Le Pont du Bois
It’s not the bridge but the body of water it crosses turbulent dangerous It’s not the crossing over but the moment suspended in air above water swift cold It’s not the bridge but the choice to trust that old wood to hold you while you step and step again It’s not the choice it’s the pushing off, lifting the feet, the moment when you could fall but you don’t Lesley Strutt Lesley Strutt is a Merrickville poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, blogger and professor. Her ancestral roots are Irish and she is a descendant of the Bard of Bytown - William Pitman Lett. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies, journals and e-zines. She recently edited If There is Somewhere to Go, the third collection of open reading poems published in the Living Archives series of the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets, for which Susan McMaster was consulting editor.
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Reflecting On Loneliness It was in the news today- again- science has proven that loneliness kills. I suspect that this was a surprise to no one. And the lonely people flooding Facebook posted it with comments that reflected nothing less than accusatory glee. There was a gloating surrounding the story, a kind of pathetic, desperate jabbing meant to declare with neon lights the truth found in the findings. People are lonely, the lonely shouted, and it’s all your fault because people like you just don’t give a shit. No one got lonely from loving too much, someone commented after the story, and I felt the cold sea that engulfed him, keeping him apart from the strangers who didn’t know he was alive. I felt an icy flash of that dark place he was writing from and my heart broke for him. But loneliness has a different face for everyone, and where I stand, it looks an awful lot like love. Speak for yourself, I thought, with sorrow that is usually more contained. Loving too much is exactly what has made me lonely. Another person commented on science by citing facts that were really pure speculation. Women are lonelier than men, they said, and black people are lonelier than white people. Poor people are lonelier than rich people, etc. This was in stark contrast to another posting that knowingly expounded on the happiness of poor tribes in Africa and destitute families in Cuba and Mexico. When you have nothing, you realize what you have, the person said, and those of us steeped in privilege and consumerism in white North America cannot possibly comprehend community and its value. Cubans know the meaning of family. I don’t know. I love living alone. Sometimes I am heading home from a grueling social soiree and panic, thinking, what if I had a roommate or kids and wouldn’t find solitude when my door shut on the world? I often quip that when I find the man of my dreams, he will live next door, even if we are married. I’m not the only one who finds overcrowding annihilating. But apparently, say the wise men of science, flying solo is as deadly as being fat or smoking, and it causes heart disease, immune deficiency, high blood pressure, hormone disorders, and dementia. It was a bit of caustic serendipity, perhaps, that before logging online this morning to find this story I waited for the coffee to brew in a quiet automat painted by Edward Hopper. Most mornings, I open one of my art books at random and contemplate a painting in those few minutes before the day begins. Today’s page turned out to be a familiar and favourite work by an artist dogged by interpretations of isolation and desolation. Hopper was a taciturn and ornery fellow but he resisted our translations of his work, however entrenched they have become. Hopper’s art most famous work, Nighthawks, is literally the poster child representing lonely. A few stragglers sit in a night café or bar, staring into the stillness. We can barely abide their lack of conversation or their late night solitude and have created a persistent mythology about the painting. Automat, 1927, features a young woman seated at a round table our side of a huge dark window. Like most of Hopper’s works, it is interpreted as a lament to humanity’s terrible disconnection. A typical conclusion is this one, from an anonymous writer online. “The woman looks self-conscious and slightly afraid, unused to being alone in a public place. … She unwittingly invites the viewer to imagine stories for her, stories of betrayal or loss. … Hopper does not tell a story but paints a moment, a moment that includes loneliness, isolation, and a spell of the dark…The viewer looks at this and immediately feel her isolation and loneliness as if it were his own.” When I was a teenage outcast, I was so lonely that I couldn’t comprehend how much worse my condition could and would become. And I loved this painting. But it wasn’t because I felt the subject’s loneliness so deeply. It was envy that I felt. I was madly jealous of what she had. There was a casual resignation in her expression. In Hopper’s picture, I didn’t feel the ongoing chaotic desperation that was all I knew. I didn’t read into this work the cues of hopeless isolation I was supposed to see. I felt instead someone else’s Zen, before I had even heard of the concept, a calm from the storm of others. I constructed a whole life for this character, the woman with the fine calves and the beautiful cloche, whom I named Jane. She was an artist. She lived with her father, and her mother had passed away. She was Catholic, but only at weddings and funerals and maybe Easter. She was a young woman who had experienced tragic and epic romance. She was also ordinary, a woman patiently waiting out the day with a cup of coffee. My imagination imbued her story with a poignant poetry. I thought that if I could find hats like hers and the peace of mind to sit so solemnly alone, I would always find my way. By the time the coffee maker breathed its contented and finished hiss, I was long transported into Edward Hopper’s painted café. I had already lamented the thick calves and crows feet of middle age that wedged twenty years between me and the last time I’d seriously searched this artwork. And I’d already been struck by thoughts that were bizarrely protective of the young woman’s solitude. I had woken alone and I would spend the day working, alone. Even so, I wanted to hog the woman’s solitude like a cache of diamonds. Then I logged into my morning, Stevia and cream tempering the acrid and acid Maxwell house bargain canister. Lonely! Lonely! screamed the news. You’re dying of loneliness! Simon says, science says. Perhaps what is loneliest for the introvert, who now has a name and a category from which to perch piously, is not being lonely. It’s practically a sin. Who in their right mind would envy, over Christmas, those with no family rigmarole to attend? Who but the most selfish and miserly among us would prefer to wander aimlessly by themselves on Saturday night, when a gaggle of girlfriends was cheering and beering together in the local watering hole? We are monsters, refusing the calls of people who love us and want to chitchat until the cows come home. Inane banter does nothing to assuage the hollows, but long hours walking solo restores our souls. How do you explain that you need more “me time” to people who would give anything for more anybody-else time? My extroverted sister makes me dizzy, and the kindness of strangers who reach out into the deserted geography where my mind resides is one I can’t always repay. My work, too, demands so much interaction that I have to steel myself to keep it together. Yes, writing and working in the studio are done in long stretches of gorgeous solitude. But the other side of my job is about attending art openings, mine and yours, meeting and greeting and mingling and jingling. In occasional doses, the jazz and white wine and meet and greet of this scene is nice work, if you can get it, and a chance for me to wear my red lipstick for someone other than my cats. But too much of this on my calendar, I begin to defragment and come apart at the seams. Perhaps it is true that introverts are insensitive, self-centered clods who don’t give a rat’s ass about the brotherhood of man. But I suspect something else is going on for those of us who take our company in smaller doses. We may be more sensitive. I am so sensitive to the emotions of others that I can hardly take reign of my own. Being highly empathic is, indeed, a trait that fuels the work of many artists and writers. We must constantly create because we are always “processing.” Far from self-indulgent, we are stuck feeling and feeling and moving through everyone else’s ups and downs as well as our own. It’s a heavy burden to carry. Following this logic, perhaps it is the “people persons” who need constant assurance of their place at the table, continual affection even if it’s from strangers, which makes it superficial even if it feels good. Maybe it’s these who are more selfish then, than us loners. We don’t need to scoop up a constant fill of emotions from others to feel good, to validate ourselves. Maybe the social butterfly is not the saint with endless love to give, but the piranha, with endless love to take. Or maybe we are all just wired differently and need to stop pointing fingers at each other every time an article is posted on social media. I always try to explain that I need a lot of “down time” in order to fuel up for the big gusts of loving everyone, and I take great cares to make sure that the people I love know my love is not a mild, airy, flaky kind of thing but something profound and loyal. It is not wasted on every Tom, Dick and Harry but reserved for the ones who grow with me and show deep acceptance and care. The biggest mistakes I’ve made in my life were the ones I spent distracted by and focused on emergencies of urgency for strangers and relatives alike, while ignoring the lovely, ordinary people in my life who loved me. My brazen errors of attention robbed those who were not fleeting stars on my path, but fellow travelers for the long haul. Still, I can’t help but resent the archaic views that the individual is to blame and the collective overrides the ultimate minority, the self. It is our unique individual identity that separates us from the animal kingdom, where the most personality filled cat or dog or cockatiel will never look into the mirror and say, who am I? When will I die? Why did this poem make me cry? Why do I prefer golf over ballet? Should I take up Buddhism? Pyschology keeps harping over the joys of any old relationship, and people who prefer to live alone or love alone are made to feel they are missing something, that they are decrepit, lacking, maladjusted, dangerous, or sick. It takes a village and such clichés are considered superior ideations, and retreat is antisocial and ill. But what of those of us who find the most healing in backing away? Are we always and forever retrogrades? More, are our intense social unions nullified by the lack of intrinsic need for constant companionships? Some of us get very tired of the pathologizing. We don’t feel incomplete. I have made peace with the fact that most people want to be paired up, or feel that a night without someone snoring and kicking next to them is an empty one. But I know that countless others aren’t lying when they find true fulfillment and relief in their own rhythm. How we survived the days of the cave, and the days of four generations in one kitchen all at once, I cannot guess. Perhaps I am grossly selfish, but the overwhelm of a big family would tip my mental health balance towards suicide, and quickly. It is not company that assuages these impulses for me: my lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder is always exacerbated by over-socializing and soothed by quiet time far away from the madding crowds. The impulse of j’accuse is universal, though, so when some feel obligated to point at another’s paucity of love and empathy as a cause of the world’s loneliness, it’s as natural as breathing. If only lonely had an easy solution. I was so much lonelier before I recognized my introversion. I often try to explain to others that I’m never bored when I’m alone but quickly bored if I stay too long at parties. We all have our limits and they are different. Without a few days of solo bliss I can hardly handle other hearts. After holidays with family I cherish, I need time off and working is like the holiday. But I do start to feel unloved after a week or so goes by without some solid meeting of the minds and souls of those close to me. Still, I feel most lonely when tossed into buzzing social milieus with people I barely know, not when I’m by myself. Small gatherings of a handful of good friends somewhere with wine and the possibility of hearing each other speak are golden. Some people need more, some a lot more. A very few people need much less, and more, or even any, is painful for them. I’m not one of these, but I do understand that hermits aren’t necessarily damaged. They are avoiding damage. Extremely solitary people have long had cures of companionship thrust at them by the well-meaning but clueless, and doctors used to force autistic children into hugging and false bonding. But it is the individual who should set the pace of how much company and touch he or she needs Scientists and other social philosophers will always come up with their own prescriptions of what is normal and healthy. I can only go with what works in my own life. I have felt such intense pain in my lifetime, I sometimes don’t know how I still stand. I do not say this to separate myself from others, but rather to glue. We all feel pain. Mine is mine, a private affair, and yours is yours, and if there is something I can do, I will. But I don’t presume that there is, and I’m certainly not vain enough to think I can make it better just by being around. In my book, loving someone doesn’t mean hogging all their space and time in the name of “giving.” “Being there” doesn’t mean literally being here, at least not for me. I am moved when someone wants to “be there” for me, and knows they don’t have to “be here” to “be there.” The ultimate irony, perhaps, of loneliness, is that no one can fix it. It’s not so easy as stopping for a moment to consider the homeless or broken. It’s not about finding a party for a socialite or a friend for a widow. Even the most extroverted, social animals among us cannot find solace in a crowd after a death or separation. That demon of isolation and grief comes at us after loss, even when we have other magnificent offers. How many times have we squandered affection on a rejecter when we have had a thousand hands extended? The loneliest times of my own life could not be salved by anyone. When I weep, drunk and alone, it is nothing you can fix with all the love in the world. I want J. back, and I want my mother, and they aren’t there, and nothing else will do. I would also extend that loneliness is an exquisite and important rite of passage. Like my romanticizing of the cloche lady in the Hopper, abandonment is a state of mind that we need to address and come to terms with. The theme in pop and country songs about being left lonely, left behind, left out, are crucial and integral to our personal evolution. In high school, I didn’t know that every high school kid was lonely. Yes, as a bullied kid, I was probably more lonely than some. But as a kid who had found a way into the realm of imagination and creativity, I was probably well ahead of the rest in finding sanctuary. Just as today’s studies tell us about lonely science, we’ve known for some time that churchgoers and other spiritually grounded folks have better mental health. This is attributed to more connectivity. But that hive of community is one of the reasons I’ve avoided my spiritual matters in public life. I prefer to read poetry and the bible at home, and I commune with theologians and writers this way. I don’t want to see a bunch of people on Sunday mornings! I feel fragile and invaded after good-intentioned folks at my sister’s church fall over the pews to shake my hand and say “nice to see you come out” when they don’t know anything about me. Still, study after study after study has confirmed that religion is apparently good for your health and the reason is connection to a community. Here, ever contrarian, I wonder. Is it really the connection to other lost and seeking humans over triangle tuna sandwiches that makes the difference- or is it connection to God? The famous David Caspar Friedrich painting about the monk on the shore comes up in various Google searches for loneliness- self-portrait, lonely monk, desolate, empty. But like Jane waiting for no one in the automat, I see the work as a triumph. The monk is solitary against the wild, but he is intimately connected with the cosmos. I never see this painting as a lonely one. I’m not so sure the artist did, either. Whether God is true or false, it’s scientific to say believers are ahead of the game. The interpreters of science leap in and conclude it’s the connection to community. Some of the first studies in sociology showed that active goers to synagogue and church committed suicide the least, and their lack of loneliness was cited as the reason. Perhaps many find joy through the hubbub of hellos, but I grow furious when someone who doesn’t know me and doesn’t really give a damn asks how I am and how my holiday was. It’s okay to just exist side by side and not pretend. I wonder if it’s not the social aspect but the sense of meaning that gives the religious their edge. Maybe it’s the perception of relationship to God, not to everyone else. Maybe it’s the feeling that it’s not all futile. After all, people who go to casinos and pubs a lot are also around a lot of people, and this connection is not heralded as a lifesaver. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that Christ said, Love thy neighbour. And I am not suggesting we should harbour rancour to others. I am not advocating cruelty, and I am not saying we should always leave everyone alone. I am not saying everyone has my kind of loneliness, or lack thereof, or any of the other things some will try to read into my words. I am only saying that superficial empathy and companionship are quick fixes that don’t hold for many of us. I am only saying that constantly giving love to those who haven’t earned it has been the undoing of many souls. I am only saying that for some, being around people does not cure their loneliness but creates it. My most dark, profound, naked, terrible, disappointed moments are with other people. In all the days that I kept hoping you would fix it, I remained impotent. When I stopped asking you to love me beyond what you could and did, when I stopped asking the dead to rise, the unable to reign, I found a fragile peace. When I realized that fewer and deeper friendships with those whose trust I earned and mine theirs, I stopped giving myself away so easily. When I realized that you don’t go to church or to art receptions or to school to be seen or to make idle chit chat, but to nourish the soul with connection to something more important than superficial bonds, I started to find what I was looking for. Since I have learned to sit in cafes by myself just like Jane and say no to group excursions to movies and go by myself, since I have said no to roommates and no to relationships with men just for their own sake and no to going out on Friday nights unless I want to, I have been far less lonely. Not forcing myself to hold up the social above all else has actually made me far more generous to the needs of others. Not spending time on people just because I’m supposed to has freed me to spend more time with the people I care about most and grow closer to my family, to give what I should to my closest friends, instead of spreading myself thin in the lunch room or on the subway. I am able to truly enjoy meeting people and being with them since I found the peace of mind to be alone when I need to be. Far be it for me to question scientists and doctors and the New York Times. But I think Thomas Moore nailed it in his wonderful book Soul Mates. “…We may think we're lonely because we have no friends,” he writes, “when the fact is we have no relationship to ourselves.” Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is an artist and writer living in Toronto, Canada. She writes about art, and makes multilayered collage paintings that incorporate text and literary themes. She has published hundreds of poems, short stories, and creative essays. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca. The Art of Addition by Subtraction
"Hey, Marie -- see the couple staring at Janette's Pomegranate #5?" Buster nodded toward the two men, one tall and slight as a whisper, the other squat, the pleat of his suit coat flaring out like a ladybug's wings. I'd shoved show catalogues into the hands of the two as they entered the gallery, but they'd looked right past me to the twelve-foot tall nude that Buster had hung in the entryway to aggravate a yawping neighbor who thought of good art as Norman Rockwell. "Window shoppers?" "They're going to buy your Brooklyn Menopause and All Dog's Children." A wry smile split the thatch of Buster's beard. He held up a fist. I bumped my fist into his, weak-kneed with relief. After a three-week run, my first gallery showing was due to come down in a few hours, and until that moment I'd sold exactly nothing. Buster, who'd taken a large risk giving a relative unknown half of the wall space in his gallery, would have had nothing to show for his generosity. "Full price?" "Me? Discount? Please. But the best thing is those two are alphas in the collecting community. This almost guarantees I'll be able to sell the rest of your pieces." From across the room a bejeweled matron, giggling at Jeanette's Beautox, curled a forefinger to beckon Buster. He gave me a sheepish look and headed her way. I snatched a glass of champagne from a caterer's tray and tossed it down in one unladylike gulp. One night a month ago, guiltily tempting fate, I'd totaled up the prices of the works I had on display. Absurd. $600,000. Even after subtracting Buster's half, and allowing for taxes, I'd clear enough to finally quit my job at the library to concentrate on my art. I giggled at the irony—it had taken me twenty years of schlepping my booth from one street fair to the next to become the "promising new talent" the Times had mentioned the week before in an Arts Section tidbits piece. I went looking for my sister Casey to share the good news. She stood at the foot of the iron spiral staircase that led to Buster's office. She was flirting, as usual, this time with a younger man, mid-30s perhaps, with copper hair and a bushy goatee. He had the almost translucent skin of a true redhead, with protruding ears that begged for a nip and tuck, and doleful eyes behind glasses with thick chartreuse frames. He was dressed in a fire-engine red turtleneck with leather pants to match. I pushed my way through the crowd surrounding the refreshments table to join the two. Only the flutter of Casey's eyelids tipped me to her annoyance at my imposition as she pivoted to make room for me in the conversation. "I was just telling Dean here," she touched him lightly on the sleeve, "how hard you worked to get this show. He thinks your stuff is super." Dean nodded, peering at me over the glasses suspended on the flare of his nostrils. "Dean Lyons. Right. Yes. Super is certainly a word." I was familiar with the contempt that Casey's ebullience brought out in some men, but he seemed sincere. "Thanks for the compliment," I said. "You're welcome. I was particularly taken with this piece." He made a hitchhiking gesture toward the centerpiece of my show in the spotlight behind him. Justice was a full-sized, freestanding sculpture made of human hair on a hidden wire framework; curly, straight, black, brown, red, blond, and white. Very conceptual, in that it didn't resemble anything except perhaps a whirlpool. I'd spent over five years collecting that hair, which had been trimmed by undertakers from the heads of corpses while sprucing them up for their funerals. It was the piece I'd been working toward my entire career. "I've never seen anything quite like it," Lyons said. He tapped the open catalog in his hand with his index finger. "$75,000. Now, how can you justify such a price?" His tone was playful. Casey sidled closer. I replied in kind. "Justice weighs almost forty pounds. Christie's just sold Femme by Miró for $2 million, and I'll bet it didn't weigh more than a pound." "Stalin said quantity has a quality all its own," he replied, smiling as he idly tugged on his goatee. "What's with the title?" "Do you really expect any artist to answer that question?" He sighed. "I never give up hope." He rolled up the catalog and thrust it into the inside pocket of his suit coat. "Anyway, I'm going to buy it. The hair thing. All forty pounds." I almost peed my pants in delight. Casey took a step back, though, and I was puzzled at the sudden suspicion, perhaps even anger, in her expression. She eventually turned on every man she took up with, but never within the first ten minutes. "You're joking," I said. "No joke," Lyons said. "Justice will fit perfectly into my collection." Hoping to draw out the conversation so I could savour the moment, I said, "You're an artist, too? Might I have seen some of your work?" Casey discreetly kicked my ankle as Lyons replied, "I doubt it. I'm a performance artist. My audiences are very intimate." "What kind of performances?" "Hard to explain. Maybe you'd like to attend one?" "I'd love to," I said. Casey kicked me again, and I kicked her back. We exchanged business cards, and Lyons promised to call me later with the details. He then excused himself to search out Buster and arrange the purchase. "What?" I said to Casey as soon as Lyons was out of hearing range. "I'm not trying to steal him from you, if that's what you're worried about." She put her hand on my shoulder and turned me to face the wall before whispering, "I just figured out who he is. He's that guy that makes bonfires out of art." I had no idea what she was talking about, but before I could ask, a stocky young man trying to decide between Crass and Boring and Arrogant Prick cornered me with a multitude questions about how each should be hung, curated, and which one I thought would be worth more in ten years. A few minutes later, Buster appeared, carrying a SOLD sticker before him like a communion cup. He transferred it with great ceremony to the label of Justice. # After the gallery closed, Janette, Casey, Buster and I crammed into a vinyl-upholstered booth in the bar next door, Muscadet. I waited until the cocktails were delivered before asking the group about Lyons. "Dean Lyons?" Janette said, frowning. "The pyro artist? He was there tonight? I read a profile of him in the Village Voice. He calls himself "Mr. Addition by Subtraction." She swirled her martini olive. "He buys art and burns it in public." Just that quickly, my joy turned to ash. Casey patted my hand. "He used to come around the gallery every six months or so," Buster said, "asking me to show his paintings. He had some talent, but his technique was sloppy and his subjects were vapid. Still, he has a shitload of money, so I kept thinking that if I got desperate enough I could sell him a few weeks of wall space. Fortunately, I never reached that point. Yet." Janette asked Roscoe, "You didn't sell him anything of mine, did you?" When Roscoe shook his head, I said, "He bought Justice. You think he means to burn it?" "You dickhead," Janette said, glaring at Roscoe. "What?" Roscoe replied. "A customer buys a piece, he buys the right to do with it what he pleases. It's not like we don't charge him plenty for the privilege. And Lyon's money is as good as anyone's. Right, Marie?" "But why would he burn Justice?" The notion was intolerable. Janette said, "In the profile, he said that eradicating bad art was as valid a form of artistic expression as creating good art. I think he even got a grant from the NEA." "He can't burn Justice," I said. "I don't care what he paid. I poured my soul into that piece." "You go, girl," Casey said, raising her wine spritzer in support. Roscoe rest his chin on his fist. "Money is money. It buys you the time to make better pieces. Some artists do commercial work to pay the bills. Is this so different?" The insult to the quality of my work implicit in Roscoe's words hurt. "If I do better work," I said, "maybe he buys and burns that, too. You think people will remember me for the money I had?" My tablemates snarled at Roscoe as he replied, "Then think about me for a minute, OK? A sale like this allows me to show more new artists like you two. Besides, the contract's been signed." "Stop the check," Janette said. "He paid cash. And he had the piece picked up at closing time." "Oh, bite me," I said, stood, pulled a ten out of my billfold, tossed it on the table, and stomped out. # I stood on the street corner outside the bar for fifteen minutes before I finally flagged down a cab to haul me from Tribeca to the Upper East Side address on Lyon's card. Along the way, I wondered if our mother would have been as proud of Justice as she'd been of Casey's firstborn, Troy, whose birth she'd regarded like a biblical miracle. It was midnight when I jumped out of the cab in front of a high-class apartment building overlooking Central Park. I felt like a hobo in the simple pants suit and sensible flats I'd worn to the gallery, and the stare of the doorman implied he shared my opinion. Rather than try to fast-talk my way into the building, I took a few steps to the side of the entryway, pulled out Lyon's card, and dialed his apartment. He answered on the first ring. Crossing my fingers and trying to keep anger out of my voice, I told him I had to speak with him, right away. I was relieved when he agreed to let me come up. The doorman didn't take his eyes off of me until the elevator doors closed. The elevator opened on the 30th floor to an apartment the likes of which I'd only seen in high-end decorator magazines. The walls were covered in chartreuse silk wallpaper, and the living room beyond the foyer was decorated in blended curves and playful takeoffs on vegetation; a chair made in the shape of a bunch of bananas, asparagus floor lamps, garlic pillows. Spotlights in the ceiling reflected from the chrome of empty art hangers lining the walls like sconces. Lyons, still dressed in the clothes he'd worn to the gallery, was leaning against the wall waiting for me, his eyes half open. "It didn't take you long," he said. There was a sag to his face that I hadn't noticed earlier, and he spoke so softly I could barely hear him. He turned and waved an arm toward the living room. "You're not armed, are you?" "Not this time," I replied, feigning amusement, since I still had a faint hope of reasoning with him. I preceded him into the living room, taking in the panoramic view of Central Park and the West Side. Empty celery-stalk display stands stood like pilings throughout the room. A see-through glass cabinet separated the living room from a music room, but the shelves were also empty. "You have the whole floor?" I asked. Lyons pointed me to an orange sweet-potato couch in front of the window, and collapsed into the bananas. "Three floors, actually. My grandparents were talented capitalists." I sank into the couch. A spray of fresh-cut pink orchids on the coffee table concealed Lyons face. He reached out with a socked foot and shoved the vase aside. "I’m surprised you invited me up," I said. He shrugged. "Might as well get this out of the way as soon as possible. You figured out why I bought your piece." He yawned. "And you want it back. They always want it back." I leaned forward to escape the lethargy of the overstuffed furniture. I'd steeled myself for a pitched argument, but Lyons seemed abstracted. "Of course I want you to stop," I said. "I'll give your money back." He slid lower in the chair, like a bored child in a pew. "Does a car mechanic worry about what becomes of the spark plugs he installs? Have you ever seen a short-order cook try to buy back a breakfast?" "Are you comparing my art to a spark plug?" "Why not? Art isn't holy, is it? It's a product. Mostly a defective product. A few years ago, a hundred paintings by leading British artists were destroyed in a warehouse fire. You know what I call that? A good start." I bit my lip and replied, "I leave a piece of myself in every work. You burn my work, you burn me." Lyons removed his glasses and rubbed his face with both hands. "I used to say shit like that, back when I was painting." "Then you know what I mean. Why I need my piece back." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "My paintings were crap. All they did was obscure other people's brilliant work. Every mediocre piece taints the art world like a drop of soap in a pot of coffee." "So my piece is crap?" I clasped my hands between my knees. "Duh," Lyons said, and yawned again. "So burning it accomplishes what? Beyond stroking your ego." He lifted his feet onto the kiwi coffee table. "I call my art addition by subtraction. And yes, I realize how pretentious that sounds. I’m sorry about the harsh appraisal of your work, but I'm not giving your piece back; I need it. Take my money and try harder next time. Or find another way to scratch your art itch. I understand quilting is fun." I sat seething quietly for a couple of minutes, trying to frame a response that didn't include screaming. Before I could speak, Lyons began to snore softly. I stood and turned to the window, tempted to chuck one of the end tables through it. When Roscoe had, at long last, agreed to show my work, I'd spent hours digging up the addresses of the teachers and classmates who had ridiculed my ambition. I'd sent them all invitations to the exhibition, and a few had even come. Now, in a few minutes, Lyons had made a cruel joke of my revenge. I waved a hand in Lyons' face, but he didn't respond. Still furious, I crossed the room and passed through the folding glass door dividing the living room from the music room, which was dominated by a Bösendorfer grand piano beneath a crystal chandelier. The walls in this room were also bare. I took out my house key. As I gouged Art is sacred into the walnut top of the piano, I wondered if the pieces Lyons had gathered for his next bonfire were somewhere in the apartment. Maybe if I acted quickly, I could still liberate Justice. I passed through the music room to the dining room, then the kitchen, breakfast room, restroom, pantry, and back into the foyer, checking closets and cabinets as I went. No art. Into the library. No art. A side door from the library led to a winding staircase. I returned to the living room to check on Lyons, who was sound asleep, a thin line of drool trickling into his beard. I climbed the stairs. The upstairs hallway opened first onto a massive media room that had escaped the attention of the psychedelic decorator. The only seating, a battered leather recliner, was placed at the focal point of the sound system. I gave the room a quick once-over. Still no art, although two empty cabinets bookending the entertainment console were purpose-made for displaying sculptures. I searched the guest bedrooms -- under the bed, in the bathroom cabinets, the walk-in closets. Nothing. My last stop was the master bedroom. Strewn clothes, piled magazines, a 60-inch plasma TV, and a dirty breakfast tray on the floor suggested Lyons spent a good part of his day in bed. A hypodermic, lighter, and silver spoon on the bed stand explained Lyons lethargy. The only piece of art in the apartment was hidden in a cardboard box under the bed. The small abstract acrylic painting was done in five primary colours. Straight horizontal lines at the top and bottom sandwiched other lines which curved, looped and twisted like intestines. The piece lacked unity, and the color pallet wasn't harmonious. Still, not altogether hideous. It was unsigned, but on the backside was a faint note in pencil: DL '01. The wronged dream first of vengeance, and I was no exception. But I also recognized the danger in confrontation: some people are willing, even happy to burn, in which case everybody loses. I decided to wait until Justice was in sight before proposing a trade. I removed the painting from the frame, then cut the canvas free from the stretcher with my Swiss Army knife. I shoved the frame and stretcher back under the bed. I rolled up the painting and slid it under my collar at my nape and down along my spine, under my bra strap and tucked it into the waistband of my pantyhose. Standing up straight, the canvas was barely noticeable beneath my blouse. The doorman didn't. # Lyons had left a message on my answering machine earlier in the evening with directions to his next performance, on Saturday night five days hence. A written invitation followed two days later. I spent the week hounding Buster, fruitlessly pleading for him to negate the deal. I talked with a lawyer, who agreed to pursue it if I gave her a $100,000 retainer. I even stalked Lyons for a couple of days as best I could via public transportation hoping he'd lead me to his cache, but a burly marine-type accompanied him everywhere he went, and he didn't leave his apartment very often. "Grieve for Justice," Casey counseled me. "Then let it go. Remember when Catigula ran away? We got over that." "He was a kitten. We were children. There's no comparison." "You should have had children," she said. "You'd have more perspective." "So you keep telling me." She'd had two, by partners unrevealed, and now that the kids were grown she had convinced herself that all those years as a single mother had been joyous. I knew better. I'd been there with her, every day, every tear, and every day I had returned home thankful beyond words that I'd chosen art. # Because Lyons had told me his audiences were very small, I was surprised to find over 100 people gathered on the roof of an old brick high-rise for Lyon's performance. Caterers were serving wine at one white-clothed table, canapés at another. The attendees ran to tattoos and trashy-chic clothing. The air was redolent with wood smoke and marijuana. Lyon's bodyguard collected my invitation and checked my name off the list on his clipboard. He also ordered me to uncap the cardboard mailing tube I was carrying. I told him the painting rolled up inside was a contribution for Lyon's performance. He waved me in. After grabbing a glass of wine from the table, I wove my way through conversation clusters toward a theater-in-the-round stage which filled almost a third of the roof. It rested on layer after layer of fireproof insulation and was surrounded by a phalanx of fire extinguishers. Another goon stood guard at the bottom of the ramp to the stage. In the center of the stage, a bonfire of hardwood logs was already sending up flames six feet high. A few steps to its right, a blue tarp covered what I presumed was the artwork Lyons had chosen for the event. He was nowhere to be seen, so I circulated, dipping into a few conversations long enough to confirm that no other artist whose work was to be burned had been stupid enough to attend. When the conversers discovered that I was one, they assumed that I was a willing participant, and made jokes at my expense. I pretended to be amused, holding my anger for later in the evening. Finally, as a nearby cathedral struck 10 p.m., floodlights clipped to the roof antennas snapped on, illuminating the stage. I moved to a spot next to the ramp. Most of the crowd was surrounding the door leading onto the roof, twenty yards behind me. The guards quickly cleared a cordon for Lyons' grand entrance. He appeared in the doorway dressed in a riotous brocaded and beaded robe with belled sleeves and a deep cowl. It reminded me of a Klimt painting; sumptuous, gold. He was wearing too much stage makeup, and his face looked like a mask in the spotlight glare. Following him was a fuchsia-haired girl with a video camera, shooting the festivities. He passed through the cordon, reaching out as he passed to brush fingers with the hands held out to him. When he reached me, though, he stopped and brought both hands to his heart like an infatuated mime. "What a lovely surprise," he said. "You're the very first. You realize that?" "The first artist to attend?" He nodded. "Oh, this is going to be an epic performance. Can't you just feel it?" His face was flushed and his eyes darted around the audience. "I'm not here to help you murder my art," I said. "Murder means the taking of a life," he replied loudly, looking around to make sure the bystanders were enjoying his repartee. "Believe me, there's no life in the art we're burning tonight." The people close enough to hear broke into laughter. I, on the other hand, spit on him. Startled, Lyons took a step back and would have tumbled over the ramp if the guard had not propped him up. He scowled at me as he climbed to the stage. In the spotlights, he appeared a foot taller. He stood, hands on hips, taking in the audience for a minute, which was applauding politely, before raising his arms. Music began booming from speakers behind us, a Dead Can Dance piece with the bass cranked up until I could feel it bouncing off my sternum. The onlookers fell silent. "What is art?" he said, his voice rising in pitch as he strained to be heard over the music, "The struggle to find order in chaos? To bring meaning to meaninglessness? To return passion to a jaded world?" The people standing next to me smiled indulgently. A goth on the opposite side of the ramp rolled her eyes and elbowed the man beside her. He thinks he's moving them with his so-called art, I realized, but to them, it's just bread and circuses. "If so, then bad art can make chaos out of order," Lyons continued, playing to the camera. "And worse, it leaves us too numb to recognize the good stuff." He wrung his hands. "I compare what I do to tearing down a billboard in Yellowstone. Burning a McDonalds on St. Marks Square, or blowing up an oil derrick on the Great Barrier Reef." The crowd clapped politely as he paused. Lyons' face was already covered with sweat. The ramp guard had turned his back to me. I eased myself around the banister so that I had a straight shot up to the stage. Now that confrontation was inevitable, I was ticking with anticipation. Lyons crossed to the tarp, reached down, grabbed a corner, dragged it to the edge of the roof, and with a toreador's flourish sent it spinning into the darkness. Revealed were half a dozen unframed paintings, a misshapen glob of glass the size of a beagle, and Justice. The audience hooted like drunken soccer fans. Lyons plucked a painting from the pile and held it aloft. "I paid $11,000 for this," he said. The picture looked like vomit on houndstooth fabric. "Burn, burn, burn," the crowd chanted. "This one's for Modigliani," Lyons shouted, and pitched the picture into the fire. It caught fire immediately. I could smell the acrylics as they boiled away. Lyons waited for the applause to recede before brushing his hands together and saying, "Isn't the world more beautiful now?" As those around me cheered, I fought off the impulse to imagine the artists whose works were being burned. I had to remain focused. Lyons returned to the pile, grabbed another painting, repeated the process. Then more self-aggrandizing gibberish. Then another. And another. A portrait of an old man with daisies for eyes. A solid black rhomboid. A puppy taking a crap. An abstract done with a paintball gun. All up in flames, except the glass piece, which shattered. The crowd egged Lyons on, and between each sacrifice, he implored their applause with come-hither motions. Finally only Justice remained. A young couple behind me debated about how long it would take for human hair to burn. Lyons appeared a bit wobbly on his feet, and he kept rubbing his chest. He locked his eyes on me, though, as he grabbed my sculpture and dragged it to the edge of the fire. He raised his hands for quiet, then said, "It takes a brave person to admit that the art world would be better without her work." He pointed at me. "A woman like Marie Shaffer. Can we have some applause for the first artist to watch her work burn?" As the crowd craned to see whom he was addressing, I sprinted up the ramp and crossed the stage, pulling the rolled painting from the mailing tube as I went. I came to a stop a few feet from Lyons, a few feet from the fire. Lyons, watching the audience, didn't seem aware that I had something in my hand. When the applause died down, he nodded in satisfaction and turned Justice to face me. "Would you like to do the honour?" The audience fell silent, straining to catch my reply. "No," I said. "But I will burn this." I unrolled the painting in his face. He staggered back a step and blinked several times. When his bodyguard took a step up the ramp, Lyons shook his head to stop him. I held the picture up to the crowd, and paced across the stage so that everyone could get a good look. "It's the last remaining original work by Dean Lyons," I yelled. "Should it burn? Thumbs up or thumbs down?" A multitude of arms shot into the air. Thumbs down. I turned back to Lyons, who sighed deeply. "It looks like your friends have no pity. Lucky for you, I do. I'm willing to trade. Your darling for mine." The crowd buzzed with pleasure at the high drama. Lyons stroked the hair of Justice. "A trial by fire, huh?" To my surprise, he smiled but his eyes were wet. He thought with eyes closed for a minute before nodding, taking a step toward me, and bending his head to whisper in my ear. "Thank you," he said. "I would never have been able to work up the nerve to burn that one." He lifted Justice and heaved it into the flames. I flicked my wrist. Lyon's painting landed beside it. The crowd's applause was all but lost on us as we watched our art burn. I'll never forget the smell of burning hair, or Lyons, both hands up in the air as though celebrating. His posture was belied by the despair on his face as his painting turned to thumb-sized feathers of ash and floated away in the smoke. Through my eyes, the world had never seemed so ugly. Tom Barlow Tom Barlow is an Ohio writer. Other stories of his may be found in anthologies including Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and Best New Writing 2011, and numerous magazines including Redivider, Temenos, The Apalachee Review, Hobart, Penduline Press, Thrice Fiction and The William and Mary Review. He is also author of the short story collection Welcome to the Goat Rodeo (long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Collection Award) and the novel I'll Meet You Yesterday. The Machinery Inside You
A train’s piercing whistle rents the air. The city’s early vibrations awakens the pavement from its asphalt amnesia. Scenes of struggle and survival played out inches from the surface of pulsing humanity. This is the day your soul gets date stamped. There is no other machinery left inside you. A frayed landscape without illusion or pretense. Can you match the Fog for density or the Crow for Black? You move towards blue pools of morning light re-assess fecundity, make clumsy attempts at language-- Linear tease. Control meat. Delicious camera eye. Internal bones. Rhizome replicating machines. It seems we are always moving towards that one perfect reconstituted koan or art form. To study mountains well, sometimes you have to bang your head against the clouds. Grow another pain in your pocket, Dig another hole in the ground. Unleash blood. Everything is dissipated now for the sake of your art. You bend it willow, will it, shape it from organic memory. This cold machinery that pulses inside you, Frida. Denis Robillard Denis Robillard has had more than 200 poems published across Canada, The USA and Europe since 2005. He Sees a Madonna from the Workshop of Bellini You were a woman; the cinquecento put gold leaf around your head and made you a queen. You sit dressed in silks, with a strange rootless olive branch springing up behind your shoulder, and a castle in the background, anachronistic—and then, of course, the soft naked infant, deceptively unhaloed, whose face is a miniature reflection of your own. Everything must be immaculate. Even the pietà is clean and bloodless; a dark wound like a slit, stigmata, maybe, but nothing else. And you are there as young and dove-eyed as you ever were, cradling a corpse as smooth-skinned as the child. If it happened, there were no embroidered robes, no study in drapery. You could never forget that burnished angel and that sunless noonday; astonishment, grief, the confusion of love. You knew them all too well. And, in a way, you were like us, Lady. Like us. Rebekah Curry Rebekah Curry is an alumna of the University of Kansas and the University of Texas at Austin. Her chapbook Unreal Republics is available from Finishing Line Press, and her work has also appeared in journals including Antiphon, Mezzo Cammin, and Blue Lyra Review. See more at rebekahcurry.tumblr.com. The House with the Cracked Walls The abandoned house is gradually falling down, the great fissure down its side, tiles from the roof tumbled onto the ground. Under the oppressive blue sky, the house exudes a sense of loneliness and isolation, perhaps not inappropriate for this artist who preferred to work by himself, far from his colleagues. - Metropolitan Museum of Art engagement calendar Paul Cézanne, is that what you were thinking When you painted This house with cracked walls? That’s not what I saw When I turned the page of my calendar Sunday morning I’ve studied your work for six days now I know I understand what you meant. People have their good points But living with them can be exhausting Especially when it’s your responsibility To shelter them from harm Your obligation to provide endless comfort Your duty to place their needs above your own To always feign joy at their return for decades When you’d really prefer to be alone. Your light sapphire sky is joyful The trees are lush Blue-green, jade, and sage The hilltop house’s single window Sees the truth of all things An eye still clear, sharp, and black. The splits that snake From the deserted dwelling’s red roof Through its yellow walls Down to its foundation in the rocks Signal freedom Its burden gone The emancipated home is relaxing Relishing mountain air And cracking a huge smile. Sheila Wellehan Sheila Wellehan is a poet who lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Her work has appeared or will appear soon in Chiron Review, Poetry East, Rat's Ass Review, and Yellow Chair Review. Christy Sheffield Sanford lives in a 1920s Florida bungalow, three blocks from the St. Johns River. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, and she is the author of seven books published by small presses, including The Italian Smoking Piece, The Cowrie Shell Piece, and The Hs: the Spasms of a Requiem. She has received state, regional and national recognition awards including an NEA in Poetry. She has worked in interdisciplinary art and mixed genre areas for three decades.
Alone
Tickets are not easy to get at the Royal Circle. A lady does not wish to get a seat by currying favor; the flavor will eventually turn rancid and ruin her day. The scent of expensive perfume pervades the warm air. A packed house of coiffed women in evening frown and men who wear success like a badge; she is here alone in full regalia: pinned-up auburn hair, porcelain skin in a buttoned-up dress. White opera gloves, her nod to convention. Several eyebrows raise when she comes unescorted. There is not much legroom and it cramps her style, yet, she bears the discomfort one hundred feet above the ground. She doesn’t get to see clearly the emotions on the actor’s face. The rest of humanity looks like buzzing bees and butterflies hiding gossiping lips on pale faces behind colorful fluttering fans. She assumes the look; men have no monopoly on the stoic face. An evening out unescorted teaches her the world will always judge not just the melodrama she is watching onstage. There is more to life than The Salon; a woman has a choice. Kim Patrice Nunez Kim Patrice Nunez is an accountant and currently lives in Quezon City, Philippines. Writing is her passion. Her earliest works were published in the University of Nueva Caceres newsletter. In the last year she has been published at PoetrySoup, an international poetry site. Her verses have won several poetry writing contests. |
The Ekphrastic Review
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April 2024
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