Goodbye Mr. Eltayeb

Tonight at this reading I ran into my friend Tarek and realized that he would be leaving soon. The thought made me sad until I remembered his wife and the piano and how nice it would be for him to be back in Vienna. He is a gentle soul. I like how this blog is populated by gentle souls who are moved by passion, beauty, and extraordinary intelligence. I told him that I once gave a watercolor to one of my heroes--Derek Walcott--which was both one of the scariest and most wonderful things I have ever done. I told him that Derek Walcott smiled and handled my painting with great care. Derek Walcott told me that he paints, too: gouache and watercolor. "What do you paint?" I asked. "The sea," he said. Tarek smiled when he heard this and patted my arm. "I want to paint the colors I see here," he said. And I knew exactly what he meant. Iowa is this wonderfully distracted shade of auburn and honey with swatches of green and blue. Derek Walcott painted the the sea beacuse it was his home and I think we all, in some way, want to paint the colors we see in the places that we are in order to know and love the places as our homes. That is a lovely and a humane thing.