The Geography of Geometry

Brown is really a tertiary color, mixed with both primary and secondary ones…it is considered a low-chroma color that comes with mixing blue with yellow to make green…and then adding red to the combination until you get the desired results. 

Coming out of the northeast, crossing the Appalachians, the generally low relief of the plains is broken in several places, most notably in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, which form the U.S. Interior Highlands, the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains.  He remembered the contours of her as he sailed high above the terrain, her gentle slopes, the arches and insteps, the curvatures and geometry.  He had seen her enough times to memorize her angles, her lines, the way she walked, the silhouettes of her against an afternoon.  He knew what dresses looked best, which clothes he could remember and the colors that created her art. 

The greens of the Tennessee valley start to run golden the further west you travel, and although the land is slowly rising towards the plains it is a gentle and gradual one.  The land flattens out as the trees give way to the farms and the furrows, the ground running in tannins, leathers and wood colors.  He remembered the flatness of her belly, the smoothness of her midsection that he had seen once, casually, not intimately.  There were still areas undiscovered, places unknown, places unrevealed.

He remembered a time when he was waiting for her to get out of a car, and as she slid out and entered the bright afternoon he saw her hair and its complex array of colors and cuts.  Like painted sands, they mingled and merged and shifted in an array of golds and brass, blondes and browns. It was an innocent look and it was a deliberate one, hair cut unevenly to fall perfectly, whether windblown or rain-battered.  It created a perfect veil, almost sculpted…it was a perfect petal, tightly wrought. 

 The Great Plains come to an abrupt end at the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains form a large portion of the Western U.S., entering from Canada and stretching nearly to Mexico. The Rocky Mountain region is the highest region of the United States by average elevation. The Rocky Mountains generally contain fairly mild slopes and wider peaks compared to some of the other great mountain ranges, with a few exceptions (such as the Teton Mountains in Wyoming and the Sawatch Range in Colorado). The highest peaks of the Rockies are found in Colorado, the tallest peak being Mount Elbert at 14,440 ft (4,400 m). The Rocky Mountains contain some of the most spectacular, and well known scenery in the world. In addition, instead of being one generally continuous and solid mountain range, it is broken up into a number of smaller, intermittent mountain ranges, forming a large series of basins and valleys.

At times he felt like he as an asymptote, his line following her curve arbitrarily closely, but never touching.  For infinity.  Forever.  He could see out the window to the low curve of the horizon.  It looked like forever, the light blues turning darker as the sand colors of the earth intersected in a flat line.  It seemed very far off in the distance, and it seemed that she was twice as far as that.  The geometry of the earth keeping her far from him, the simple math that he was here and she was there.  The colors in-between them were earthen in tone, flat in terrain, sun-bleached and sometimes barren.  Left without water they would crack and crevice, and break in your hands.  This far from her he felt brittle. 

He had had exactly one dream about her, a haunting one that had left him stirred, a vision of stark perfection that was unsettling…in it they had been walking together, a dark place like a woods or a forest…he could only see her outline of her face but he knew it was her.  He had tumbled, into a hole he had thought but as he looked up at her he knew it was planned.  She hadn’t pushed him, she had merely led him to this place.  And with both hands, she began to cascade dirt upon him, slowly at first but picking up speed.  Soon, it was at his knees, and he couldn’t move.  Soon it was pinning his arms against him and soon it was near his mouth and he could smell the dark earth, feel the moisture of it against him and soon he could only look up as she pushed more and more upon him…the dirt perfectly matching the color of her eyes.

The black tires skidded and smeared rubber on the white tarmac, announcing the landing in a town far from where he had taken off.  The land here was perfectly flat, and he walked out into a collision of colors and angles, noises and temperatures and yet he found himself looking for something else, looking for something he knew would not be there.  But he wanted it to be, wanted the shape to take place in front of him, wanted the shape to stand stark against his afternoon and be waiting there for him. 

There were a thousand shapes in front of him, and none of them were her.