A Thousand Words

Look at this picture:



"Pacific"

It’s driven me crazy for years. I glimpsed it during a documentary about Canadian artist Alex Colville that I watched pretty much because it was on. During the show, one of Colville’s contemporaries remarked that his work was so interesting because you always had the feeling that something bad had either happened or was about to happen. The contradiction of violence and tranquility in this one really hit me. There’s a story in this painting; a story that’s eluded me for years.

Last week, I started to get something. Picture if you will a man of mystery between assignments. He got back last night, late last night, in heavy rain and brutal wind. He crashed oncoming through the door, slept hard—this is the only place where he sleeps deeply—and woke on his own to a placid dawn. He puts the coffee on and takes a shower. The workout can wait a day, but weapons maintenance can’t. It can, however, wait for coffee.

Half-dressed, he pours a cup and carries it to the picture window, propping a shoulder against the deck doorjamb. The sky is a polished silver-blue, split from a matching sea by the dark blue horizon. A brisk salt breeze has the surf curling as it hits the shore, thumping the sand like a Golden Retriever’s tail welcoming him home. Already his rhythm is adjusting to the ocean’s heartbeat. The solitude is sublime.

He sips his coffee and contemplates a trip to town. The kitchen needs stocking and he’d better do something about the garden. Not the roadster, then. He decides on the SUV.

Later on he might take the chainsaw down to the beach and carve up some driftwood for the fireplace … and then he spies something lying on the sand, half-buried amid the logs and ropy kelp tossed ashore by last night’s storm.

He slowly straightens, muscle coming alert, eyes intent on what could be a bunch of seaweed but looks suspiciously like a tangle of dark brown curls …