Dear Meier,
Thank you for the money, it allowed me to buy more supplies and as I promise I have sent more work your way. Although you will have to forgive me, it is not like my other paintings, and I am not sure if you can sell it. And yet, I feel as if it one of my best pieces I have done since leaving Charlotte. I’m not sure how the others will react to it, but maybe, I shouldn’t care. It was a painting that I need to be express in that manner. I hope and pray you can see its worth as I have seen it but if not I have sent some other painting with it as well.
It was a harsh winter here in Virginia and the snows gathered on my door steps for many weeks. I still have a great fondness for the snow, not like the others who have grown up here. They curse the bitter cold and shout at the white chill while I stand in awe of it all. The clean smell of the world wrap in a stillness unlike anything else. When the wind rushes around like children playing in the snow, the world must stop to take notice. Every sound, movement and the moment are amplified greatly in the cold. I like to believe it is because all those events bring warmth into an utterly chilled world causing everything to stop for a moment in astonishment.
It is beautiful to say the less.
It is also why I spent the winter marching out into the rolling hills of this place off the beaten path and had painted the world for you. At least the way I see the world when I’m sitting out there in the snow. The color blues under the white, the gray reds of the sky and the dull yellow of the sun painted with an eerie smoothness to it all. I thinned my paints out so much to leave no texture and took hours, if not days, to smooth the paint out with my brush. At first and to my dismay I used canvas, but the texture of the canvas itself was bleeding up to the pictures. So, I tossed the canvas to the side and worked on wood panels from then on. Panels, I would spend hours sanding down to a glossy stillness like the hills outside.
These are the majority of the works I am sending to you.
My dear friend, for the most part, I love them. They are some greatest paintings to behold, and I can say the time spent working on them was worth every moment. It was even worth the cold caught which put me in bed for several days.
Jon, the brother of Elizabeth, would come to check on me from time to time and to bring me what medicine he could. He also brought me some warm food from his wife, and I’m forever grateful to him. But now, I am well, and spring has beat out the winter air, and all the snow had melted from my gaze.
The first day I was up and about I stood in the doorway watching the snow rush from the world only to feel a great sadness come over me. It was as if with winter gone I knew the monster was back on the hunt. He was looking at me like a bull in heat, and I was doomed to be found by him. Or, I feared, he would come for you again.
Then again, summer has always brought an uncomfortable feeling to me. I hate the heat. It pushed me into the laziness I despise so much. The world becomes so bright and hot all I can do is shut my windows and wait for the night. Even then the nights are warm, and people are rushing around all the time. They want to go here and there. They want me to go with them. I can’t find a moment to be still. I can’t find my bearing in all the spinning of the world, not like I can with winter.
I’m sure that is why I was sad to watch the snow go. Also, if I am, to be honest here, I didn’t know what to paint once the hills became green again. Van Gogh could find paintings here. He could walk out from the door to see a whole painting before his eyes but I am not him, and I cannot do the same. I went back to his works in the hopes of finding inspiration but only found dead ends.
For weeks, I walked the hills not sure what to paint, not sure where to go. I thought to himself maybe it was time to move on from Virginia. Maybe go north. Maybe go west, but I knew I didn’t want to go south. I wasn’t or am I not now ready to come home yet.
I let the idea of leaving sit on my mind for a little while and debate with myself. I like it here. I wish you could see it but at least you can’t. I don’t think I’m ready to face you. I want to look into your eyes and see your smile again but now is not the time. The wound is still bleeding. I still need to time to heal.
But what I’m trying to say is I enjoy the air, the land, and the people here. They are country folk who just want to live in peace. They don’t care where I came from or where I am going as long as I can hold my drink and keep calm. Lucky, for me, I can do both.
A little way from my cottage is a small town named Staunton where they host an amazing Shakespearean playhouse and is the cornerstone of the whole town. I believe the place is called the Blackfriars Playhouse and if you ever wish to see a play done right, I suggest you find your way here.
I went to see Hamlet one night as my only outing I gave myself for the week. The rest of time I work and wrestle with myself. It is why I am here after all. I came to save myself. I came to find God in these hills or a way to let go. I want to be free of the monster hunting me. I can’t keep running from him. I can’t keep leading people to him. Here, in the stillness, I should be able to find freedom, I hope. If I do not, then I fear Death will find me. No longer will I let the monster hurt anyone again. You wear too many of the scares from him.
Oh God, what have I done?
After my enjoyable night at the play, I stumble into the bar to have a few drinks with the guys. After too many beers and a long night, I hit the road to head home. I wasn’t fully well and should not have drunk so much, but I let the Curse get the better of me.
On these roads, unlike Charlotte, the speed limit is more or less a poor suggestion, and no one followed it. So, my car raced down the dark roads as if being chased by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The windows were down, and the music was up, and I was racing the devil. I came flying around the hill to see in the holes my headlights made in the dark a woman on the side of the road.
Her back was to me with her head low, and she was walking down the road. She didn’t seem to have anywhere to go but where ever she was coming from was not a good place to be. She wore the same clothes everyone out here seem to have on, blue jeans, boots, and a plaid shirt. I stuck out only because of my Mohawk but wore the same as them. When in Rome …
I pulled my car to a stop with a little more force than I planned. I had to back up, and I could see a shocked look on her face. She had been crying, but the tears had long run out when I found her. She was about to run away from me, searching the dark to flee, but something stops her. She must have believed I was someone else then notice I wasn’t them.
I pulled up beside her cutting down the music and asking her, “You alright, ma’am?”
Her face was soft with a round nose and a square chin, but it was her hair that I couldn’t look away from. It was as if the sun had reached down giving her some of its rays wrapped around her head and falling over one eye. For a moment, I believe it bright up the night around her. It might have been why I notice her in the dark. She smiled with blue eyes and asked, “Can you take me somewhere?”
She climbed into my car as I said yes but my mind asked me what I was doing? I could not get involved with this woman, no girl. She looked only to be in her twenty, I thought with her besides. I would find out later I was very wrong.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to kick her out of the car. I should have because I need to work on my soul. I need to fix the creaks in my heart, not help her. If I let her in my world, it would only lead to bring the monster to me faster. I couldn’t have it. I should have taken her to the bus stop, but my body spoke different words to me.
She smelled of apples and wine… and lust. The lust poured from her like the stink of alcohol on me. Trust me when I say I drank a lot that night. The effect she had on me was like a web has on a fly in the glimmering sun. All I could do was give into it. Let the web hold me tightly in a loving embrace with no thought or idea of the spider to come. The spider did not matter.
I must point out here. She wasn’t wearing or doing anything to make me feel this way. In fact, she sat in the car saying nothing. She stared ahead without a word to me or where to go. I think all she wanted to do was get away.
I wanted to touch her, even to kiss her, and then my mind went to places I wish not to write down, but the howl of the monster stopped me. I knew from that moment forward I would not give into the desire baiting me right now. It was a weak desire anyways.
My heart beat roughly against my chest with fear rushing into it. There was something else about her. She was powerful. She could destroy me with a single word and a single glance. I was at her will, and there was nothing I could about it. My mind recalled this idea in a book I read once about the archetype of the goddess or the mother.
From what I could remember was a man at first puts all women they meet on a pedestal or in the place of the goddess. It is a reaction to their up bring if they had mother their lives and the fact they almost worship woman’s affection to them. Most men long to have a woman to show them any affection and will go to great length to gain it. This also means when they are rejected or hurt by the goddess it puts fear in them like no other. They now understand it can happen again.
It is a reaction to how boys are raised with their mothers. I am saying boys are in love with their mothers; I’m just saying we understand how to love a woman from the love we receive from our mothers.
Most woman can’t stand this idolization man put them in, but they don’t understand over time we remove them from the pedestal. The close we bring them down to earth, the more human they become, the more the love becomes real. Sure, the idolization never fully go away but it less over time to become affection or love.
It was about this time she asked me my name, and I told her.
“I’m Aphrodite,” she said with a sweet voice. That could explain everything; the glowing hair, the perfect skin, and the aroma of lust.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
“Just drive,” she said pushing the seat back and setting her thin legs on the dashboard.
We didn’t speak the whole time in the car. I thought about breaking the silences, but the more I let the wind do the speaking for me the more Aphrodite seem to ease into her skin. I didn’t say anything until the sun started to paint the sky the different hues of the morning and I asked her where she wished to go? She told me back to my place, “If you don’t mind.”
I turn the wheel of my car heading home for the day. The alcohol had long died away and the sleepless night was beating at my head. The thought of taking her some else also beat at my skull. Why did I bring this girl home? I didn’t know her at all. She could have been a serial killer for all I knew and yet, there was something warm about her. Something that told me like a cat sitting at the door, it was okay to pet it, and it was okay to have her in my home.
My car started up the gravel driveway as she told me what happen to her. She explained the event that leads up to me picking her out of the night. She fell in love with a sweet boy in New York City. A real man’s man. He was rough and tough had a strong will about himself. The love danced across her skin like so many times before and she should have known this time would have been no different. Love for the goddess of love always left creaks on her soul.
They ran away to here, got them self’s a little house in a field with a white fence. The more they grew together, the more she could feel the pit growing beneath them. A hole which would swallow her alive like it always did. No matter how much she loved him, there was a pull to love others deepen in her. She was the goddess of love, and it was her duty to show others the joy of the heart.
He came home to find her in bed with another man. They fought. She left after he told her to go and that is where I came in. I showed her into the small little cottage filled with my works and painting supplies. She smiled at me laughing about how it would be her luck to find the only artist out here.
“Do you want to call him?” I asked her.
Aphrodite grins a weary smile looking down at her feet and told me, “There is no point that tale is over, and it is time for me to move on.”
“Where will you go then?” I asked fighting back a yawn.
She shrugged with a simple I don’t know. “All I know is I’m never going to make someone else’s heart my home again.”
I showed her to the only other room in the house and let her use my bed for the day. I crawled into my chair and tried my best to caught some sleep, but it was not working. The dreams I longed for ran from me and I chased after them hoping to catch just a one. An hour or so later Aphrodite tapped me on my knee asking me to join her.
My hesitation must have been written all over my face because she explained to me, “I can’t sleep alone. Please, I just need to feel someone in bed with me.”
She pressed her body against mine as we drifted off the sleep. I woke hours later, close to dinner I believe, and she was cooking what little food I had in the kitchen. I came out of the room with her smiling big at the sight of me and handing me a plate. We sat on the floor eating rice with butter and steamed chicken.
“Tell me about yourself?” Aphrodite asked me.
How could I say no to a goddess like her? At this point, I told her a little about me, how I grew up in Harrisburg, North Caroline and spend my life becoming an artist. I told her about the loneliness one feels when they give themselves over a purpose like art. How my whole life became about my craft and nothing more. I told her a little bit about you and how you were the one who gives me my break into the artwork. I didn’t tell her about my sin.
I wasn’t ready to face it so I could I speak about it to her.
For the next few days, she stayed with me. We ate together, slept together and walked the hills together. She told me of her past. She spoke about the Trojan wars and all the other wars with such convention there was no way I couldn’t believe her. She even told me about this Jewish family she saved during WW2 and the amount of detail she described left me at a loss for words. After the war, her family came to the states where they live now. They all over the place but her father, Zeus, leaves in New York.
Everything in me told me not to believe her. She couldn’t be a goddess, and her father couldn’t be Zeus, but the more I was around her, the more felt it to be true. The kind upper case letter ‘T,' Truth. It was the kind of Truth you felt when the sun rises because you could see all the world with the light. Her story was real. She was Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and she was leaving with me.
The distraction was nice for about week or two but soon the need to work washed over me, and I was still not sure what to do. I would sit on top of a hill with my sketchbook waiting for my hand to start moving but it felt as if it was asleep. Or I would sit in the house in front of my paintings not being about force myself to place a color the surface. I was at a lost, and it was starting to weigh heavily on me.
“Paint me,” Aphrodite said.
What a great idea, I thought. I did a few ink drawings of her sitting in the chair reading a book. They were good at best but not what I want to do. They didn’t capture the essence of her. It would do no real justice to the beauty of her, so I tossed them aside. I did not send them to you either. I burnt, but that was many weeks later.
I sighted, and she stood up rushing out of the room telling me to the whole on for a moment. She came back into the room with a white blanket of her. She was fully nude under the blanket. She turned to her side holding her hand across the underside of her chest pulling the blanket to cover most of her body. She allowed the white to fall around her as she lifted one knee up a little and she brushed her long blond hair from her face.
“Well?”
I stood there like a fool for a moment as if I had never seen a nude woman before. My eyes were not sure of the beauty before me, and I question all the abilities I had as an artist. Could I paint something so perfect? How was I worthy of this task? I am nothing more than a lowly artist, who ran from his past and felt worse than nothing. And yet, here stood Aphrodite waiting for me to capture her in the glory of her soul.
“Get to work; my leg is getting tired.”
I pulled one of my panels from the stack and started to work. We worked on the painting for a few days, and I painted the background in a deep purple to enhance the white. For the white cloth, I pulled in some light blues and heavy yellows letting the brush run along her body gently, almost outlining her figure. The brush moved like a lover’s hand around her figure in the throes of intimacy. The paints begged to touch her body and kissed the smooth orange pale hue of her flesh into life. I pulled some of the deep purples into the shadows to give her body life and took my time running up to her face. The brush wrapped around her neck like I wished my hand could and kissed her blue eyes into the painting. I ran some of the purples along the sharp line of her jaw and nipple around the edge of her ear.
When I finished the painting, she stood in front of my beckoning me to take her. Her hand was petting the back of my head, and my hands, against my will, touched her nude body. They felt the warmth I had forgotten about so long ago. It has been years since I felt someone. It was a feeling which sent new life through me, but it was a feeling which reminded me why I didn’t love another.
My hands dropped away from her as she looked down at me and asked, “What is the matter? I can tell you want me. I want you too.”
I couldn’t look her in those blue eyes. I hid my face and fought back the tears. She bent down kissing me and then stepping back. Her voice shook as she said, “Oh poor, child. You have summoned the Minotaur once before.”
My head nodded a hard yes. She pulled me in close to her with my hands falling around her. I weep like the fading snows on the warm spring day, and she whispered to me, “My poor child, it is alright. Everything will be fine.”
Everything after that is a blur, all I can recall is waking up to an empty bed and empty house. I looked for Aphrodite, but she was gone, and all I was left with was the painting of her. I stood in front of it sighing and thinking to myself, “People come, and people go; sometimes, they stay for a while, and those are the ones who matter.” The goddess of love blessed me with her present for a short time, what more could I ask for? I have a great painting for it all and a better story to tell. I hope you find some love in the paintings as I have.
There is a detail in which I didn’t notice until I was about to send it off. There are creaks growing from Aphrodite’s heart, at first, they were small, but then they seem to be getting bigger. I thought it was the paint or if I did something wrong, but if you look carefully, you can see the creaks on the part of the paintings. I didn’t paint those by the way. They just appeared one day. Make of that what you will, my friend, and until next time …
With a Handshake,
Zack Amor
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