What Did it matter? He knew he had finished it. He sat back in his chair and looked at the eyes. Whom looked back at him in the same awe and quiet regard. The only exception being that those eyes looking back at him were dabs of paint. Moments ago, lines. Now covered with thick impasto.

Two years to the day, that canvas sat in another place. In a closet, another time period. Another one of those lifetimes we left somewhere and forgot for a moment. Another one of those lifetimes we recollect when we hear that ole Spanish tune on the digital radio. A relic on the dark side of tHe moon.

The canvas was beating. A throbbing sound; Reznor's hell . Under the right lighting and quiet circumstances the canvas starts to breathe. Almost a tremble, a quiet earthquake. A giant walking the lonely earth at night, picking up the last pieces of the earth under his feet, until it is all gone. All around him now, the stars and a gentle moon.

Now the canvas gets closer to him. At Kubrick's tracking pace. A long corridor becomes a slow dance. A madman's retreat Into Magritte's mirror.

He realized then and there that America was stuck in a surf shop. And they were just waking up from a long soujourn through Morphine, while the waves crashed on their sea to shining seas. He knew that everyone was just a bunch of beach bums waiting that next tube. Maybe it's all just an illusion. Maybe there isn't a tube for you, a touch of destiny, or a book of just faces. Just Another place to store memories. He knew the truth. We weren't just living in the past. We were watching it.

Everything on the digital plane had already happened. Yet, we made sure history repeated itself. What was so important that moments we are living aren't as important as what had already happened? Did we miss something? Does everyone need to go on your journey?

Man is not content anymore to journey alone, without the watchful eyes of his peers. He is a voyeur without wanting and a vigilante without willing. He has no time for his own pictures in his mind. He needs to watch others movies as they play out. He watches repeats of his former life through costars he never met. A collection of made up lives. Photocopies of theater. Man used to have friends, now he has followings.

"Only quiet triumphs", he thought. He knew man was more than just of procession of perfectly timed performances. Cue music, cue laughter. He knew about the types of stereos, that performed without knowing power, lived up to their hype, and saw no trumpet's glory. Miles away there are these words, traveling further than it's readers. Behind him now, as he had turned away earlier, the canvas looked over his shoulder.

It's all in the lighting. Color turns to lightning, and hugs it's viewer. Are a million colors possible? Turn the page and all you see are prints. A trip to the Metropolitan. To walk in rooms full of painted pasts. Actual moments frozen in movement of the brush and the hand that held it. Crowds gathering to catch a glimpse of the moment. That thought. That reflection. those combinations of color and questions. Swords of bristle attacking Quijote's towers.

Earlier that day a man walked into his studio to see some of the works. He had been there a few days earlier and saw the canvas, as it had looked before the painter had touched it again. It was still partially wrapped in the black garbage bag the painter had painstakingly taped to cover over the old soul of a face that was there, after sitting in that closet those two years. All this while he collected the rest of his memories and took the four winding flights down from that city in the clouds, just south of Potala Palace. The concrete awaiting his feet, and the blistering sun, awaiting his back, and their journey onward.

Days earlier, the man and a lawyer friend stood inside the very same studio to admire the collection adorning the walls. The canvas sat atop an old piano, also bagged with the same care as the canvas, this time a large green garbage bag. Awaiting the day the appraisers would finally come down, throw a number out and exit in an orderly fashion.

How many lives is that so far? Can you count how many you've had? Are we all cats or burmese pythons? Swallows and sheds, Birds and barns. Eat the rich, feed the poor.

He stands adrift inside the end of the night. Are some born to the endless night? Do they scurry when someone turns on the light? Maybe Buddha was right. Empty mind.

Maybe Love is a really, really deep breath. We float like helium balloons, for the lucky ones. Some get stuck to the ceiling. Bobbing up and down in basement birthday parties. Where the cake always has pineapple, and it's made from a box. If the garage door is open just right, and the north winds are whispering, then some of those other balloons. These also full of helium, just float away. An upward drift, a rider in the storm. Seemingly aimless rising, then just when they are out of the reach of the retina. Pop. little explosion.

At 2:35, that same man walks into the studio, sans lawyer friend, and the painter calls him over. "Take a look." he tells the man as he points at the painting. "What do you think"? This wasn't normal for the painter to do, but the night prior, where he sat, in front of the canvas, and stared, and stared, and picked up the brush, and attacked the oncoming windmill, and sat back covered in sweat. Brows to bone, then as if suddenly awakening from a coma after seven years. A temple bell for a young Ulysses. He saw that break in the fabric, that little tear in the universe where tears turn to hologram, he saw the painting. Titanium in one hand and a palette knife in the other, he layed down the final strokes. A touch of Cadmium yellow here and there. Done.

The man looked at the canvas and said, " what were you thinking?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all", thought the painter, as a smile came, hung out for a while, and left in another moment.