Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

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 a fish’s good act, even the smallest action, effectively done, is a glimpse into a human heart. And a glimpse into one heart is a glimpse into many.

What do humans go to art for, but to locate within themselves that inward-turning eye, which breathes significance into all of existence—for what is art but the act of infusing matter with the breath of God?

For art is not made for living bodies—it is made for the cold, eternal soul.

she understood that the best and only good thing about death was that it was final. That there could be no negotiating with death was its one mercy, its only relief.

Just because it’s love, does that mean you have to like it? Do you have to want it forever, simply because it’s love?

Maybe her heart is protecting her against pain. Perhaps it will start working later on. Perhaps her heart got tired long ago, and collapsed and was left by the side of the road. Maybe one day it will start to feel again. Maybe it has run out of feelings. Anything can run out of anything. A thought can run out of words.

She doesn’t know why she spent so much of her life thinking about such trivial things, or looking at websites, when just outside her window there was a sky that was not trivial. Had it been wrong of her not to understand that the sky was more valuable than a website? People once valued the sky, but only because they had nothing better—because they didn’t have websites. It was hard to tell which was right: either the sky was more valuable than a website, or a website was more valuable than the sky. If she gathered together the amount of time she spent looking at websites, and the amount of time she spent looking at the sky, then her life was clearly answering which was the more valuable, for her.

She had thought that when someone died, it would be like they went into a different room. She had not known that life itself transformed itself into a different room, and trapped you in it without them.

It was the dead who needed our love, the dead who she wanted to be loyal to, the dead who needed us most. The living could take care of themselves, going to the grocery store in all that sunshine. It was the dead who needed to be held on to, so they would not slip away. Who would save the dead from oblivion, if not we, the living?

That humans felt like adorning a tree with lights at Christmastime made her think that an intuition of some other realm wasn’t completely gone from us; that humans still felt something, that there was still something to honour.

But it’s true, there’s nothing to be sad about. When you are sad about the humans being gone, it’s the art you think of that won’t be seen, not the humans, who maybe don’t deserve to be here, because they are so killing.

You have love in you, but that part is extra-human, and that part is in the plants, and the animals, and the clouds, and the seas, and everything.

What is lovable is not humans...

We are the tragic ones who think it’s a tragedy that the human animal will be gone. We can’t even accept that our own fathers will be gone! But that doesn’t mean it’s a tragedy on a worldwide scale. Except for all the suffering. Except for all the suffering, but then the earth will start doing what it’s already doing, which is making itself well again. We are part of its flu.

only remember the loving parts of you now. That is true when someone dies—that you often only think about the loving part, but in that way you are just thinking about life, which runs through plants and trees; the loving part which is part of everything. That part of us is the best thing about us, and because it is the least individual thing, it shines through us so beautifully, when it shines. It is easy to remember that part, which is equivalent with life, when the person you love is dead.

When you remember me in a loving way, it is the thing that illuminates everything on earth that is shining through your memories.

Our lives are full of misery, but what about the thrill of being here together,

In the next draft of existence, everyone will love everyone, and they will consider our lives and think with a shudder, Until they pushed a person out of their dirtiest parts, they had no one they could truly love, and no one who could truly love them—except for their own parents, who also pushed them out of their dirtiest parts. How crude and bizarre our world will seem to them then! How small, tragic and imperfect, when they consider what we had to do to find love.

Mira knew that humans made art because we were made in God’s image—which doesn’t mean we look like God; it means we like doing the same thing God likes. Both making life and making art are pouring spirit into form.

People complained of being tired, exhaustion, not realizing that this was put in them so they wouldn’t do as many things. Such people railed against their fatigue—the ones who were determined to fix things. In order to stop them, the gods tired them out. The weariest people are being the most prevented. They are the most dangerous ones, who would change the world if they could. We know which people are threatening to the gods by how exhausted they feel all the time. Those who would not make as many fixes are not given as much fatigue. You know the gods consider you dangerous if you are tired all the time.

that is the pain and the longing. That is the beautiful.

But a person born into this draft had the necessity of acquiring clothing. God knew this caused all sorts of frustrations, and hearing Mira’s complaints, he knew it again.

Then is it even possible to make creatures to serve their own ends, or will your ends always limit their freedom, if you are the one who made them?

Why did it seem like the only way to live—was to disobey?

Perhaps Mira had been wrong to love Annie. But not loving her had not been within the realm of her choosing.

You will have so many more years of living, and the years will draw you far from this time when you feel so bad, and time will crust over everything, and so much more will happen to you, and though the present is all you have right now, it will all be far in the past one day,

this present moment will one day be gone, and its troubles buried beneath so many layers of living.

as if life was not a constant falling short of the many tasks that God, and others, and even we, have given ourselves.

It was a delusion to think she had created the world and everything in it; that she had made up its rules and was always to blame. Where had that idea come from? Or did everyone feel that way, a little bit, for it was actually God who was feeling it—the God who had in fact created the world, while we picked up on his shame for having made it, in some ways, poorly, and mistook his feeling of responsibility for our own.

That was why she needed that ugly old seashell; because it was the contour and shape of her insides. It was a reminder of what a human self was, and what a human life was: not a beautiful glass lamp just this side of being broken, or a lovely gold ring with a single dent in it. B...

Life was always playing its tricks, never just giving, and never just taking away, but always both.