![]() ![]() ![]() Behind the two, and half hidden by trees, was a little monastery. The old man was dressed in threadbare blue velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue cap, and had about his neck a rosary of blue beads. A russet-faced boy of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows dipping for flies in the still water. And it is in this way that he is able to rest his mind, and more than that, get through the night.Ī very old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-covered isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. In fact, he can see all the things he can’t see with them opened. I think of that man in the picture closing his eyes and being able to see colors. I think that if I had such a coloring book with that picture, I would color the background black because it is dark. I think of what I would look like in a coloring book. I listen for sounds-any sounds-the train in the night a half mile away, the cars on the Thruway, a noise down the street. I sit in the dark living room and think about what has happened in my life and all that is lost now. ![]() It is after not being able to color the Paris pictures, though, that I give up on coloring books and go back to the reading I had been doing. And instead become like the glaring mistakes I have made in my life. That they are too permanent and leave no room for error. That it could be something as simple as that. It is then I realize that more than anything, the markers are holding me back. That feeling is holding me back even though the pictures are plentiful and I have so many markers to choose from. I am excited to look at the pictures, but when I sit down at home, I am not able to pick any colors, and I wonder if it is because it had been so gray in Paris. It had been cloudy and rainy most of the long weekend we were there, but the colors of the city were still vibrant. I am attracted to the book because I think it will bring back memories of the last time my wife and I went to Paris twenty years ago. On the cover are buildings along the Seine. I buy it along with markers instead of coloring pencils. The last coloring book I buy is about Paris. It is no longer a matter of right or wrong. So I stare at the sky as I pick a shade of blue with some gray. Finally there is a breeze and the sun is warm and things are better, until I realize I am not the man in the picture. The thing that happens when you become old. Looking out at the ocean, I know I have become a lesser person. I am not sure why I don’t know these things, so I just stare at the water as I color in the blue, green sea. It is almost as if I am in a dream, and I wonder if my mother and father and sister are in the next room. I wonder how all the things that have happened to me have made me end up looking out at the sea.Īs I color, my mind wanders. In my mind, I become the man in the picture. It is, instead, of a man looking out at the ocean from a desk in his house by the sea. The picture I pick has nothing to do with a cat. I hurry home and open the book, and find the page I want to color. The cashier holds it up to get a closer look and says, “I love cats.” There is a picture of a cat on the cover of the book. I buy my second coloring book at the supermarket. Something to keep my mind from the fear that is increasing. My thoughts fill the room like a balloon inflating enough to explode.Īfter a while, I stop coloring and hold the coloring book up, looking at the unfinished mosaic, and realize that what I am doing is nothing but time. I concentrate on a part of the design on the bottom of the page, and I think about how I was once so capable and able to do the things a man can do. No one to say, “I wouldn’t think you would have used so much orange. No one to ask me why I used light blue there or pink somewhere else. There is no one to second-guess my choice of color. It’s also the first thing I have accomplished in a long time.Īs I fill in the pattern, I feel I finally have some control. I just have to select the colored pencils I want and fill in the design. When I start my first picture, it feels good because I don’t have to think. His wife, an artist, has put together a book of mosaics. I get a coloring book in the mail from my friend, Phil. ![]()
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