update from sparkleup
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@ -142,12 +142,20 @@ The silently bereaved already sit graveside.”</p>
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<p>“She said that she was seven,” The Woman said. “I found her joy to be quite different from what I imagine for myself, though, as ought to be the case for someone who has chosen to live as a seven year old versus someone who has perhaps no choice but to love as a 317 year old, yes?”</p>
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<p>“I will say that she is no less flighty or energetic when she chooses to live at older ages. When she is, say, twenty five, there is still no stopping her.”</p>
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<p>“So I am told. However, she is also a very good girl, is she not? Beholden saw the state that I was in — for when Motes started zipping around the house, I started shifting between forms — and suggested that she go and paint. She said quite simply “Okay!” and ran off to the next room where she simply sat on a stool and began painting.”</p>
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<p>I nodded over to a wall, upon which a painting sat. The Woman smiled and nodded.</p>
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<p>I nodded up to the wall beside the couch, upon which a painting sat. The Woman smiled and nodded.</p>
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<p>The painting was of my up-tree’s house. The Instance Artist was one who decided that it had had quite enough of life in comfort, life here on Lagrange, life here honing, or perhaps forging new frontiers but in a familiar place, and up and left for the stars, back when humanity buckled down and decided to send out the two launch vehicles. Our very own twins, yes? Castor and Pollux? Those two half-sized Systems that even still race out of the Solar System at some unimaginable speed, yes? The Instance Artist left us all behind with no fork to spare, and broke all of our hearts.</p>
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<p>When it had lived here on Lagrange, it had contracted my other up-tree, The Sim Designer, to build for it an infinite short-grass prairie. It was a land of long, rolling hills and yet longer flat basins that always drank most thirstily from the seasonal storms that did their best to thrash the earth below. There, amid the countless acres, sat its house, low and flat, an echo of the plains around it all done up in concrete that matched so well the gray-tan stalks of the grass in fall, the gray-green stalks in spring, and glass.</p>
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<p>And so there on my wall sat a painting, small by her standards at only the size of both of my paws held flat, wherein she had painted the house, the endless prairie, and the sky that somehow managed to be something beyond endless. There was the gray of the concrete that matched so well the gray-tan stalks of grass in fall, the gray-green stalks in spring, and glass. There was the plain, the sky.</p>
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<p>And so there on my wall sat a painting that I had asked The Child to make, small by her standards at only the size of both of my paws held flat, wherein she had painted the house, the endless prairie, and the sky that somehow managed to be something beyond endless. There was the gray of the concrete that matched so well the gray-tan stalks of grass in fall, the gray-green stalks in spring, and glass. There was the plain, the sky.</p>
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<p>And there, right in the center, hovering a scant claw-width above the house, a perfectly black perfect square.</p>
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<p>Readers, you must understand that, when I say perfectly black, I do mean it! There is this color, or non-color, <em>Eigengrau</em> that is perhaps the darkest you are used to seeing. If you are in a perfectly dark room, or you are out beneath the stars at night and you close your eyes, or you are hiding under two layers of blankets from the monsters that haunt us still, even in this afterlife that we have built up into our nigh-perfection, what you see is not pure black, but <em>Eigengrau</em>. It is the darkest color, I am told, that our eyes can see, phys-side! This is because, even when there is no light, the nerves of our eyes still fire occasionally. Perhaps it is because this is something that is required for nerve cells to feel healthy, and when those cells are in our muscles and it is just one or two at a time, it does not yank our hand away from our pen and paper like they were burning hot, but when they are in our eyes, every little firing is still perceived as a photon hitting this rod or that cone. Perhaps it is because there is some fundamental state of being for us that is <em>not</em> stillness, that is movement at some molecular level. Perhaps it is simply because they are lonely! I do not know, I do not know. I do not know.</p>
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<p>Readers, you must understand that, when I say perfectly black, I do mean it! There is this color, or non-color, <em>Eigengrau</em> that is perhaps the darkest you are used to seeing. If you are in a perfectly dark room, or you are out beneath the stars at night and you close your eyes, or you are hiding under two layers of blankets from the monsters that haunt us still, even in this afterlife that we have built up into our nigh-perfection, what you see is not pure black, but <em>Eigengrau.</em> It is the darkest color, I am told, that our eyes can see, phys-side! This is because, even when there is no light, the nerves of our eyes still fire occasionally. Perhaps it is because this is something that is required for nerve cells to feel healthy, and when those cells are in our muscles and it is just one or two at a time, it does not yank our hand away from our pen and paper like they were burning hot, but when they are in our eyes, every little firing is still perceived as a photon hitting this rod or that cone. Perhaps it is because there is some fundamental state of being for us that is <em>not</em> stillness, that is movement at some molecular level. Perhaps it is simply because they are lonely! I do not know, I do not know. I do not know.</p>
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<p>This square is not <em>Eigengrau.</em> It is beyond that. It is beyond even black! It is deeper than <em>Eigengrau,</em> yes, but it is also a very thirsty black. If the ground of The Instance Artist’s prairie drinks thirstily of the sky, so too does this black drink thirstily of all the light in the world. It draws light from the room, and when you look at the painting, the world seems dimmer. It is a hole in the world.</p>
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<p>I am used to it, my friends, for it sits happily enough upon my wall, but I am told that it is unnerving to see.</p>
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<p>“Her paintings have always struck me as bearing a sort of serenity that I have not actually seen in the world,” I said after we had appreciated house and plain and sky and hole in the world. “It is more than just some moment of movement captured and frozen in time. It is like she records things that were never still to begin with.”</p>
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<p>“Yes, and that is what drew me to her,” The Woman said, gaze lingering on the painting. “I begged Beholden’s leave to sit and watch Motes for nearly an hour. I claimed a spot in her studio once I received permission and watched as she worked. While I was there, she built up a scene of a mesa. I recognized it as Table Mountain. Do you remember?”</p>
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<p>“Yes,” I said, with some surprise. “I have not thought of that place in…well, likely not since we uploaded!”</p>
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<p>She laughed. “Neither had I. We hiked there once and it seems to have left little enough impression, and Motes simply pulled it up from some deep recess, yes? Seeing that slowly take shape, though, as she worked with her paints, I felt like I was seeing some ancient behemoth who had never once woken laying asleep. It was a mountain that had never moved and never changed, even as a suburb sprawled at its base.”</p>
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<p>“Did she paint the shape while you were there?” I said, gesturing to the black-beyond-black square.</p>
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<p>“No, not while I was looking. I did still have my errand, yes? I did not want to lose track of that. I wish now that I had.”</p>
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<!-- Warmth discusses art with EoE -->
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</article>
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<footer>
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