Flag

In 1954 Jasper Johns painted his most famous work Flag. Forty two years later I would see it for the first time as a fifteen year old and it would carve a desire to paint into my heart. Twenty-one years and I suppose three months after that, I would see it again and wonder what the hell had happened to my life.

That sounds too dramatic. It probably wasn’t the way that, say, former heroin addicts wonder what happened to their life. It was more the way a middle-aged man, beer gut straining his belt, would look at his high school football picture and wonder where that kid went.

I was chaperoning a field trip when it happened. I was keeping my eye on the five kids I had been assigned to supervise. They were sprinting from room to room, eager to get the tour over with, more concerned with the day out of class than the art on the walls. I was trying to soak things in while keeping the backs of their heads in view when I turned a corner and saw Flag exactly where I had left it all those years ago. Have you ever run into someone you were once in love with? Not someone who left you broken hearted, but one you never actually dated? That way you have no bad memories of them, just some sense of things that never were? It was like that.

I stopped and stood in front of it. You have to stand in front of it to really appreciate its glory, all those underlying textures creating a depth that makes it so much more than a picture. The way that the white wasn’t really white and bits of text peaked through like secret messages, it amazes me and always has. And in that moment I remembered what paint smelled like. The sharpness of acrylic, the tantalizing asphyxiation of oils. I lived in those smells for almost a decade, and yet five minutes before I don’t think I could have brought them to mind. They lived in that painting.

“Mrs. Martin are you okay?”

I turned, seeing one of my students, Emma, looking at me.

“Yes, I just really love this painting.”

She smiled and nodded, “Oh, yeah, because it’s an American flag and you teach American history, right?”

No, not right. But how do you tell that to a kid who has to sit in your American history class the next day? Who probably sees you as the robot in front of the room that lives for nothing but to make them memorize the dates of the Civil War? Okay, that’s too depressing. Technically they know I have a life, but in the same way that I know George Washington must have snuggled with Martha; true, but hard to fathom.

“Yeah, something like that,” I replied because telling her any more wasn’t possible.

We looked at it together. She saw a flag. I saw the corner of my bedroom at my parents’ house, my easel, the paint stains on the carpet that made my mother crazy. I saw myself staying up all night in the summer trying to do what Johns did with Flag with as much success as one can expect at seventeen. I saw the stacks of canvases I have in the corner of my laundry room at home, covered with garbage bags because I just don’t know what else to do with them.

She moved on and I had the sense that I was slipping on my official duty. So I turned and hurried to find my group, looking back to give it one last glance. It sat there, waiting for its next admirer, and I said goodbye to it in my mind. I found my kids in the gift shop. They were laughing over a book of cubist nudes. Since they were at least trying to be quiet, I left them to it. And really, cubist nudes are pretty funny. I browsed near enough to them to still be a respectable chaperone. I thought about buying a book on Johns, for old times’ sake, but shrunk down in reproductions, they really are just pictures.

Eventually the rest of the students made their way through the exhibit and we left to wait outside for the bus. The November sky was gray and cold, and we huddled together for warmth in the bus loading zone.

“So what did you like best, Tariq?” I asked one of my students, trying to take my mind off the cold that was seeping into my sneakers.

“I liked the melting clocks one, although it was a lot smaller than I thought it would be.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“I liked the Jackson Pollock,” added Jordan.

“What? The drippy one? I could do that in my basement,” Tariq shook his head at Jordan’s apparent foolishness.

I laughed because that is what they all say, Pollock fans know that all too well. “No offense Tariq, but I doubt that. Maybe if you worked on it for a few decades.”

“Oh come on, Mrs. Martin. It’s just splattered paint.”

“No, trust me. Getting that feeling right, it isn’t easy.”

“How do you know?” Jordan asked.

I shrugged, “I used to paint.” I waited for someone to ask me about that, but no one did. Instead they turned and stared down the street, wishing the bus into existence. When that didn’t work Tariq turned back to me.

“So which one was your favorite? The drippy one?”

I gave him a smirk. “No, I liked the Jasper Johns flag.”

“Of course you do,” he replied.

“Hey, it’s not just because I’m the history teacher. I’ve always loved it, even when I was your age. It’s just so… deep. The colors and the textures. It’s a flag but it’s not a flag, you know?”

He blinked at me. “I don’t know, it just looked like a flag to me.”

Of course it did. And I guess in some ways he’s right. It is just a flag, a flag made of bits of paper, wax, and paint. And somehow, a piece of my soul, too.


Written by: Leslie Martin
Photograph by: Anthony Delanoix

The Hallways of Always

I remember thinking to myself that we shouldn’t be doing this, that even though the weather forecast said no rain, the ominous thunderclouds gathering in great bunches to the south were singing a different tune. I remember wishing I had worn my other shoes, the ones with the good rubber souls. I remember cursing out whoever decided that the trail should follow the thin shelf along the ridge. I remember the panic in my friend’s eyes when the first raindrops hit us, heavy and cold.

I remember falling, the wind whistling past as I outraced the rain on our way to the valley floor. I remember the sun starting to peek out from behind a cloud. Then nothing.

It wasn’t like I had always imagined. Images of my life didn’t flash before my eyes. There was no tunnel, no bright light. There were no voices of loved ones beckoning, calling me home. There was no choir of angels and no pearly gates and no clouds. There were none of the things I had been taught to expect.

                                                                                                        ***

I am in a long corridor. Angular and sterile, it looks like a Museum of Contemporary Art. Doorways open at odd intervals, each emitting a light of a different color. I wander down the hallway and come to an intersection, each direction the mirror image of the others. I choose the left. I come to another intersection, same as the first. This time, I choose right.

I have no idea how long I amble down the labyrinthine passageways before I start to see and hear them. At first they are just murmurs and shadows, vague notions that something else is here. Then they start to come into focus. The first one I see is a medieval knight, clomping down the hallway in his armor. I try to talk to him, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. I motion to him, but he passes me as if I don’t exist. I turn around just in time to see a small Asian girl in a school uniform running straight at me. I brace myself for the collision, but she darts right through me. I come to another intersection and panic as a tiger, snarling and ferocious, rounds the corner.

“Don’t worry. It can’t hurt you.”

The voice is cool, serene. But I don’t know where it’s coming from.

“Excuse me? Who said that?”

“I did.”

I follow sound the voice and turn around. Standing in front of me is a human form, but unlike any that I have ever seen. Radiant and shining, as if made by pure light, the being seems neither masculine nor feminine.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“I am Sidpa. I am your guide to the Hallways of Always.”

“My guide to what?”

“This place you have entered. This is the Hallways of Always. It is where souls go to transmigrate as they pass from one body to another.”

As Sidpa speaks the corridor grows ever more crowded, like the hallways of a high school in between classes. But instead of teenagers, it’s filled with people of every nationality, every age, from every time period. There is every type of animal. And there are the other things, fantastic Dr. Seussian creatures, like the seven-legged, two-headed beast shuffling it’s way towards me.

Sidpa sees the look on my face.

“In an infinite universe, you don’t think that life only exists on one minuscule planet do you?”

“I… I guess not.”

“I know. This is not easy to wrap your head around.”

“So I’m dead?”

“Yes… And no. Your soul is everlasting. It has been here before, an innumerable amount of times. When you are done in one body, you come here and choose another. See, watch him.”

Sidpa motions towards a man sauntering down the passageway. Clad in the rigid, formal wool uniform of a Russian World War II soldier, the man pauses at each colored doorway, as if window-shopping. Some he walks away from quickly, others he stays at longer, as if pondering whether or not to enter.

“He’s getting a feel for them, choosing where he wants to go next, and who, or what, he wants to be. Time and distance do not exist here. You can go wherever you want. You can be your favorite leader from history, your favorite animal. You can even be the parent of the person you were last time. The only life you can’t choose is the one you just lived. Unless you were taken before your time.”

The soldier comes to a another doorway and peers into it. Electric blue light reflects on his face. He exudes peace and understanding. We both know this is the one. Right before he steps through the threshold, he discards the incarnation of the soldier, leaving it on the doorstep like a snake shedding its skin, revealing the luminous soul beneath. I watch in awe as it disappears into the neon-tinted void.

“But what about you?” I ask. “Do you ever go through a doorway?”

There is no answer. I look around, but Sidpa is gone. I stand and watch as others slip through doorways. I gaze into the closest portal. Through a vibrant orange haze I see a collection of yurts on the Mongolian Steppe. I see a man and woman and immediately feel a pang of familial love. I walk to the next and I feel like I’m transported underwater. I see a pod of dolphins swimming all around me. I hear their squeaks and am surprised that I understand what they are saying. I continue down the hallway, surveying each door, and each life contained within.

Down the long corridor, I see a vivid green doorway that seems to pulsate. As I get closer I feel it pull me in, like a magnet. Before I even get there, I know. This is the one. I let the emerald glow swallow me up as I walk through.

                                                                                                        *** 

I see a bright, white light. I hear a voice with a slight Indian accent. A shadow cuts across and a man’s face comes into focus. I try to lift my head, but can’t.

“Don’t try to move,” the man says. “I’m Dr. Sidpa. You were pretty lucky to survive a fall like that, we thought we lost you.”

I lay there, my mind wandering, trying to separate truth from illusion, memory from myth.

“Yep, pretty lucky.” Dr. Sidpa continues, giving me a wink. “Or maybe it just wasn’t your time.”

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal