San Anselmo 7
Pascal never looked at me. Whether we were in meetings or alone with
Naomi, those eyes, her eyes always avoided me. As if she were afraid
I might see something. Like how much she loved Naomi. Maybe
that's the reason she hated pictures. Afraid for anyone to
see the woman that was hidden away in there somewhere. And yet she
always seemed so full of energy and fun. It was a mask, like she
was a spy. But her dad gave me this shot he took of her -- and it's
been my window into her mind ever since. She is a proud woman, and
very beautiful.
And I now have to imagine her at a hospice somewhere in Sacramento -- decaying
-- straining to walk down endless stark white halls, always alone in the
darkness -- Sometimes she stumbles and falls and has to reach out, trying
to take hold of the light. It's light she wants, light she reaches
for. I know. So all my corridors will have no flat edges, softy
curved yet full of power and full of light -- like an angel's hand.
My father's grandmother was a Creole from Baton Rouge. Dad said --
legally she was born into slavery -- but she denied it to the day she died.
She'd never been any man's slave, she said. when I was a boy, I'd
sleep with an old cotton quilt she'd made and sometimes dream I could feel
her hands upon my face. So when I made these walls for Pascal, her
hands were there and grandma was right: she'd been no man's slave, and
a slave to no thing either, no silver, no gold. Or even life or sudden
death.
So there isn't a logic to my structure. It has no rational
shape -- no simple unitary algorithm for form and function. Only
time and space and stones and light. A bell from Nara, an African
tree.
For I see everything. And I see nothing at all.
