the reason for that would be what?"
"You don't know?" I asked, and she shook her head, enjoying the playfulness of our sudden and unconventional meeting.
"Yes, yes you do know," I said, realizing that my voice had acquired the same calm assurance that Damon's had when he spoke to me. Her playful expression dropped into one of real concern and bewilderment. "Perhaps you don't understand, but I believe very firmly that you know."
Lowering my head so that my lips just barely brushed the top of her ear as I spoke, I whispered the words I was hearing in my head when I was first drawn to take her smooth long fingers in mine in the first place. "I don't have any choice," I said. I backed up slightly, just enough to bring my hand up between her face and mine. I traced her lips with a fingertip for a moment. "You see, no matter how long I live, no matter how withered or useless this hand becomes, I will always and with great reverence look down upon it and know that it is good. I will know it is good because it once held yours, even just for a minute."
Her eyes were tearing up again. "You're the painter, aren't you?" she said. I had assumed she knew that much.
"What do you mean?" I asked her, thinking there must be more to the question.
"You're the one," she said. "You're the one who painted that." She pointed to the small painting on the wall beside us, the one she had been looking at when I crashed into her just moments earlier. Looking at it again, with her next to me, I saw what she meant. The face was generic and nowhere near exact, but the face was undeniably hers. She had begun crying when she read the title of the tiny piece on the index card below it. For no reason I could fathom then or now, I had called it "Marie."
I left my own debut show just after meeting Marie in front of the painting I had inadvertently tossed into the smooth and huge gears of fate and time. We walked through the city for hours, this same city that weeks before had fooled me into thinking I was beaten, defeated, stuck. It's tricks were no good anymore, I would never believe the whispers of those devious and taunting streets again.
I continued to paint, making more of a living than the factory would ever offer, and Marie and I married shortly after in a simple ceremony at the courthouse downtown. I had thrown all the pieces of a puzzle into the air, or had all the pieces thrown at me, and they landed in flawless alignment.
I thought of Damon often, in thanks and in sadness at his absence. I wished there were some way I could let him know how it all worked out, that his work was important even if his part in it was short-lived, even if he his gift dictated that he lose what he seemed to desire most. The enlightenment he gave me had changed every single angle of my life… And I would not forget him for it.
They say that the best revenge is living well, and that might be true, but sometimes living well can be your only way of repaying that kind of debt. And that's exactly what I did.
Marie and I settled into life with each other, trusting our choices while still learning the shapes and curves of living and loving with each other. We found our lives to fit as perfectly as our hands did that first night, and we fell further and further into each other as each day passed into night, as each night passed into day.
I remembered a time when I found it foreign to have visions---how I first found the way my impulses turned into actions unsettling---but soon I couldn't fathom life without this plane, this ultra-dimensional frame of view.
I was inside the pulse of destiny. Painting was my haphazard vessel, languid and easy were my motions on the canvas. And I, me, the no one sitting alone at the end of the bar; I was at the lazy art helm.
Nothing of such impact as my new life could come without a flip side, as I would soon learn. Making love to Marie was still an act of the most divine religion, but the signs were fading. No longer did I see the sparks of her burn into the sparks of me, no longer was our union so obvious. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I had come to take such obvious signs for granted, that I had come to rely on them for the trust, certainty, and belief I held so dear. I wondered if their gradual absence was to build my faith, to keep all aspects of my being up to the speed of the level I had come to exist on. But, with no tangible resources with which to answer even that question, my doubts simmered at the bottom of me, growing and gaining momentum.
Marie noticed the change in me, and was frightened at the cracks in my confidence. I woke her early one morning after an unfortunate encounter with two bottles of wine. "Tell me!" I shouted above her, shaking her by the shoulders. I gave her a few moments to rub the misty sleep from her eyes before shaking her again. "How did you know?"
Forever understanding of my wildly pendulum-like temperament, she calmly sat up under me, resting her goddess head against the wall. "How did I know what, dear?" she asked, stroking my face as a mother would an infant.
"That night," I explained, softening my voice enough to dull the threat in my tone. "How did you know when we met that it would be all right, how did you know then that we could get even this far?"
"I didn't," she said, as if it was nothing in the world.
"No, no, no, no," I cried, springing up from the bed. "You know I know more than that! I knew your fears, but I knew your certainty as well. How do you do that?" I had explained my peculiar modes of thinking and reason to Marie once before, and while she listened patiently I could tell she believed it to be more delusion than divine intervention. She dismissed it as just one of the eccentricities alloted to artists and gave it no more thought.
"You're right," she admitted. "But when I stopped long enough to recognize you, I realized you were with me all along. I knew I knew you from somewhere inside of me that was untouched. And when I saw myself through your eyes I felt for the first time ever that I was beautiful, in only the truest kinds of ways."
How she could speak like me in my brightest of moments without the cheating benefits of the sights and senses I had come to rely so heavily upon was beyond me. It ate away at me as I paced back and forth at the foot of the bed, casting quick and burning glares in her direction.
She rolled onto her knees and reached across to me. I stopped walking at her touch. I stopped breathing at her touch. It was true that I couldn't see or feel anything symbolic in the exchange, but I felt a reserve burst inside of me. Something explosive had given way. She laughed softly at me, pulling me onto the bed and rolling until I was on top of her. "You," she whispered. "How you can know so certainly that belief is something we only find in ourselves and still be so afraid if you can't see it?"
I knew she was right, and my fear eased. We made love slowly and with absolute and great purpose. Afterwards she slept, and for the first time in weeks I painted. It was another picture of Damon. In this one, he was waving backwards to me, riding the back of a bird into the forever that starts just at any horizon.
I woke Marie again a few nights later, this time gently and with many apologies. I held her face in my hands as she woke, and I wept. She held me softly, and I appreciated her tolerance. My love for her was true enough that I knew I must offer her a way out.
My dance with unsubstantiated trust was brilliant but short-lived. The faith I had borrowed from her in the shining hours just before morning had faded into fear with no warning or mercy. I had attempted to work the paint, but my deliberate and obvious attempts disgusted me. It was time to accept that my run had ended. It was a good run, yes, and I enjoyed the rewards. And now it was time.
"Marie," I told her, refusing to let the choke of tears affect my voice, "I am no longer the man you met, I am no longer the man you fell in love with, I am no longer the man you married." She looked back at me patiently. "I will carry the ache of you leaving for the rest of my life, through anything I do from now until then, but I think it's best if you do."
She was smiling. "You're so crazy," she said, shaking her head. "Do you know what you get if you start a sword fight with destiny?"
I cocked my head to the side. "What do you get?"
"A sword in your belly."
She wrapped her arms---her sister arms, her protection arms, her poet arms---around me and held me to her chest. "Sleep, love," she said. "Sleep."
And, in absolute peace, that's exactly what I did.
The years have gone by me. As I write an ending to what is somewhat a life story, somewhat an explanation, and somewhat a plea, Marie sits across the room drawing. As it would happen, she is quite the artist herself, and losing my own abilities lured this talent out of her.
I am letting my eyes drift back and forth from this page and back to her, and I can't help thinking as I enjoy the sight of both that this hand---my hand---has lived up to the promise I made to her so long ago. It is a good hand, and has done well by me, and I thank it every time I think to for taking hers amidst that rushed and heated moment in the sterile halls of that dreadful gallery.
I had no choice but to accept the way I was thrown so harshly back into my old self. Eventually, I reached a new zone of my own understanding, one in which I could appreciate the experience without the bitterness of loss ruining my perceptions.
I no longer know the good or evil orientations or intentions of people just by looking at them, just by passing them on the street. I can no longer taste flavors in sounds, or see the colors of feeling. Those things left me that night as I slept so near to her womb, so near to the center of her and myself and the universe that even I of such doubt could not deny its allure.
But there was a time when I was blessed, when I got to play the prince of every fairy tale in the human imagination, and it was a beautiful and learning time in my world. My world that revolves in this world, which in whole exists in and along side another world, and on and on.
I would like to say that I reached this easy and medium plateau entirely by my own device, but that just wouldn't be true. Once again, my life turned a hard and sudden corner, my dear friend Damon pointing the way.
It was Autumn and a day worthy of a walk. I walked the few blocks to the river and followed the path along it, wanting to get out of the asphalt and brick for a while. My thoughts were on contentment as I started at the sight just up the the trail a few yards.
Without seeing his face, I recognized him by his suit, the same one I had seen him in the night we met. I rolled him over by his shoulder and gasped as his hand shot up to grip me. His hands, his face, his neck; covered in his own blood.
"Damon!" I cried, trying to help him up. He brushed me away, shaking his head.
"You don't understand," he said, gurgling soft bubbly spurts of blood as he spoke. "I'm finally done. I've reached the height of my purpose here. This is a joyous moment."
"No, Damon, you can't, not now… I've lost everything you ever gave me, I've lost everything I had. I won't lose you, not now and not like this." I began to tear at his shirt to find the wound. I found the wide puncture and pressed a strip of the cloth hard against it. It looked as if the knife had been twisted before being withdrawn.
"Lost?" he asked, seemingly unaware that his own life spilling out at our feet. "Because you can't paint? Because they say you've burnt out?" He was, as I could expect, right.
"And the vision, I've lost that too," I tried to explain, this time almost forgetting his situation myself. I held his body in my hands, I could feel his muscles giving up as his head rolled pointlessly on his neck.
"This," he said, holding the wound in his side, "is just a part of the purpose. The man who did this had to for the purpose. And I, I am no longer for this side of our lives. So I'm going away. Your vision, it had no more purpose here, and now it's gone away."
I tried feverishly to understand, knowing that with my former perception I could grasp it. He saw my confusion and disappointment and raised his hand to my face, gingerly feeling my cheek with his palm. "Don't worry," he said. "Don't be afraid. You're still fighting the good fight, you're still at the lazy art helm. Even if you never touch paint again. That was a step, not a destination."
I was stunned to hear those words, words I myself had never even spoken aloud---the lazy art helm.
He died in my arms, spending his last minute on saving me yet again. I was certain that had I still been able to see those drifting sparks, his would have been skyrocketing upwards, sure of their target and divine in their light.
That night, I sat in the open window of our third-floor apartment, smoking a cigarette and ashing into the air, watching the embers gray out and drift lightly to the ground.
"You seem happier," Marie said from behind me. "Did you paint today?"
I tossed the cigarette and walked across the room to her silhouette in the doorway. "I don't think I'll ever paint again," I said. "Unless I really need to."
She looked concerned and hurriedly made he way towards me, putting one arm around my neck. "Never paint? I know you haven't scored so well with the..."
I stopped her with a motion of my hand. I smiled the smile of the prophets, of the explorers, of the angels.
"I know now what I really have to do," I said. "I have to write it all down."
Forever tolerant, she smiled and kissed my forehead. "I'll make something to drink."
I turned once again out the window and lit another cigarette, this time letting my eyes follow the smoke upward as it gently dissipated in the same slow manner as my thoughts. In the middle of the quiet sky was the huge and heavy moon, and in its crevices and shadows were distinct lines that swirled into colors and contours that settled into edges that made up the smiling face of Damon, pure and good and finally home.
"I'm going to do it, Damon," I called up to the moon. "I'm going to write it. I'll let them all know." I said it half to assure him that his work was done and done well and half because even in my certainty I sought his respect and approval.
The face winked down upon me once and disappeared.
Jay Morgans
©1999
