• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
August 12-The Full MoonTHE JAINS WERE a sect of Buddhists who claimed they couldfly. They could walk on water. They could understand all languages. It's said theycould turn junk metal into gold. They could heal cripples and cure the blind.Hereyes shut, Misty listens while the doctor tells her all this. She listens andpaints. Before dawn, she gets up so Grace can tape her face. The tape comes offafter sunset."Supposedly," the doctor's voice says, "the Jains could raise thedead."They could do all this because they tortured themselves. They starved andlived without sex. This life of hardship and pain is what gave them their magicpower."People call this idea 'asceticism,' " the doctor says.Him talking, Mistyjust draws. Misty works while he holds the paint she needs, the brushes andpencils. When she's done he changes the page. He does what Tabbi used to.The JainBuddhists were famous throughout the kingdoms of the Middle East. In the courts ofSyria and Egypt, Epirus and Macedonia, as early as four hundred years before thebirth of Christ, they worked their miracles. These miracles inspired the EsseneJews and early Christians. They astonished Alexander the Great.Doctor Touchettalking on and on, he says Christian martyrs were offshoots of the Jains. Everyday, Saint Catherine of Siena would whip herself three times. The first whippingwas for her own sins. Her second whipping was for the sins of the living. Thethird was for the sins of all dead people.Saint Simeon was canonized after hestood on a pillar, exposed to the elements, until he rotted alive.Misty says,"This is done." And she waits for a new sheet of paper, a new canvas.You can hearthe doctor lift the new picture. He says, "Marvelous. Absolutely inspired," hisvoice fading as he carries it across the room. There's a scratching sound as hepencils a number on the back. The ocean outside, the waves hiss and burst. He setsthe picture beside the door, then his doctor's voice comes back, close and loud,and he says, "Do you want paper again or a canvas?"It doesn't matter. "Canvas,"Misty says.Misty hasn't seen one of her pictures since Tabbi died. She says,"Where do you take them?""Someplace safe," he says.Her period is almost a weeklate. From starvation. She doesn't need to pee on any pregnancy test sticks.Peter's done his job, getting her here.And the doctor says, "You can start." Hishand closes around hers, and pulls it forward to touch the rough, tight clothalready prepped with a coat of rabbit-skin glue.The Jewish Essenes, he says, wereoriginally a band of Persian anchorites that worshiped the sun.Anchorites. This iswhat they called the women sealed alive in the basements of cathedrals. Sealed into give the building a soul. The crazy history of building contractors. Sealingwhiskey and women and cats inside walls. Her husband included.You.Misty, trappedin her attic room, her heavy cast keeping her here. The door kept locked from theoutside. The doctor always ready with a syringe of something if she gets uppity.Oh, Misty could write a book about anchorites.The Essenes, Dr. Touchet says, livedaway from the regular world. They trained themselves by enduring sickness andtorture. They abandoned their families and property. They suffered in the beliefthat immortal souls from heaven were baited to come down and take a physical formin order to have sex, drink, take drugs, overeat.Essenes taught the young JesusChrist. They taught John the Baptist.They called themselves healers and performedall of Christ's miraclescuring the sick, reviving the dead, casting out
�
 demonsfor centuries before Lazarus. The Jains turned water into wine centuries
�
 before the Essenes, who did it centuries before Jesus."You can repeat the samemiracles over and over as long as no one remembers the last time," the doctorsays. "You remember that."The same way Christ called himself a stone rejected bymasons, the Jain hermits had called themselves logs rejected by all carpenters."Their idea," the doctor says, "is that the visionary must live apart from thenormal world, and reject pleasure and comfort and conformity in order to connectwith the divine."Paulette brings lunch on a tray, but Misty doesn't want food.Behind her closed eyelids, she hears the doctor eating. The scrape of the knifeand fork on the china plate. The ice rattling in the glass of water.He says,"Paulette?" His voice full of food, he says, "Can you take those pictures there,by the door, and put them in the dining room with the others?"Someplace safe.Youcan smell ham and garlic. There's something chocolate, too, pudding or cake. You
 
can hear the doctor chew, and the wet sound of each swallow."The interestingpart," the doctor says, "is when you look at pain as a spiritual tool."Pain anddeprivation. The Buddhist monks sit on roofs, fasting and sleepless until theyreach enlightenment. Isolated and exposed to the wind and sun. Compare them toSaint Simeon, who rotted on his pillar. Or the centuries of standing yogis. OrNative Americans who wandered on vision quests. Or the starving girls innineteenth-century America who fasted to death out of piety. Or Saint Veronica,whose only food was five orange seeds, chewed in memory of the five wounds ofChrist. Or Lord Byron, who fasted and purged and made his heroic swim of theHellespont. A romantic anorexic. Moses and Elijah, who fasted to receive visionsin the Old Testament. English witches of the seventeenth century who fasted tocast their spells. Or whirling dervishes, exhausting themselves for enlightenment.The doctor just goes on and on and on.All these mystics, throughout history, allover the world, they all found their way to enlightenment by physical suffering.And Misty just keeps on painting."Here's where it gets interesting," the doctor'svoice says. "According to split-brain physiology, your brain is divided like awalnut into two halves."The left half of your brain deals with logic, language,calculation, and reason, he says. This is the half people perceive as theirpersonal identity. This is the conscious, rational, everyday basis of our reality.The right side of your brain, the doctor tells her, is the center of yourintuition, emotion, insight, and pattern recognition skills. Your subconscious."Your left brain is a scientist," the doctor says. "Your right brain is anartist."He says people live their lives out of the left half of their brains. It'sonly when someone is in extreme pain, or upset or sick, that their subconsciouscan slip into their conscious. When someone's injured or sick or mourning ordepressed, the right brain can take over for a flash, just an instant, and givethem access to divine inspiration.A flash of inspiration. A moment of insight.TheFrench psychologist Pierre Janet called this condition "the lowering of the mentalthreshold."Dr. Touchet says, "Abaissement du niveau mental."When we're tired ordepressed or hungry or hurting.According to the German philosopher Carl Jung, thislets us connect to a universal body of knowledge. The wisdom of all people overall time.Carl Jung, what Peter told Misty about herself. Gold. Pigeons. The St.Lawrence Seaway.Frda Kahlo and her bleeding sores. All great artists are
�
 invalids.According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so manylives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of whatwe already know.Our misery. This suppression of our rational mind is the source ofinspiration. The muse. Our guardian angel. Suffering takes us out of our rationalself-control and lets the divine channel through us."Enough of any stress," thedoctor says, "good or bad, love or pain, can cripple our reason and bring us ideasand talents we can achieve in no other way."All this could be Angel Delaportetalking. Stanislavski's method of physical actions. A reliable formula forcreating on-demand miracles.As he hovers close to her, the doctor's breath is warmagainst the side of Misty's face. The smell of ham and garlic.Her paintbrushstops, and Misty says, "This is done."Someone knocks at the door. The lock clicks.Then Grace, her voice says, "How is she, Doctor?""She's working," he says. "Here,number this oneeighty-four. Then, put it with the others."And Grace says, "Misty
�
 dear, we thought you might like to know, but we've been trying to reach yourfamily. About Tabbi."You can hear someone lift the canvas off the easel. Footstepscarry it across the room. How it looks, Misty doesn't know.They can't bring Tabbiback. Maybe Jesus could or the Jain Buddhists, but nobody else could. Misty's legcrippled, her daughter dead, her husband in a coma, Misty herself trapped andwasting away, poisoned with headaches, if the doctor is right she could be walkingon water. She could raise the dead.A soft hand closes over her shoulder andGrace's voice comes in close to her ear. "We'll be dispersing Tabbi's ashes thisafternoon," she says. "At four o'clock, out on the point."The whole island,everybody will be there. The way they were for Harrow Wilmot's funeral. Dr.Touchet embalming the body in his green-tiled examining room, with his steelaccountant's desk and the flyspecked diplomas on the wall.Ashes to ashes. Her baby
 
in an urn.Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint.Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us amillion bits put together the right way.The tape tight over each eye, keeping herface relaxed, a mask, Misty says, "Has anyone gone to tell Peter?"Someone sighs,one long breath in, then out. And Grace says, "What would that accomplish?"He'sher father.You're her father.The gray cloud of Tabbi will drift off on the wind.Drifting back down the coastline toward the town, the hotel, the houses andchurch. The neon signsand billboards and corporate logos and trademarked names.Dear sweet Peter,consider yourself told.August 15JUST FOR THE RECORD, one problem with art schoolis it makes you so much less of a romantic. All that garbage about painters andgarrets, it disappears under the load you have to learn about chemistry, aboutgeometry and anatomy. What they teach you explains the world. Your educationleaves everything so neat and tidy.So resolved and sensible.Her whole time datingPeter Wilmot, Misty knew it wasn't him she loved. Women just look for the bestphysical specimen to father their children. A healthy woman is wired to seek outthe triangle of smooth muscle inside Peter's open collar because humans evolvedhairless in order to sweat and stay cool while outrunning some hot and exhaustedform of furry animal protein.Men with less body hair are also less likely toharbor lice, fleas, and mites.Before their dates, Peter would take a painting ofhers. It would be framed and matted. And Peter would press two long strips ofextrastrong double-sided mounting tape onto the back of the frame. Careful of thesticky tape, he'd tuck the painting up inside the hem of his baggy sweater.Anywoman would love how Peter ran his hands through her hair. It's simple science.Physical touch mimics early parent-child grooming practices. It stimulates yourrelease of growth hormone and ornithine decarboxylase enzymes. Inversely, Peter'sfingers rubbing the back of her neck would naturally lower her levels of stresshormones. This has been proved in a laboratory, rubbing baby rats with apaintbrush.After you know about biology, you don't have to be used by it.On theirdates, Peter and Misty, they'd go to art museums and galleries. Just the two ofthem, walking and talking, Peter looking a little square in front, a littlepregnant with her painting.There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic.Just physics.Idiot people like Angel Delaporte who look for a supernatural reasonfor ordinary events, those people drive Misty nuts.Walking the galleries lookingfor a blank wall space, Peter was a living example of the golden section, theformula used by ancient Greek sculptors for perfect proportion. His legs were 1.6times longer than his torso. His torso is 1.6 times longer than his head.Look atyour fingers, how the first joint is longer than the second, then the second islonger than the end joint. The ratio is called Phi, after the sculptor Phidias.Thearchitecture of you.Walking, Misty told Peter about the chemistry of painting. Howphysical beauty turns out to be chemistry and geometry and anatomy. Art is reallyscience. Discovering why people like something is so you can replicate it. Copyit. It's a paradox, "creating" a real smile. Rehearsing again and again aspontaneous moment of horror. All the sweat and boring effort that goes intocreating what looks easy and instant.When people look at the ceiling of theSistine Chapel, they need to know that carbon black paint is the soot from naturalgas. The color rose madder is the ground root of the madder plant. Emerald greenis copper acetoarsenite, also called Paris green and used as an insecticide. Apoison. Tyrian purple is made from clams.And Peter, he slid the painting out fromunder his sweater. Alone in the gallery with no one around to see, the painting ofa stone house behind a picket fence, he pressed it to the wall. And there it was,the signature of Misty Marie Kleinman. And Peter said, "I told you someday yourwork would hang in a museum."His eyes are deep Egyptian brown, the paint made fromground-up mummies, bone ash and asphalt, and used until the nineteenth century,when artists discovered that icky reality. After twisting years of brushes betweentheir lips.Peter kissing the back of her neck, Misty said how when you look at theMona Lisa, you need to remember that burnt sienna is just clay colored with ironand manganese and cooked in an oven. Sepia brown is the ink sacs from cuttlefish.
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...