there is a canvas
on the corner of my bedroom
on the corner of my bedroom it sits and there it gathers dust
it is not a canvas, but a very old wooden framed reproduction of some painting.
probably 17th century art
it belonged, along with another dozen or so, to my grandfather
and I saved them when he died,
from the typhoon of my uncle's haste and anger,
from the earthquake of my grandmother's bitter pain
not because I wanted the figure, which I can't remember:
I saved it along with maybe another ten of them, because I wanted something
because I wanted garbage that had once been art
because I needed something that once had been beautiful to someone:
because I had been the family scavenger, roaming about rooms and gardens, behind bridges and under dinner tables, saving up broken pieces of. Of.
I still have the shattered green glass that belonged to my great grandmother in a box somewhere, which I broke stupidly and cried, because I left it on the floor by the sofa one night while watching TV. I stood up and kicked it, and it broke. But I don't keep only my old guilty shreds, the things that were still memories to myself, the things I broke personaly. It is my self-asigned job gathering bits of rest, rests of string, strings of wool left behind from the severed bonds. marriage, birth, companionships. I was the gatherer, and in my tiny shop I made my tiny baby frankensteins. my little affection monsters of clay, the small cardboard models of houses made to be build from wood and concrete. wax dolls of old smiles, from faces that never truly meant them.
I gathered the dozen or so old and cheap wooden frames with the already whitening images of famous paintings my grandfather held, one day, I imagine, dear. Not for him, but for us, whoever that may be. My first plan was an artistic project: I would cut up shreds from words written by all of them: my mother's thesis, my grandmother's papers, my uncle's books, and finaly my grandfather's autobiography, wich, scared, I never read. I would cut up the phrases to make new. I would glue them to the old reproductions of old paintings and with the old words I would glue together a frankenstein of my family. I tought it was an interesting contemporary piece about -the artist's- personal life and a deep critique on each member of my family's individual truth in words. It was brilliant. It was not. It was a lame excuse for the true work of the gatherer of ages: the collage artist of severed ties. It was to be, in truth, my final frankenstein, the last shred of unspoken hope for fiction and dream to glue together worlds. I never made it. As I often do, I left it, idealized and appreciated for what it was: the brilliant final project. The old portraits, or canvases, or were they art reproductions, sat there, waiting, in my closet, as patheticaly metaphorical as it sounds. Instead, one day, I chose one to make into a gift.
I had loved a woman ever since I met her. This story is not about this love. It is, as much as it is about all love and all loss and all pain and hatred and all the impossibility of holding, and my awful gift of breaking and broken things. I have come to open doors as much as I have come to break things. But some things need breaking, and it takes strenghth (and maybe it also takes oblivion) to do the work of the storms. In any case, although this -is- as much as it can be, the story of this love, I don't wish to tell it, not this part, not deeply. Let it be said only that I was a coward and that I was a liar, for I loved her more than I could hold, understand or believe, and that my love tore itself apart entirely, for lack of water and sun, for lack of air and space, and for charging, uncontrollably, incapable and desperate like a caged animal, in the right direction once it found it. Sometimes finding the right direction after a long time of darkness only means running desperately into blindness and abyss.
I had decided to make her a gift. I would paint over one of those old pictures from the canvases left by my grandfather, and over that I would glue slivers of pictures I had taken of her. Not the entire pictures, but slivers, between which I would write poetry about permanent things. No, I did not, at the time, catch any of the irony, neither did I understand that only could I ever, for whom I was, glue anything but slivers of the things I loved back together into those old portraits. I chose the pictures. I saved them on my computer's desktop. I've always had thousands of undone things saved on my desktop. I have more ideas than I have will, and I had the knack for the scavenger collage, which must never be entirely done. Then I looked through the things under my bed to find paint. I never painted, not really, so I had many half used bottles of school paint, washable paint, but also, ever since I was a little girl, plastic paint I used to make t-shirts for my dad on his birthday. These are permanent. I chose different tones of blue, and I splattered the old immage with lines of dark and light blue, and I smiled as I covered my old family cracks with an immense ocean I would only later understand the depths of. It was meant to say words of permanence, of things that last, of never-ending, never-leaving stories: it was meant to be a promise. I have made her many promises. I failed to keep them when I understood my guils would never grow, and I would never be alive under water forever.
They say the immense creature only comes to the surface once every six billion years. But the creature has no guils. The creature breathes. And once, every six billion years, the creature does come to the surface, and you can hear, from every corner of the world, the unmistakeable breath of the immense blue whale.
there she blows.
The birthday came, the ocean was beautifully scattered on the canvas, but the pictures were not printed, and the present was once again, undone. I am sure she resented me for the presents I promised and never gave, as much as I resented her for the presents she promised and never gave, the letters never read, or written. I know now we were unable to finish off these small tokens of our lies: we could lie every day, but we had to leave certain affection objects untouched, for they were not as big as our hearts. I can only guess if this is true on her side, but I, for once, am certain my heart was too gigantic to bare the small knots we tried to tie. It never got done. It sat, the ocean painting, on the corner of my bedroom, so I would not forget. The pictures all sat on my desktop, her beautiful reflections, the reproduction of a snowy peral skin, frekles I adored and the look I came to fear and almost even hate, for it tricked me between love and diception, and I never knew of the mirage or the beach.
This part of the story I will not tell, for this is not a confession letter, nor is it a letter of forgiveness to myself, though maybe both should come in time, but a retelling of the tale of the blue portrait, made from the pieces under the dinner table. This is the part where the creature's breath splashes the continents, where the seamen run and scream in desperation, where entire ships are sunk and lay at the bottom of the sea by one simple swift movement of the tail. It is also the part where the harpoons struck, and where, tied to the bleeding creature, wailing in the deepest cry afer the once-in-a-lifetime breath, the captain sank. This is the part I will not retell for I am not in place to recount the lives I have drowned nor the torments I have created, and it is not my intention to tell you the creature means no harm. I am neither here to repent, nor to retell of blood and assassination. Stories, as our lives, are not trials, which I will continue to refuse for they have the despicable habit of starting from the worng end, and ending at the bottom of a helpless pit, out of which people who are dangerously sure of themselves throw out the fruit they see rotten, and ignore the colors of the sky.
What's left is the day in which I took the old ocean-painted square thing out from the corner of my room, and stared at it's wrinkled childlike painting, covered in dust, and remembered every gift I never finished, and the words I never said in silence, or out-loud. It was over, and there was nothing to do. It was over and the promise of permanent matter has to go, because it was the last of the lies, holding together pieces of a love that would not dare come to light. Love, as people, does not want to die. And if you breathe, you are alive, and if you are alive, you will die. The fear was stronger and deeper than all the other promises. The ocean, though, is not deep enough for such fear, and one must, eventually, come up. I can see destruction and regret for the blood and the splashes as I look at it, but mostly the regret comes from somewhere else. The regret splashed onto the canvas is deeper than the ruins of the ships I wrecked in a few days or months. Regret is a thing of years, the words unsaid, the space unmade, the questions not asked, the things it took me so long to open. The gift I never finished, because it wasn't made for finishing. Because it was made from the spare-parts, because it was made to mend the eternal wounds. The wounds will be wounds. Dust covers this bizarre object that was to be a gift to the woman who will never forgive me. But the one thing that strikes me now is not the need to be forgiven. It is the feeling that she will never forgive me for the wrong things, the fact that I need forgiving not for the mess, the splashes, the truth in the recent blood. I need forgiving indeed, but for the six billion years where I had us believe the sea was a placid surface from which never would any thing, any one, any matter erupt. I need forgiving for the years in which I never asked her to dance with me, to open her eyes, to let me in, and out.
As I have said, I have come to break as much as to open. Openers are breakers, in the end. Some doors are locked, and sometimes you need to break in, or out. And now I stared at this would be present of an ocean that needed, as many things do, to be destroyed. I pondered. Burning something in a city like ours is a mess, simply something foolish people don't do, so I do not burn it, for I won't find the intimacy and the open space burning it would require. There are no tears as I take it to the bathroom and undress, turning on the shower, and setting it to cold, cold water. Somehow it needs cleaning, as much as it needs destroying. So, naked, I let the water run over it, half expecting the school paint to wash away and reveal something special underneath, something I have forgotten. But most of the paint is plastic, and I have to rip it apart, slowly, in pieces, like the skin of a sea animal. Underneath it, it is white. The paint has erased the old immage, and I won't ever know what it was. It doesn't matter, I wish not to restart the business of the scavenger underneath the dinner table, this will not be another frankenstein. I notice, thouhg, the other side of it seemed to have another old reproduction. It used to be a Van Gogh, hidden on the other side, glued to the wood. I'm surprised, as I expected old painters I don't like, and I smile vaguely remembering my grandfather loved things, once or twice, that I too find beauty in. But there is little or no temptation to keep this, though it hurts like washing an open wound. The old paper and paint make for pieces of skin I gather in a small ball, soaked in water. It could make something new, I think, and I look at it with love. But it won't, and it shouldn't. I gather the pieces, and throw them in a bag, left with the cheap wooden frame underneath. Should I break it in little pieces? Burn it after all? I stare at how blank and firm it looks, and the scavenger in me makes a move, suggesting how much this too could be transformed, reused, remade, glued into new forms of life. But I'm retired now, I have found my way back into the world which I came from, where things are made up and written down, not glued back and frankensteined. I do not want my old job back. I consider smashing it to pieces so no one else can remake it, but there is no anger. I understand that when and if it falls in new hands, the canvas will not be the slivers of severed ties, but something new. Truly new. I understand that by saying goodbye to this perfectly good piece of wood I am allowing someone who would actually be far removed enough to transform this deeply, to take it from me, to live. To love over the old wood, or to warm themselves on it, burning the last bit of love I could not live. I remember the young girls hand in hand walking from the icecream place, honest with each other as with themselves, like we were never able to be, and I give them my blessings. And then I take it all outside, and I say goodblye.
and I dive once more, in the truest and most transparent waters I would have ever hoped for.
