"Ask me a question," I said.
"What was the best day of your life?"
"I do not know how to answer that. There have not been good days, but moments: snow, reading with an animal near my thighs, drinking wine and feeling my mind open briefly, watching summer through my lover's apartment window while I am on top of him. This is ridiculous, I know it is, all of these Mozartian examples trying to say something which is a feeling which may be only mine. Romance. The meaning behind flowers.
Moment:
Noun.
1. A very brief period of time.
2. Importance.
Moment. Money. Monet.
Monet and his water lilies, whose symbolization depends upon their color, not unlike humans with impasto strokes beneath their skin.
Orange: hatred.
White: virginity.
Yellow: quixotic.
Universality. Restoration of innocence after death. Large canvases of petals with their smeared bodies on museum walls, acting like mirrors to the pigmented prayers moving between the ribs of the girls in sweaters like air; bones painted like rainbows and kaleidoscopes.
Born: November 14 1840.
Profession: Painter. Atheist. I one day found myself looking at my beloved wife's dead face and just systematically noting the colours according to an automatic reflex! Clairvoyant, reading the souls of the audience, freeing them from their psychedelic limbs."
"And what does the soul look like?"
"A vampire once told me it is like Bordeaux, but that is only because he is in love with blood. My fingers say my lips, but that is only because I am aware of them touching each other. I heard a man from Asahikawa say it reminded him of winter, but only because he liked to see snow on the maples. The permanence of consciousness is painted red, like scorpions rising from constellations."
"And the flowers in the garden behind Camille, the poppies in Argentuil?"
"Stem cells, cleaning out diseases of the eye and mind."
"But not for Monet?"
"Cataracts are communion wafers, moments of ocular brilliance."
