Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World

One day Harry came in while I was there. She seemed sunken, low-energy. I asked her if she was okay, and she looked at me for the first time. I mean actually looked at me. She smiled, and her face wrinkled up, and I realized she was pretty old. I told her I had used abalone shells on people to clear their hearts of sorrow, that they were very good for soothing and working through emotions, that they might help her. She patted my shoulder but didn’t say anything. She talked to Anton for a while. Then they were fighting, and he shouted at her, “This is my life!” Before she left, she came over and talked to me. She asked me about where I grew up and how I got my name. I told her my mother named me after a clematis because her mom, my grandma Lucy, loved the vine more than any other flowers. She seemed to like that. I told her my father didn’t want me. He wouldn’t even sign the birth certificate. It’s funny, I don’t tell everybody that. It depends on their aura, you know, but that day, even though Harry was kind of low on the energy scale, it was okay. I told her about my sensing things most people can’t see or feel. Before she left, she said something I still remember. I can’t say it like she did, but she told me that people have different names for the same things, depending on what interests they have, but the words can also change how we see the things. I don’t really get the last part, but I can understand why Anton thought Harry was wise. That day she seemed wise, and when she touched my hand, I felt warm sweet energies coming from her.

Anton sold everything in the show. Steve and Edgar left, and I didn’t see Harry after that. Anton took a lot of pictures of me for an artwork he said he wanted to do, but he never did. Every once in a while, he’d bring in a box with a strange little story in it. He’d sell those, too. But I never saw him working on one of them. He used to lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling a lot. He read some books, and he talked about Goya, the Spanish artist from the sixteenth century or something, and he showed me these terrible war pictures he made, and I said, “Anton, those won’t help you.” He talked about Harry. He said everything had gone wrong with her. He felt like a reflection in one of those fun-house mirrors. “You don’t get it,” he said. “She’s me. I’m her.” He was really imbalanced by now, and I tried garnets on him, but he got worse, and I explained that there were toxins in him, and sometimes there can be a healing crisis, and everything comes out all at once like an explosion. Then he started yelling, “You fucking little bitch with your stones and your energies and your auras. It’s garbage. It’s all garbage, don’t you know that?” I remember every word because what he said was so hurtful, even though I tried to center myself and understand that he was hurting more than I was; honestly, he was. He knocked over some tools, and he kicked the wall. He made a dent in it, and a piece of plaster shaped kind of like Louisiana fell on the floor.

I stood really still and closed my eyes. It reminded me of Mom and Denny when they fought. Denny would yell and hit the wall, and Mom would cry. They broke lots of things in the house. Once, Mom’s nose was bleeding all over her shirt and the floor. Denny left us when I was ten, and I was glad. Then Alex came, and he was much more mellow. He would take me to the beach on Sundays, but that was when I was eleven, and then he left, too. I used to press myself against the wall in my room and close my eyes and try not to hear them — Mom and Denny, I mean. After a while, it really worked. I trained myself not to be there, and I wasn’t. Sometimes I could see everything from very far away. I was out of myself, looking down. It’s pretty easy to do after a while.

Never mind. Never mind. Never mind, Sweet Autumn, I used to say. Float out and over the room and stay very, very quiet. After a while, Denny would leave — he would run out to his car yelling and drive away. I’d go to Mom and pet her head, and she’d cry and hold me for a while. I had to take care of her and not let the sounds she made go inside me, and then we’d sleep in my bed together. You see, when I was a kid, I learned how to wait, so I waited for Anton. He said he was sorry. He said he didn’t mean it. Then he told me about Harry and that it was mostly really Harry’s work, and he was just the name on it. I think I kind of knew all along even though I didn’t have the words for it. Anton said he tried to give Harry the money from selling History of Art , to make a clean break, but she wouldn’t take it, and so Anton said he was going to travel around the world to look for answers to the big questions.

I explained that it wasn’t good for me to be around him anymore. It was throwing me back and forth and bothering me, and I just didn’t need all the bad karma. So I walked out and didn’t come back.

About a year later, I was visiting my friend Emily in Red Hook, and I was walking around down by the water, chanting to myself and feeling the wind blow on me, so purifying, and I went by Anton’s old studio, but there was another name on the door. That’s how energies work, you know, because just two days later, I got a postcard. I saved it.

Dear Sweet Autumn,

I’m in Venice sitting in a café. This morning I went to the art museum here and saw some pictures by Giovanni Bellini. There was a Madonna that looked so much like you, I had to write. She had your eyes, the kind of eyes that go straight into you. I’m okay. Thinking of trying California as a place to live. I hope you are well.

Love, Anton

I didn’t see Harry again until she was very sick. That’s when she gave me the name Clematis, but she liked to call me Clem and Clemmy, too, and sometimes Clammy, to tease me. She’d say, “Clammy, my dear, isn’t it strange how things come around?” And I’d say, “No, Harry, the wheel keeps turning.” It does. The wheel keeps turning, round and round.

Anton Tish’s first show, The History of Western Art , made a splash at the Clark Gallery in New York City when it opened in September, announcing an edgy new voice in the art world. A twenty-four-year-old bad-boy geek with a mystical underside, he got people talking. Toby Bruner met up with the artist in his studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to get the dope on where he’s going from here.

TB: So what does a guy do after he’s become such a hot property?

AT: I’m thinking about photography. You know, a post-Warhol take on the icon. But not with icons, if you see what I mean, just regular people. There’s another twist to it that I’m still working on. I got interested in Mannerism. Bronzino is my favorite, and I keep thinking there’s something in his work that will help me frame my new direction.

TB: Cool. And the story boxes? I heard you can’t make them fast enough.

AT: I might make a couple more. I don’t know. The show was kind of a one-time thing, I guess. Cleared my system of the past, you know, and now I’m ready for a new conceptual path. It could take some time figuring it out, but that’s okay with me. Once the concept is really tight in my mind, I can move forward. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, thinking…

TB: What are you reading, man?

AT: This book called Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness. It’s really wild, man. I mean, these guys say that the way you look at something creates what you’re seeing. That’s quantum, and it links up to the brain and consciousness. They call it spooky, and it is. It weirds me out, actually. I keep looking at things and wondering what I’m seeing.