truths and do i dare

Such a wonderful day at Dallas Arboretum in so many respects, the loveliest perhaps being when, seven quinceanera dresses, and 100,000 pumpkins later, we chose our spot to pause. W sketched, I stared and thought about the view in front of us as we shared glasses of a rare White Malbec.

That balcony! It taunted me. It screamed at me. And so I kept staring. 

I have an oil painting that hangs in my bedroom; a straight line of sight from where I often prop up with several pillows. It was purchased in a frame shop on a whim shortly after Spoke died, and only because it spoke to me. I wasn't sure how it did, or why it did, until I had stared and studied it across many of those cushy hours.

The painting is of what looks like a rustic balcony. There is an iron guard rail which suggests a place far away, clay pots lining its length hinting of flowers not withering but not thriving. Who lives here? Who used to live here? What are their stories?

It took hours with this painting for me to realize the access onto the patio is not a double door but actually windows, which makes the balcony instead, oddly, a large and awkward window box, it having free standing pots. The implication slipped by me, as it has every person who has laid eyes on it. Everyone imagines a balcony, and so as one does with opera plots, we embrace it as an unlikely truth.

I have promised to will the painting to someone, a young bartender forever dear to me, who was there for me during some personal months of grief when I wanted to be alone but not at home. I spent many hours with Joe. He used to introduce me to new customers as his best friend. Sigh.

Balcony or window box being a moot point now, I had shared with him my vision of a book about this painting and the many stories I think it has to tell. But I'm not a fiction writer so I've never gone so far as to even imagine the characters.

That painting, memories of Joe, the book premise, all swirled around me with each sip of rose as I stared at this other balcony, sensing it too seems to have many stories to tell. Each balcony, thus each book, could house many chapters of many imaginary lives. 

The bedroom painting might shield a group of girls on a vacation in Barcelona, or tell of the first impressions for the great niece from Wisconsin who has just inherited this ancient house in a village south of Rome. The arboretum balcony sets the stage for a honeymooning couple coming up for air and people watching all of us in the park from their rocking chairs, equally sweaty margaritas in hand.

Maybe some frigid January day, I'll tackle defining characters and their lives behind or on either balcony and I'll put them in ink. Or maybe I'll just, gloves on and scarf wrapped tightly, grab the same seat by the same pavilion and keep staring for staring's sake.