She’s an Anna Sciarra type. Not the one on the red carpet; the one in the movie “What Dreams May Come.” Her skin is milky-white. Her eyes are a dark brown. A muted shade, not a vibrant one. She rarely lets herself get too excited, save for the quiet pleasure she gets from a moth-eaten page that’s home to a sentence that evokes happiness or sorrow in her, both she finds equally delicious and critical to her soul.
A bit solemn and morbidly creative, the Sciarra girl revels in a quiet glare that softens into a smile. Her mind is a cavernous place where parakeet-yellow dandelions grow against tall stone walls. A blue bird rests on the great stuff ledge, basking in the sun as the clouds move thoughtlessly through the warm rays. The sun yawns, having worked so hard, and closes its heavy lids. The dandelion rests against its concrete home.
She’s serious, but playful, and cherishes her father’s wisdom. He wears a hat from England with a small brim and wants for her what he doesn’t have himself.
Lawrence Hall has narrow crevices and tall gray walls. A concrete-framed hallway gives way to billowy paper lanterns that dangle from clothespins and string. Funny, you think. A bit of laughter in a studious place, the banter of a child in a meeting for grown ups.
The whole place is like this. Creatively serious people drink gray tea out of mason jars and hunch over intricate sketches for innovative and efficient pieces of architecture. You can almost see their big yellow ideas bursting out of their life-ceilinged office, like in a cupboard in an attic, they crutch and scribble, their thoughts seeping through the cracks in the doors. A small yellow lamp atop a short desk, a wooden chair atop a cold slate floor.
Then there is the warmth of the honey-colored wood and the windows trimmed in white, as a warm spot in her brain. A place you can spread out and take your writer coat off. The espresso illuminates your spirit, but the gray light from the sky pours in to cool color of cocoa bean infused froth. The coolness of a newspaper meets the warmth of a golden hand. A group gathers to warm themselves and socialize.
Quiet but creative. Solemn but beautiful, happy, yet subdued. The Sciarra girl hasn’t found him yet. But he awaits her on the other side of the wall. He picks the lone flower, and fights his loneliness by gazing at the blue bird. What does he see he wonders. Is she there? A tainted love, a deep wound, a ray of warmth from a small lamp, a chill from a stony breeze.
It’s her. It’s here. It’s this place. This dichotomy of warm and cold. The overflow of ideas, and the compression of a surge. A wet towel wiping sunshine yellow drips down a splintered wooden brush.
Lawrence Hall. Her.
Tags: Ayshlee Koontz, Lawrence Hall, uo
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