Friday, September 09, 2011

It was only after you proposed a new adventure that I paused, caught in the puzzlingly indestructible beam of your glance. And here I had thought it was just the sunlight filtering down through the trees, all this time. Had I turned just a moment later I might have crashed into that beam and smashed all the plates in my hand, never really understanding that what was getting in the way was only how you were looking at me. But I saw, and everything shifted, and it turned out there was adventure just in front of me where before I had only seen tables and chairs. In the usual way.

Last night I went to look at some Bierstadt paintings, glowing sweetly through all of the rooms. It's probably not surprising that my favorite was the one that turned out to be almost entirely imagined, a landscape based on what he thought rather than what he had actually seen.