J
DeCeglie
© J
DeCeglie 2009
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Relief
He took respite from what seemed like truth. Whether
it was complete truth was uncertain, though worth
the mental exertion to conclude. Though that wasn’t
true either. He knew pretty well that it wasn’t
absolute, very little was or more so could be
exacted such, but it worked right now very fine
for him and was as close to truth as he could
or required to get. It was roughly true. Time
spent inauthentically could give rise to time
spent authentically. Every hour he endured working
gave him money that in turn gave him time. Any
section of existence not spent existing for money
was spent on his work. Inauthentic existence in
terms of any time spent not on his work could
give way to intense periods of authenticity. Intense
authenticity gave birth to his work. Thus anything
which allowed for intense authenticity he deemed
essentially good, no matter the anguish the doing
of it caused. Again this was not absolutely true,
though the meaning was meant just for him. Just
for then. Working for money days on end meant
working at painting for days on end afterward
and the depths reached whilst living inauthentically
were matched by the heights soared when existence
leant to meaning and purpose. The pummelling his
spirit took whilst teaching relief at a local
high school could be trounced by the thrashing
of a canvas for days afterward. The abyss looked
at from both standpoints was entirely contrasted,
from the bottom the meaninglessness meant just
that, a thousand zeroes never did add up to one,
despair strangled you mornings and most days were
like being beaten half to death, from the top
the view skewed and thus the meaning, from here
the abyss was the range man had reached, he was
his own, he had conquered vertigo and days were
purpose and meaning and his, this was the view
of beyond man, of a further consciousness, of
course glimpses of either view could sneak into
the eyes from opposite viewpoints, it happened
regularly, it was sudden and forceful, he tried
to eliminate the depths from the heights but include
the heights in the depths. Consciousness was his
to rule. He realised he had will. He knew the
individual mattered most. That recovery was personal
and could only be gained through the self. If
one had not the intention of living than one did
not live. That was absolute. There was nothing
other than that. He wanted to live more than anything.
It was the only piece that concerned him. With
this came not living, feeling it and seeing it
much moreso than others. Never accepting it. Fighting
with it. Never not feeling it within inches. Searching
for feeling when deliberately living inauthentically
gave way to what happened. Though it can’t
be said he didn’t choose it. Every action
is your own and each matters more then most human
agents ever realise.
Beauty
was the greatest cure for his inauthentic existence.
Transcendence toward meaning no matter how inexplicable
or personal. And beauty came to him. His eyes
were trained for it. He felt his understanding
of it was superior, that what he saw was the furtherest
end of beauty, that most missed it, too busy bothering
with instinct and the unpleasant bottom end of
the spectrum. Clarity was beauty. And when he
saw it he felt it. Sunlight through water. Glimmering
lucid through trees. Glowing on faces and skin
and reflecting from eyes. The buoyance of radiance,
how it could lift the dark shadow of days spent
seemingly wasted, of time not doing that which
you are called to do, how moments exceed life,
like a well suddenly overflowing with water.
The
day after deep authenticity was always the most
awful. The headache came in the night. Preceding
it. The pressure building in all the sinuses of
the head. The tensing of the soul. Freedom ripped
from your hands. He’d worked like never
before. Two canvases at once. Reading immensely
in between. The luminosity he’d been able
to achieve in the nude was matched by the stark
severity of objective lines in the landscape.
The paint was thick and good. The canvas’
loaded til their brim. When he stood back and
observed what he’d achieved he felt so right
that it meant more than being alive. It was being
alive. It was existence. Portals of dark lustre,
of vivid being, brushstrokes like moments lived
without end, like cool fingers on burning eyelids.
He’d used her hair colour, that yellow the
sun gives when almost white. When it’s seems
most nourishing and allows everything its most
shining shade. He’d captured it strictly,
and then let it grow of its own. It wasn’t
exactly right but it almost was. When he went
to school the next day and she wasn’t there
he thought about how life was ruled by emotions
and how those emotions were nearly too much for
him some of the time. To see her walk through
the shadows and sun just for a minute, against
the backdrop of shaded palettes and sunlit objects,
it would have been enough, it would have somehow
been meaning. It was a dreadful day. Endured rather
than lived. The clarity in faces of others not
enough to save him from himself and the abyss
from this lowly stature. That night he scolded
himself terribly for allowing the outside to influence
his self so much. Too grant such room for tiredness
to claw at him. To only see through that narrow
slit. It was fragility of the worst kind. He sketched
his on face from the mirror and left it nearly
skeletal.
He hoped she would be there tomorrow.
The
inauthentic can give way to an intenser method
in time. That was certainly true. Authentic living
is life without that feeling. Can it be achieved
fully or mostly? He who has the meaning in his
life can endure anything to achieve that end.
Inauthenticity as a means to authenticity. It
was his ideal, to live it was the most important
thing. There was nothing else.
In
the house he lived you could hear the traffic
whip past all the hours of every day. The morning
sun shone through the front of the place leaving
the hallway ruby as it poured through the same
coloured curtains of that room and out through
the doorway. Concentrated crimson cherry walls
in the room and leaving his naked skin and the
canvas laying about all blenched blushing and
brightly glowing as if a dream viewed though vibrant
rose coloured glasses. In the afternoons the sun
swung around and streamed throughout the large
back garden making leaves translucent, golden
and green, swaying shadows and sunbeams like yellow
oil paint, light flickering though foliage, shivering
shadows that never end on living room walls. Turpentine
and the freshest air. Damp nourishing soil and
the aroma of paint. Every colour meant something
to him as he could capture it and give it another
more determined form. He painted what he saw,
and everything blazed there, in those eyes, the
sheer clarity of beauty and the meaning of moments
against the weight of meaninglessness which seemed
vitally lazy, the way the sun just took over his
vision, how he could look straight into it through
leaves and branches and the vines that ran amongst
them, the blazing glory of the star, the sheen
and glow and transcending fluidity, the ruby of
the hallway and that room overpowered him at times,
the sun on the river when walking by it gave life
more than enough, that dire sense of loss and
loathing vanished. Live!
Live.
For
over a week he worked solid at school. She was
not in any of his classes. Some days he saw her
and others he didn’t and he made an effort
to not distinguish one from the other. He kept
to himself mostly. Drank much coffee. The ideal
was the method to live. At night he read and touched
on paintings rather than beginning new compositions.
He had gained new insights. Furthered his line
of thought. The inauthentic days could be furthered
not only by beauty, and of course by reading,
but also by adhering strictly to the ideal. By
defining one’s self by every decision made.
Every single one. Thus allowing the self to grow
as an individual along truly authentic lines of
meaning based in honesty and decency. The real
I. Just managing through the days of drudge was
nowhere near enough, a determined soul could always
manage no matter how it felt. There was more.
There was. Form could be gained in this manner.
Meaning could be added. Life did not front up
to man but he up to it. Although he could tell
by the way in which she lit up when she saw him
that he had started something. How she said hello
to him was a dazzling flourish. A blooming before
his eyes. He put how quickly the ideal could leave
down to the fact that he was raw with it and that
everything takes time to come through, he could
not paint as he did now always, it took much practice
and trial, surely existence was the same. With
work it was mastered. Soon her smile and voice
would not be greater than the entire ideal itself.
She would not be the equal of the sun always.
It
got far worse though. He began to paint her.
Started
to work after school. Normally the inauthentic
day would drain the juice and he could only work
in limping spurts. In limited strokes and dabs.
Definite yet diminutive. Though now he worked
in a sacred fervour. After hours of little meaning
he could straight throw the shackles and work
with absolute zeal. He was torn on the meaning
of the ability he now found. Divided as to its
gain and origin. He may have evolved along his
own system, developed further authentic talent,
the inauthentic taking less so that the authentic
could be harnessed more thoroughly, more quickly,
being able to gain immediately after the inauthentic
experience rather than enduring the waiting period
which was previously required. The well was filling
rapid. The method may have produced its own results.
What stole his belief in this matter fully was
her. Unsure of what she had added. Trying to understand
if he was now accessing reservoirs of energy he’d
not yet known, or whether she was fuelling his
truths with her unceasing brightness. It only
played in the back of him. He went with it mostly.
When he didn’t teach he worked all day and
night in clarified fury. When he did he began
immediately afterward it and did not cease til
early morning. The feverous lick of it electrified
him. Made his blood swim clean through him. The
brush a bone connected by tendon and sinew, nerve-endings
running into the bristles, the paint his own fluid
lent to the world still wet and drying in her
ideal illustration. It was his best work by far.
It was his own and every stroke said it such.
It came from the ability to shirk the inauthentic
as soon as it was done. This newfound capacity
inspired him no end, he felt a man beyond men,
an original consciousness or the equal of those
he’d read about. He was gambling as the
real artist does, with his life as the stake.
Though there was more. There was her too. To gain
so swiftly. To enlarge such, to expand so, is
never real without the work put into it firstly.
He had gained, and worked, though this was beyond
that.
The
perversion evaded him, or he ignored it. All there
could be was the work and her.
Shedding
personality comes with it. Essence shines through.
He speaks to her as much as he can. He has decided
that just smiling and saying hello is counterfeit.
That just getting by on her countenance is bogus.
He can see the affect they have on one another.
Felt in himself and witnessed in her. The lighting
up from the ribs outward. Bones glowing and skin
alight. It all able to heard in the voice and
seen in the smile. The attraction of two objects
falling at the speed of destiny. How people move
in straight lines forever unless their will tends
them off that lifeless course. She would stare
at him and then look away when he noticed. He’d
watch then, stare back, and occasionally she’d
turn again and smile. In those pieces, those fragments,
he wanted to show her the canvas more than ever.
It
was the colour of her hair that mattered most.
Nothing was more important to the piece. He’s
never seen anything like it on a canvas, and capturing
it such was the most vital and difficult section.
He used it to justify that the work was not just
about and for her, but about new ground and originality
just as equal. It took up as much time as the
entirety of the rest. The getting right of it.
Producing what he saw and felt through it. He’d
gotten all the rest. Gotten it fine and true.
There she was as he knew her. Maybe more vivid
than in his eyes by day. The lips, the large blue
orbs, their lids and their lashes, the skin, the
jaw-line and cheekbones, the neck. All essential,
but lacking. It was the hair, it bought forth
the brilliance, down to her breasts, straight
and blonde, much beyond wheat or sunflowers, yellow
further than daylight, purer than that that radiates
to Earth. No it was the real light, coming off
of a star, white golden and untainted in space,
streaming from her head like it does in the unseeable
sky, monumental strands luminary trailing across
galaxies, it took him a week to mix the colour
right. Hours on end. He did it from memory. He
did the entire canvas that way.
Summer
was being delivered. It spirited sundrunk bursts.
It bought with it new fragrance, new light. Colours
seemed certain, drying on the entire canvas around
him just right. Definite in his eyes by the early
morning. Time was dissimilar due to the changing
of the seasons and the moments spent anticipating
her. This was new time.
Existence
forced a thought upon him. A moment came and went
and he thought of dying. Of the moment being,
then not, and how what had not occurred in that
moment could now never be. At least not in that
moment it couldn’t. So he thought of death,
of how having it present in decision making made
one live more fully. Life was not lived as if
owned and capable of putting off til one was ready,
but rather as a looming and pending weight coming
with each day. With a grave in mind there was
life, urgency and joyous burden, a significance
in your individual survival and meaning, without
it, days became carried on a conveyor belt gone
awry, just tumbling off a mistaken eternal end
and piling up on the floor without order or any
person overseeing the arrangement. It was no way
to be. He felt he should have kissed her. During
it and afterward. After class. The planet sprung
the moment on him and he went with his common
sense. Drew back just inches. Enough to say no,
not now, probably not ever. Swimming in the faultless
blue of her pupils, drowning in the fleshy pulp
of her staring lips. It would have changed everything.
Would have changed the planet. Just his four fingers
on her neck and thumb on her collarbone. Just
breathing in her petalled breath. The whole classroom
and universe smelt like her. She was a beautiful
teenage giant. Much shorter than he. His tissue
disappeared off of his bones and his organs blew
away like dust. It was Friday and the clouds kept
the heat close like prickly gauze wrapped tight
on your skin. On hers. Shining on her cheekbone.
She smiled before she left. Not speaking, he put
it down to confusion. To all the things he’d
made her feel. It made his heart bound in his
chest. As he drove home he thought about death,
the effect it could have on life, it spotted rain
as he drove, pregnant lukewarm drops leaving cleaner
streaks on a dirty windshield, at home he painted,
madly, he finished, splendidly, he thought he
may have to leave, cause it would happen eventually,
some degree of something, any degree of anything
meant scandal, he would show her the painting
first though. Make sure she understood who she
was. Make definite he hadn’t invented the
total production in his mind. He could regret
the entirety of it later.
He
watched the paint dry all weekend. Saw the raised
welts of his strokes harden. The shiny wet reflected
edges dull. Outside the earth was perfumed damp
and tepid as the hoary skies reigned. He couldn’t
pick up a brush. Not even a pencil. He knew what
had happened but avoided knowing it completely.
It was a magnificent canvas. She looked healthier
than he had ever projected. More alive and more
striking. The hair was the genius in it. It was
the axis the art of it revolved on and its balance
was unshaken. He had never seen such a colour
before, and he knew he had captured it wholly.
That wasn’t the lot though. The smile and
eyes revealed such beauty, an innocent sadness
and longing being divined with feeling she didn’t
yet understand. The posture so awkward, not sexual,
not the opposite. It was an authentic piece and
he had worked on it as such, he’d gained
authenticity through inauthenticity, his ideal,
even with the corruption and strength of his feelings
for her. He tried to convince himself of it. To
outweigh the weighted truth with the work. By
Monday morning it had not shifted an inch.
The
painting had not dried sufficient to be moved.
It would have been a vast mistake to have bought
it to school anyway. He thought this as he drove.
About death affecting decisions to fatal ends.
He also thought about leaving soon. About new
schools, new students, teachers, he thought about
new countries. It excited him. Could he ever just
have the paint? Just the art? Somewhere else maybe
he could. You just had to find the right method.
He had a nice feeling in his gut about seeing
her. A simple good notion. She wasn’t there.
Or she didn’t wait by where they usually
said hello to one another in the mornings. It
would have been understandable if she hadn’t.
After Friday and all. The sun was fierce very
early on. Pointed and unrelenting. He felt like
an ant under a magnifying glass. Kept to the shade
where he could. He could tell by the excitement
of the chatter that something had occurred. The
simmering in the voices. The rumble was too much
for a Monday morning. It didn’t take long
to get some intelligence on the weekend. Some
party. Too much alcohol. No parents. Older kids.
At first there were just brushes with information.
Scrapings. The same clippings again and again.
Little flinchings. Papercuts. You just had to
find the right kid though. The one that would
tell you everything. By recess he knew she’d
had much too much to drink. She’d been fumbling
about and laughing. She’d kissed at least
three boys. All older. Not all from school. He
was sweating now. The feelings in him were up
ending. Words hurt like knife wounds. Biting at
his lips with the pain. Tightening with his flashing
thoughts. At first he knew it as his fault. That
seemed straightforward enough. He’d driven
her that way. She was young. Was hurting via him.
His inability to act. His lack of dependability.
He’d never imagined her behaving like this.
It hurt like a damned bastard. By fourth period
he hated her a little. He thought nothing of it.
He’d also daydreamed of suicide a number
of times. This wasn’t unusual for him. He’d
decided to press for more at lunchtime. There
was no choice but to know the reality of it. He
was on duty watching the students go mad on the
oval. The clouds had come in and the air was so
close you could almost drink it. He watched out
off the embankment like a General overseeing his
troops. The view was not dissimilar. There was
mayhem out there and the same stuff in him and
God knew what he was supposed do about it except
try as hard as he could. He found the kid he was
after. It had to someone who saw it as bragging.
Eliciting everything that happened as a method
to gaining an obtuse respect. It was never the
brightest spark that divulged. Usually a male.
This time no different. He told him to pull his
pants up before the conversation began. The boy
smirked and tried it out. Didn’t take long,
never did. Yeah she was there, looked hot too,
nice short skirt, really smashed, more than me
even, hooked up with different guys, went off
with one of them, year twelve, everybody saw,
she didn’t come back with him, friends couldn’t
find her for ages, they were getting stressed,
she’d just passed out under the swings in
a park down the street, he came back, was showing
everyone her underwear, flowery things, took them
out of his pocket, bra and panties, very funny
sir.
The
kid gave the name up without a blink. Just like
that. He knew the guy. Didn’t know straight
off what to do. The unwanted images stronger inside
his head now. Focused from obscurity. By the end
of school he’d gotten hold of the address.
He surer of his actions by then. More definite
in his definition. Driving home he thought of
liquor. Of the ease and burn that would come with
it. He imagined ripping the canvas to pieces.
The still drying paint smudged all over him and
the floor in the fight. Sitting in a corner drinking.
This led him to thoughts of cowardice. Spinelessness.
No the feat had to be true. If not then it had
no right to fruition. When he arrived home, he
stared at the painting, trying to change the meaning
back to what it had once been. He found the intense
hatred he felt was directed mostly at himself.
She was still beautiful. It was a wonderful work,
his best, now dreadful to him and a reminder of
something he wished he did not know, but always
had. He could never destroy it.
He
sat in a cold shower for a long time.
Determined that after all this done he would try
again. The ideal would not be abandoned with such
ease in the future.
When he was done it was almost dark.
The heat seemed to make the night burn black orange.
The air smelled sweet with dampening road and
lawn.
He had it planned to the letter.
Got dressed and drove over to the house.
The boy left about forty minutes after he’d
arrived.
He followed.
To another house, he recognised the girl who answered
as another student.
A year twelve like he.
His thoughts the whole time were of conflicting
developments, not of what to do then, no, that
was distinct, it was the aftermath that lay waiting
to be determined.
In the three hours he had to pass in waiting he
set himself.
In position.
In mind.
So that when the time came, he would set upon
him like a loaded spring, giving the boy no chance.
The first anonymous blow knocked him over; the
rest was nameless and profound flood.
No he’d never show her the painting.
He’d just take it with him when he left.
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J
DeCeglie
© J
DeCeglie 2009
