Still life.” What a lie. Life isn’t still. Death is.

Great art is like that. You can think you’re a real hard-ass, with no use for artsy-fartsy jazz and then one of the greats hits you like a bullet though the heart. People talk about Tiger Woods, or Michael Jordan but if you really want to see a dude playing above the rim, spend half an hour looking at Picasso’s from between the wars. The greats don’t just want to score they want to dunk in your face.

Touch with your eyes, Cathy. Handle things with them, so you can tell by looking if they are rough, or slick, or damp and soft, like mushrooms. You have to cry with your hands, and laugh with it, and let it sing, You have to see with your heart. You have to see with your heart.

If this were a war year, if this were 1918 or 1944, I wouldn’t be the only girl whose dad was never coming home. Think of that: a whole generation of us, daughters and young wives, waiting for a car that will never roll into the driveway. Waiting for a door that will never open again.

In that intense stillness, the old man laughed. “You have a good eye,” he said. “Someone taught you to see.

Without us, the world is just things, Cathy. It’s our seeing that fills them with meaning. To pay attention is a painter’s scared duty. That’s what real prayer is. real meditation: to hold your attention to the world like a match, until it catches with the fire of meaning.

Maybe you think a lot about the past, when you haven’t got much future in front of you.

Cathy, you burn like a candle in the dark.” Victor titled up my face with his fingers. “All your life, people are going to see that, even from far away, even in the middle of the night, and they are going to come to you.” He touched my damp cheek, still wet with tears. I could feel my skin flushing against his fingers, “They are going to want to add your light to theirs,” he said “And every night ends, and then it’s morning, and the sun comes up.

I pegged him as the kind of jock that has a thing for smart girls. You see these guys, second-stringers on the football team; they stand around the edges of the Jock Huddle listening to raunchy talk about cheerleaders, but they fall for the smart girl with library eyes.

Still life." What a lie. Life isn't still. Death is.