We are shaped and fashioned by what we love- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
What do you love, what do you desire of all the world?
“Try table four.” Rob, my fellow host of the night, said this delicately, almost as if he were trying to convince me to try a dessert I didn’t think I would like. As if I were about to try a flaming pudding, or strawberries with brown sugar and sour cream. “Try table four.” As if he was pretty convinced I would like it, but not one-hundred percent sure. Because, that table just might not work out, and I might have to put the couple somewhere more pleasing. A table that tasted a bit differently, more acceptable to their tender palette that distinguished harsh lighting and chair comfort level. The couple squirmed uncomfortably in their fancy attire as I glanced back at Rob. The woman shifted and sighed loudly as her black leather boots with the tiny tear squeaked in discontent on the slick wood floor. The thoughts ran through her mind and leaked across onto her face, coating it in concern. Sticky, sappy concern- the kind that covered up real problems by busying one’s self with problems that didn’t exist. The woman busied her mind. Did this girl really know what she was doing, or was she simply looking around thinking about the ways in which people speak? Her eyes were sharp, harsh, like streaks of blue paint haphazardly brushed onto an old canvas.
I led the couple to table four, where the light was muted gently by a red lampshade. The woman sat down, eagerly picking up a menu. Her eyes shattered the words on the menu quickly- ravaging them and tearing them apart with her mind. Was it her birthday? Did he forget again, this meal a last minute attempt to pull together ‘love?’ Was he busy all day talking with his young secretary- a girl with a dress just a bit too short, and teeth just a bit too white? The woman looked at her husband expectantly, silently asking him, begging him to sit down. The gentleman squinted, and watched the soft light dance across his wife’s eyes. The lighting transformed the woman, and suddenly she was no longer the tired woman who entered the restaurant, but an echo of something that used to be very beautiful. The softness of the light made her skin glow, and her manufactured blush was matched by her own blood, flowing softly underneath the skin on her cheeks. Echo.
“Eck hem,” the man muttered discontentedly.
“Can I help you sir?” He shifted weight onto first his right foot and then his left.
“Do you think we could have a table with better lighting please?”
The woman’s face twitched for an instant, the right side of her face sliding down, those blue eyes freezing to black, before it quickly was composed again. Perfect smile. Same world, deprived of art. Same eyes, deprived of light.
“Of course. Right away sir.”
I let out a breath of something not unlike relief, as I quickly led them to table eight. “Try table four?” No. No, I don’t think it worked- it would have been too easy. Too much like a fairy tale. Table eight would have to do.
*
More than anything else in the world, I don’t want to ever sit at table eight. More than anything else, I want to be someone who will sit with her in the shaded light, and finish the canvas. Paint her the rest of the portrait. Turn the sharp, harsh streaks of blue paint on the old canvas into something to be cherished. More than anything, I want to turn the world into a place full of artists- people who will look at things just slightly differently, just a bit ‘off kilter’- and each of these different from one another. A place where people are willing to look at the dramatic difference that light can make, and how blue is such a broken color in the dark, an exploited one in bright light, and a beautiful one at table four.
When asked by all these artists that I want to create exactly what it is I want, I respond slowly. Carefully. I taste the words on my tongue, turning them over like candy in my mouth. The consonants are spicy and the vowels are sweet, both melt into each other. Flaming pudding. Strawberries, brown sugar, and sour cream. I breathe through my nose, and open my mouth, letting the words cascade, dribbling down my chin, speaking. “I ask that you let me help define the world somehow. Let me help you live and realize that you are living. Let me become a writer, a dreamer, one of those who is mumbled at as I walk down the street, thinking only of the next way I can show my readers how I see the world. How I can make emotion tangible, and make everything more real than it already is.” The artists stare at me, and make wondrous things, shaping and fashioning things to love. I smile and move my pen across paper, watching them and write about them loving. This is my greatest desire, and this is what I will choose to do forever.
how many days had she spent
sitting on her bed and trying to figure out
why her heart could not rest
why her mind was so full of life
how many years did she spend
listening to music that made her recognize that
there were more like her in this world
how many tears had she spent
on people or ideas of people
sitting in her room trying
to capture them perfectly with
just the right sentence
the perfect simile
how long did she spend wishing she could
do something more to give dimension to those she
spent all of her time
loving or
imagining she did
