Pasty Fact

"Like easy zesty."
I had no idea what she meant, so I just turned and walked out of the kitchen. The conversation was going nowhere. It hadn't started anywhere. She just opened her mouth and chopped out little blocks of sound. It's the kind of talk that you can't write down because writing means you put the words in order and decide where to lay them down. This was just the little pidgeons of thought evacuating a head.
"Why are you leaving? Come back I haven't told you what I wanted to tell you yet -"
Her voice was muffled as I walked away. Now was not the day to tell me that you wanted to tell me about the shape of the origami that you made. That's what she was going to tell me. I always pretended to be interested, enthusiastic even, so she always made sure to tell me when she had come up with a "new" shape. A new figure. That was what she really needed, a new figure, a new model. I could give her one. I thought I could. I thought I was one. I had it backwards.
"Are you coming back?" she had walked to the bottom of the stairs, but I was already sealed away in the study. That's what we called it, "the study," with its three walls of bookshelves and the old dense furniture, but no one used it for study. It was where I created, where we had decided I would be left to myself. The shelves were, on the left, lined with solid materials - blocks of divers woods and metals. On the right were the finished works, shapes of men and animals at first, then more intricate miniature buildings, machines, and beings. The most recent, an arachnid shape, crouched away from the others were I had left it, not sure if I was fully ready for it to enter the collection. I had moved on to the next piece, but that spider wouldn't quite let me go, I was still enmeshed in its barely felt threads.
She went back the kitchen. I saw her in my mind, rubbing her hands on the apron at her waist and shaking her head to herself. Her mind always seemed to be jogging forward with flippant energy. It allowed her to be satisfied with bread and origami. It allowed her to create small things and move on, go forward. She would never achieve the things I had, I knew, because she could not. She didn't have the patience, couldn't channel her energy. It was the settling, the focus over time, on one thing, persistently twisting every fiber of my mind into one cord, turning to one creation, one act of generation, that allowed me what I could do.
I stood and looked at that spider.
Its body was a house. I'd made it a huge lumpy and collapsing box of mansion that I had seen at the bottom of a landslide when I was five years old. It had ridden down from the top of a ridge when the brown clay beneath it had given way. I had heard it in the midst of a childish game and run to see, gazing in awe at the deep channel it had cut down the steep cliff side. It sat, after its careen, like a man who had run his heart to death, with every corner pulled away and every gable roof sagging in. All the lines that had been straight were twisted and clay was splashed over the old stone sides, in through the ravaged floor, and spilled out over the threshold.
That picture, that house sagging after the hillside had had its way, had never left me. I carried in the back closet of my mind, in the corner where gauzey veils obscured it. I never remembered it in times of concentration, never landed on it, never conjured it up when I was working, when I was envisioning a project, but on the days when I was free, when I was away from work on vacations at the shore or walking under a brilliant sun by some verdant bank it would sneak out. I would see it, see its dark eyes chewing at the light that seemed to reveal it. I would always remind myself that some day I would need to use it, use it's striking face in one of my works, but I never did. I always retreated. It was the idea that I always knew I needed to remember, but never could.
But I had. I had remembered it last week, had decided on the spider as its form, had spent only two days and had brought it to life. Looking at it on the shelf I judged it the best work yet. I had never turned out a better work. The miniscule stones were textured with my memory, the sunken windows and dribbling door were a perfect balance of vision and formal beauty. I had truly brought my memory to life.
Somehow it didn't leave me satisfied. Now that it was out and real, now that it was done, I couldn't think of anything else. It was the exact opposite of the effect on my psyche that I had intended. I had wanted to rid myself of the occaisional intrusion, instead I had placed it front and center, and could never escape its presence. For three days I had tried to envision a new project, to begin a new work, but no other image would come. Always, when I sat to think toward a new creation I was stymied by a kaleidoscopic view of this one. I could envision it from every angle, could concieve of new tilts for it on its spindly legs, could image widening one window or pinching a room in to create some new nuance of form and meaning, but never could I think of anything else.
I reached out and lifted it with my left hand. It was heavy pewter. I had chosen the spider legs to emphasize the place it held in my mind. Holding it up and tilting it back I touched the feet with my right fingers. These legs were a depiction of the motion from the darkened corner of my consciousness, the creeping in out. It was a spider-like motion, I had thought. It was, I was right that it was.
I put it back, dissatisfied. I wanted to go on, to move forward with my work.