Through the Waters

Through the Waters · Luminous Oil Witness

The Eye

Oil painting. Inside a glass-walled conference room at a technology company, a person seen from behind at the left of the frame holds a printed page out across a wooden table. The page faces the viewer and reads POSITION ELIMINATED in bold black capitals above blank ruled lines. At the right, seen in exact side profile, sits an East Asian American man in his late thirties in thin round wire-frame glasses and a dark grey quarter-zip, a blank white badge on a lanyard at his chest. His head is up, his shoulders are level, and one hand is reaching to take the page. Rows of empty desks are visible through the glass behind him.
Oil painting in deep near-black. A colossal circular wall of storm cloud encircles the whole frame and curves up and overhead, opening far above onto a ragged circle of dark night sky. On the dry ground at the bottom of that vast arena a small figure walks, an East Asian American man in a dark quarter-zip and jeans, lit with a warm golden light. A single small upright flame of gold light, no larger than a fist and with no face or body, hovers in the air a few feet ahead of him and is the only light in the picture.

The same morning, the badge gone. The eyewall is the most violent part of a hurricane, and it is the thing turning all the way around him. The calm he is standing in is surrounded, not safe.

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