spring was late and I've been waiting, but now the geese are going north again, and the robins and the redwings and the bluejays are in the trees. And birds you don't see further north, ones I'm not used to. Turkey vultures on the highways, and real bluebirds--not sure on the right colour, I don't like the newer chemical blues--I never see them long enough so I wouldn't paint them that way, like a bird book, but they're there, they're in the woods so they should be there in the trees when I'm doing the trees.
Sometimes it's just too hard to make it clear what you're doing.
people watch for the robins but the crows are the first, when winter's back is broken, my uncle used to say. They land on the snowbanks and peck them away, the black oppositing the white away, negating it until the last pieces are gone. I like the bent black figures on the white but I can never pay much attention to colour schemes like that for long--except in evening when everything is blue and silent. That isn't the same, though, and the crows are gone by evening when it's blue. Evening's too yellow these days anyway, too much light with nothing to shield us. The trees aren't awake to cover us over.
(I saw an old old snowbank once in a deep shadow behind a building, a place where the sun never managed to reach. It was June. I touched it but left it in peace, snow that can live forever. The crows couldn't take it apart.)
The dream was different last night.
The water left me on the rocks in Lake Superior. What's the colour of the rocks there? The red rocks. But not red, an old hard russet, a little light oxide red and some umber and I'd have to see it again to know what I was doing. These few red rocks among the grey, all of them rounded by the waves. The coarse grit and the weeds and the water--Superior's a serious sea, tidal and angry and so grey, so grey. What is that grey? It would have these gleams of pear-coloured light on its pleasant days, a blue like eyes (which are not blue, we just call it that) and little violets but somehow in the shadows of the waves and the teeth at their crests you have to get the grey of this cold sea. The water's cold. But when I stand up, waist-deep in this cold water that's winter black at the bottom, I can feel the sun. It came up over the rim of the water, the narrow strip of silvered blue that was the end of everything. Gichigami, the big water. A peach lid of an orange eye, tricoloured glass sky clear like a Christmas bulb. The wind that stirred the water was cold. Violet and coral rose, the first rays of the sun, the first breaths. A streak of gold on the waves when they rise up and meet the sun.
I felt my head and the wound was there, but the blood was gone, the gash closed up. The water was cold, because that's how it's supposed to be up there, but the sun was warm on my shoulders, the beads of water there. The sun was a carnelian eye just grazing the horizon. And I thought of something I read once in a book. It might have been a quote from another book. A man dying telling his brother, "I am returning to the city of my birth." The bush by the big Lake. Algoma. I don't feel anything when I'm here. I told Sara that once and she didn't believe me. I think she wanted to hear something spiritual maybe? People sort of want an explanation. I'm mystified by that--a girl in my art class was talking to me about my paintings and said something about how she only worships the divine in the great outdoors and feels one with nature. God is in nature. I think all I said was that I was a Presbyterian and she was disappointed.
But I don't feel anything at all, nothing separate from the rocks and the trees and the smells in the air--there's one you smell in marshy places, so sweet, like nothing else in the world and I've never tracked it down. I feel all that, there's no room for thinking about spirituality or whatever it is. I don't think any deep thoughts--I'm not sure i ever do. I'm just there on the water or in it or the trees are around me and it's nothing more complicated than that. It just feels good.
No, I do think about the colours, that's true. That's not what Sara was after, though.
There is no room for it. Utterly consumed. I came out of the water and I was walking and I wasn't dead. I like rocks better than beaches, something to hold onto, nothing clinging to your skin and falling out of your shoes days later. On the bank there was only the woods, and all I remember is I found a place where the cedars shed their needles and I went to sleep there. Inside in the trees, the waves and the wind in the leaves the only sound.
The crows woke me up. They've set up right in the tree outside my window and they're noisy.
None of this is very good--too long since I've been up north, I couldn't paint that shore. I never make it clear what I'm saying and I never get what I really want, to make people stop thinking.
Sometimes it's just too hard to make it clear what you're doing.
people watch for the robins but the crows are the first, when winter's back is broken, my uncle used to say. They land on the snowbanks and peck them away, the black oppositing the white away, negating it until the last pieces are gone. I like the bent black figures on the white but I can never pay much attention to colour schemes like that for long--except in evening when everything is blue and silent. That isn't the same, though, and the crows are gone by evening when it's blue. Evening's too yellow these days anyway, too much light with nothing to shield us. The trees aren't awake to cover us over.
(I saw an old old snowbank once in a deep shadow behind a building, a place where the sun never managed to reach. It was June. I touched it but left it in peace, snow that can live forever. The crows couldn't take it apart.)
The dream was different last night.
The water left me on the rocks in Lake Superior. What's the colour of the rocks there? The red rocks. But not red, an old hard russet, a little light oxide red and some umber and I'd have to see it again to know what I was doing. These few red rocks among the grey, all of them rounded by the waves. The coarse grit and the weeds and the water--Superior's a serious sea, tidal and angry and so grey, so grey. What is that grey? It would have these gleams of pear-coloured light on its pleasant days, a blue like eyes (which are not blue, we just call it that) and little violets but somehow in the shadows of the waves and the teeth at their crests you have to get the grey of this cold sea. The water's cold. But when I stand up, waist-deep in this cold water that's winter black at the bottom, I can feel the sun. It came up over the rim of the water, the narrow strip of silvered blue that was the end of everything. Gichigami, the big water. A peach lid of an orange eye, tricoloured glass sky clear like a Christmas bulb. The wind that stirred the water was cold. Violet and coral rose, the first rays of the sun, the first breaths. A streak of gold on the waves when they rise up and meet the sun.
I felt my head and the wound was there, but the blood was gone, the gash closed up. The water was cold, because that's how it's supposed to be up there, but the sun was warm on my shoulders, the beads of water there. The sun was a carnelian eye just grazing the horizon. And I thought of something I read once in a book. It might have been a quote from another book. A man dying telling his brother, "I am returning to the city of my birth." The bush by the big Lake. Algoma. I don't feel anything when I'm here. I told Sara that once and she didn't believe me. I think she wanted to hear something spiritual maybe? People sort of want an explanation. I'm mystified by that--a girl in my art class was talking to me about my paintings and said something about how she only worships the divine in the great outdoors and feels one with nature. God is in nature. I think all I said was that I was a Presbyterian and she was disappointed.
But I don't feel anything at all, nothing separate from the rocks and the trees and the smells in the air--there's one you smell in marshy places, so sweet, like nothing else in the world and I've never tracked it down. I feel all that, there's no room for thinking about spirituality or whatever it is. I don't think any deep thoughts--I'm not sure i ever do. I'm just there on the water or in it or the trees are around me and it's nothing more complicated than that. It just feels good.
No, I do think about the colours, that's true. That's not what Sara was after, though.
There is no room for it. Utterly consumed. I came out of the water and I was walking and I wasn't dead. I like rocks better than beaches, something to hold onto, nothing clinging to your skin and falling out of your shoes days later. On the bank there was only the woods, and all I remember is I found a place where the cedars shed their needles and I went to sleep there. Inside in the trees, the waves and the wind in the leaves the only sound.
The crows woke me up. They've set up right in the tree outside my window and they're noisy.
None of this is very good--too long since I've been up north, I couldn't paint that shore. I never make it clear what I'm saying and I never get what I really want, to make people stop thinking.
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