I.

You have always accused me of being unable to understand your art.   I suspect that is, in truth, what turned us apart: I couldn't understand that you wanted your life to be your masterpiece. I felt like I was not fit to be in any painting, nor in any writing, nor in any movie... so I thought I couldn't be a part of it.

I'm doing this now just because you requested it, and I don't want to add this to the number of problems that we have together.

"After some time," you said to me. "You will become more watchful. The beauty of your art will be uncovering what is already there."

I know that you think of me as your muse, but, you will see, I am not even an interesting character.

 

II.

It's been some time since you have left. I only now remember that I promised to do this.  You want my report? Everything is the same. The cars' noise outside of the house, the people talking, the sound of the same steps of the same people; then some birds getting into the pile, too, along with a dog here and there… from time to time, the whistle of the wind.

"It's all music," you would have said, as always.

"It's all noise," I would reply.

But, believe me, as I stare at your empty chair, I am beginning to think that your remark was the real music.

 

III.

It's been some time since I have said it's been some time, and I still have to do this stupid exercise.

Our child has said his first word, but he couldn't hear it. They told me he is deaf. I sometimes see him moving as if he was dancing. Maybe he is able to listen what no one else can.

No one else, of course, except for you.

 

Nothing has changed much… yes, which includes my saying that. I still hear our neighbors' fight during the night, and those two women on the street screaming at one another as if there were miles between them, and that person who would pass in front of our house and say, at the same hour, always the same phrase: "Everything is the same."

I might even try to write these reports in verse. "It's all poetry," you would say, and I wonder if, during your travels, you will finally get to publish that poetry book in which you merely catch people's spoken gibberish.

I am writing with the only pencil you would use to write a book if you ever did so. “It is magical,” I can almost hear you insist. Though I have my doubts about the part of the pencil, I know you would somehow manage to make even gibberish beautiful.

 

I am writing this one day after the last time I wrote. It's ironical that I wrote about poetry: I went to see the doctor today, because, as you know, our second child is old enough to be speaking, and he is not. The “seeing if it is just about some other problem” did not allow me to sleep anymore. I pushed harder for some real answers.

At the end, the doctor said he is mute.

I hear him babbling, as if trying to say something to me. I imagine what he is saying, and write it down as if they were his first words.

Maybe his art is called "You imagine it."

I know you would have smiled at the opportunity.

 

You still have some time left, but I am resisting the urge to go after you. We can only be thankful for our sorrows if we can make some art out of it.

I look through the window of our room, and the single tree that never gives fruits is still there. So are the rosebuds that never bloom and the bird that cannot fly.

"It's all a painting," you would have said. But, of course, I could never see the beauty in any of it.

I turn away and ask myself whether that painting is called "Us."

 

VII.

 

Now it is our first child that sees through the window. He is not actually able to, of course, but he is smiling at the "painting", like you used to do.

I resist the desire to ask him what it feels like to be blind: Not that he wouldn't give me the most detailed description of it... the true problem is, as I look deeply through the window, I realize it all seems completely grey to me.

I am still blind.

A glimpse of light gets into my eyes, however: I think the image looks like our boy seeing something there.

 

VIII.

I must inform you that your dear pencil is coming to the end of his life.

I suspect you would never have used it anyway: "We seers are also artists," you said. "And I would rather make it my art to show people the notes and verses in their own lives."

I have been writing for a long while now. I don't know whether I am doing what you requested, and I cannot see the beauty in this, the beauty that I thought I would find.

Maybe you actually went away to do some real music, or painting, or poetry... but it will only be for the deaf that wouldn't hear anything, for the blind that would see nothing and  the mute that would recite for the former and make gestures for the latter.

I don't see why you should come back, and I am sure it won't make a wonderful plot for your masterpiece...

 

 

When you do come back, I know I have to give you the other parts of this. Yet, once you get through the door, I merely leave the last writing on the table and turn away.

I wander through the house for days without speaking, without hearing, without seeing.

You have brought only three things with you, and you display every one of them when you see me finally staying somewhere: I cannot run away forever.

You first call our mute child, and you tell him that you have a poem for him to recite, the only one you have ever written and will ever write. He hasn't seen you in a long time, but he seems to recall that you  took care of him perfectly. He reads the paper you give him, and I watch his lips move as if he were talking.

I find that even if there had been any sound in them, I would have been too focused on the beauty that they irradiated.

You call our blind child next, and you show him the only painting you have ever painted and will ever paint. I see the canvas is black all over.

"Is it beautiful?" Our child asks.

"Yes," you whisper in his ear. Next, he touches it and takes a deep breath, the type of breath one would take while gazing into an amazing landscape. "What is it called?" You ask him.

"It's called Trust," he says.

Finally, you call our deaf child, and you take out a stringless violin. He stares at you while you perform the only song you had ever composed and will ever compose.

Once you are done, he claps loudly and almost starts to jump around the place.

"What is it called?" You ask him with signs.

He approaches me and takes my hand. I can't do otherwise, I have to follow him. He makes more signs: He wants me to name it.

I notice how quiet the house is, as it had never been when you were here, for it wasn´t only us who had to hear our neighbors.  They had to hear us, too. I just couldn't see the beauty in anything, and when you tried to do so, it seemed to me as the ugliest of things. Yet, as I am so immersed into a silence that lasts forever, I can only think you among the best of the authors... including in your masterpiece.

“So, what is the name of the song?”

"It's called Silence," I say, and I mean a silence that does not need any word…. that is art by itself.

You had said that your pencil was magical. I realize, as I give you every piece that I have written, that it was magical because it would become magical if we thought it was.

Every piece that I have written but this one, for I still have to end my own masterpiece: Seeing that maybe it actually is one. 

updated by @americymru: 11/29/17 10:00:59PM