by Hoang, Jamie
“Forgive my honest speak, but I have always wanted to know: why do you paint? What is the reason inside?” Atef asked.
“I do it because there is something I want to say,” I said.
“Why not just write it?” he asked.
In a long and sobering moment, I thought about how to respond. “Everything in life—our thoughts, our emotions—are always fragmented. For me, art brings it all back together. With any kind of art, you can feel something and empathize with it on a very deep level without having to put restrictive words to it,” I said. “Music is the same way. Take Beethoven for example, his combination of notes and spacing evoke emotion without the use of any words.”
One of the most powerful experiences with music I had ever had was listening to Beethoven’s Appassionata in a college lecture hall. The song opened quiet and ominous and ended in complete tragedy. He wrote that song a few years after coming to terms with his progressively declining hearing, but to describe it as tragic would have been to diminish the experience. Beethoven’s single and double notes were my absolute and appositive brush strokes. In the same way his notes, when strung together, created a complex symphony, my brush strokes, when laid out in calculated and meticulous designs, made up a work of art layered with meaning. That he and I now shared a common tragedy was purely coincidence.
“That is God damn poetic,” Jeff slurred.
“Beethoven is a genius and you are a genius. Please, make me look handsome,” Atef said.
I couldn’t make you look ugly if I tried, I wanted to say. Instead I shrugged and acted coy. “I promise nothing.”
The compliments and blandishments were showered onto me as I continued to drunkenly sketch their portraits. They stopped only after I sternly asked them to so I could stop laughing and steady my hand. When I was done, I handed each drawing to its respective owner.
“Amazing photos of an amazing artist,” Jeff said, not making much sense. I smiled and laughed, noticing that his arm rested on my thigh and stayed there long after he’d set his portrait off to the side.
Leaning back to relax against a large sitting pillow, I thought to myself, This is a night I’m going to remember. I didn’t know if it was because traveling drew people together or because I was in such a vulnerable place that others were drawn to me, but by the end of the night, Enmar and Atef felt like family.
Before going to bed, Enmar handed us a bag of juice, which he made us promise to finish before falling asleep. A hangover-preventer of sorts that burned through the system—some kind of ginger, lemon, and spice combination that I was certain would give both Jeff and me the runs. But being the drunks that we were, we drank with enthusiasm.
Instead of being a cynic, I should’ve gotten the recipe. On our second day in Petra, I felt better than I had in awhile. I was alert, light on my feet, and maybe I was being overly optimistic, but even my vision seemed clearer. At the very least, it wasn’t worse.
Day two was to be traveled on camelback. It was the same pathway we had taken the day before, but we were traveling a longer distance to the Monastery. Having never been much of any kind of rider, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea. I told Atef I was fine walking, but he said, “Aubrey, trust me, this is part of the experience. Camels are a part of this world and have been since the ancient times. Please, you will enjoy it.” So I hopped on and begged the animal to forgive me for my weight.
Even though these camels made the same trek every day, I didn’t trust them not to spook and throw me fifty yards across the desert. Did camels spook? Or was that just a horse thing? No matter, I was holding on for dear life and the experience was far from relaxing.
I sat atop the slow but steady animal for an hour before arriving at the base of a mountain where we traded our camels for surefooted donkeys. The astute name did nothing to ease my angst as my wobbling legs moved from one to the other. Only then did we climb the 800 steep steps to the famous monastery. Safe as the donkeys were, I would have felt much better with my own feet planted on the ground, and it took all of the strength of my muscles combined with fierce willpower to steady my shaking legs once we reached the top. If any ride on an animal could have conjured up a fear of heights, this would’ve been it.
Carved out of pure rock was an enormous, trophy-like structure situated at the top of the Monastery. Like a banister typically found at the top of a wooden staircase, the structure had several geometric shapes stacked on top of one another with the bottom cone tapering out into a large disc at the bottom. Walking along the slanted surface was scary only because of the close proximity to an edge. With great effort and concentration, I crawled out onto the platform for a panoramic view of Petra.
Being on my hands and knees while small Arab children walked around with ease made me feel ridiculous, but my legs had only just begun to stop shaking and I wasn’t willing to trade my life for my pride. I stopped close to the center where I thought I had the best vantage, and also where I could plant my feet securely. Jeff, who the day before was struggling with the confined spaces of the Siq, had no problem with heights, so even with unguarded ledges he wandered about unconcerned.
I felt a tightness in my chest and tried desperately to take in air, but I couldn’t. When I finally did, I let out multiple gasping sounds that sent both Jeff and Atef to my side instantly.
“Are you okay?” Jeff asked.
“Go get her a water bottle from the donkey, please,” Atef ordered Jeff.
Jeff hesitated, but took off running.
Atef took my left hand in his and stroked my back with this right hand like a parent trying to calm a hysterical child. “Be calm,” he said. “Try to take deep breaths.”
“I can’t,” I stammered.
“You can,” he said, helping me off my hands and knees and into a sitting position. Still holding my hand, he said, “You are on vacation, yes?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Where have you been so far?” he asked warmly.
“China and India,” I stammered.
“Oh wow! Then we are in tough competition. And you are traveling more still?”
“Italy, then Peru, and Brazil.”
“You are…what do they call it? Running around the world?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes,” I said, feeling myself begin to calm.
“Why do you to travel?” he asked.
“I’m going blind,” I replied, feeling my chest close again. I gasped for air.
“It is okay. You are okay,” he repeated calmly. “You breathe with me okay?” I nodded. “Okay, one, two, three breathe up.” He took a deep breath in and I followed. “One, two, three, breathe down.” He let his breath out and I repeated.
After a few minutes of breathing exercises I was able to take in longer, more steady breaths. “Thanks,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “Please don’t say anything to Jeff. He doesn’t know.”
“You have not talked to anyone about this?” he asked.
“Just my friend Rati,” I said, willing my heart to stay calm.
“Not Jeff?” he asked. I shook my head. “Well, maybe you need to speak it out,” Atef smiled with compassion.
“Maybe,” I said.
“I meet a lot of people in this business, you know…people who travel both a lot and a little, but none who are really seeing the world. Not like you.”
I smiled, then returned my focus to breathing.
“I have a drawing worth a million dollars in my pack,” he said warmly. I blushed. “I had a blind man once, as my guest,” Atef continued. “I asked him why he bothered to travel if he could see nothing. Do you know what he said? He said, ‘Just because you can’t see the stage, doesn’t mean you can’t dance on it.’ I think he was a very wise man, this guy…”
“Was he an artist?” I asked.
He laughed. “I don’t think so, but he did take a lot of photos.”
“How does a blind guy take photos?” I asked.
Atef thought about it for a long moment b
efore he responded. “I don’t know. He just did I guess. I think maybe he didn’t worry about how to frame the photo but just to take a picture for his friends.”
I liked the guy’s metaphor about being blind, but I felt like more than just somebody who wanted to dance. I felt like a ballerina who worked tirelessly to get into Juilliard only to have her legs amputated. I was losing more than my eyesight—I was losing my career, my dream, and the very thing that defined who I was.
“Do you believe in destiny? That everything in the world happens for a reason?” I asked him.
“No,” he said simply.
Looking out over the monastery for the first time, I saw that I had a grand view of a serene expanse of land, and as such, it was a good place for a spiritual revelation, but I didn’t have one. Religious people turned to God when things in their life went wrong; all I had was myself.
“I’m afraid I don’t either,” I said, with a gentle smile. “But I envy people who have faith,” I said. “For the rest of us, the burden and disappointment of life sometimes feels unbearable.”
“Not if we share the burden with others,” Atef said, gesturing to Jeff who was running toward us.
“There wasn’t any water in any of the donkey saddles so I had to run down to a vendor,” Jeff panted. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think so,” I said, feeling both touched and embarrassed at the horrified and scared look on his face. “Thanks Jeff.”
That night, back at the Kempinski Hotel, I created my first surrealist painting. Using the rose-red colors of Petra mixed with the colors of my natural skin tone, I painted a Picasso-esque self-portrait of a naked girl, hugging her right knee. Etched into the rock, she was one with the earth. It evoked a sense of loneliness through hard, broken lines and lack of substance—there was only the girl and the earth. There was no sense of a higher being. She existed on her own, completely isolated.
“That looks nothing like anything I’ve seen of yours,” Jeff said, coming up behind me.
I didn’t say anything.
“It seems…sad?” he questioned.
“Maybe.”
CHAPTER NINE
Detour
PEOPLE describe being blind as living in darkness. I thought about this as I stood on my balcony looking at the sleeping city cloaked in shadows. Sharp corners appeared rounded and isolated buildings now all blended together in the low light, but even in darkness I could still make out a path to the sea. When the sun left us, the moon took its place and our eyes adjusted to the change in light. I felt queasy as I thought about trying to find my way in a world of total darkness.
I sat there for hours, unmoving. Watching the slow shift between moon and sun was like being in a place without ecstatic happiness or devastating sorrow—a purgatory of sorts. For a small fragment of time, nothing moved forward or backward. I wasn’t going blind, nor was I not going blind. Then a car passed, breaking the invisible bubble I had manifested as a means of stopping the clock. Slowly more cars emerged, then a bicyclist, pedestrian, and a truck. The first signs of sunlight appeared in the east, and the city began to awaken.
Grabbing Jeff’s camera, I carefully placed it on the balcony facing my canvas and set the timer to take a photo every five minutes. Taking a charcoal pencil from my box of supplies and holding it between my teeth, I pulled the belt from my robe and blindfolded myself.
Mentally exhausted but physically alert, I sat as still as possible and tried to decipher the sounds around me: the squeak of rusted breaks, the low rumble of an engine, bicycle wheels running over potholes, chatter in a language I didn’t understand, and water running down a drain. With my fingers I traced the size of the canvas until I found what I guessed to be the center, took the pencil from my mouth, and started to draw. I sketched fast, not worrying about placement or perfection. If my pencil went off the canvas, I let the image fall off as well. The warmth on my back grew with intensity as the sun rose and the heat became my marker of time. I drew roads, bicycles, and people walking, but stopped when a shift in the atmosphere made me jerk my head up. I reached for the blindfold.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Jeff said, placing a hand over mine.
“Morning,” I said, embarrassed. “I was just doodling.”
“With a blindfold on? That seems counterintuitive,” he said. Unable to see, I was keenly aware of his hand holding mine. Warm and soft, it sent a tingling sensation through my spine. He had a firm grip. In all the years I’d known Jeff, the insides of our palms had only made contact a few times, and I had the urge to return the grip, to fold my hand into the safety of his, but I didn’t.
“I can’t,” I said, peeling the blindfold off and wincing at the chicken-scratch drawing before me. “I lost my concentration,” I lied. The truth was, it made me self-conscious to have someone watch me create something that I myself couldn’t see.
“I don’t quite understand the exercise,” he said. “Is this supposed to help you create free flow or something?”
The image was pretty horrid. My hand-to-canvas coordination was terrible. What were supposed to be bicycles had wheels that were overlapping or abnormally far apart. What I intended to be a circle looked more like a slinky, my river was mid-canvas instead of near the bottom, and the sun fell off the top. Nothing was as I imagined it.
“Atef mentioned yesterday that he gave a tour to a blind guy once, and the guy was something of a photographer. I thought the concept was interesting,” I said. “It’s pretty terrible huh?”
“I’m not an artist, but generally when trying something new the first few are throwaways anyway, right?”
“Is that your way of telling me it sucks?” I was disappointed that he didn’t tell me he thought it was decent for my first try, or that it was actually pretty good for someone who couldn’t see. But no, Jeff didn’t say any of that.
“I think all of your paintings are equally odd, but you know, being older and wiser now…I can say with some truth that they’re starting to grow on me,” he said. I laughed.
He looked at me and smiled with a genuine kindness that made me want to cry. He had no idea what was happening to me, yet he somehow came up with the right words to comfort me.
“Right. Well, I have a feeling my patrons would agree with you on this one.”
He walked over to my camera, which was presumably still taking photos. “Uh, am I going to have to delete a camera full of Aubrey selfies?”
“They’re not selfies. They’re purely for educational purposes,” I said. “I wanted to see what I couldn’t see.”
“What does that mean?”
“I wanted to be able to see the progression of images as I created them.”
“Well, for something educational they’re actually pretty cool,” he said.
“Huh?” I was genuinely surprised. I got up and went to stand beside him.
“See that?” he said, quickly scrolling through the photos on the camera. “As the light changes, so does your canvas.”
The photos were interesting, but also disappointing. He seemed more impressed by the time-lapse shifting of the light than my drawing.
On our flight to Rome, Jeff and I had the row to ourselves, so I sat by the window with my feet stretched across the center seat and tucked under his thigh. He sat upright, typing away on his laptop and stretching his legs into the aisle when necessary. The sun was shining directly in through our window. Most of the other passengers had pulled their shades down, but I kept mine open. I lifted my hand to the glass, felt the heat of the sun beneath my fingertips, and did my best to ignore the RP line that split my hand in two.
“Blue light is hotter is than red, right?” I asked Jeff.
“What?”
“Do you remember the Bunsen burners in Schultz’s class? How a blue flame was a higher temperature than the red flame?” I repeated.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Maybe this is crazy, but I was thinking that maybe I could create an art installation about light
and the way we interact with it. How cool would it be if I could get iconic paintings and display them with colors of light that are designed to make you feel a certain way. Don’t you think that’d be cool?”
“You want the honest truth?” he asked. “It feels a little gimmicky.”
“I think manipulation of light would be pretty innovative and cool,” I argued. “What if we took Picasso’s Blue Period and cast the work in a gentle gray light?”
“What if you did?”
“It would change the way people felt about the paintings! Give old works new meaning.”
“So fifty years from now, you want somebody else taking your paintings and giving them new meaning?” he countered.
Jeff was right, I wanted to find something that worked within the confines of everything I already knew, but maybe that was the wrong approach.
“When do you think I’ll be able to see your app in action?” I asked, looking at his screen.
“Wanna see what I have now?”
“Sure.”
Unbuckling his seatbelt, Jeff scooted into the middle seat and I pulled my legs up to my chest. He closed a bunch of windows on his computer and opened a program called Beta.
“So basically this is a combination of Yelp, Instagram Video, and Foursquare for travelers. Everyone has a profile, and you can upload videos up to five seconds long. They’re sorted by location using the GPS on your phone, then your friends and random strangers vote on the videos and the one with the most likes gets to be the Mayor of that location. So let’s say I travel to China and I post this,” Jeff said, as he played a five-second clip of the Great Wall. “I’ve got videos at every place we’ve been, even restaurants, and as soon as I get access to Wifi I’ll upload them all. I’m creating filters too, so people can make black and white 1920s-style stuff or 90s VHS video.”
