He moves in wide steps as he enters the room. Some say wide steps are a show of confidence, but this man has none. If it weren’t for a rough night with bad food and an unsettling sickness burrowing its way through his stomach, he would walk like the rest of us. He does not notice her at first, but he knows that something lies waiting in the air. An electric current ripple the frail features of his face. He has a weak appearance like someone who was lost within the walls of a POW camp for years on end and has just seen the light of day. He hesitates as he steps. The click of shoes is barely heard amongst the drowning hum of useless chitchat that often follows an exhibition of an unknown artist like this one.
The air surrounding her is on fire. She lights up a room with her presence. She paralyzes the unwitting paintings and makes them feel meaningful as she glides past them in her high-heeled shoes. She is wearing the lightest shade of turquoise dress. The color matches her eyes. She sees the paintings yet only one is lit within her mind. A picture that no one else has seemed to notice except for one man. He stares trying to look past the simple landscape of a chair and vibrant blacks and whites. He stares as though trying to talk to the picture with his eyes. She notices him and slowly moves towards him. As she walks this time it is as though she walks on clouds. Not the faintest whisper can be heard from her spike like heels. She approaches him and stands off to his left and looks at him like parents look at their newborn son. She looks as she tries to understand him, trying to know what he is thinking. She wonders… Does this art seem better with someone believing in it, as I do, or is it still the chair in its place and is he just a by passer? Is he a simple man, one who can’t really enjoy it, yet he looks trying to give meaning to its reason for being? Without showing her presence to the man, he gently articulates as if under water. His words are in a tone that could crumble a mountain
“Who was its last resident?” He says as if he is speaking to himself the portrait and anyone wanting to listen.
She slowly thinks to herself; how did he know I was here?
“It was your smell the sound of the cloth on your dress; it drew me in like the web of a spider I was stuck to it.” He stated.
“An old woman with terrible arthritis. She is resting her weary body from the hard hill she just climbed from the valley. A man who just found out he has cancer, and it is incurable. The chair is encouraging, and it has a good soul that’s what the light is for”
“Hmm… yes, or is it garbage, a bad toss from the house of un-wanting owners desperately seeking the acceptance of their new furniture. With a lucky bounce it lands on its feet becoming the helper or the meek unknowing of its great deeds. Then also maybe it is just a chair that is in the street at a good time of day for the light to hit it right with someone there to photograph it.”