Through the Waters

Through the Waters · Luminous Oil Witness

Dry Ground

Oil painting. On an ordinary sunny afternoon a man in a dark suit, seen from behind at the left of the frame, holds out a printed page toward a woman standing in her own front doorway at the right. The page faces the viewer and reads EVICTION NOTICE in bold black capitals above blank ruled lines. She is seen in exact side profile, a Black and East Asian woman in her thirties with long tightly-coiled dark hair, wearing a loose terracotta house dress and an open oatmeal wrap. Her head is up, her eye is level, her mouth relaxed, and one hand is coming up to take the page. Green lawn and a quiet suburban street behind them.
Oil painting in deep near-black. Towering walls of driving rain and black water rear up on both sides of a narrow corridor and curve overhead, leaving a parted channel down the middle. A woman walks away from the viewer along it, seen from behind and slightly to the side, mid-stride and barefoot on dry ground, in the same terracotta dress and oatmeal wrap. Her hair and clothes are completely dry and a warm golden light rests on her. A single small upright flame of gold light, no larger than a fist and with no face or body, hovers in the air ahead of her and lights the path.

The same twenty minutes. The trouble has become weather and she is walking through the middle of it. She is not soaked and she is not sheltering: she is dry, and lit, and the light did not start in her.

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