The Art of Nothing

Apr 20, 2008 - 18:05 PM PST

Chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, shadows, and the movie White Christmas. What do all these things have in common? Nothing, not anymore that is.
I felt like an invisible hand had wrapped its sharp rounded fingers around my heart and squeezed. Tighter…tighter…soon the pulse under the unrelenting fingers would stop with an explosion and the people around me innocently gorging themselves with food would be showered with the soggy debris of my shattered flesh.
“Too full for cake?”
Tammie’s gray eyes searched my face but soon a mocking smile swept across her skeletal lips
“You’re right!” she said without waiting for my answer
“This gray matter they call food would make anyone sick.”
“Who said I was sick?” I said and I was surprised by my sharp tone
“Come on. You seriously think that you can hide anything from the world…or especially me? Everything you are thinking goes right across your face.”
She loaded her fork with the cake that crumbled and fell like ash onto her plate as she lifted it to her mouth.
“I guess you just know me too well.” I tried to concentrate on bringing the blood back to my numb fingers and legs.
“You’re right, Tammie. It must be the food…” I said and tried pumping my fingers
“Yeah you haven’t been looking too well lately, you know. We should complain. I heard that Calvin Rodriguez got food poisoning so badly from here one time, the doctors had to remove his spleen!” Tammie’s eyes looked as if they would fly from her head if she tried to open her lids any further
“His spleen?” The rumor was absurd, but I couldn’t help but give it a little thought
“Yeah…do you remember how everyone thought Calvin ditched school those two weeks to go see his ‘cousin’ in Colorado?...”
I nodded and chased a pea around the plate in front of me with my spoon
“Well, he wasn’t!” She slapped her open palm onto the table and made me and the pea on my plate jump into the air.
“No! You don’t say!” I let my spoon drop and threw the back of my hand onto my forehead with an exaggerated gasp of disbelief.
“Yes way!...” Tammie’s face remained serious. Her lack of ability to recognize sarcasm astounded me sometimes.
“He was actually recovering in Palo Alto after getting his spleen removed!”
“Do you know the actual function of the spleen, Tammie?” I asked while attempting to split the pea with the side of my spoon
“I don’t know…but I know something was wrong with Calvin’s!”
“That’s not the only thing that’s wrong with Calvin.”
“I don’t see what you have against him, Sydney. He’s super fun to hang out with!”
“Yeah, fun like taking hot pokers to your eyes!” I plucked my wallet from the table and stuffed it into my sweater pocket
“You should at least go out with him once.”
I looked at her and raised one eyebrow while twisting my lips to one side. That had shut her up before, but today it didn’t seem to have any effect.
“He might stop asking you out, you know, if you keep rejecting him all the time.” I stood and lifted my food tray from the soft pink table top
“That’s the point.”
I walked towards the rotating conveyer belt where I discarded my plates, some still scattered with untouched food. I always felt bad about leaving food on my plates. Not because of “poor starving children in China”, but I didn’t want to give the students washing my dishes more work than necessary. Tammie on the other hand delighted in mixing as many disgusting food articles as possible into one rancid concoction she then tried to make some poor freshman drink by promising him a date that she never intended to go on. She hadn’t tried this stunt around me more than once. The one occasion where I did happen to witness her little game, I forced her into actually going on the date by threatening to expose to the rest of the cafeteria one of her most embarrassing fifth Grade moments. Such as the incident where she stuffed her training bra with water balloons with hopes of impressing, Sam, the boy she insisted was her future husband. Her undulating synthetic bosoms remarkably lasted through the first half of the day until math class. Tammie had forced her way into being partnered with Sam for a difficult problem, and while leaning across her desk to grab her pencil, the pointed end of her metal protractor punctured her right breast and sent a spew of water over her desk and Sam while giving her light blue blouse the look of excessive lactation. Tammie would like to forget that moment forever, but memories are hard to kill, especially when I am protecting them. Tammie and I had been friends since the second grade and even as we went our separate ways in high school, me with my art and Tammie with her…well, whatever it is she does, we managed to stay absently close. I guess I considered her to be the physical form of my Jungian shadow, my inescapable other half that I try my hardest to ignore but somehow can’t live without. I gave Tammie a half wave as I abandoned the cafeteria and left her mixing mustard and samael olek sauce in a foggy drinking glass, waiting for her next victim.
I walked alone into the engulfing arms of the brisk wind. I have always liked to imagine the fog from the wharfs as it rolled through the streets gathering the rank soul of the city as it passed and carrying it treacherously until it dissipates into the night air. The air smelled of salt, seaweed and car exhaust and yet, I loved it. The sun was setting and the moon was becoming brighter behind the silhouette of the Transamerica building.
I strode through the small campus that, at first sight, appeared to be a collection of random buildings and old houses reconstructed to be part of the Arts Academy. I soon arrived at my destination, a homey looking building made of grey stone and small high windows. The Student Art Studio was usually busy with students trying desperately to produce the timeless masterpiece to their professor’s deadlines. This time was no different. Large ceiling fans rotated circulating the air that was filled with ominous emotions of poetic despair and simplistic frustration. I tried to quiet my steps as I wove between canvases relentlessly splattered with unnatural colors and images. The soft gliding voice of Bing Crosby singing “I’m….Dreaming of a White….Christmas….” met my ears and I smiled at the small battery powered radio propped against the wall. I had always loved the movie White Christmas and looked forward to hearing the soundtrack played every year. I sighed when I finally reached my corner and unlocked the cupboard that held my paints, brushes, solvents and other mixtures of browning goop that I used to either thin or solidify my paints. After the careful arranging of my pallet and paint mixtures, I released my large canvas from the tarp that held my painting captive under its smothering grasp. The unfinished painting glared at me, taunting me to finish it, but not my way, the way it demanded. The canvas held the abstract image of a woman’s torso lying on what appeared to be a push rug. The elegant curves of her waist and bosom were draped in ivory satin cloth and as I studied her, I could almost see the smooth fabric move like glossy waves with her breath. My brush carried my hand to the dark color of dried blood and I started swirling the image in the relentless hue. The scraping sound of the brush against canvas captivated my mind and I heard nothing else and saw nothing else, only red, red, red. My brush carried my arm faster, faster until I felt my shallow breaths become one with the strokes. My breath stopped as my knees submitted to a concentrated burning sensation in my right breast. I dropped to the floor clutching my palpitating flesh between my groping fingers but the pain only intensified like a raging inferno being coaxed to grow higher, higher, hotter, hotter. My head lay helpless on the cement floor which felt like ice compared to the stabbing heat piercing the cavity of my chest. The dried blood from my brush oozed from its hairs and stung my eyes. I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t move. No one seemed to notice my agony.
HELP!! HELP!!
I screamed within the confinements of my own mind but nobody heard.
Help me! Help me! The paint…the blood! I can’t see…it stings! It BURNS!
Red, red, RED. It’s all I saw for an eternity, then the world was black.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________



My head throbbed with the darkness as my blood heaved through my temples like a gushing river of lava that seeped from every pore.
What is that noise?
The soaring sound of tunneled whistles and beeps sang like an orchestra of whales through my mind. I felt tears form behind my eyes and dropping acid as each drop dribbled out of their sockets.
“Sydney? Sydney! Are you all right?”
The resonating voice of a man grew into my consciousness. I noticed my skin was warm again and I felt like a newborn child as I filled my lungs with the bitter air.
“Why are you crying? Is it the painting?”
I gathered all the energy within my body to lift my eyelids and see a small canvas propped askew in front of me. The sun was shining through sheer portions of scattered clouds in the sky and a seagull cried and dove to the pavement to steal a lost piece of sourdough bread in front of me. Embarcadero Street buzzed with the usual energy from eager tourists, shoppers, and business men dressed in pressed black and white suits tailored for their rounding bodies. The canvas my eyes were fixed upon sat tilted on a homemade easel displaying its slathered surface of at least fifteen shades of pewter grays and blacks so deep they seemed to disappear into the void of my reality.
I felt the weight of a hand slide across my abdomen and rest gently above my navel. My mind silenced.
“What did you say?” I turned to face the owner of the coarse hand that embraced me. I allowed my eyes to rest on his long face whose angles could have been cut from jagged stones. Brown eyes stared back at me and his dark hands rose to cradle my face in their palms.
“You’re scaring me Syd…is it the…”
“No! No…I just thought I heard uh…whales.”
His black eyebrows came together as he wrinkled his eyes, the way he always did when he was worried or confused. “Whales?” He glanced over his shoulder toward the stagnant sea that was almost completely obscured by mildewing concrete buildings. “I’ve heard you say a lot of weird things, but that has to be climbing the charts as one of the strangest!”
I readied my index finger and gave him a quick jab to the rib cage. Yet, he was right, what was I saying . . .? I shook my head and felt my short hair brush against the sides of my cheeks, I loved that feeling.
“You’re right. I guess this painting just REALLY caught my attention with its marvelous display of…talent.” I laughed, he knew as well as I did that the painting I was looking at was one of the worst we had ever seen. He laughed and put is arm around my waist again.
“All right, whatever you say, Syd! You’re the expert!” He rolled his eyes dramatically but smiled down at me displaying two rows of teeth that seemed to be almost too large for any single person’s face. “Maybe we should go home. You’re not looking so well. You know what the doctor said about being careful with the…”
“I know!” I cut him off then regretted my venomous tone and attempted to soften my voice. “I know…” I twisted the golden band that encircled my left hand ring finger “You don’t need to be so protective, Calvin.”
“How do you expect me to act? You’re my life now! You and the baby.”
I couldn’t help but smile and put my arm around his waist as well.
“You know I love you, but being pregnant doesn’t mean I’m dying or about to crumble with the slightest touch!”
His face widened with a grin “Oh yeah? You think so, Mrs. Melodramatic? How about we find out?” His fingers turned from being loving cradles into mischievous spiders as they coiled around the sides of my ribs and tickled my body without mercy. My knees started to buckle and I couldn’t control my wheezes of laughter. He loved ever minute of my torture, I always knew he was twisted.
“What’s happening?”
A soft male voice thundered in my brain and I pushed Calvin’s hands away from me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked and his eyebrows came together again.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes you did! Stop messing with my head!” I took a step away from him to look at his face for a more accurate reading to see if he was lying.
“Okay Sydney. I think it’s time to go home now.” He wasn’t lying.
“I think maybe you’re right…” My heart quivered inside my chest and I felt tears once again rising to my eyes. I wanted to know the answer to the man’s question….what was happening?
“It’s ok honey…” Calvin took my hand and started led me toward the BART entrance. “How ‘bout I make you some cake when we get home? Chocolate with cream cheese frosting! That’s still your favorite isn’t it?”
I nodded and squeezed his hand allowing myself to be guided. Our steps padded simultaneously weaving ourselves between the crowds. Gradually I felt Calvin’s pace increase and his fingers tightened around my hand until I felt like my bones would crumble into a powdery residue in his fist. Faster and faster he pulled me by the hand through the streets. My feet felt like they had ceased touching the pavement that blurred under my eyes and I was weightless rushing again into endless darkness. My body bloated wider with every second that passed into nothingness and I could feel as each hair on my body detach itself until I felt myself exposed and shivering.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

My stomach shriveled into my chest and I prepared to feel my bones splinter from a sudden fall while every muscle in my body tightened in anticipation of the cruel ground below. I convulsed in a single fitful leap when I felt my back rub against a firm substance. Air rushed out my lungs and through my parted lips into a wheeze but followed by a sigh of relief at the realization that I was still breathing. I opened my eyes and stared at a textured beige ceiling that hung above my head like a foggy sky or the lid of a coffin, I couldn’t decide which at the moment. I blinked several times in hopes of clearing my head from the spinning, dream induced state of panic and incoherent thoughts. I hoped I hadn’t woken Calvin, the last falling dream I had I nearly rolled off of our king sized, platform bed and onto the hardwood floor. Calvin snorted and slurped in a trail of drool that oozed from the corner of his mouth as he slept on his stomach in a spread-eagle position. I remember when we bought this bed Calvin argued that a queen sized mattress would be enough room for the both of us to sleep comfortably. I insisted on a king precisely for moments like these where I lay recoiled from his protruding legs and dangled on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t help but snicker as he crumpled his nose in a look of distain but then smiled in response to some figment of his dream. I liked to imagine the figment was me whenever he smiled in his sleep. I used my index finger to stroke his coarse black hair at his temples but retracted my hand when he snorted again and dug his face deeper into the mountain of pillows cradling his head.
My toes tingled as I wiggled them under the white goose-down comforter that reminded me of soft puffy clouds sewn together. I shivered from the cold air that circulated around me and tried to ignore the prickling feeling that crawled up my calves as I stepped onto the slick wood floor. I pulled my robe from its resting position over the bedpost and clutched it like child to its security blanket as I wrapped the satin fabric over my shoulders and around my waist. It was time for me to make my routine late-night trip to the baby’s room. I stepped gently down the curved staircase and though the dim hallway, careful to avoid the plank of wood on the right side of the hall that groaned when stepped on. I was still surprised at how the aroma of the fir Christmas tree standing in the living room filled every room of the spacious house. I couldn’t stop my lips from crawling into a shallow smile as I glanced at the silhouettes of my paintings that hung on many of the beige walls of our new home. I could still hear Calvin’s voice, intensified with excitement, on the day we moved in.
“Can you believe it?” His eyes shone with ecstatic disbelief that mirrored my own. The high ceilings and bare walls echoed his voice back to us and he yelped to hear his own call sounded back to him before running up the double staircase taking the steps three at a time with his lengthy legs. That was a year ago but I still retained a portion of my surprised and disbelief of the success of my paintings. Calvin was right to ask that day if I could believe our good fortune, because I couldn’t.
My fingers slid through the crack between the door and the frame that allowed a sliver of light to peek into the baby’s room. She was four years old but Calvin and I still couldn’t help but call her “the baby.” Dark waves of fine hair caressed her rounded cheeks as her quick and almost inaudible breath rustled the fine strands. I stood and watched her eyes flutter for what seemed like seconds that floated through the air like humming bird wings suspended in time. Every night when I watched her dream, I couldn’t help but imagine what she would become and prayed that a part of me could help her grow into what she was dreaming of.
The loose plank in the hallway behind me groaned. Strange, Calvin never wakes up this time of night. I narrowed my eyes to better discern the shapes though the looming shadows and the hallway fell silent. Maybe his is sleep-walking. I closed the baby’s door to its standard position and walked down the hallway on the balls of my feet. I scanned the entryway and staircases when I passed and crept into the living room where the giant Christmas tree and my favorite paintings hung. My arms felt stiff and my sides and my feet became weighted anchors to the floor when I realized that three of my paintings had disappeared from their hooks on the walls and several others lie on their faces as if waiting to be transported by an invisible hand. The shadows that grazed my feet shifted from behind and an inky outline of an elongated figure slid up the hall I just passed through. The image of my sleeping daughter engulfed my mind and my legs regained their freedom. With hands and knees shaking, I ran towards the hallway. A dark slender figure moved with slow steady walk with his neck thrust in front of the rest of his body moved up the hall and towards the door where the baby slept. I sprinted for the staircase in hopes of waking Calvin before the intruder reached her, but my movements did not go unnoticed and the stranger spun on his toes towards me.
“Calvin!” I screamed with burning panic that froze on my lips when I heard a deafening crack that split my ears and I crumbled to the ground against the first step on the staircase. “Calvin!” I tried to shriek again but instead of the name escaping my mouth, a glob of warm liquid was regurgitated onto the cream colored rug that warmed the wood floor. I clutched below my right breast where I felt a more blood escape. I heard the intruder drop his weapon and dash from me. I didn’t care where he went, as long as it was away from her. I fingered the bullet’s exit wound and tried to plug the throbbing cavity with my index finger but I could no longer feel my hands. The blood pooled in front of me and its bitter fingers crawled toward my face until the liquid stung my eyes. I heard Calvin calling my name and rapid, heavy footsteps descending the stairs. The baby is crying, she probably needs her pacifier, it’s on the night stand…I’ll get it. Why won’t my legs move?
“My wife has been shot!” Calvin sobbed into his cell phone and I could feel his warm, trembling palms embrace the sides of my head. “Please, please send someone right now!” I felt a drop of something drip onto my check and roll into my mouth, it was salty like warm sea water. “My address is…”
“The baby is crying.” I told him again and again, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I was so cold and glad Calvin kept his hands on the side of my head and forehead. “I hear whales.” I said before coughing through the blood filling my lunges. The screams of the ambulance steadily grew closer but not soon enough to make me warm again. Lots of men stood around me, but the baby was still crying.
“What’s happening?” Calvin said.
Even though I couldn’t feel it, I tried to wave my hand through the air for Calvin. I felt colder and it became increasingly painful and difficult to breath, like inhaling warm, thick water. I felt my arm stop its flailing and was supported with a firm pressure. I smiled and tried to squeeze Calvin’s hand that I knew held mine.
Then there was nothing.

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They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes, like a reel of film spinning out of control and you’re the only one in the theater to see it, but that’s not entirely true. You are never a casual observer in your own life. I lived more during the twisted moment of my death then I did counting the minutes in life. I was no longer Sydney the friend, who became the student, then artist, then wife, then mother. In a single simultaneous moment engulfing eternity I was complete, I was one person despite time and I could see my masterpiece was finished. Not the way I imagined, but the way it demanded. Chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, shadows, and the movie White Christmas. What do all these things have in common? Me, I am nothing yet I am everything. I am the moment, the nothingness that slips away before you realize its past; this is the art of nothing.