shadows

[note #21]

My friend Richard dreamed of painting his walls to look like the walls of Pompeii—not the hands holding grapes, not the faces looking out, but the walls themselves—ochre yellow, faded blue, Pompeian red. The geometric lines. The good thing about the loft was that the walls were already ochre, already fading. He just had to add some lines to it, to block it out, to fill in the reds and the blues.

Last week’s post included this photograph of Richard, alone in a room surrounded by his sculptures, which were meant to evoke Pompeii:

This week I noticed, for the first time, the shadows in the photograph. Each window is nearly white with sun, Richard faces into this light, as shadows reach across the floor toward him. One shadow is from an ornate chair, which is draped with what looks likes clothes (maybe the shirt he isn’t wearing?)—its shadow stretches past Richard (the penumbra just grazes his foot) and out of the frame.

It could be said that Richard was swallowed by shadows, that shadows are a motif for understanding his life. I went to Pompeii ten years after he died. A pilgrimage, to see what he had seen (though I think he only saw Pompeii in books). To return to this ruined world. It was gone in an instant, swallowed whole. Atlantis by water, Pompeii by volcano. Either way, it was gone.