The Canvas' Embrace

Sitting on his balcony watching the sky change while the morning sun rose away to the east, Damian sipped espresso as he tried to take it all in, letting the oranges, the slate blues, and the pale greys wash over him. This scene never seemed to get old even though he'd experienced something similar every morning since he'd begun his stay here in the San Juan Islands a few months back. The cottage he was renting, well, the loft in the cottage, was charming and idyllic, like something out of a romance novel, and, as the sky continued to lighten, the change essentially imperceptible, Damian could hear his landlady downstairs begin to stir. He saw her occasionally, just the right amount, but spent most of his hours reading, painting, or exploring the area.  

Damian shifted in his seat and took another sip as he watched the pinkish hues near the horizon begin to take on a fiery orange. The dominating black of night was all but gone now, giving way to a deep slate as the morning marched on. Damian was glad that the scene still seemed fresh, but he wondered if it would ever go stale. Taking another sip and then a deep breath of Northern air, he was rewarded by Mother Nature as the scent of nearby western red cedars, thuja plicata, filled his nose. Brant geese, branta bernicla, flew by overhead in their rows, white collared birds on their morning commute. 

Soon the sun capped the horizon, and the sky took on a light gray punctuated here and there by the sun’s orange hues rising from below. Damian took the last sip of his espresso and closed his eyes, relishing one more moment before he got back to work. He could feel it though, with his eyes closed, his work. It was boring a hole in his back from the other side of the room as it had been all morning. Something about this project, his first ever self-portrait, was making him loath to start. He’d never had this problem before. He had been painting steadily for a year now, finally pursuing his passion, but up until then it had been all landscapes and still life's (still lives?). This first self-portrait was an attempt at something new, however, a study in art, a practice-go, a chance to improve. What he had not realized, though, when he started with himself as the subject, was the profound exercise the project was in emotion and acceptance. This morning, he dreaded it, as he had been dreading it since readying his canvas a few days before. But he knew he had to keep pushing. He was sure that continuing to paint was the answer, and soon, something of worth would be uncovered, the image would coalesce, the lesson would be learned, and some deeper meaning would rise to the top.

Stretching the moment into a lifetime, Damian eventually opened his eyes and pushed his espresso away from him and across the tiny table, ceremoniously ending the morning's ritual. He pushed himself away now, and walked back towards his canvas, each step a task, each movement a drudgery. Finally, he reached the canvas and easel and carried them back towards to the balcony, placing the set next to the large stand mirror in the corner. He pulled his chair over and sat and stared. The day before, all he had managed to paint were the beginnings of his own eyes on a field of grey blue. Maybe this was not how you were supposed to start, but having no formal training, Damian did not know the right way, nor did he care.

Damian readied the canvas and his brushes, looked hard in the mirror and then back at the image, and began again. Stroke after stroke he moved, working to complete the eyes, slow and deliberate at first, and then faster as he got the knack until the strokes felt as if they were coming of their own accord. Some time later, minutes, perhaps hours, he set the brush down and saw what he had created, really saw.

He stared at the eyes. They were finished now, and they stared back at him. He looked in the mirror. The mirror looked back. This repeated for some minutes, eyes on canvas, eyes on mirror, and around and around we go. The eyes in the mirror held some measure of something more, he couldn't quite tell, but when he saw them on the canvas, they were the same but not. The 'something more,' hidden behind the real eyes, somehow came out on the canvas in a way that real life could not match. On the canvas the ‘something more’ overfilled it, almost running away with itself (or running amok?). What is it, he wondered to himself, what am I seeing? Like one of those Magic Eye images, an autostereographic, the something more came to the forefront in a rush ... 

Sadness. It was sadness. 

That was what was coming through, what had been at first hidden and enigmatic, but it came in force now and he could not see otherwise. What was now seen could not be unseen. He looked back at the mirror, at his own eyes, and there it was again, sadness there too. He stared back at the canvas, staring harder, looking, really looking until the dark, liquid eyes, eyes on the verge of tears, drank him in and he was lost. 

The memories came now, unrelenting as the sun, but it was no longer his eyes he saw, but hers. He was back at his house, or his former house, the house they built together. It was a first among so many firsts. The house was quaint, but to him it had been everything, while to her it was just an investment, just another rung on adulthood's ladder, another task to be completed on life's to-do. Maybe it was more than that, but he could not be sure anymore. She was not who he had thought she was. He thought he knew once what motivated her, but not anymore.

The eyes. Her eyes. He sees them now, after dropping his bag by the door, as she comes around the corner into the living room. They look different, the eyes. They are beautiful, like they always were, but now they hold something more; they hold secrets, but the secrets are flowing over now. The eyes hold a sadness that in this moment he realizes has been there for a long time. This is the 'something different' he had seen without seeing. He had felt this 'something different' for about a year now, but when he had seen it before, it was foreign, alien, something to be kept at a distance, just out of sight. She had been the same girl, the girl he kept falling for day after day, year after year, a love growing with all the shared firsts, with each laugh, and with all the good things of life. He thinks to himself that it must have been the secrets that made those eyes sad.

The eyes start to leak tears like a dripping faucet. Her breath becomes ragged, punctuated by a cough. "I need to talk to you," she says, but he does not need to hear for he already knows. The eyes tell him everything, every detail, every dagger. They had been telling him all along, but eyes are false, they are traitors, and the mind is an accomplice. The eyes see what they want to see, and he had wanted to see her as the person she could have been, not as the person she was, and the mind was happy to oblige. Why? Because the truth would hurt. It would mean facing life. Life is not this house, it is not the firsts. It is pain, it is this real pain that comes no matter who you are or what kind of person you have been. Life. Does. Not. Care. It does not care because people don't care, not really. Oh, we go through waves of caring, waves of compassion, but these are the exception, not the rule. The rule is spelled out in three words: "life is short," or maybe in just four letters: "yolo." This is slang for "people are selfish;" and, where the rubber meets the road is where you find the true self, the person behind the person, the secrets behind the eyes.

They sit now, on the couch where they used to make love, a place where cheese and wine were often shared, where the happy couple used to make a bed and sleep arm-in-arm in front of the TV's peaceful glow. She sits on one end now, and he, his legs lead, moves and sits on the other.

"I have to tell you something," she begins again. Something new shows in her eyes, or has this always been here too, he thinks. It looks like pity, like the look of Abraham above Isaac, the killing blow about to descend, pity. He steels himself to it. Right now, pity is the last thing he needs.

Then, her secret becomes theirs, it is "shared," as all things in a marriage are, or are supposed to be. She tells, and tells everything, well, not everything, but enough, enough that his mind clouds. It literally is a fog. There is sadness here, but at a distance. He should cry, but he can't. All he can do is stare at those eyes and wonder, wonder about everything, wondering why, how, how long, how did the wheels come off, and am I the last to know. 'Probably' is the answer to the last of these. There is nothing sadder than this answer, 'probably.'  

Again, he tries to feel, tries to feel something, anything. Anger, nothing. Sadness, nothing. Worry, nothing; just a numbness. He distantly registers surprise, not at the numbness, but at the repetition thereof. He has felt this feeling before. It has been twenty-five years, but he remembers it. He felt it when he was twelve, when his parents sat he and his sister down and said those words too, "we need to talk." The same knowing had taken over then as well. He'd known already. He could feel it. But then he couldn't feel after that. All he could do was parrot the talking points he'd seen on tv, his mind latching onto the false positives that might take over juvenile thought - 'yay, two Christmases,' 'double allowance,' or any of the other silver linings that come from a broken home. If only it were that easy. If only the good parts stayed and the bad parts didn't.

Damian snapped back to himself then and wondered at how long he had been in reverie. He saw the painting now, and saw the mirror. He saw the balcony and his finished espresso, his paints and his brushes, his easel and his hands, and then he remembered where and when he was. He looked around again, looked at everything except the self-portraiture eyes, and then steeled himself and looked in the mirror. Tears were flowing now and the streaks on his cheeks told him that they'd been flowing for a while. This time, he let them flow and they did. He stared at himself as the flow grew heavier until, eventually, great sobs racked him one after the other, his breath ragged. Again, he was lost, this time in his own eyes, and in the tears. It felt like the tears were a bottomless pit, and they would not end, and, surprised, Damian realized he did not care. The tears felt good. He needed them. They felt 'achy, but good,' as some have described.

The tears stopped though. They always do, sometimes later, sometimes sooner, but they always stop. When they stopped for him, he felt lighter, a weight lifted. He looked outside and the world seemed lighter too. Feeling something off towards the canvas tugging at his vision, Damian decided he'd better get on with it and finish this painting. He steeled himself again. No. That is not the right word. He thought to steel himself, but instead, feeling brave, he softened and decided to take whatever he found on the canvas, take whatever he found in those eyes. He turned and looked, and there again were the eyes, staring right back at him the way they had been before. But this time, the 'something different' was less. The eyes were sad, but less sad. They were softer in the same way he was softer. They were healing in the same way he was healing. The rest of the face hadn't coalesced yet on the canvas, but Damian could see it now, he could see all of it, and for the first time in a long time, he liked what he saw. He smiled, picked up a brush, let out a deep sigh, and went to work, finally understanding, at least a little, that even though this work would be hard, it would be worth it.