August 29, 2000
This is not what I expected to happen.
aklw
For V-chan
We walk down the beach in companionable silence, and I can't help but admire the way the water mirrors the sun. It glows suspiciously, and my mind thinks of thermal detonators and C4 charges.
"Nice, huh? Looks like a peach," he says, grinning at me under the wide brim of that ridiculous hat. Everything about him, from those violet-tinted eyes to that long rope of a braid, is ridiculous, larger than life. "You know," he says, winking at me, softly, "you don't seem like the kind of guy that likes to go on walks on a beach at sunset."
Words die in my throat. That's happening to me more and more. I shrug and he laughs, a low chuckle that is reminiscent of wood chimes. What would I say, if I had the words? But thinking in terms of 'suppose' and 'what if' isn't what I was brought up to do, so I shuffle my feet a bit and make uncomfortable noises, hoping he'll drop the subject.
"Why can't you smile more?"
"I'm not the kind of person that smiles when they're not happy."
"And I am?" he demands. "You're selfish to hide like that."
"You're always smiling. That's hiding, too." And suddenly, as if something I have said amuses him, his face lights up like one of those explosions from the fireworks he dragged me to see on the fourth of July. I almost expect to hear a bang as he overextends himself. We walk in silence for a moment, and then he speaks, slowly, as if he is discussing a world-shattering epiphany rather than him always smiling.
"Have you ever studied classical history?" he asks. I shake my head. We both know why; there is no reason to elaborate. The unspoken understanding, more than our experiences, has made us friends. "Ever seen the portraits of the royal families? Those were dignified people, not like royalty is now. Now, the emphasis is on the realism of the depiction; all of it. The warts, the crooked noses, the sagging chins. Do you suppose people just grew uglier, a kind of de-evolution?" He sighs and answers his own rhetorical question.
"No," he decides firmly, "it was the painter that made the difference and not the subjects. They saw the beauty.
"I see it too. Have you ever watched the way a flock of seagulls flies together and the gray shapes between their bodies, the negative space, shifts and moves? If you close your eyes, it's like music. Here now, and gone in the next instant, but the reverberations still contract. I'll bet my braid you've never noticed the way you can see faces, pictures in a tangled basket of string.
"I like to look at sunsets. It looks like someone splashed the clouds with watercolors, and the paints dripped down, color by color, staining the sun. It's messy, it's wrong and it's edgeless. It's as close to human as anything else.
"When I look at a ripe tomato, bulging at the seams, on a twisted vine, the red bright and bold against the green leaves, or a foil candy wrapper flapping like a flag in the wind, I think, 'God must be in these things.'
"It's the explanation I use because I can't bring myself to be angry at Him for taking from me. He gives so much; most people can't see it because His gifts are effortlessly woven into our lives to the point where everything, if you look closely and ask no questions, is beautiful."
Then he suddenly pokes my arm, dispelling the ethereal fog around us, and I'm almost--but not quite--surprised to see tears, red in the light reflecting from the ocean, gathering in the corners of his slanted eyes. Solemnly, he wipes them off, painting his smile back on with the palm of his hand and snorts at a joke I can't hear.
I want to laugh, but I don't know how. So I just stare off into the grass growing on the very tops of the sand dunes, like the last strands of a balding man, and try to see.
Uh...^^; that was interesting.
Ariana
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