Caught.

Silver strokes. Brush, paint. Oil and water." Of course, the shadows are always the most mathematical, precise and rational part of a painting. All else is just us, artists, crying because we're not creators but simulators." He'd often been cynical, knowing he liked the bohemian lifestyle more than the actual brushwork. The fabric of his life was colored with women, wine, good food. Animal. Basic. Sex, hunger, thirst. That summer of '63 was a good time to be in the art business. Music interlocked with the nomadic abandon of "obscurity". Being different. Everyone was doing it. Being different.

History's forgotten him, no one remembers his studio apartment in New York, or the magnificent potrait of Grapes in the Sky he once finished in 15 minutes. I remember watching him as he played with paint, late at night after wrapping up my part-time job at the University lab. He would splash around in the color, like a child enjoying his first warm bath. His fingers caressed the pigment like it was the ivory neck of a Petrarchan beloved. Have you ever seen Joy? Touched it, it's tangible solid contours and wrapped your hands around it? I have.

It was during that summer of '63 when I watched him paint.

I remember with vivid clarity that day in the park he told me I was immortal. That he was immortal. Because he could will it, he could create a universe of his own on canvas and live in it, forever. That the kind of people who do good things when no one's watching are the only Believers there are. The day he told me that to rule the world all I needed was a charming smile, a palette and knowing the way around my mind. Just that, a blue print of my mind.

That's the day he got up, shook my hand and left me, feeding the pigeons. The next day, as I rushed to his apartment, my stomach churned with premonition. Foreboding. The landlady told me he'd moved out, never to come back. That she didn't know where he had gone.

All she gave me was a charming smile and an old palette he'd left me. He'd often told me to not look for the things I've lost, every time I'd lose a tube of color or an idea that tipped off the tip of my brain before I could catch it. " They were just getting in your way anyway, those thoughts you keep losing."

Never was I to look for him, though I fancied I saw his shadow sometimes on an abandoned street in a quiet suburb or near a tree he used to love. Shadows after all, were the only real creations he ever indulged in. It fit.

Sitting in that same park as I type this out. The pigeons are still here, nothing has changed. It's '96 and they don't talk of art anymore, not the way they used to.

Me? I'm holding up a grape to the sky, recalling his smile and trying not to lose this thought, to catch it before it gets in my way.