Still Life with Tornado(77)

I think of Earl.

This is art.

The five of us. 40, 23, 10, me, and Bruce.

The two of us. Me and Bruce.

Me.

I am art.

I have become Spain. I have become Macedonia. Life is art. Truth is art. Art doesn’t steal. Art just is. You can take a break from art. You can make art for seventy-two hours straight if you want. You can breathe in and out and that is art. You can hold your breath and that is art.

Blinking is art. Snoring is art. Sneezing is art. It’s not complicated. No one needs to be better than anyone else. That is not art. That is anti-art. Art is inclusive and it’s the murals all over this city and it’s the kids in the park and the old people you see at the corner grocery who only buy four things at a time. Art is dog shit next to a tree on Locust Street. Art is the sound of the Dumpster service behind the pizza place at four in the morning. Art is as big as Liberty Two. Art is as small as two wedding rings at the bottom of the sea.

You get the picture.

Nothing new ever really happens.





All Before It



The museum closes at five and we get there just after one. We travel in a pack and don’t split up even when Bruce drags us through the medieval art. Ten-year-old Sarah really wants to see the armor room, but she knows we’ll get there. She holds Mom’s hand, and I’m not jealous even for a second.

We get to the gallery with Salvador Dalí’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civl War), and Mom stops in front of it. “Grotesque, but I like it,” she says. This is a woman who reaches into people’s bodies and removes foreign objects and sometimes small animals and sometimes four hundred pills.

I tell them I want to show them Sleeping Girl. They follow me through the maze of contemporary galleries and I get to where the Lichtenstein was, but it’s not there anymore. I ask the security guard, “Where’d the Lichtenstein go?”

She answers, “They moved it last week.”

Sleeping girl. On the move. Maybe she woke up. Maybe she’s happier now.

40 says, “Where’s the Twombly room?”

I lead us to the Twombly room. Ten-year-old Sarah gets impatient for the armor. She says, “This looks like scribbling!” I tell her to be quiet and point to the writing at the bottom of my favorite piece in the collection. It says: Like a fire that consumes all before it.

All of us stop here.

All of us stop at this scratched message meant just for us.

We are allowed to relax now.

Mom takes a deep breath and I hug her and Bruce hugs both of us and the Sarahs gather round and we form a family of Spain. A family of Macedonia.

This family—no matter what it looks like on any given day—we are art.

Mom says, “I’m so sorry,” and her words are art.

I say, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” and my words are art.

Bruce says, “I missed you so much,” and his words are art.

We are so consumed by all before it we don’t see the others leave us. We are suddenly three. Three relaxed people. They didn’t even say good-bye.

This is what’s left.

It’s everything we need.

Nobody said There’s nothing we can do about it. We did something.

It’s not like anybody died or anything.

I wonder if I’ll ever see ten-year-old Sarah again. I decide that I will.

Then I see my reflection on the glass outside the Twombly room and I see her there. Ten-year-old Sarah is there. In my reflection.

I did this.

I did it my own way, just like the headpiece. No one else would understand what my skin absorbed in all those years of lying.

I will sweat out the lies.

I will sweat out the truth.

My scars will tell stories until the day I stop breathing.

Thick skin? You can’t make art if you can’t feel the tips of your fingers.

So I had an existential crisis. I didn’t know why I was here. I couldn’t draw a pear. Who cares? I saw a teacher kissing a student. I had my art project sabotaged. I lived inside a thirteen-million-peso windmill that couldn’t generate electricity. Some days I carry an umbrella in case it rains bullshit.

I am a human being. I am sixteen years old.

And that is enough.

? ? ?

I get a text on my phone from Bruce, who is standing in the same hallway with me. It’s our picture—all four Sarahs on the couch, and Bruce. I regret not taking ten-year-old Sarah to the armor room one last time, so I go there myself.

There’s a detour. Strange. I have to slow down behind a guy on the steps who’s carrying a ladder, then weave around to the right to get into the armor gallery from a side door. But I want to see where the guy with the ladder is going, so I follow him to a gallery room that’s sealed off with plastic. There’s a sign. PARDON OUR APPEARANCE. WE’RE SETTING UP A NEW EXHIBIT! The whole second floor smells like fresh paint.

He parts the plastic and walks through it and I stop because I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble if I go into the room. I stand there and try to see through the plastic, but it’s several sheets thick and everything is blurry like heavy rain on a bus windshield.

I open the plastic overlap a little and peek in and it’s just blank walls. Whiter than white. Blanker than blank. Just like me. But this is a fresh start. In a week or two, this room will house something new—something I’ve never seen before. Just like me. I stand there until the security guard from the adjacent armor room taps me lightly on the shoulder. I say, “Sorry,” but I don’t really mean it. I’ve been to this museum so many times and I’ve never been as moved as this—by something so ordinary. A blank room. A man with a ladder. The smell of fresh paint. Construction.