This much

8-27-07
I’ll show you this much to start with. Then you can decide if you want to see more.

She could have been talking about a series of paintings, or carpet swatches, or even houses in a peach-colored subdivision. Something there was more of. The first in a long list. Just the fleshy part. Just what peeked out. Just the part worth showing. The part that any seasoned viewer would see.

He, of course, wanted to see more.

She led him along the curb. The carpeting rolled out on either side. Shag and industrial, throw rugs, coiled rags, braided country coverings, grease-stained scraps, and also the sort you’d make while seated in front of a large loom, threading colors back and forth, back and forth.

It was a seemingly a sterile place. The edges were neatly trimmed even though some got creative with curtains. In a few places, almost hidden, were graffiti marks. He stopped and looked at these for a long time. Parts of speech and grammar and philosophical tenets and mathematical equations and other things that belonged to smart people. He found himself wanting to scrape some of the symbols off the wall and keep them.

By the fifth canvas, he was wanting to touch something, to stop beholding just with the eyes. He was sure she had a vice somewhere in the garage, amidst the loose nails and the wrenches and the various bottles of harmful chemicals. He could get inside of it, let himself be squeezed. Gently. Or not.

She would probably have safety goggles in there as well, and she might insist he'd wear them as protection. They'd be the kind you could barely see. But they'd provide a shield not from the fumes but from the colors and from whatever was beyond the colors. The smears and the scrapes, where everything might run together into brown, where there was still blood in pools of red. She didn’t want to show him this. Not yet. Maybe not ever. So it would have to be a slow walk. With lots of stops. She would ignore his questions and say things like: Look at this house. Let’s sit here on this lawn. Would you like to make a wish? Go ahead. There’s a dandelion right there, gone to seed. Blow on it.

He could see that there were swatches of carpet she was not laying out for him. She did not want him to get too comfortable. She was afraid he might run off. His eyes flickered. They absorbed the lights and the colors, which rearranged his cells, changed him. She liked that. These quick shifts, nothing held in place but the cumulation of which would signify, over time, something substantial and true.

He liked this outdoor light very much, but he also wanted her to lead him into a basement where it would be dark and cool and quiet. No matter if the washing machine was running. The thrum might make it safer. They could hold hands. He wanted her to answer his questions. He wanted her to stop pointing and flipping for a second. He wanted to see more.

He figured in a place like that, their eyes would have to adjust to the darkness, but afterwards they could look closely at everything, all of it, for a long long time.