Next Best Note by Austen A. Artier

 

The warmth comes from her slender body, silhouetted by the open curtains, uncovered by the sheets Miha has stolen from her. Her hair trails down her back resting perfectly despite her horizontal position. Su’s body folds at his touch, she shifts her waist to cradle Miha’s elbow. His arm runs through the tunnel between her neck and the pillow, it slides up her wrist and she opens her palm to accept his fingers. He notes her flexibility as she turns to ask in response. She laughs at every touch and kiss. She slides his hand to just below her breast and she smells of honey and truffles, her olive skin glistening with the light dissipated by the window. Miha asks her if she’d like some water, she nods her head.

       Now looking at himself in the mirror he rubs his eyes, traces his eyelashes with his fingers, and thinks of her signature. The large bowl he has filled up with water, starts overflowing into the floor. She blinks at his choice of container, and laughs, she sits across him on the bed, her legs crossed imitating Miha’s, still naked. Draped on his legs is a red blanket indistinguishable with the ends of his large red shirt.

       The bowl lies in the centre as she places it between them, Su begins to think about why Miha is looking at her. She thinks of images that slips through her fingers and all she can think about is sitting in a Victorian sitting room and being annoyed that the hammer does not appreciate the patterned wallpaper. The hammer is marvellous, shined and made of marble, so why should he care about the age of the dust.

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Su asks, “why are you here?”

 

Mihas gaze drifts back down from her poem on the wall, taken aback by the question.

 

Sometimes feeling is so powerful it doesn’t ask for a why. An unrelenting force carries our burdens and is also a tyrant. We like to fly but we despise the kite line.

 

“You asked me to stay” replied Miha

 

“But you’re not supposed to be here,” said Su

 

“How come”

“Because I barely know you”

 

He’s puzzled, by how she has said this.

 

“I dreamt of you” said Miha

 

“Last night?” asked Su"

Yes, I can’t remember it well, but it was about choices. I’m not sure what it was but it had something to do with you”

 

Miha frowned realizing that she was upset. Her posture told of her that she had felt a character. He thought of Danielle and her unrequited love with Kissinger, mentioned to him by a friend.

 

Danielle was a journalist and she happened upon the opportunity of interviewing Henry Kissinger. Like all things in retrospect, it was a likely meeting just as much as it was written in the folds of her hand. Every similarity feels prophesized, and every difference feels necessary. She described it as the most authentic human experience she had with a human being. This brush was absolute and without question to her, the impasse of their situation was a pause to her new act of life. She resolved that to understand him was of no matter that to move a finger in any direction after what she had felt to be the culmination of her human condition, she had to decide to love him. His friend thought it an obsession, futile, without base, and unrequited.

 

He told her of what he could see. He outlined her character and drew her figure.

 

He loved her figure. He loved her directness. He loved the things she said.

 

2

 

I walked down K Boulevard and couldn’t decide if I loved her, or I loved something.

Exhaustion eludes me the little sleep I’ve had, instead my eyes scan the faces on the street. Scanning like that makes me think of the look I imagine I’ll see. They say it’s hard to imagine a crowd, so we only think of one person, I agree. It’s easier to dance thinking only about the right side of the stage, also when dancers dance all it would then take was the awe of one.

 

Everybody knows that no one knows anybody. My hair is all over the place, but I’m still dressed quite nicely, appropriately for the time of day. I like to think as I walk that maybe people think that I’m from nowhere and that it would take me 5 minutes to explain what my works is. Also, that I tear up at the ocean, that in the midnights of summers I think they are for me, that my longings for apples are so rich I taste them. I know that I do not think that about them, but I delude myself that they see through my eyes. Attempting to poetify myself, but it’s also nice to make things matter more than they do.

 

I turn right at Rue de Bonaparte, and I think of unconditional love. I’ve read of something about it. I think it was the confessions of St. Augustine. I’m not religious to any extent but there’s always something to appreciate. It makes me think of a quote. “There is not a taste, a mannerism, or a human act which is not revealing.”

 

I walked on the road, and I notice a new house pieced together with cement walls, the windows are squares, and the cement is grey, next to it is an old stone house, with engravings on its frames. I stop and stand between the two, my eyes shift between them. I like both. I practice. The cement house is without details, except for little divots for lights that in the daybreak blend with the sidewalk. Its makeup is simple, but it has created a complexity through the mode of conflicting angles. The other house has discoloured light green walls, the door looks carved, vines grow on its side, mangling the stone it has pushed through. Its elements are complex but it still it stands for simplicity, it is more personal. They are in a sense opposite, but they stand for each other, I like them both so maybe they’re closer than they are far from each other. You live in one place, one home, but still you change, and the architecture stays the same. The concrete makes me feel at peace and the vines make me feel alive. Rest and then energy. Sometimes you want to run and other times talking is exhausting.

 

3

 

       I sit down on the bench at Sandymount strand, the crescent blue fades into the spirit of the ocean. Yet the ripples still make sounds, and the foam marks the topography of the waves. It gets warmer, I take my scarf and jacket and use it as a pillow to lie down on the bench. The birds chirp, the wind embraces, and the light eases into my eyes. It baffles me that life can turn so quickly into the markers of a dream, but only then do you feel like you’ve awoken. Mostly the banality of the day, and only shortly the ecstasy of existence. You hear of artists that crumble, at the brush of a full stop, or the lift of a brush, they sink into the ground, and cry. Surely, they have accomplished something so fully, so thoroughly, that they are done, that in that moment purpose has met fulfilment. I laugh because I think about that moment but also about the moment after. I think if I had it, I’d do a lot less things, I would need less things.

 

       You read everything, you try to make something new, but still, you love, you hate, you work, you are social. We still read Othello. I think of Masha. We are born pledged to God, but he in turn pledges himself to her. It almost always is a friend of a friend.

 

       Grafting is of the most beautiful things nature can do. When a plant has a stable root, it can extend the wisps of its leaves in all directions. It knows that no matter the leaves that die, close to its roots it shall be alright. When the grafted vine tries to grow it must simultaneously attempt to grow outwards and establish its roots. It feels out for reservoirs, and she is like a spring. Her presence was like birds harmonizing with the hums of the tree.

 

       Being nothing but yourself, how do you asked to be love? You are not your occupation, where you’re from, not even your traits. Are they not just transitory elements of what it meant to be you? Just windows into the soul, an influence but not a part. How can you love unconditionally if all you see are conditions? Maybe we intuit things past the conditions of a person. Her laugh, the way she sees, makes me see a signature of what it means to be her. I can never know it, but then comes my faith in her image. The way I am must be slightly different from everyone else and the feel of a person must be closer to some than others. Some notes follow other notes.

 

       Knowing that you have seen nothing but yet are prepared to accept everything. Whether they laugh or whine, like red or white, sex in the morning, warm showers in late spring. It never could have been that you did not know this person. It is implausible that they have not understood this as well, impossible because you Know them. The thought of her has purpose woven into the image of her eyes. You have remembered an old promise, and you want her because in the future you already have her.

 

4

 

       Masha walks through the grove of the blossomed tree, and Miha trails behind her watching as she loudly exclaims about the pink blossom. Miha barely knows her at this moment, he has met her only recently, they have met up for a coffee, but now they’re on a walk. He smiles when she smiles and laughs when she does. They end up at a charity shop, she tries on comically large sunglasses, and then stands next to mannequin. She’s very still. Miha laughs.

 

       Miha carries over a ball of red thread and starts undoing the strand and wrapping it around the still Masha. Then they speak of things they laugh about. He tells her every story he has, anything that relates to the conversation. His speeches are followed by her laughs. She mocks his stories and how he speaks and tells terrible jokes, and still he laughs.

 

       They sit for coffee again right by the far window in perfect view of the sun but also dissipated by the condensation, they sit in front of each other, and the light hits Miha on the right side of his face, and Masha on the left. They are no longer talking, as they have nothing left to say, the silence is warm on Miha. He looks out the window and breathes, his shoulders slump, and they stay silent.

 

5

 

       He thinks back and wonders whether he was to Masha, what Danielle was to Kissinger. Either both delusional or sane. He cannot say what it was about Masha, feelings carried with them reasons, but he did not love those reasons. The day spent with her was absent of content or relation, every conversation was a caricature, a comedic offering. He knew as much. To him it was as simple as she just happened to be an extension of himself. You do not get to know yourself in the same way you get to know another.

 

       Miha hated the idea of being absurd and knew that his belief in her likeminded signature was as arbitrary as any perception of another was. To him it was like knowing a melody was sad, or an abstract painting tragic. You absorb what you can, the sounds in the air, the pigments on the canvas, the form, and then you give it an essence. To give it that essence, first you must have faith that on the other side of what you see, it is there. You never know it, but it must be felt.

 

6

 

       Danielle just misunderstood the fickleness of her faith. A charming person bares their neck in every interaction, so you think there is trust, and trust without history feels like a gift of fate. She is not a fool, the connection was as real as any, but it is subject to the whims of perception. He either did not see it or didn’t take the step towards faith. Authenticity is not love it is just a part of it. The shock of connection calls as loudly as love.

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       Love requires authenticity and faith, that is found, but also made. It asks also for whispers, calls for something to share, attraction to hold. I think of Su and know I could love her.