Gray river

Walking across the bridge, the river is gray. Clouds above. I've said it before, thought it a hundred times, the sky is reflected in the river, these words coming again like drizzle falling out of humid air. Only this time a sharp wind, hard out of the north, has rasped the surface.

What would Paul Hotvedt do? I thought. More to the point, what would any good painter see when they looked carefully at this river? What is at issue is not simply the color of the river, although it could start there, perhaps.

The world comes at me soft and sharp - or something. Not in words, but in sensations through my eyes and against my skin. My mind is matter – the scientists have probed and sliced the brain tissue, scanned it with radiation. No homunculus. Only chemicals and impulses. Neurotransmitters have been spotted leaping the synaptic clefts.

So my painter friend, I ask again, how would you paint the surface of this river? And where might I find the words? The river, as I looked downstream from the Kaw River Bridge on a winter day was gray, the surface rasped by the sharp north wind. Maybe one day I will do better. And so Mr. Hotvedt, how would you express it?

I think that the river knows what it cannot express in paint or words, but it does indeed reflect the sky.