1A Sparrow Named Thomis
- J. Welsh
"I never start with a title."
I never use "Untitled" either, "Untitled" sounds so low-key-over-dramatic anyway. By calling something "Untitled" I shouldn't really know what it's about, but it's tricky that way, because I really do know what it's about. It's a nothingness that's on the tip of my tongue. It means what I say it means because I'm the artist. It's untitled just so I can tell you what it means. I like to make you guess.
"What do you see?"
He sees paint, globs of it, smeared across a canvas that's been stained with flashes of green acrylic. That's probably all he sees. I've looked at that canvas so hard that I probably don't even know what I see in it anymore. It's a blur. That's the nice thing about art. It doesn't have to mean anything. It can mean what I want it to whenever I feel like changing my mind.
He looked at me, a half-quirked smile on his face, trying to gain a little sympathy for his lack of any idea as to what he was supposed to be examining so closely. It was a painting, sure. It was a green painting, an acrylic painting even. It could be an up close and personal view of grass for all he knew. Thomis ran a hand over his light curly hair and laughed. He had no idea.
Thomis is a writer. He can't write. He writes about nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability may be there, but he has a decided lack of inspiration. He writes about nothing; he writes a whole lot about nothing. That in itself is quite a simple thing to do. If I knew enough about nothing, I could certainly write enough of it to make something. Something out of nothing, I'd be a self-proclaimed deity. There's a way to go about it, though, a way to make everyone else think you're actually taking them somewhere near a final punch-line of a fantastic story. There has to be a little give and take. They'd give their attention, and I'd take away ten, maybe fifteen, minutes of their lives and store those precious things away in labeled jars. His, hers and ours, like monogrammed towels in a Brady Bunch bathroom, but maybe not as colorful. Keep it simple. Simple words, simple phrases, an overdose of enough simplicity to drive readers mad, thinking they might have missed something, that something out of nothing. Yeah, Thomis could write a whole lot of nothing. Maybe he could come up with a title for the painting. Then again, maybe there's no way in hell I'd want him to come up with one.
"What do you see Charly?" His question was doing more fishing than anything else. Thomis picked up a clean paintbrush and twirled it between his fingers like a magical baton that could invisibly paint the world with a flourish.
What do I see? He would ask that. I see a man with an unused brush, probably something of an improvement compared to an unused pen. Oh wait, that's right, Thomis never uses pens. It's a good thing he never uses a typewriter either. Oh god, the clicking and the tinging and the rip of paper in the most mechanized torturous way of his so-called "creation." Those kinds of sounds aren't meant to be compounded together. Alone, they're fine; I can appreciate a swift tear across the paper grain. But together, together they're just like ringing the doorbell to damnation itself.
Thomis and I were artists, and we were artists in the truest sense of the word; we would never agree on anything, but we'd never say we didn't either. We lived together and we lived separately. Both of us rented out a little place big enough for a few standing easels or piles of unfinished manuscripts.
I lived in a studio, lived and slept exactly where I worked. Having tile floors was the best decision my landlord could have ever made; it was easy to keep them clean. The shower curtain in my bathroom was covered in stained patches of color; I imagined Pollock himself might even fancy a bathe behind it. My favorite paintbrushes were assigned to the toothbrush holder placed about the sink faucet. I preferred brushing my teeth in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to see how terrible my bed-head was or how the wrinkles were working their way around the corners of my face. Aside from the decorative curtain in the bathroom, the flat was clean – orderly, even – with nothing hanging about the walls to distract from my work. The comforter of the futon was a tasteless gray, and the windows had been bare of frills since moving in four years ago.
Thomis always said my place was only appropriate for sleeping. He couldn't do much else there. I wouldn't even let him break out the paints without making sure he was properly set up like a two-year-old needing oversized paint smocks, because that's how he painted. He preferred the ease of his two bed-one bath. One of the bedrooms had been converted into an office not too long ago, and there were a couple half-full cabinets scattered in between several empty ones always meaning to be used. Papers were strewn all about the desk and bookshelves, spewing out the drawers like splayed tongues tied loosely to gaping mouths, their titles trailing off into unfinished introductions. Thomis liked to think there was an organizational chaos in the world, and he was master over it. The stereo in the living room was always on the one classic rock channel that never overdosed on car commercials. Aside from that, his entertainment system was placed in alphabetical order along shelves around the room, all novels in paperback. He made it a point to never publicly display any books he believed occupied the same genre he was always spending time writing – competition, naturally.
I had my smock sleeves rolled up above my elbows, hands and arms covered in every green from seaweed to pine. A few strands of hair were loose about my face, having escaped the knotted mass of a half ponytail hanging low about my neck. I rolled my eyes at Thomis and snatched the dry brush away from his hand.
"I'm not done yet."
And why would you expect me to be finished? What do I see? A mixture of all my least favorite vegetables smeared together to look like a suburban jungle not yet mowed. A one by three rectangular version of a world from the middle of the park. Grass. That's all it is! It's grass! There's nothing to that. How could there be? That's his something out of nothing, an expression he's waiting for me to confess to so he can counter it lovingly with a garnish of words. Smile while I speak.
"Oh, right then. It's nice. You going to hang this one up too?" Thomis stepped closer in my direction, not bothering to reexamine the painting that I was scrutinizing so closely with my brows unnaturally furrowed and lips pursed.
Ha. So now he's an interior decorator, load of good that's ever done anybody. He wouldn't have to live here to look at it. It's not as if any of our works are going to be framed and mounted like some stuffed trophies against a mahogany wall. Why should I bother? It would be the only thing in front of me, occupying more of my time than it deserves, like his countless stories waiting to be written in his half-started journals. Nothing would come of that kind of display. A matter of pride? No, there is pride enough in completion. What extra earnings in that department of sin do I need hanging about my neck? It is enough to finish, to have an ending.
"It's going to go right next to that female nude you have hidden away in your bedroom closet." I told him. I blew the stray hairs out of my face just to have them settle again, this time at odd angles across my nose, worse than before. Thomis reached out a hand, but I beat him to it, with a lime green smudge across my cheek to count for it. He tried stifling his laugh. It didn't work too well. He brushed his thumb over my face, probably in an attempt to reverse the war paint I had given myself, and his eyes lit up with what I could only assume was amusement at having made the situation worse. A grown two year old dabbling in the secret art of face paint made me a literal Jekyll and Hyde.
Yeah, I know about those rolled up posters you have hidden behind your overflowing laundry basket. No one should ever bother wandering in to make sense of anything in that tiny space reeking of masculine tendencies. But you wouldn't be embarrassed by that, nope, not ever. You'd let it slide over you just like a fact of life can be glanced over and categorized in an encyclopedia that's referenced once and heaved onto a dusty end of a shelf.
"When are you going to finish?" Thomis was rubbing his hand on the front of my smock when he cast a side glance to the painting.
He would have loved to work on his own terms, but there was usually a real world in which he had to partake to make ends meet. Thomis had been shuffled around from job to job, never finding a perfect fit that would allow him time to write during lunch breaks. There were all those side jobs too, to make the finances work smoothly. He had to have a way to buy more ink cartridges for his printer, if nothing else. His luck just hadn't arrived, but along with his chaotic organization theory, there was another pertaining specifically to his free-floating attitude. He'd take whatever came his way and wing it the best way he knew how, with the grin he always wore on his face.
That was the one painting that took me forever to finish, absolutely forever. It wasn't for lack of paint or time, but for lack of a title. I never start with titles. Thomis always had titles. He always had beginnings. The endings were mine; they always had been.
I had brought the small bird to life gradually, cranberry browns complimenting the white creams in smooth curving strokes. The highlights making the eyes shine curiously, drawing in a passerby's gaze, were the same that made the creature seem so friendly against the green backdrop of painted grass.
It had taken me years to finally take action and give that painting something. Something out of nothing, some meaning out of a tiny sparrow standing so steadfast in such a large world. Even on canvas, it felt real enough to be true to itself and fly when and wherever it chose. That was his end.