I yield against my will and call upon some books, whose pages drop listlessly one by one. From my chair, I watch the end of the hands’ fight over the work, while the colours, uncaring, follow their path from mind to heart. I don’t know whether I’m finished. I pull the old easel from Casa Ferreira, bent and stiff from pulling and dropping canvas for years on end. On the pallette, I prepare a curd of paints the canvas accepts without deference. I stretch the pain.

No smell nor lymph in this partial finish. I sharpen my senses and apply a fine diluted coat, like rain on a rose bush. The titanium white yells at the indecently spreading red. It watches me like the Renaissance, sideways and casting foul language typical of easel academies and old furniture with pots of flowers. I go all the way to the bottom of the canvas. The brush has become a blade. I’m no longer painting. I’m dissecting. A thousand details that crack and brake like violin strings. They only want to die. I take the canvas from the easel and, lying on the floor I whiten it there and then. I sharpen the brush in the bowl and draft a movement on air. The paints rest on a point without intersection, like playing cards. They live within themselves in a space with no dimension. I lift a tube and squeeze it till it bleeds a blue thread. I’m watched by the light crossing the workshop’s window, eager to get out. I wash away the Winter from the canvas and on it I churn an exuberant green. A round sun, enveloped in acetylene flames, slides from the canvas, runs through the floor by me and heads for the door. With a jump I seize it and pull it inside. This is not England. There are no green meadows outside as an excuse. I bind it to the work and sit down near the children by the wall I’ve painted. We rock our legs to the rhythm of fresh paint. It’s the day going by in this attic of sliding windows, wanting the view of the clothes lines it should have.

My cat claims my company. Tonight we dine together.