You painted me arsenic green. I held an airplane in my hand and knew I'd suddenly grown up and had to move as far away as the moment I was born. No turpentine could erase the incredulity in my face. No words could frame this canvas, no casbah would ever make room for this Titian fire, this green othermindedness, ineradicable yearning for trees' embrace, seas' rocking, tears' search for throbbing fjords, this painting's gaze, this birth from a handful of grief and betrayal.