Scumbler

by William Wharton

  I move back into my studio, the one I got from Sasha. The white-on-white painter has left. He’s run off with a famous rich French gay painter for the aristocracy, a friend of Claude’s. They’re touring Italy together.

  I start sitting around in the studio, alone, spinning wheels, hours slipping by unnoticed; I’m caught on a snag. I have this weird idea clawing at the back of my mind and can’t let go of it. Whenever I begin to paint, it drifts in and fills my entire foreground so I can’t see anymore, can’t paint.

  WHAT IS ANYTHING IF YOU CAN’T TOUCH IT?

  HOW TO KNOW A REAL OBVIOUS UNREALITY?

  I’m hung on the possibility of painting my way through time. There’s something strange happens whenever I paint, and I’m thinking I can use it to break my way right out of time sequence into time the way I’m sure it really is: continuous.

  I’m convinced our perception of time is warped because we’re part of it, locked in. Space and time have much in common, but space we can handle. We move around in space, sideways, up and down; we can know something about it, experience it. But time is different.

  With time we’re the way a tree is in space; a tree can’t know space except in a very limited sense. A tree takes up a certain amount of space and moves through “it” slowly as it grows, that’s all. We’re the same with time. We’re hooked into a certain section and use up a bit of it as we grow, but that’s all.

  A tree can’t walk across the field or hop a jet from Paris to Los Angeles, just as we can’t move into yesterday or tomorrow, or two hundred years from now. We’re locked into our limited progression of time. Space is probably as much a mystery to a tree as time is to us.

  I want to uproot myself in time, as we might uproot a tree and move it across a field. I want to be unhitched from my particular little niche in sequential time and move easily along the bands of continuous time. And I think I might have actually found a way to do this.

  All these thoughts almost convince me I’m bonkers, but they won’t go away, get back in the background where they belong, let me get on with my life, my painting.

  A CATCH IN THE EYE. A MOTE IN THE MIND,

  TEMPTATION TO SURRENDER, PRETEND KINDNESS.

  When I paint, especially a portrait, there’s a magic moment just when the painting is finished. Till that last stroke of my brush, the painting has been continuously changing while the model and I, the painter, have seemed stationary. Then, suddenly, everything is reversed. The painting is finished, static, while the model and I go on, strapped into our personal relentless time bands. The painting remains virtually the same, for centuries, millennia; but the model and I will decay, rot, be burned or buried.

  I’m fascinated with that precise second when this change occurs. It’s like the surf on a beach. The water rolls up onto the sand, a culmination of ocean movements; waves, winds and currents traveling thousands of miles. Then it climbs the tilt of a beach to a certain point and falls back, sliding under the surface. A new set of vectors carries it off to other beaches in other times. This moment is like that somehow.

  I feel if I can catch this moment, I’ll have a handle on elapsing time and can perhaps lift myself out, be detached; for a brief space participate in the true nature of time, be part of it, not merely a fixed point or intersecting by-product.

  A CEASELESS TWIRLING. TWISTING WHIRLS IN VAIN,

  THE CEMENT CAVITIES MELT THROUGH MY BRAIN.

  I’m going to reach for this through a self-portrait. There should be no outside deterrent or interference. I must lean completely into myself, get as close as possible, penetrate to the last layers of temporality and dig for my essence, the immortal timelessness of true identity which I’m sure is there, just beyond grasp.

  I know my entire field must be filled by the canvas. So I stretch a 120F and stand it vertically; it’s more than six feet high and four feet wide. I don’t want to violate any of the perceptual reality; there can be no distortion in size; I’ll paint exactly life size, and all of me from head to toe.

  The only distortions will be those necessary to create a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional space. This time I must believe my eyes, my brain; distrust my mind. There can be no shortcuts, no exaggerations, no trimming to fit preconceived ideas of the way a painting “ought” to look. I’ve got to paint straight. I try for this in all my paintings, but whatever I am always gets in the way, muddles things. But not this time.

  WHITE HOLLOWS ECHO IN A VACUUM.

  BLACK SOLIDS STILL IN THE DARK,

  THE SAME.

  The relationship between the second and third dimension is also at the bottom of my idea. I want to break through to the fourth dimension, time. I’ve already learned how to see in three dimensions, see in space; then create on an object in two dimensions the illusion of a third. This seeming three-dimensional, yet two-dimensioned object then, in turn, exists in a three-dimensional world.

  Is it illogical to think that perhaps in this illusory third dimension I might leapfrog to a real third dimension? From there, I could perhaps slip through into an illusion of the fourth! Could it be possible to do a metaphysical backflip, penetrate one illusion to the awareness of another, a psychic Möbius twist? Mightn’t I then break the seemingly immutable barriers of sequential, clock-locked time and enter into the open plains of real, continuous time? I’m ready to try. I’m ready to sacrifice all—sanity, life itself—to make this jump.

  SEE. BE. IN LINE WITH MYSELF, A

  POLARIZED VIEW, LINEAL PERSPECTIVE.

  To start, I lock the door of my studio. Traude has an early class, so she’s gone every morning by eight o’clock. Claude’s off to cut more marble in Carrara and then to investigate some dark blue granite in the Midi. I have total privacy.

  I set up a big mirror I bought last month in the flea market. I was looking for clocks and found this absolutely flawless mirror for seventy-five francs. It’s six feet tall and three feet wide, beveled on the edges where it goes into the wood. There’s something of beveling in my idea of time.

  I stand this mirror on the floor at a forty-five-degree angle to the windows. The window light falls on me, plus there’s reflected light on my dark side from the mirror. I glow in super three dimensions. I’ll stay with this mirror image, not try to reverse it; I’ll stay left-handed, it’s part of the warp, the bevel. I’ll use my lap-landed twin brother to help with my leapfrog jump.

  WE LIST MUTUALLY ON OUR PERSONAL

  INCLINED PLANES. TO DECLINE US SANITY.

  The first day, I don’t do anything but stand there and stare. I look at the all of me and at the parts. I watch myself breathing; try to catch myself swallowing, blinking. I want to see myself aging, like watching the hour hand on a clock. I’m looking for the little differences, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. A life seems only so many of those units; I must penetrate that lie by acute observation. If I can actually see myself happening in time, real time, not sun, clocks or calendars, then I’ve made a beginning.

  By the middle of the second day, I begin to see myself changing, some subtle changes in coloring, in the hang of my flesh. I’m watching a slow-motion Dorian Gray right before my eyes. “Death, where is thy sting?” Easy. It’s around you, inside you, every day you breathe. The end is in the beginning as the beginning might be at the end, if you believe in beginnings and ends. I’m not sure I do anymore.

  On the third day, I start projecting myself onto the canvas. I stare at the mirror without turning my eyes, trying not to blink, staring until my own image is registered, burned onto my retinas. Then I close my eyes, shift my head, line up with the blank canvas, eyes still closed, then open them suddenly, casting the afterimage from my eyeballs onto the canvas. I do this over and over, time and time again, time hammering, sinking the nail of identity deep into the wood of life. Finally, I know just where each part of me should be on that blank canvas; all the canvas space has been apportioned, involved with my image.

  THERE I AM; I AM THERE!
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  WHERE? THERE! THAT’S WHERE!

  When I start drawing, it’s almost as if I’m following a drawing that is already drawn. I’m doing me and my easel, the canvas, my paint box, the part of my studio behind me in the mirror. I rarely look back at the mirror to verify a location or a relationship. It’s flowing through me onto the canvas, my hand tracing out the projection of my mind into lines to define me. It all flows so easily, so calmly, that the days pass almost unnoticed.

  I draw for three days. I’m drifting over the surface of the canvas, entering into the confines of this illusion till the two dimensions no longer exist. I spend hours staring at the drawing, going back to the mirror, drifting between the two, meandering in space and time, losing myself, forgetting that I, as physical flesh-and-blood reality, am the true stimulus, the first source.

  Instead, I’m feeling how the reality of the mirror and my drawing are taking over. Especially the drawing is gradually assuming a much greater substance as I cumulate, synthesize, concentrate and elaborate this identity to the suppression of the necessarily momentary image of the mirror. I’m getting to the moment for painting.

  LOSING TO FIND, A DRIFT INTO A

  LIFTING PYRAMID; INTERLOCKING

  EQUILATERAL TRIANGLES ON A SQUARE.

  THAT’S WHERE!

  The terrible part about this whole experience is that at home I’m almost invisible. Even when I’m away from the studio, I’m back there with the mirror, the canvas. I don’t want to talk, to break the completion of my involvement. Kate knows and is resentful but resigned; she leaves me alone. Even my kids more or less understand from long experience and give me room.

  In my dreams, I’m sometimes the mirror, sometimes the drawing, sometimes sitting watching myself watch, feeling the stroke of the pencil on my body. I’m scared, spooked out, but I don’t want to back off; this is something I must carry through to the end.

  I WATCH MYSELF WATCHING ME, WATCHING ME.

  I NEED NO WATCH, THIS WATCH. WATCH OUT!!

  THAT’S ALL.

  I start to paint. I develop the underpainting with great care. I’m thinking like a sculptor; I’m cutting away the fullness of the white with my brush as knife, as chisel, subtracting the reflective quality of the canvas differentially, regulating, measuring, modulating, mirroring my mirror. The imagery flows easily through me. I’m painting in thin layers with short strokes, hacking, continually overlapping, carving interrelationships of planes, feeling the glow of white from the canvas fight against my mutilation, my light slashing. I’m producing the illusion beyond vision.

  I paint in a delirium, and four more days pass. As I come out of it, what I see is more than real, more than surreal; it approaches an ultimate reality, verges on the intrinsic. I feel I’m not doing this myself anymore. I’ve been taken in hand and I’m being led to truths beyond knowing. Now I’m really scared, rat scared; but this is what I’ve been asking for. There’s no going back; even if I want to, a part of me won’t.

  HOLDING BACK. NOT BACKING UP, BUT

  STANDING THERE, LISTING FOR RETREAT.

  When I begin the impasto, there’s the eerie feeling it isn’t paint on my brush, on my palette, but flesh, cloth, hair, air. I squeeze the usual pigments, load my brush, the old well-known way, approach the canvas as I’ve always done it, but the ordinary magic I’ve lived with for more than forty years, the magic of living in the painting, the space of the canvas becoming real to me, is so magnified my brain can’t absorb it. My mind is being absorbed itself; I’ve become a technician to another act, beyond painting, beyond thinking. I’m transcended, not only in time, not just a question of space dislocation, but with some complex blend of the two.

  I paint, or apparently go through the motions of what I’ve always called painting, and another thing is happening. I’m on the edge of a new-dug well, seeing myself reflected at the bottom, and I’m falling in. Something is holding me back, but another pressure from behind, within, gently eases me forward. I can sense my lack of real control, the gracious glide by which the difference between mirror, painting and self can disappear. Then where would I be? Would I be? I become so frightened I have no volition to move. But I am moving, sliding as if between stars, free-gliding without desire, a wilting victim of forces beyond gravity, direction, place or time.

  BETWEEN IMMUTABLE FORCES TORN. QUARTERED

  BY FOUR HORSES: FEAR, DESIRE, IDEA, INERTIA.

  Then, suddenly, all is quiet. The air around me is incredibly clear. There’s an enormous stillness in my heart. The restlessness around which I’ve lived my life is gone, raked smooth.

  I look out at a circumscribed world and as I look, the painting starts to move. I stare, transfixed. The “me” in the painting is reaching into the paint box I painted and picking up one of the tubes I painted and squeezing paint onto the painted palette. Then it leans forward and strokes gently—carefully, softly, with love and concern, with my brush—my shoulder.

  It’s the next thing I was to do. The painting is painting me; it’s like having love made to you when you are finished, have nowhere to go anymore; passively enjoying being somebody else’s continuation, anticipating, participating in the other’s joy by not moving, not responding.

  I watch, I feel, I don’t move, I don’t breathe. Then I know. I’m not breathing. I can’t move. I’m not me anymore. That’s me, out there! I’m watching “me” out there painting, painting a portrait of me and I’m the portrait! I’ve stepped through, out of my body, out of space, out of the third dimension and into time, real time; I’ve become the painting!

  I know this and I’m calm. A swift feeling of separateness, of flatness, of wide emptiness and no emotion pervades me. I watch and know the time of him, the old me, moving out there is not my time; I’m not locked into it anymore; I’m time-drifting, as an astronaut drifts in space. I’m free of time-gravity, time-direction.

  I also know how, with another effort, an effort not much stronger than that necessary to leave my body, I can now move out of this “time” into what would be called the future or past for the “me” out there; that “me,” staring into the mirror, staring at me, as portrait. What will happen?

  I concentrate. Some mindlike but physical shifting occurs, and I move. I move slowly without friction and the room darkens. I stop and it is night. In the dim light I see “me” sprawled on the floor. The mirror is twisted. I panic and lean backward, back in time to where I was. There’s light again; “he” is still staring into my eyes. I frantically juggle time back and forth, parking a car in a tight space, trying to get back to where I was. Did I really push ahead in time, was that the way it is, will be? And why was I stretched out on the floor? If I leave, must my body die? What will happen if I, as him, leave here without me, going home, moving in space? Or what if I leave, go two years or three centuries forward or backward, or only into yesterday or tomorrow?

  WITHOUT TIME, LIFE IS A TRAGIC MIME. A

  MOVEMENT OF EMOTION STRIPPED OF MOTION. E.

  And what would I be to Kate and our kids? That body can’t be me anymore. It can’t be having the thoughts I’m having. Can he have a future without me, even within his time; my old time? Is all I know, all I call my past, still registered in the folds of his cerebral cortex? And if so, what is it I have?

  THE HOLLOW OF ZERO,

  THE IMPRESSION OF NOTHING.

  I then realize I can no longer move in space. By releasing myself from time, I’ve locked myself into space. Perhaps the old me, out there, is locked in this space too, or perhaps normal time will no longer happen to him, a moving robot. Perhaps that’s what he was doing on the floor, a deep, timeless sleep; or maybe death.

  TIME WARPS

  TODAY’S CORPSE.

  I want to go back. I want to put myself together again in space and regulated time. I know it can only be done through the mirror. The mirror is turned so I see him reflected, but I cannot see myself. I broke through to here through that mirror and it must be the only way back. Without the mir
ror, I’m doomed to wander through time in this place. Whatever forever is, I’m there and from now on space can only move through me, I never through it.

  I’m feeling claustrophobic, not in the sense of space, but of time. I feel too much time around me.

  It’s then I know that the passing of time through us is part of our genetic expectation. I don’t feel alive anymore. Perhaps this is death; I want to feel warm again inside the movement of time, sense the familiar glide of entropy, growth and decay. Time without participation is a raft in an ocean without drinking water and I’m deeply thirsty.

  A GREEN BLANKNESS. THE GREEN AT THE

  EDGE OF A BEVELED MIRROR—

  SILICONED PALENESS.

  Somehow I must contact me out there. Now I watch me packing up the paints, closing the jars of turpentine and varnish. Is he really me? Is there space and time for me out there? Or have we separated irrevocably as in a new form of osmotic miosis?

  I must make him turn the mirror so I can see myself in it. Is it still possible to move his mind with mine; is there still enough of me in him for this? I concentrate. I pressure him to stay in my field of vision, in front of me, the portrait. I try to captivate him to me, hold him from moving away, leaving the room, abandoning me.

  I bring all I have of life to bear on him with the one thought: “Turn the mirror.”

  He comes close, stares into my eyes. I project, penetrate his mind. Slowly he moves, clasps his hands on the sides of the mirror, then stops; stares again into the mirror, looks back at me, perplexed. I bring to force all I am and watch as he tightens his knees, flexes and gradually twists the mirror till I see myself, see myself as portrait in the mirror and, at the same time, see him as me, frozen, frightened, caught in the fusion of time and space. He stares. For the first time he’s seeing me as he is, not as I am, and in this second there’s a great roar, a sound of ripping and all is black.