The movement of things through time

             

   We were talking of pretty things and clinking ice in our glasses. I had spent the previous summer painting: staying in a small studio, studying lines and shades of color, learning that red has thirty six different iterations, none of which perfectly matched the contours and hues of her lips. “That’s the trouble with looking, with anything,” I said to you. “Once you begin a search in earnest there is no chance of finding what you’re looking for.”

You shook your head. “Are we talking about keys?”

“I’m speaking abstractedly here. The search for something abstract, like a perfect shade of red, an idea, the moment when the sun breaks over the horizon, a pair of perfect lips, these things are all essentially unattainable. They live in the mind’s eye. They have no real corollary in the physical world. It is the pursuit of these things that either drives us, to drink, to be mad, to fire rockets off towards the moon. And that is why we will never be satisfied in any lasting sense, because the things we desire are not real, they are phantoms, shadows, pictures of things that have never happened.

The other night, I was lying in bed, feeling half-dead from lack of sleep when it occurred to me that one day I would be thirty six. Not tomorrow, not even all that soon, but that one day, at some point in the future I would be thirty six, and I sprang up from bed and rushed to the studio and painted for hours. None of it was good. The colors were all wrong. I was trying to paint the sunset in Paris on a certain day from my youth when I was at the top of the tower in Sacre Couer, alone, beautifully alone, but I messed the whole damn thing up. And yet, if I’m honest with you, I felt so much more content as the morning light started coming in the window, touching off slivers of light that looked like small schools of fish swimming across the oak boards.

It’s absurd yes, to worry that one day you’ll be thirty six? I believe the more common date to worry over is that of one’s death, but, my God, death is an abstraction, aging a certainty. You see what I’m saying. After I’m gone who will care what I’ve done? Certainly not me, but while I live, well, the painting was terrible anyway. I don’t know why it brought me peace.

Myself, she responded, technically I’ve never been good at anything. That is not entirely true. As a child, third or fourth grade or so, I was amazing at the times tables. I could spit out the answers to anything in the 1 to twelve range as if they were emblazoned on my brain. It struck me, and everyone else, as a sign that I was intelligent, one to watch out for. What this “skill” turned out to be was just proof that I was a fairly substandard computer. I mean, drill it into me enough, and I can compute quickly, but it turns out that I was born in the wrong era, all that work is done by computers now, not by some strange girl with a knack for numbers.

It was a kind of relief though. I don’t understand the sort of fear of not achieving perfection that you’re speaking of. I’ve never imagined myself to be the paragon or paramour or parawhatever of anything. Consequently, my life isn’t dictated by the sorts of pressures that you’re speaking of. I wonder sometimes, after leaving a room, if the people I’ve been talking with have found me pleasant, or if I’ve said something slightly dopey, but beyond that, no, nothing like what you’re describing. It sounds like an exhausting way to live and probably not worth the trouble.

At that point of time in my life the two of us were in love for no discernible reason. I’d have pointed to some of her more noteworthy traits but the truth of the matter is that the whole thing was strange, a happenstance that seemed more born out of the two of us being so constantly thrown together during the previous three years than something we’d freely chosen.  We were getting together now, three of four times a week and having these ridiculous conversations in which we could agree on nothing, just waiting for the feeling to pass, hoping that we’d catch a glimmer on the way to get another whiskey in the eye of the other that would say, “it has passed.” Barring that, I suppose we’ll just keep meeting in the evening, exchanging pleasantries until one of us finds another city to move too, or another person to love.

For now I am listening to her talk about her cousin’s sister, something about the cut of a dress in an upcoming wedding. I tell her that I need to leave soon, but I can see through the lattices and bars of the old window that snow has begun falling, heavy, thick, and wet. I mean to be leaving soon, but I can see that we’ll be together for at least the remainder of this night. I catch her hand in my own, and tell her that I love her. No. That was someone else. I am watching the wisteria climb the large clock in the courtyard. Time, it moves so slowly, this moment so quickly.