Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

the stumblingest part of her,

Seasons had become postmodern. We no longer knew where in the calendar we were by the weather.

She didn’t think of herself as someone who another person could see, evaluate, and finally judge. She simply wanted what she wanted, and she didn’t think about how her desires would reflect on her.

It had been a simple and pure thing, her wanting it. Later, acquiring things would become more complicated, and would leave her dissatisfied, confused, and wanting even more. But having the lamp didn’t lead her to wanting more lamps. It led only to the pleasure of having this lamp.

including pure colour—not something that was coloured, but colour itself! Colour itself came in hard little circular discs, and was shiny like a polished stone or polished jewel, but with its colour deep inside it. It showed its colour on the outside, for its outside was what it was all the way through. But unlike a gemstone, it didn’t emanate colour. Its colour sat there, turned inwards. Pure colour was introverted, like a shy little animal. Mira had never seen pure colour before, but she guessed there was probably lots that her father knew about, and could show her, and give her, besides these discs.

she understood that she was under some spell—and she thought she knew why men down through the ages had often feared women, feeling them to possess some otherworldly power that had to be reined in.

In some books, you are supposed to stay away from such a woman, but in other books, she is the one you are supposed to love. In life, there are no sure signs of whether a woman is the one you are supposed to stay away from, or the one you’re supposed to love.

To be in a world in which the writers she loved had once lived and written beautifully—that meant there was something real to find here.