A very small resurrection

I saw a small girl sitting with a gallon-sized paint can, she appeared to be waiting and thinking, all the while watching the can. I wondered about this small girl, and what she thought about. As this thought sank into me, I became aware of a stretching - like a band of blurred colors and shapes - none very distinct or recognizable and all moving in a direction I cannot describe, not related to compass letters or much like the prepositional mouse - there was no over under in on, there were no landmark buildings or mountains, there was only motion and blurs in slowed shapes, then shapes forming blurs as everything stretched. This happened not in my eye, or in my brain, but between attention and history, yes, almost like flying through the pages of a Western Civilization text. The motion stopped,
the book lay open
and my attention turned to memory.

Don’t touch it.
As soon as he said this I knew I would.
It was summer, not too hot but still fragrant with grass and the freshness of sun. Over my head hung four gray wires, thin tubes really, or string, or lines – bare except for the sun they wore (I imagined this made them loose and supple). My eyes crept along the wire-lines one way to their ends that were attached to a board somehow, which was attached to the house somehow. I crept the other way till my eyes stopped
at a metal arm opposed to the lines. The arm was held up in a “go no further” gesture, and insisted on gathering the lines and tucking them under its shiny frame. The arm glinted in the buzzing sun and sat atop a tall post in dire need of paint.

I sat in the grass – lush green plaids
and patches of “extra” fertilized circles wound through my yard.
Each little green soldier waited, some shifting lightly with the breeze, others struggling to get up after having been splayed flat, their tips shorn straight across from last week’s mowing. I could pull one tip slowly, very slowly, till white guts were released from its dirt shaft these - tasted sweet. I ate a few waiting for him. He brought a can, and a flat paint brush, with four inches of horsehair. He was proud of his paintbrushes, and while there were flecks of hard white speckled on the hair, he said most of his brushes were 20 years old, and that they could last forever if they were taken care of properly,

(I wondered about this immortality).
He brought a wooden stirrer and an opener, not wanting to chance an open can of white walked across the yard. He popped the top. This revealed to me a thick yellow oil on top of a chalky whiteness.
He stirred the yellow into the white - slowly, with deliberate turns of his wrist and sometimes folding the mixture over itself like cake batter.
It took a long time.
I contented myself with watching the swirls in the can, little lips of white pushing up over the rim to lay in a small white trench. The swirls moved slowly and I wondered if this was because of the sun, or because of the heat, or because I was watching. The paint was not at all like water (quick – splash – spill – running)

and white’s scent in the warmth of that day wandered too,
until I was quite sure
of how white paint with oil in it must smell in the summer, so different than anything else I knew, not pleasant, not repulsive. It was heavy smelling, like the basement, and like a tarry street. But this made no sense to me when looking at the full white color in the can that I thought should smell like milk in the morning, or new snow. I reached out, because I had to know how it felt, how it was different and same.
It was then he said
“Don’t touch it, it’s oil paint.”
I was disappointed.
He mixed more, I watched its final twirls and he tested the brush by dipping it into the smoothed white. “Damn,
no rag, here, hold this - I’ll be right back.”
I remember him coming right back,
yelling at me because of my dripping hand,
my very white hand, my smelly hand, my smooth and slimy hand.
I wiped it off in the dark green grass and marveled at the white tracks it made on the lawn, so thick and white.