Art of Helium

I am fearful of giving wrong answers, to myself for which i now lay quiet, to my host for whom I extend my wroth.

There is no need for me to secure this message, for my vagaries are a missing piece of myself, and the completed puzzle is not something I wish to see.

Enmity, apathy, introspection, loops without any purpose or meaning can entertain the soul long enough to allow me to lift.

So as the doorbell rings I bow, welcoming the stranger, the person who is better than I.

"Marle." My name is not my own, it is borrowed and unneeded, but I like to hear it. Vanity suggests brilliance in all aspects, an introduction made clean, and praise before worship, if not for my own acquiescence to tradition as my head faces the ground. Surrendered.

"Angel." He enters. His steps methodical as those of a predator striding through new territory assessing his grounds. He has little to work with. His suit, wrinkled and with a splotch of dried food on the lapel outlines his older greying face unfavorably. He is thin and tall, but it's hidden by the padded shoulders, and there is no reason to treat him as a tower. For though he may have a reach above me, ethically and intellectually, he is not a building worth climbing.

He is lifeless, a shell that goes through motions, ones I mimic myself, if only to hide. Yet his are genuine, he does not see his own worth, know his own value, so secure is he in his findings of nothingness in the everyday that he does not reason to question. Oppressive is his silence, which thinks of nothing but the task at hand, and pitiable the sentiment behind it. He wants to create. The shell wishes to make something new which he is missing, and I, possessing neither the balance of spirit or care to refute his ideals of me, accept that as an intent to talk.

He rests a heavy suitcase on the ground, treating the floor like a table for I failed to anticipate and offer him my furniture, my own silence as threatening as his. Out of it he pulls an easel, paper, and pencils. I stare at him as lifeless as he wishes me to be. He will not be able to capture me in a picture, as he is want to claim. He knows me little, and I respect myself even less. We are not one sided, nor do we have one image to bear. He may capture a snapshot of a moment, but it will be one tiny part of my whole, the moment and not the self, the image but not the memory, the photo but not what I am, and I am waiting.

Restless do I remain still, forced to consider the control he has over me in this moment. His eyes cross my figure, yet I have conceded the right to motion. My autonomy in question, yet breaking this contract would only serve to disappoint, and that fear keeps my judgement in check. Whether the decision is correct or not is a matter of feeling, and I do not have luxury to feel, for it might risk the display of emotion which compromises me before the artist. Yet there is regret in my decision, and anger in my willingness to lose what I have formed, and sadness in my inability to defy my own self to a degree that I could engage negativity with this stranger. He is better than me, more skilled, more perfect, but he is dull, and lifeless, and I have no reason to care for his success.

"Done." So he says and spares me the humility of answering my conundrum. That I am known to overthink. I move to look upon his work, freed of my constraint and eager to pass judgement as the only means of control I have over him and his mind. For he is simple, and judgement would here be met with emotion, a control that I need not reserve for myself. Before I can see it, he reveals it to me himself, a drawing of which my features are neither exaggerated or perfected, not made ugly nor exemplified in the art. Yet it is foreign, it does not have the weight of my face, but holds it in my jaw, I appear perplexed but calm, not out of skill but by the flaws of a work trying to copy reality, and in it there are enough imperfections of recognition that make me question if I am even the model for this work, so strange is it, not my body, my image, or the face I see in the mirror. If it had purpose, it would have called out certain parts and brought forth meaning, but this creation is devoid of such things, it is conflicted, messy, and lost.