The second painting: I made this in my thirties, that is I didn’t make it, I am not a painter, it simply came to me, so vividly I wondered if I hadn’t actually seen it somewhere before—in one of those expensive galleries by the sea? In someone’s home? No matter. There it was, in a single instant, possibly during meditation, I don’t know for sure. We were living at the time in an old Spanish-style house, that could have been part of it. We have always lived in old Spanish-style houses, from the time we met. The stucco, bleached white, washed white. The red tile. The wooden shutters. The arched doorways. We are looking at the house from a little distance. A red geranium in a pot on a windowsill, a woman PARTIALLY OBSCURED, PARTIALLY SEEN is standing in the shadow of the arched window, the geranium on the broad tile sill. She is standing back from the window, desiring to see but not to be seen. She has long black hair and full red lips, her eyes are hooded, her face partially turned, her chin slanting away. She isn’t holding a curtain of heavy velvet in front of her as a shield, but she could have been, it was a possibility, a consideration. It is cool where she is, inside that room, inside the house. Outside the sun is bleaching the walls white, nearly blinding. Above the window is a strip of roof, rust-colored tile, not red like the woman’s lips, the petals of the geranium. No: not rust-colored. Terra cotta. The word comes, and she shivers slightly from the discovery. But she is still obscured, really only half a woman, no more than that, in this world of marriage and babies, politics, endings. I want to tell you.

About the arrow. The third painting did, most definitely did, come from a meditation, in fact it was a burst of joy, a burst of pure joy that nearly rocked me out of my chair. The small upholstered chair, plaid, pink and purple and blue, in the little study off the kitchen. In our Spanish-style house. A burst of such joy, tears sprang to my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I glanced at my watch to see how much of my twenty-minute meditation was left: six minutes. Well then, there it was—what was it, you say, tell me! There it was, a vision, clouds parting, shadow lifted, and with six or now five or four minutes left to ponder it, the joy of this image tingled like a cough or a fever or a nose desperate to sneeze.

It was a flying fish.

That’s it. A flying fish—you laugh. You are disappointed in my third painting. But don’t you see? There are no underwater birds. There are birds that swim, sure, but they can’t live under the water like fish. They need air in their lungs, they would die if they failed to reach the surface of the water in time to breathe, to break the surface, to gulp air. No: a flying fish is an anomaly, an exception, not this nor that, a vision, the shadow of a vision, a wondrous, wondrous thing. Well, you say, you do realize the fish isn’t exactly flying, don’t you? It doesn’t have wings, it can’t soar to the treetops whose branches whisper together, the wind making a sound like running water, a river. A flying fish simply leaps out of the water, a momentary impulse—to fly, I say, breaking in, imagine a fish imagining flight. The joy of it, even for a moment. Flight is flight: the arrow from the bow, the fish arching its back: fins outstretched, the color of its lovely blue-green skin gleaming. Beautiful, daring, grinning, ecstatic, accomplished, unexpected, brazen, dreamlike. In that instant, jewels flung into the air, hovering.