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Tales from the Other Side of Language 41 complex to me, so I choose two or three blossoms and immerse my eyes in the individual qualities of each. The bent stem of one leans over, casually drifts in space. The fluffy edge of a purple aster is disfigured with yellow, secreting its mortality inside its beauty. I pare the overabundance of leaves to a few that urge brightly or quiver around themselves, no vase. My flowers are suspended across the page. I take a break and walk around the room to look at everyone else’s work. I see enormous differences. One woman draws her blossoms in a long row growing out of the bottom of the paper. I find it very odd and childish. But the judgment recedes, and I see the pleasure in her radical arrangement; her use of the colored pencils is sharp and bold. I am more tentative. I learn from her. The teacher hangs our work on the wall for the last twenty minutes of each class. She doesn’t critique so much as appreciate. She describes the special way each of us looked at the same vase of flowers and then set a unique vision onto the paper. She is supportive of what we see. This is a profound lesson for me, this intimate act of private seeing. No “right” way, only the personal way. My seeing is changing. A new kind of candor emerging. Everywhere I listen to music—in the streets, on the subway, and especially between patients. I plug a baroque chamber sound-scape into my headphones, and the outside chaotic sounds and energies of the city disengage from my body. My brain floats free in Hayden or Corelli. The sound is intimate, resonant against the battered walls of my aching brain. It smoothes on like a salve, and my verbal brain quiets in the surround—as if the Dalai Lama is chanting. I have believed that words, good sturdy words, were core to my existence. To articulate thought well is to be alive, to be seen in the world. I am learning other ways of being. From drawing I ease into watercolor painting, tiny brushes and delicate forms, a cluster of daisies with pinks and
urnished purples. 42 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance: A classmate urges me to try a class at the Art Students League, a room filled with flowers. I’m arrested by this vision. The reality, even more than I thought, overflows with abundance, flowers everywhere. An assistant hands me a book illustrating different botanical kinds of leaves, tells me to practice them over and over and be accurate. Being more casual, I have trouble copying. Another day I learn how to wet the paper so that the color blows out when it is very wet and becomes more defined as the paper dries. I’m eager to experiment. I begin a lavender chrysanthemum from the flowers around me. I can’t imagine doing this bountiful flower all in one color; so I use different colors, blues and some reds, to create contrast and shadow. I’m pleased with my cunning. One of the two teachers comes by and I expect a little bit of praise; instead she says, “You can’t do it that way!” and walks abruptly onto the next student. I am startled in my bones. I may lose the delicate seeing that has been emerging if I stay here. I could be smothered in technique. Something about my life is at stake. I have to trust something new in myself… I revel in the sensual beauty of the flowered room, but I must leave. I mustn’t cage my own way of expressing, however unsure and untutored it is.
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Weeds, ink dr
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house as sentient. Tales from the O
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is now. Tales from the Other Side o
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lives around him in deep and import
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“Without Utterance is a testimoni
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