heatsink

Do you ever suddenly feel warm?, he asked, as they walked through the eucalypti towards the sea, saltylipped and sandblown. She returned his gaze, uncertain: How do you mean?

I mean, a sudden, inexplicable feeling of warmth; an imparted heat. I felt one just now. In fact, it still lingers. A photo, maybe, taken from back there, on that hill? See that man in the dark coat? A picture of us. The crouching man, squinting into the lens, capturing us, and in the bargain, diffusing something of himself. Enveloping us, seemingly, pulling us into the lens, and us, here, feeling that pull as heat. Or that push. His push; a gift of his thought, his creation; his life, his heat.

Energy, thought, heat, passion. We pass these on, but in what form? A scream passes heat surely – in the suddenly taut gut of the passerby, the pounding heart within – but what of a loving gaze? Much of life seems to be an emotional imparting of this heat, either noisome or cathartic.

It is much like painting.

For many days I sat in our sun room, back pressed against the pale yellow of the wall, plaster against spine, staring at a feeble oil I had been struggling with. I had plied, pried and played at it, but for so long it had refused to coalesce; instead it leached me.

Then one night I was feverish, whiskey-worn. I threw down blankets, tapestries, newspapers, covering each delicate surface of the room. And filling the clay pots with pigment, arming myself with brush, knife and linseed oil, I attacked the flesh of this planar beast. In the ensuing hours the entire room seemed to melt, transfigure. Rivulets of molten steel coursed down the cloth, blood soaked it, distant screams bounded it in time. When I finally emerged, skin sticky and starved, hands strained, stained and shaking, the painting was finished. As I turned off the bulb the image remained, pulsing through my nerves, coating my tongue, tingling in my teeth. I was clearly delirious, probably drunk. Shivering, I stumbled to my bed, and fell, forever marking the soft flannel with my madness.

The next day I had ventured, timidly, into the room filled with morning's light, and looked up at the battered, color-soaked canvas, and its expected gleam was gone. Odd, I thought; it had dried in a day. Or less than twelve hours. When it should, certainly, have taken weeks…

He paused in voice as they did in body: they had reached the water. Stroking her soft cheek, he turned her head towards him, her eyes to his. Pupils of lead met pupils of fire. And leaning to the side, slightly, he pressed his lips to hers, delicately.

Those nearby saw him collapse in the arms of a woman, an image they would never forget, two antithetical figures next to a pounding sea, framed by the day's last light. His limpness slung ropelike across her solidity. In time the medics arrived.

The pneumonia led to complications and eventual death. She came to his bedside once, to remember his marble face, a simple term in her evolving series. Tracing a path down his arm, she stroked his finger, kissed his cheek, and turned away, looking forward to tomorrow, the next day, and all the moments of warmth to come.