excerpt
At the end of the evening, Ken tried to find the young man again, but
the press of the crowd overwhelmed him. He accepted congratulations,
smiled, and shook hands as he fought his way to the exit and the cool air
of the parking lot. He was achingly tired – more tired than he had ever
been in his life. Marsha steered him to the car. “What the hell happened to
you?” she asked. “Where did that talk come from? You were on fire! This
is not the you that I know.”
“I have no idea what I said.”
“But you must know!”
“No – and it troubles me. I have no idea what the hell I said.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I told you. Was it beautiful? Was it powerful? Was it
strong?”
“More than that. But, what do you mean when you say you don’t know
what you said?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what I said. I must have been in some
sort of trance.”
“You mean you were possessed?”
‘I have no idea.”
He fell into bed, closed his eyes, and felt a wave of contentment sweep
over him. When he woke at eleven o’clock in the morning he felt an urge
to laugh out loud. He had expended so much time and energy, to make
money to do exactly what he had accomplished the night before – without
spending a single penny.
When Ken arrived at his studio about an hour later, he walked into a
party. “I’ve never seen you do anything like that before,” Diane said.
“That’s because I haven’t done anything like that before.” He turned to
Rocco. “Can either of you remember anything I said?”
“Yes,” Rocco said. “Why?”
“Because I can’t.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m serious. I haven’t a clue what I said.”
When the party dispersed, Ken started making dozens of small sketches
for Isumataq that he laid out in various configurations on the floor of
his studio until he had what he wanted. With Diane’s help, he stretched
four small canvases that together measured twelve feet long by one foot
high and served as a scale model for the much larger painting. He covered
the canvases with coats of gesso, layering the primer horizontally first and
then vertically. He drew the scene, in pencil, on the canvas with so much
detail and depth it resembled a painting in shades of gray.
He drew three more sketches, each the same size, with nuances of
mood and tone. The fourth was the definitive one. But, when he stepped
back and looked at it he realized it was too small to scale up to the larger
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 