Serendipity.

[rivka]

Every once in a while, I type the names "Lilo Raymond" and "Amagansett" into a search engine or an online posters/prints store. I'm looking for a poster of a particular photograph, with that artist and title. I've known that it exists, despite my inability to find a copy, because I have in one of my closets a wrinkled, stained, tattered exemplar. It belonged to Hilary.[1] She left it to me.

For a couple of years, I've wanted to replace the poster. It's in terrible shape, and it means more to me as an icon than as an artifact. Her fingers are the ones that left dark smudges in the corners, yes, but it's the image itself that truly brings her to my mind. But I've never been able to find a copy. Not of that print, and not of the other print she left me: an Edward Hopper painting of a girl sitting alone at a restaurant table. For years, it's been as though Hilary had the only copies of those prints ever sold.

Enter elynne, who made a reference in clairaide's journal to the journal of someone named brainpuberty. Whose reference to a Dali painting called Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by Her Own Chastity led me to a site called barewalls.com. Where I typed the name "Lilo Raymond" once more into the search box, and immediately found my print.

This had never happened before. So I went back to Google and once again entered the words "Lilo Amagansett," and this time I discovered that the print could also be found here and here.

It's everywhere, apparently. You'd think I'd buy it right away, but suddenly I'm unsure.

For a long time I thought of this as a melancholy picture - the empty bed seemed to naturally speak of loss. It was years before I thought to ask someone else if the picture struck them as sad, before it even occurred to me that there might be alternative interpretations.

Now I look at the print and see it from multiple overlapping perspectives. It's the same picture I've always seen, all bittersweet memories and aching loss. It's the memory of a scene of passion, lovers too caught up in enjoying each other and the day to make the bed. It's just a picture of a piece of furniture, with some interesting interplay of light and shadow in the rumpled sheets.

In a weird way, it's no longer what I was looking for. I'm no longer sure what it would mean to hang it on my wall.



[1] I'm finding that I'm not up for an extended explanation of who Hilary was. She was my best friend, and then she was my girlfriend, and that ended because she killed herself when we were both nineteen. Obviously, there are enormous tracts of unsaid material here. If you realy want to know the details, try doing a Google Groups search for my name and hers.

Comments

Re: Wow.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You seem to be having a bed-filled week, as well as a run of the past showing up in your present. I'd read into the portents, but it seems a bit presumptuous of me to go on at length about you. Especially here, where I'm not inclined to do so.

I do, don't I? I wonder what I'm supposed to be doing with it. Probably ignoring it and hoping it will go away, as I'm inclined to do, is not the best option.

You're welcome to speculate about portents all you want, here or in e-mail.