RENASCENCE Thursday, December 4, 2008 (Clare is 37)

RENASCENCE


Thursday, December 4, 2008 (Clare is 37)

CLARE: It’s a cold, bright morning. I unlock the door of the studio and stamp snow
off my boots. I open the shades, turn up the heat. I start a pot of coffee brewing. I
stand in the empty space in the middle of the studio and I look around me.

Two years’ worth of dust and stillness lies over everything. My drawing table is
bare. The beater sits clean and empty. The molds and deckles are neatly stacked, coils
of armature wire sit untouched by the table. Paints and pigments, jars of brushes,
tools, books; all are just as I left them. The sketches I had thumbtacked to the wall
have yellowed and curled. I untack them and throw them in the wastebasket.

I sit at my drawing table and I close my eyes.


The wind is rattling tree branches against the side of the house, A car splashes
through slush in the alley. The coffeemaker hisses and gurgles as it spits the last spurt
of coffee into the pot. I open my eyes, shiver and pull my heavy sweater closer.

When I woke up this morning I had an urge to come here. It was like a flash of lust:
an assignation with my old lover, art. But now I’m sitting here waiting
for.. .something.. .to come to me and nothing comes. I open a flat file drawer and take
out a sheet of indigo-dyed paper. It’s heavy and slightly rough, deep blue and cold to
the touch like metal. I lay it on the table. I stand and stare at it for a while. I take out a
few pieces of soft white pastel and weigh them in my palm. Then I put them down
and pour myself some coffee. I stare out the window at the back of the house. If
Henry were here he might be sitting at his desk, might be looking back at me from the
window above his desk. Or he might be playing Scrabble with Alba, or reading the
comics, or making soup for lunch. I sip my coffee and try to feel time revert, try to
erase the difference between now and then. It is only my memory that holds me here.
Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together.

I stand in front of the sheet of paper, holding a white pastel. The paper is vast, and
I begin in the center, bending over the paper though I know I would be more
comfortable at the easel. I measure out the figure, half-life-sized: here is the top of the
head, the groin, the heel of the foot. I rough in a head. I draw very lightly, from
memory: empty eyes, here at the midpoint of the head, long nose, bow mouth slightly
open. The eyebrows arch in surprise: oh, it’s you. The pointed chin and the round
jawline, the forehead high and the ears only indicated. Here is the neck, and the
shoulders that slope into arms that cross protectively over the breasts, here is the
bottom of the rib cage, the plump stomach, full hips, legs slightly bent, feet pointing
downward as though the figure is floating in midair. The points of measurement are
like stars in the indigo night sky of the paper; the figure is a constellation. I indicate
highlights and the figure becomes three dimensional, a glass vessel. I draw the
features carefully, create the structure of the face, fill in the eyes, which regard me,
astonished at suddenly existing. The hair undulates across the paper, floating
weightless and motionless, linear pattern that makes the static body dynamic. What
else is in this universe, this drawing? Other stars, far away. I hunt through my tools
and find a needle. I tape the drawing over a window and I begin to prick the paper full
of tiny holes, and each pin prick becomes a sun in some other set of worlds. And
when I have a galaxy full of stars I prick out the figure, which now becomes a
constellation in earnest, a network of tiny lights, I regard my likeness, and she returns
my gaze. I place my finger on her forehead and say, “Vanish,” but it is she who will
stay; I am the one who is vanishing.