June 2023
"They’re part of your life," she said, "you should have them".
Most visitors said her ‘Miesian box' was strange. One visitor, when she worried about her less than clean windows, remarked that it is not the windows you see, but what is beyond.
She fell into some paintings. Large canvases of impasto colours seemingly layered by chance - at least he, the artist claimed; were actually, she thought, layered by an existence of past into present. She saw into them, into him. She saw his depth bleed within turbulent seas of paint like the waves he surfed, while below, a taniwha, pushed and pulled.
The house she built had a three-meter stud height with white walls, and floor to ceiling windows. Her mother always said a kitchen should have a good view. Hers was a wide sky lighting up hillsides of native bush, layered in perfect perspective to the sea. Blue upon green upon blue.
She cared for the paintings while he went north, and then even further, for even longer, moving, travelling, pushing and pulling. She watched seasons of flickering light pass over terrains of painted canvas.
The taniwha rose. So, she cared even more for his paintings, like they were a heart to keep beating.
One day, he put his bed out in an old church with many walls and small windows. A place where the current coterie of girlfriends could visit with limited life pot plants.
It was easy to get him to take them back. It was easy to convince him that he should take all his paintings, even the ones he had gifted her.
Her house, her Miesian box house, tall and wide, has white, pure walls and big, big windows.
©Bice Grace Lapin
Bice Grace Lapin 