Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

Ready to go at creation a second time, hoping to get it more right this time, God appears, splits, and manifests as three art critics in the sky: a large bird who critiques from above, a large fish who critiques from the middle, and a large bear who critiques while cradling in its arms.

People born from the bird egg are interested in beauty, order, harmony and meaning.

People born from a fish egg appear in a flotation of jelly, and this jelly contains hundreds of thousands of eggs, where the most important thing is not any individual egg, but the condition of the many.

A person hatched from a fish egg is concerned with fairness and justice here on earth: on humanity getting the temperature right for the many.

A person born from a bear egg is like a child holding on to their very best doll. Bears do not have a pragmatic way of thinking, in which their favourites can be sacrificed for some higher end.

Nothing makes a person feel like their life’s work—or their self—is less seen than when it’s being judged by someone from a different egg.

Perhaps God shouldn’t conceive of creation as an artwork, the next time around; then he will do a better job with the qualities of fairness and intimacy in our living. But is that even possible—for an artist to shape their impulse into a form which is not, in the end, an art form?

And what opens one heart opens many.

She was alone so she could hear herself thinking. She was alone so she could hear herself living.

oh my