The Wall with Rothko’s Multiform Print
is broken only by his Violet, Green and Red, 1951, the vertical longer than the horizontal, I like its looming presence. The pristine white border accentuates wavering, separate colored lines, how it disperses what bears down on me; not solitude, that too intellectual a word for how my gut feels. It is closer to loneliness, being alone in a strange town though I have lived here for decades, but not so long as Mark’s life of sixty-six years.
I have disposed of clutter in my life, the print the singular feature on an otherwise naked-walled apartment. Pleasure builds whenever I watch, yes, watch the print, connoting vigilance and keen attentiveness. I keep an eye on the loneliness factor, how it shifts surrounded as I am with blank walls except for the distinguished one, colors inflating my courage to get through another day.
Rising with the sun, sitting in a rocker, I say, gotcha, and point my forefinger at the Rothko. I drink strong black tea; my ascending consciousness jerked up by the caffeine high lifts away loneliness. How focused the print is as it directs attention to me as I to it, both it and I no longer alone, observer and observed, out of which emerges connection, the living and the dead. How we need one another, how we inhabit shared spaces of color, wounds bleeding into both singular and diverse minds.
What else but to arise another morning and watch the static unfurl, avoiding dread that lurks behind the print, a barren wall. How claustrophobic I am. Yet, I abound in Mark’s words about his work being “tragedy, ecstasy, and doom.” The art-wall is not one to resist, but to yield to possibilities, and dream.
George Sparling likes slow baseball games, red beans and quinoa, nightmares, fast flowing rivers, Ravi Shankar, death metal, Tom Waits, wet mornings, nostalgia, rooming houses, cold nights, docks, The Moby Dick Cosmic Ocean, mania, unwarranted lofty thoughts, death metal, Dennis Cooper, depressing novels, art brut, and the odor of eucalyptus trees. He has been published in many literary magazines including Underground Voices, Nib, Downer Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Unlikely Stories, Paper Darts, the NewerYork, Synchronized Chaos, Thick Jam, Red Fez, Word Riot, Slow Trains, and Future Flash Review. He has stories upcoming in Zygote in my Coffee #143, Skive Magazine, and Colours Journal.