Kisses, m.
 |
| Lolita in the sky with diamonds. 2012. |
What do you see?
(9-4-2010)
“What do you see?” He asks.
“I’ll tell you what I see if you tell me first,” he insists.
He
tells me to go first to see what I’ll say. Always like a challenge
wanting to be answered. It was his version of a psychologist’s test to
gauge the mental processes with the imaginings of the eye. There was
nothing analytical about it.
“It’s a clipper ship,” I say and smile while running my hand through his hair. “With great white sails that dance in the wind.”
“Really,
I think that it’s just smoke.” He points to a line breaking across the
horizon and through the middle of the mast of the ship and smirks with a
hint of laughter. The funny part is that he always says the same thing.
Even though he knows it’s not true it’s always the same thing.
“No there, look it’s a handful of feathers pouring out of an overstuffed pillow.” His eyes light up when I contradict him.
“And above the pillow there’s a head of hair waving.” He joins in.
“How about there?” I motion toward a new formation.
“It’s white gloved fingers pointing in the direction of the wind.”
“No, it’s a cat with a wide-toothed smile larger than the top of his head.”
The
birds are dancing through the teeth of the great big cat that knows a
secret he refuses to share and I know this just one of those games that
we love to play. It’s never just smoke in the sky. Clouds are but a
dream away from the touch of a hand as we lay back and watch the sky.
“Is this a dream?” I ask him.
“But what is a dream?”
“Something the mind sees and makes real.”
“Clouds
are a dream.” He tells me while reaching over and brushing the leaves
from my hair. “That’s what my mother used to tell me when I was a
child.” It’s a conversation that we had a thousand times and the same
story never grew old. He tells me about this story with a small smile in
his eyes. After the story it’s always the same.
“What were the clouds like when you were growing up?”
“They were big and fluffy and had the most beautiful colors.”
“What kind of clouds were they?”
“Big white ones like today, sometimes small streaking ones, and occasionally there were the rainclouds.”
“Tell me about the rainclouds.”
“Oh,
the rainclouds brought the most amazing thunderstorms with them. The
grays and purples among the colors of the breaking daylight…”
“Really?”
“The
most amazing storms came and went. Reaching across the landscape. Those
Arizona plains slightly dampened. Like hands dropping water through
them upon a dry scene. It is nothing like today. ”
Today
is different. The transition of colors moves and shifts against the
clear blue backdrop. Slowly grows the grays and purples mixing in with
the white. Creating a multicolored oversized version of a Rorschach
puzzle that awaits our interpretation.
“How so? How is it different?”
“The clouds aren’t one, they are many and look there’s a man with a hat holding a dagger made of cotton sticking out of it.”
“You’re right the sky is different. But he isn’t holding a dagger it’s a pair of scissors with a feather in the hat.”
The
colors are growing darker and the shapes keep intensifying deeper and
fuller. He asks me “What do you see?” again and again and I tell him
there’s a million things that are creeping across the newly coated
blanket of gray against blue. He tells me that its not a million things.
I tell him its now a slow climbing a black balloon with a white diamond
in its eye that watches our movements. He laughs and agrees that it’s
rising and rising to overcome it all. The birds are still dancing
through the white upon blue, in and out of the gray-black in the
corners.
“Maybe it’s just smoke.” I tell him.
“Is that what you think?”
“Maybe I’m inclined to agree?”
“Then smoke it is?”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“It’s not just smoke.”
“Well, before it starts raining and the clouds lose their shapes and colors, tell me…What do you see?”