new bed

Toni was excited about buying a new bed, going on at length describing it. She detailed the size and approximate weight, its color, tone, materials, and general design, she described the headboard in detail. She is a very verbal woman and after all that I still could not see it. All those words and nothing really came through. All the details amounted to generic bed. I'd just have to see it myself.

"Draw me a picture."

Seemed the standard solution. Smart as she is, another woman I glommed onto in order to make academic life a bit easier, and she is well above average, everybody sees this, many are intimidated, and smart as all that, straight A's all the way through, she could not draw a picture so simple as a bed.

"Come on."

"No. I can't." 

"You just think you can't. Every dummkopf can."

"Not me."

"All children can. Even you." I sense us slipping back to childhood. She does that. Her voice becomes childish. Something happened back then that put an abrupt end to her trying. I am certain that I have it in me to go back then and step over that mental obstacle back there. Transcend the trauma. Luckily, she is willing to play along. You know how you draw a cube from a two identical squares and connecting their corners. That's drafting. Finding points and connecting the dots with lines. What is so neato about drafting is you find the points and lines for the top view, then bring down the dots for front view, and draft the points over for side view. That's what that t-square and angle tools and rulers are for, finding points.  Then you draft the points off at an angle for a tilted somewhat 3-dimension view but shown in 2 dimensions on paper. Since a dimension is forfeit in the translation all sorts of dimension-translation related visual mischief can be got up to, that was Escher's forte.

Yes. Toni remembers. Of course she does. Everybody does.

Toni drew the cube as all children do. 

Simple enough. Now with the cube, elaborate a headboard and add a footboard. It is the same idea as the cube except now all rectangles. And once you pick your angle for your cube then stick with it throughout. It's all finding points then erasing the points and lines that interfere with the view. Since the bed is not made of glass and all edges not visible. Were we better at this then we would see in advance what is blocked and not draw the points and lines in the first place, but for construction we do. Then erase the mess.

Toni simply could not do it. She utterly defeated me. It was distressing. I'm pretty sure I can show this to any child, but Toni is not having it. I cannot even duplicate what she drew. It was like a stick-figure bed. She could not take the cube idea and elaborate a bed.

Fine. Let's switch gears. You don't have to draft the points for a bed. Let's try a strawberry.

"I cannot draw a strawberry. You have to be kidding."

"You don't have to. Just suggest a strawberry." 

"I cannot suggest a strawberry. Now I know you're kidding." 

"Yes you can. You can suggest a strawberry with a red comma. That alone will do it. Anything you do to that red comma, scratch a patch of green, tap a few black dots will further suggest a strawberry. It's up to you to decide when to stop suggesting. You don't even have to outline or sketch a strawberry, just mark a page." 

You can tell she had never held a brush before in her life, or she acted as if she hadn't. She tapped her brush into the watercolor as if she had no conception whatever of bristles soaking up liquid, no sense of how saturated the brush or how dry, there was no connection between tools and intention. No sense of depositing color on paper. Apparently Toni forgot momentarily how to draw the shape of a comma because her mark looked nothing like that. I was beginning to lose my patience with Toni who I expected was trying to be thick, and I do not like that.

"Come on."  And she did.

We never talked about painting pictures or suggesting strawberries again.