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Twilight: Irresistible Destiny
EPOV
I'm watching her look at my painting. I wish I could read her mind. She is thoughtful, quiet, absorbed. I sit very still so as not to disturb her. It's a very large painting and most people look at it from a distance, but Bella gets up and moves in close.
Now her perspective is the same as my own when I was painting it. So I know she is looking carefully at each brushstroke, noticing each slight variation in color. I hope I am being as still as the bench I am sitting on, but I am anxious to know what she sees, because I know she is seeing me as well, and is not just observing it as a painting.
She stands relaxed in front of it. I notice when her breathing pattern changes and I wonder what she sees and feels that lead to that change. Something is affecting her, but I have no idea what. When she finishes, she turns to me to walk over and looks at me with huge eyes.
"I see what you meant when you said what you said the other day. I am not sure I would have been brave enough to meet you after seeing this.
She sits down beside me then and tells me all that was going through her head while I was wondering. And I am completely surprised.
She says, "Leo Steinberg wrote about Jasper Johns first show, and how everything screamed waiting, solitary waiting, endless waiting. Hangers waiting. Partial plaster faces waiting.
"But I see your waiting very differently.
"Your very action in painting is inscribing your feelings, your touch with the brush, your nuances of the same color over and over, as just a focused time while you wait.
You paint a painting that will take forever to finish so you will be interested while you wait. And it is clear that you are going to wait forever, for your entire life if necessary, so no wonder you memorized Duras statement on loving, longing and waiting.
"It's so beautiful Edward. I am changed forever knowing that you were waiting for me and would wait your entire life for me. You told me in words, but now I see it, feel it, and am changed by that knowing. I tremble over that and chance and Destiny. What if…."
And I hush her with my fingers and pull her to me as her eyes fill up with tears that spill over at an imagined loss and desolation.
"I can't even think about not having you now. And I've just had you for a few days. I've been without you my whole life up to now. How did I live? The truth is, I wasn't. I was just surviving."
And she turns in my arms on the bench and puts her arms around me and just holds on for dear life. She is weeping silently and trembling against me. "Don't ever leave me. I will die if you do."
I laugh at her and say, "After waiting that long do you even think it is possible for me to consider it?" And I hold her tighter.
We breathe together and sit very still here in front of my painting, sit still on the hard bench holding each other.
"I think I would like to wait another time for us to see the other one. Will you go along with that. That's not a question."
She laughs but doesn't move away from my arms. I caress her face, drawing my fingers over her cheekbones, down her neck to her throat, and on down over her breasts, her waist, her stomach, her thighs, her legs to her feet. I bring my face close to hers and softly kiss her face, neck, throat and then I turn her face so I can cover her lips with mine. I hold us like that as we breathe together.
"Oh," she says, and kisses me harder as if she will never let me go. If she does, I won't let her.
Other Criteria - Leo Steinberg
"Yet it depressed me and I wasn't sure why."
In the works of Jasper Johns, Steinberg identifies a theme of great
consequence that is not clear to the naked eye, that of waiting.
Steinberg points out the "sense of desolate waiting" in Johns's
works, which all contain objects (flags, faces, coat hangers, etc.)
designed to move and function in a particular way, yet they are held
absolutely rigid and still. This technique, according to Steinberg, is
how Jasper Johns manages to invert the viewer's expectations of
what makes for significant art.
Jorge Luis Borges
“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
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| Jasper Johns |
EPOV
I'm watching her look at my painting. I wish I could read her mind. She is thoughtful, quiet, absorbed. I sit very still so as not to disturb her. It's a very large painting and most people look at it from a distance, but Bella gets up and moves in close.
Now her perspective is the same as my own when I was painting it. So I know she is looking carefully at each brushstroke, noticing each slight variation in color. I hope I am being as still as the bench I am sitting on, but I am anxious to know what she sees, because I know she is seeing me as well, and is not just observing it as a painting.
She stands relaxed in front of it. I notice when her breathing pattern changes and I wonder what she sees and feels that lead to that change. Something is affecting her, but I have no idea what. When she finishes, she turns to me to walk over and looks at me with huge eyes.
"I see what you meant when you said what you said the other day. I am not sure I would have been brave enough to meet you after seeing this.
She sits down beside me then and tells me all that was going through her head while I was wondering. And I am completely surprised.
She says, "Leo Steinberg wrote about Jasper Johns first show, and how everything screamed waiting, solitary waiting, endless waiting. Hangers waiting. Partial plaster faces waiting.
"But I see your waiting very differently.
"Your very action in painting is inscribing your feelings, your touch with the brush, your nuances of the same color over and over, as just a focused time while you wait.
You paint a painting that will take forever to finish so you will be interested while you wait. And it is clear that you are going to wait forever, for your entire life if necessary, so no wonder you memorized Duras statement on loving, longing and waiting.
"It's so beautiful Edward. I am changed forever knowing that you were waiting for me and would wait your entire life for me. You told me in words, but now I see it, feel it, and am changed by that knowing. I tremble over that and chance and Destiny. What if…."
And I hush her with my fingers and pull her to me as her eyes fill up with tears that spill over at an imagined loss and desolation.
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| Brancusi - Kiss |
"I can't even think about not having you now. And I've just had you for a few days. I've been without you my whole life up to now. How did I live? The truth is, I wasn't. I was just surviving."
And she turns in my arms on the bench and puts her arms around me and just holds on for dear life. She is weeping silently and trembling against me. "Don't ever leave me. I will die if you do."
I laugh at her and say, "After waiting that long do you even think it is possible for me to consider it?" And I hold her tighter.
We breathe together and sit very still here in front of my painting, sit still on the hard bench holding each other.
"I think I would like to wait another time for us to see the other one. Will you go along with that. That's not a question."
She laughs but doesn't move away from my arms. I caress her face, drawing my fingers over her cheekbones, down her neck to her throat, and on down over her breasts, her waist, her stomach, her thighs, her legs to her feet. I bring my face close to hers and softly kiss her face, neck, throat and then I turn her face so I can cover her lips with mine. I hold us like that as we breathe together.
"Oh," she says, and kisses me harder as if she will never let me go. If she does, I won't let her.
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