Playing for Keeps

The first time she felt like an artist — as an unconscious decision — was when she noticed her coffee mugs were filthy. She realized: she hadn’t cared. Just poured another cup. Black. No sugar. There was nothing to infect. It took ages for bacteria to set up shop, she imagined, in a film of coffee-soot. Fill it up again. Soot’ll dissolve. It’s in the coffee already. One less thing to think about, one less thing to distract.

She set down her mug, fastened the blindfold and wandered across the canvas. Gobs of paint wiggled between her toes, her feet, the burlap around them, and she tried to ignore — prayed for selective adaptation — so she’d move, walk on intuition. Or — not intuition. Not understanding. Not even dance. Don’t dance. She wanted to move without anything.

She took three more steps, turned left. Four-by-six, the canvas would (probably) allow two more steps. She turned left again, but a hard left, so she spread the greens and reds diagonally. She jumped here. She jumped backwards. She jumped forward and some paint kicked up to her arms. She side-stepped right, hopped on one foot there. And the other, there. Did a quick tap dance, took off the blindfold and leaped to the tarp at the side so she didn’t get (too much) paint on the hardwood floor.

She averted her eyes. She hurried to the kitchen, refilled her mug, read two chapters of Jitterbug Perfume, meditated for an hour. Folded laundry.

Then she went back, confronted the implications of her wanderings, how the Rorschach played. Always better to examine after noon, when the sun didn’t interrupt through the east windows. She hoisted the canvas onto hooks and stood back. The first pattern that caught her attention was the diagonal steps. They hinted at a pastel ridgeline, like fall in Vermont or a fire in Montana.