Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

The few moments of real presence you have ever felt in your life might mean that a god was inside someone near you, using them to see you. The few moments of real insight we’ve ever had about another might indicate that a god was inside us at that moment, using us to see them. When they brighten the characteristics of another person, it is like turning on a light in a darkened room. We might remember that moment of seeing better than any of the other moments in our lives. The person who the gods are watching through you often develops a certain attachment to you. That person may find themselves thinking about you a lot, and you may find yourself thinking about them a lot, too. It often happens between two such people that they will feel fated to be in each other’s lives. They might like or dislike the other one, or have no clear feelings between them at all, yet there they are, for minutes or hours or weeks or years, mysteriously in each other’s orbit, as though something of significance is going on.