Self-Portrait with Nothing

by Aimee Pokwatka

There was no common denominator among the believers in terms of age or class or race, but they all had a distracted quality about them, their faces glazed with daydreams. Frost’s work had that effect on people, rendering them oblivious to the real world around them, immersing them instead in worlds that existed, as far as Marchand was concerned, only in their imaginations.

Ula Frost had a cult following for a reason: her portraits—at least those painted in the last twenty-two years—were said to unlock alternate versions of their subjects from parallel universes, bringing them, somehow, into this world,

It was hard to function split in two, each version of yourself feeling less real by the second.

“It’s a self-portrait,” Iphigenia said. “It’s a portrait of Ula, young, maybe even a teenager, holding an infant. It’s called Self-Portrait with Nothing.”

a parliament of owls.

“Eventually, the world requires your participation. The observation is just training.”

And in every universe there was still plenty of uncertainty and grief, and kindness and anger and suffering and joy, beautiful things and miracles and tragedies that knocked people on their asses, there were mistakes and forgiveness, second-guessing and the question of what else might be out there—all constants in every universe, all existing at the same time.