Spieli

It is the sixth day of the sixth week, the last one for self-understanding.

Dark grey clouds loom outside, but light is coming through like a right answer to a difficult question. The house, bright and new to him, has just been painted green, leaving the ceiling and frames white. The door is in between the two window panels on the sides, brightening the wall and stairs. That is the entrance. I move there, closing my eyes to half blend into the wall. Half of me floating in air, the other in concrete. It is the exact spot to see what I need to listen. It isn’t my turn, and I am not even a referee. They want me there, and so I adjust my eyes because the brightness coming through claims the depth, and here I am. On my right the painter, and on the left, the model. It is a particular corner to choose for his brush job. Forms captured under different sources always intrigue him. He isn’t new to experimentation, and the muse knows it with expectation. Probably the three of us are too close in that corner. It is the habitual happening, when the one-self needs to examine the second-self, and me observing from nowhere, but still close enough. The canvas is placed, the word “perfect” comes out, and the monologue between the two starts.

“It’s always interesting capturing your face.”

The first smear of impasto goes down on the wood covered with white stucco.

“I see. How many of me’s do you have in your box-room? Why don’t you hang them or sell them?”

“Would you sign a model release?”

“You don’t need it. You know that.” He says, twitching his neck.

“Please, if you need to relax, do it now.”

“I can see you experimenting again, you know no one will understand which direction you’re taking in your art.”

The painter feels a bloom of compassion.

I can see how there is love between the two. They know I am there, I know what is going on, but they don’t quite know they know that thing in between; spieli. This is another excuse to know better each other. That little parrying and harming with compassion, once seen as shame or pity. There is love now. True stabbing love now. In there. In the in-between. In spieli.

My left, the concrete eye, faces the model; my right, the free one, watches the painter. Behind the canvases, the doors. He is dragging the bristles, shaping the waist up portrait.

“Why a painting this time?”

“If your question is, ‘why not a photograph?’ It’s because I would like to dig deep without retouching.”

“I can see how today you are trying to be as true as possible of the reality.”

In the painting, every wrinkle, hair, and shade of the eyes, green-brown now, once totally brown when they were kids, every little spot, freckle, and blotch of skin reveals something of the inner soul.

I see a person getting close to the door from the outside. I do not pay attention, I keep the focus on the two in front of me. The conversation is there. It is revealing on the canvas. The clack of the letter box. Who knows if the postman sees the conversation between the painter, the model holding the brush, and me; standing half inside the wall.

“See, everyone wants a picture with a photograph, with the perfect instrument for mirroring reality. Everyone takes a picture of themselves from the best location, angle, best light. Only to dismiss it if not perfect: filter, retouch, maybe delete. No one truly knows, meets, sees, or loves themselves.”

“I don’t know how much you can dig in here.”

“I can just circle around. It’s me, don’t worry.”

They smile with affection. He replies with trust.

“I think we are done. It’s finished.”

The light is still coming strong inside, but it is raining. A rainbow against the dark weather is making the colours stand out clearly. Those rare occasions when, as they say in some countries, the witches are brushing their hair.

“You work fast today, but I don’t think it’s your best portrait.”

“No, it’s not.”

“But the work is us.”

They say this last sentence together, getting closer. So close their eyes can’t keep focus.

Listening to that rain.

Washed by that light.

And when the noses almost touch the spieli (mirror) I disappear.

Spieli is the Friulian word for mirror.

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