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Writer's pictureJ. Joseph

The Perfect Painting

The brisk air settles around him, near windless, as Richard settles into his work area. Today is a painting day, everything else is set and fine, but he wants to make something truly beautiful today. The sun burning down on his back feels almost comforting compared to the freezing spring air. This morning had been near perfect, but now he sat staring out at the landscape. A landscape he feels as though he’s painted a thousand times. A landscape that he knows. He takes a bite out of his lunch as he stares, trying to find on the flat piece of wood what sort of painting it wants to be. But, unlike normal, today it seems to not want to speak to Richard. Looking around once more, he notices that the pot of salt is still out here. Perhaps that is the issue. It’s already finished being dehydrated, after all. It shouldn’t be out here. Perhaps his subconscious is trying to remind him to move it inside. That’s why he can’t think of what he should do.

Standing up, Richard heads to the pot, which every morning he hauls out to evaporate more thoroughly. Reaching in, he finds he is right. Almost bone-dry. He doesn’t really understand that expression, bones are rarely actually dry, given they’re inside bodies, but maybe there’s something he’s missing about where the phrase comes from. He’ll need to empty the salt into a new container, so he can use the pot later. Maybe he’ll make soup sometime. He doubts it, but it could happen. With a deep breath to ready himself, he hefts the pot of salt up. It’s not as heavy as it once was. Carrying the pot inside his cabin and downstairs to the basement, he finds the storage jar settled against the wall where he stores the meat. Using his hand to scoop it, he transfers the salt into the jar. Handful by handful the soggy salt fills the jar up. Once it’s all in, he seals it best as it seals and places it carefully in the corner. Then, putting the pot down, he heads back outside to paint.

Seating himself with his paints once more, he gazes at the piece of wood. It’s smooth surface looks inviting for a painting. As he looks, Richard becomes quite proud of the job he did cutting and smoothing this particular one. Clearly it deserves a truly great painting, does it not? He’s more determined than ever to make this one today perfect. Staring at the surface, he thinks about what sorts of things he’s painted before on slabs of wood less perfect than this one. He’s painted this isle from every possible angle by now, of this he’s almost certain. And whenever he does anything interesting on a day, he tries to capture it as well. But today he has not done anything particularly interesting. Certainly not anything worthy of this perfectly made slab of wood. Perhaps something more. His mind starts to grow busy, like it did before he came out here. That isn’t the purpose of this. He’s here to escape such chaos. Taking a moment to breathe deeply, he tries to settle his mind. Thinking once more on the image, he realizes he never did wash the pot. It only had salt in it, of course, but he really should at least rinse it out in the river. In case the salt left in it, baked into the walls, throw off any future stuff he does. And besides, maybe what he really needs is to do something else. Then, inspiration will come. Leaving his paints once more, he heads inside to the basement.

Taking up the ceramic pot once more, Richard hefts it over his shoulder and returns outside. Breathing the brisk air is almost refreshing. A reminder of where he is. And, more importantly, where he isn’t anymore. He begins the trek across his small island, walking into the woods away from all of his things. Towards the rushing river. Where the small river is nice for leaving the island, as the current is fast but not strong, this side the water rushes strong enough to push anything away. A strong current rushing the mountain water down towards the ocean. Not useful for a controlled row to begin, but rather useful for washing things. Or gathering water. It’s mostly clean, after all, and fresh. Though, personally, Richard prefers rainwater to riverwater. Not just because it’s less of a trek to get a simple bucket, but also because it feels more like taking what the world gives him. Besides, if he wants true fresh water, he just rows upstream and chips a big chunk of glacier ice off from one of the glaciers by the mountains and has perfect fresh water for a week. But that isn’t important for today. Today, he’s just going to wash out the pot and get to work on his painting. Today is all about the painting after all.

The river rushes quickly. Touching the water, it feels colder than he expects at first. Sometimes, Richard forgets just how cold the water here gets. Where the brisk air is a wonderful reminder of where he is, he doesn’t actually touch the water enough for that to be a reminder. Not really. But sometimes he needs to. He readies himself and plunges his hands into the water for three seconds, to rinse off any residue that might be on them. Confident his hands are clean enough, he pulls them out from the water and picks back up the pot. Dipping the pot into the rushing water he wrenches it half full back out. Five gallons of water is not insignificant, but that doesn’t stop him. After swirling it in the pot once, twice, thrice, he tosses the water back into the river. Just a little saltier. Doesn’t much matter to the water, where it’s headed is much saltier. Think of it as a bit of preparation. Waiting for the salty water to wash downstream a bit, he looks around this spot. When he comes to this side of island, he never really has a set spot. He doesn’t come that often, either. It’s not particularly useful, and there is the occasional boat speeding through. More often he’s out here, the more likely one of those boat drivers notices him. Anyways, it’s just more calming in his cabin. And the other side of the isle has actual uses. Looking across the river, he notices a tree he hasn’t seen before, at least not from this angle. It seems to hover over the water, not quite imposing itself on the world so much as freeze-framing itself as it falls on its face. It’s almost entertaining. Dipping the pot into the river once more, he repeats the process.

After three rinses, Richard runs his finger along the bottom of the pot and tastes it. No salt, at least not enough to notice. That’s good enough, then. He’s found since he came out here cleanliness is important, but some things are just unnecessary wastes of time. Anything beyond rinsing for things that you use on a fire is one of those wastes. Washing is for getting rid of bacteria and other microbes. And what else does that? Heating things up to the extreme temperatures needed to cook things. So, knowing the pot is clean enough for use here, he slings it once more over his shoulder and heads inland, back to his cabin.

Once he’s made it back, he heads to his cabinet and returns the ceramic pot to its proper place. With a sigh, Richard nods. This is good. Nothing else to distract him. Nothing to do until it’s time to gather eggs for the evening. Heading back out to his paints he sits down. Perhaps that tree could provide inspiration, after all, he noted it and things he notes are either important or interesting, never boring. But as he begins to form the image in his mind’s eye, it isn’t quite right. Sure, it’d be a fine. But fine isn’t what he’s looking for. No he needs it to be perfect. And that tree, it would almost be too perfect. While it looked funny, and seemed interesting, it also lacked any flaws. The little things that make things that are beautiful seem truly unique. Truly perfect. And if he went across the river, saw the tree up close, he could probably find those small, lovely flaws in the picturesque nature of the falling tree, but as is, it is a background image. He needs something to put in the foreground.

Frustrated, Richard takes a moment. Putting down the wood and the paints, he breathes. He lets his worries fall away. He feels the sun on his back. The still air slowly and softly push against his cheek. The quiet rush of the somewhat distant rivers. The naturally rhythmic clucking of the chickens. He forgets himself for a moment, forgets his worry, his expectation, his need for calm. Instead, he simply is. And opening his eyes, he picks back up the wood. He has the background. He should get to work on that. Perhaps, in working on the painting, the rest will come to him in the moment.

Starting with the sky, as he often does for these landscape images, Richard decides that the beauty of night would be a good place. Night has cooler lighting, calmer tones than day or twilight. Using dark blues and deep purples, he mixes together a nighttime sky without stars. A swath at the top of his wood of pure night, almost like that visible from a city. But that isn’t what the night is, not here. Pulling out his knife, he gives the night a texture to it, carving tiny stars out from the sky. They are, after all, behind the night. And the inside of the wood is bright, especially compared to the rest of the sky. Then, taking a dark gray, he adds the other end of texture. A sky is not flat. The stars lay behind it, for sure, but there is also texture in front of the sky. Thin, dark clouds which, while not blocking the light, can obscure things. Taking the gray and dragging it over the sky in thin, uneven, and asymmetrical lines, and smearing and mixing the paint beneath each line, he has his cloudy night sky.

In front of the sky, he needs the treeline. Vague but clear. Deep, dark greens with hints of brown bark and flowering splashes of white and red. The treeline must be homogenized enough to make the falling tree pop, like it had when he looked across the water, but not so homogenized that it feels unreal. Carefully, rather than as a whole, he individually crafts each tree at the front of the woods, leaves, and branches. And he does so, trying each time to make the same tree. That’s how you get things that look essentially the same but feel different enough not to be wrong. Because, good as someone might be, no two things they make will look the exact same. And those slight differences are enough that, subconsciously, people tend to feel them to be different objects. Eventually, the treeline takes shape.

With the treeline present, Richard moves on to the shore, brown slabs of mud with flares of light green grass pushing its way free from the soil. Then the river, a dark blue mass with aqua highlights to make it pop. The white waves in the water, pushing everything downriver with the current. And finally the tree, falling over. The moon highlighting the top front of the ridiculous tree. With it all there, he knew his initial instinct was right. This painting, it felt lacking. Like it was missing something. Gazing at it for a moment, he realizes exactly what it needed. The story isn’t the tree, but the finding of the tree. With a thin, dark paint, he adds in the foreground, on the other side of the wood from the falling tree, a silhouette. Adding in the only lit area of the person his own unkempt brown hair, splaying out from the silhouette’s head, he smiles. The painting is good enough. Not perfect, but now, looking at it, he realizes it never needed to be perfect. It just needs to be what it should be.

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