Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

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?

There must be some deep frustration in him as he works, trying to correct what can never be saved. So he paints in a hurried way, not wanting to see what he’s made. That’s why his canvases are such a mess. There is no compass in his soul, so his vision becomes chaotic. One can sense the envy in his heart, yet he doesn’t even know what in other painters to envy! Unable to pull off beauty, he hides behind an ugliness that he calls beauty, and his canvases turn out shameful, and so the critics shame him, for he makes us ashamed. Then he continues to make his paintings which have nothing to offer, and turns and blames the critics for their ‘crimes.’”

Nothing would be as we hoped it would be, here in the first draft of existence. People were finally beginning to catch on. Our rage made perfect sense.

On good days, we acknowledged that God had done pretty well: he had given us life, and had filled in most of the blanks of existence, except for the blank in the heart.

But spiritually, there had only ever been one age. Heartbreak was no less heartbreaking. Lust was no less lustful. We remained as proud and hungry and fearful as we had ever been.

We were curious about the world to come, but were relieved that its problems would not be our own. Some people experienced a delightful sort of rest in becoming very small, very inferior, and very irrelevant, in the face of such chaos and change.

in the midst of all this, one could still see, on one’s bookshelf, books that were hundreds—even thousands!—of years old, that were relevant today. Yet none of the books which were twenty years old were the least bit relevant anymore.

It is only those with icebox hearts and icebox hands who have the coldness of soul equal to the task of keeping art fresh for the centuries, preserved in the freezer of their hearts and minds. For art is not made for living bodies—it is made for the cold, eternal soul.

There is no point in loving something that is not a bit within reach.

have been too shy to meet someone who she thought would change her life. She would have been worried about how she’d appear, or would fear that she’d embarrass herself in some way. But she didn’t think of herself as a person back then.

What a triumph! They were clearly capable of anything. Everything in their lives was proof of it.

Well, okay, they said, let’s go over now. They hadn’t heard about playing it cool.

One door led to the occult bookshop and the other led to Annie’s apartment, up a dark, narrow corridor of stairs.

and the people who had died before those people lived, on the land and in it, and just everything forming the carbon of everything that was the stage and amphitheatre of their entire lives, which they never once considered.

Everything, other lives, and the thoughts of people who were not themselves, were all so equally far away. All that touched them was each other, and the books they read, and the music. Did any other kids exist? They certainly didn’t think so.

One knew no more than a dozen or two dozen people, and you never knew when you would see them again. There was always the chance, after you parted, that it was for the last time. After a party, it was always possible that you would never see their faces ever again.

like your friends, that was okay, too. We were fine with living our mediocre lives. It didn’t occur to anyone that we could have great ones.

Was there anything else to be ambitious for? Just an imagined immortality—a sense of one’s own greatness, which could in no way be tested.

We only keep in touch with the friends we have made since the friendship revolution, which made being in touch of primary importance. The friends we knew from way back when—we felt content to let them slip away; to continue the traditions of the old world into now.

She leaned down to plug it in, then sat up again and looked at it. There it was: her lamp.

having the lamp didn’t lead her to wanting more lamps. It led only to the pleasure of having this lamp.

The red and green stones shed its light upon her dark face and the white walls. And she loved her meagre little existence, which was entirely her own.

Mira had invited her, bursting with pride, thinking that she would see Mira’s life the same way Mira did—as a coolly admirable existence. But as soon as Annie entered the vestibule, Mira knew that inviting her had been a mistake.

So was their life, so was their party, so was the soup, and so were their drunk and too-young friends, none of who knew how to behave at what they had loftily called a dinner party.

Over the next few weeks, any time Mira and Annie ran into each other, something widened inside of them.

it was in her chest that this stretching was happening, in the part of her that usually kept love out, that firmly preserved her insides. This was how she normally lived—with that part of her sealed shut. But now it was opening almost too wide, and a similar thing was happening in Annie.

Seeing Annie for the first time, something in Mira recognized her. It was like their relationship already existed.

Such people are deeply igniting in a way that others are not. This igniting always happens in the very first instant and it never goes away. No stupidities can destroy the igniting, so even if those two people never meet again, a connection always remains.

It was that she was meeting her in this one—and isn’t that rare! Why is it so hard to meet in this life?

Surely not everyone Mira felt called towards could believe their life was about a meeting with her.

On such occasions, it is often the gods who are to blame. They slip into a person like an amoeba, and from within one person, they watch another one—the one they have chosen to watch. So

the gods just taking notes on humans, to make us better in the next draft of the world.

A road was being laid, though nothing was yet travelling on that road. Some workers were doing it—it was the gods—and it was happening far too quickly!

The experience was painful, like her rib cage was being pried apart, so that worker hands could get at her heart. Then she could no longer deny the fact of this road that was being laid between them, straight into the deepest corner of Mira’s chest, normally shuttered, now flung open wide; and if neither was ready to walk on the road quite yet, it was hard to believe they wouldn’t soon be walking on it.

They could not imagine what her life had been. They longed to be like Annie—so independent, so free. There was something romantic about having grown up without parents, but the idea also scared them.

Even if they never called them on the phone, there would always be an umbrella over them, if it rained.

them. Mira had a father who loved her so much, nearly to the exclusion of everyone else. While Annie had no one, she was completely alone. That was why they were drawn to her. Mira and her friends admired her deeply. She was who they were pretending to be.

When Mira thought about home, her main thought was about her father, and about how he wanted her near. He encouraged her to go out in the world, but he would have rather she stayed at home with him. She always felt his presence, calling her to return, and she could never separate any of her actions from the pleasure or the pain she feared it would cause him—her total suspicion of which way it would go.

One sunny afternoon, when Mira and her father were standing in the garden, he promised that one day he would buy her all sorts of mysterious, rare and marvellous things, 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.

As Mira got older, it became harder to love him in the proper dimensions, or even to know what those were; any interest she developed in another person felt like it was taking something from him, since he had no one to love but Mira. It was generally a pleasure to be with him, but something

So Mira craved to live a cold ice bath of a life, once she was out in the world, without him. It had been hard to be held so closely by the most bearish bear, and anyone who approached her with the same total love immediately made Mira feel scared.

So the overheated Mira went looking for a freezer. She wanted a love that would cool her down, to the temperature of the living. She longed to be held by the coldest hands. If she was loved in a way that warmed her up, she feared she would be too hot to handle art, to help pass it down through the centuries.

Then 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.

She saw a future unfurling between them, even as she tried to resist it, but she had never before seen a future so convincingly unfurl.

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.

A person can waste their whole life, without even meaning to, all because another person has a really great face. Did God think of this when he was making the world? Why didn’t he give everyone the exact same face?

But doesn’t it all work out in the end, no matter which face you got? Yes, people with ugly faces can lead beautiful lives, and people with beautiful faces can lead ugly ones, and a beautiful face can draw you right down deep into the world’s greatest ugliness. But in the next draft of existence, they will not understand this; how one person’s beautiful face could pull another person deep into their greatest sorrow.

Why didn’t Annie, in the weeks after she returned the book, say to Mira, I hope you found my picture? Because Annie would never have said such a thing. She had too much pride and was too filled with despair to ever say to anyone, Did you find my picture?

Mira was the unthinking sort of person who could have said to anybody, Did you find my picture? but Annie was too cool and too utterly hurt to ever utter those words.