At first the line was invisible; its existence was only known in the creases of my brain reinforced by the six planes of my studio apartment. It was comforting knowing it was there like the comfort of having my bed also act as my couch. As it was invisible, I could ignore it, and, like most invisible things, its silence and non-presence made it manifest.
It all started with some spaghetti sauce. I inadvertently knocked the sauce pot's handle with my careless elbow. The sauce flew everywhere, all over the apartment making a huge mess. As I cleaned on bended knees, I left one long sauce line down the center of my apartment essentially making two rooms. That was only the beginning.
I lived with that line for months as if a friend was on holiday. It became my companion coming with me as a whisper whenever I left my home. It pointed out differences with each step leaving in my shadow an acute awareness of uniqueness. The man over there with the similarly long black hair is lighter skinned than me, which I always noted, and that lightness wasn't quite white, which I hadn't noticed. The woman, yes we are differently gendered, has a manner of walking, of placing her feet carefully one in front of the other, that speaks of control, definitely a similarity, and also of intention, definitely a difference. The child with the gray eyes who races down the street chasing after an escaped ball runs carelessly bounding and galumphing and unaware of the cars weaving around her -- not s single similarity. I saw this child daily. Never before had I compared myself to her. There hadn't been a desire.
Then, one Thursday, right before my shift at The Groggery, a tall thin straight shape approached me. Cloaked by shadows, I couldn't see their face. It held out a small piece of purple chalk on what I assumed to be a hand. The line in my head recognized the chalk and grabbed it. Then, that tall thin straight shape dispersed into the shroud behind it. I put the chalk in my coat pocket.
At The Groggery, I slammed a shot of tequila unnerved by the perplexing figure and unsure why I took the chalk. Then, another. And another. And finally another. Four shots in twenty minutes and still no customers, so I did another and locked the door. It was time for the stronger spirits stored in a locked cabinet in the back.
Something about the chalk bothered me. All I could think about was Harold and the Purple Crayon. He had imagination. I just had my line. I hated Harold. He was different than me. I had to leave my mark.
I pulled the chalk out of my pocket and drew a straight line from the bar to the door at the back. The line continued up the door. Then, I opened the door and continued the line on the red brick floor until it reached the cabinet door, the door with the lock I didn't have the key for. I wanted in. It was another line between me and something else. "Break it," whispered my line, and I drew a line down the middle of the lock. And...it snapped. Right there in front of me the lock fell off the cabinet into two separate pieces.
The bottle was long and slender like a Riesling wine bottle. Its neck delicate almost as if it was meant to be snapped in half. The liquid a neon violet, similar to the neon blue of Hypnotiq, beckoned drinking. I drew a line down the middle. A loud crack, and it split in two. The spirits flowed out of the cabinet and all over the brick floor. Too late for drinking out of a cup, I lapped it up like a cat.
The booze whirled through my head curving my line. I saw new shapes and prospects and alternatives divide my brain. No longer was it singular. Yet even as they multiplied and morphed and mutated they were all derivations of the first line, the invisible line. There were boxes and circles and spirals and winding lines that formed figures. There were landscapes and horizons and twisting roads. There was an entire world, and I saw for the first time how everything is a line: that same invisible line. Yet my mind or my body or my humanity rejected similarity. While there were lines, there was also space, and without that I wouldn't have seen those figure or horizons. Dizzy and confounded, I slept. Then, I dreamt.
I stood at the edge of a horizon staring into a void a line firmly beneath my feet.
Then, it moved. It rose from under my feet stretching infinitely over the void. It was the same tall thin straight shape that gave me the purple chalk. It obstructed everything. At once, it completely surrounded me encasing me in its borders, making it impossible to discern myself from it. I wondered where I began and what made me me. I couldn't feel my body, but my mind...it was independent, autonomous. I knew it wasn't the line. Yet, I was the line. There were no distinctions, no demarcations in any physical way.
But there was thought, Without borders -- clear definitions, limitations, expectations -- how do I know the difference between us? How do I separate myself from the landscape that's enveloped me? What is the real difference between positive and negative space?
A shiver.
Is that a thought just made manifest? No...There in the line surrounding me. That... It is that beautiful purple chalk: finite, solid, bound. It is distinctly not me, distinctly not the line.
Somewhere else, my body slept on the red brick, my body sprawled over the line I drew, the neon violet wetting my face.
But here...the purple chalk beckons. The line soothes. One must give way to the other. It must. Or........?
It all starts with an invisible line in the creases of my brain.
And it ends here: with purple chalk in my hand and a purple line surrounding me. I draw it. It draws me.
And my body...? It has dissolved into the neon violet, and it now sits in a slender bottle whose delicate neck is easily snapped locked in a cabinet in The Groggery waiting for a simple line of purple chalk.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
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