When I got home I did exactly as I was told. I did not pass
go, did not collect two hundred dollars, I sat down on the large paper spread
out on my living room floor and set to it. With the back of my hand I brushed
away the layer of dust, grit and hair and began searching among the fifty or
more sharpies scattered around for a blue that still had some life left.
After weeks of standing over the thing, I began making marks
again, cross-hatching at first, figuring in the slight muscle along the back of
the bird’s neck. I’d been at it long enough I didn’t even need to look at the
book for reference anymore. The geography of the drawing was well known to me. The little blue heron had finally begun to
emerge from the stand of reeds, except at five foot by seven, it consumed my living
room easily.
There was no other proper marker besides blue in the sets I
brought home from Wal-Greens. Not even in the pastel twelve pack I’d
experimented with one time. The only way to go was blue upon blue, more blue
for shadows, maybe some black along the outer perimeter to set down hard lines. Thousands of marks laid down finally achieved
a solid layer of color. It had formed something that resembled feathers
covering its thorax. The fine plumes wisping from its neck like a beard almost
swayed with the wind coming up from the bend in the great river below.
I drew until my back was ruined and my knees ached and then
I kept drawing. I poured everything I had into it, layering until the cobalt
beneath me acquired a depth I could peer into, teasing out blue with hundreds
of marks. Like a thousand cuts into flesh, or a thousand arrows falling from
the sky to pierce me, I drew until everything fell away. I was a diver above the impossible sapphire expanse
of the Gulf Stream, almost tumbling into the abyss. I carved Xs into the breast
of the bird, crosshatching or scribbles writhing across the landscape of its
wings like a new language. An insane person outlining the figure of God, I was
a broken vessel made whole again, and being filled from heaven, it was all I
could do to lay my art down on paper.
