LIZARD BRAINS

I 

The whole city suffered from a heat delirium, and we wandered around sweating and avoiding each other. The air was burning hot and I was wasting time, but I didn’t want to. There was work to be done but my mind was too loud and I was distracted by the volume, and by sorting out how to contain it. Loudness can overwhelm. Like the Munch painting, a sky was on fire.  

II

When the noise started, I assumed it would be temporary. I went to work every day, diligently picking up yesterday’s threads. But as it grew, and then lingered I began to erode and disappear into the volume of it all. Half finished paintings loitered around my studio uncomfortably. We couldn’t look each other in the eye. 

I wrote to G, pressing a mentor with facts.  

Dear G, 

I am lost. I don’t know how to paint. I don’t know who to be. I don’t know where to go. 

F.

Dear F,

As a painter, you don’t need to know who you are. You find out through painting. To express yourself doesn’t mean to say something you already know, it’s to express something you don’t know, or don’t even see. 

G. 

III 

On a day of no significance, I was home when I shouldn’t have been. Stopped in the hallway by a movement in the corner, I stood paralyzed for a long moment. The pause broke the noise and I melted to my hands and knees. Something was throwing itself against the wall. From a far edge of my mind, a new sound, a machine sound, like a mad filing as my brain leafed through all my experiences, and some from TV, looking for a reference.

Lint.

A fly.

A moth.

A spider. 

A small frog.

A tiny bird.

A baby dragon.

A lizard.

A lizard.

A lizard. 

My heart pumped thoughtlessly and I fell in awe.

IV

Now I am in the corner too, being small with the lizard. How have I never been here before, to this dusty hall corner at the top of the stairs, behind the potted plant?  From my new perspective, the ceiling is towering above and I can smell the dirt in the pot at my shoulder. I don’t want a lizard, but here we are.

I take out my phone and share a photo. What is this?! Why? (Lizard emoji. Exploding head emoji). 

I type into Google ‘what does it mean when a lizard appears?’ A text comes back as quickly as my search, 'a lizard is a symbol of rebirth and renewal! Lucky you!' and suddenly the lizard is my lizard, and the surprise visit is momentous, symbolic, welcome. A Jesus lizard, come to break the noise, to resurrect me and start me over. I lay with Jesus lizard on the floor and I’m not hot anymore, and I’m not wasting time. I’m building what this lizard means, living out fantasy tomorrows, when I’ll stand up again. There is so much work to be done. 

V

Now I have a lizard under an overturned wine glass in the leisure corner of my apartment. Its photo has been distributed widely and a sleuth team of confidants have identified it as a Brown Anole, native of Cuba. Sé por qué estás aquí I whisper conspiratorially my tiny active Jesus. I know why you’re here. We have work to do. 

VI

 ...Painting is to express something you don’t know, or even see.

Concentrate on thinking less. Be new. Be surprising. Use your lizard brain. I stare meditatively at Jesus, trying to psychically connect our limbic systems. Is he really so pure, all brute impulse and urge? Fight. Flight. Fornication. No second thoughts. You’re not clouded by all this noise. 

VII

But I have to do something with Jesus, he can’t live under a wine glass and anyways, I only have one. I dig through the kitchen and find an elegantly large glass jar. He will go to a new home, to someone who will know how to raise this dragon. I have too much work to do. 

I brace the large jar with one hand. With the other, I lift the wine glass to make a fast switch. For a moment, a break between seconds, my mind wanders. I see myself from above and marvel, What a wonder life is!  With this one short ovation, I miss a beat, my hesitation long enough that when the jar comes down, Jesus has moved an inch. The jar lands hard on his head. 

VIII

The heat had broken and I felt cold and erased by bewilderment and shame. My eyes moved from my lizard mess to my hands, and all was quiet. I turned around and walked out the door, slamming it hard. 

Back in the studio, I started over; all new paintings that I couldn't yet see. No noise, just the pulse, my reptilian brain telling my broken heart to beat.  

CLICK HERE FOR Interview with Tristesse Seeliger