My left eye’s tears seem different from its twin. As I grew and matured, this new eye seemed to shed its abundance more readily, a river of salty effusions opaque and compromised. Within these tears, there seemed the special sadness of memory mingled with regret for choices not taken, desires not achieved, love not responded to. Opaque and veiled much like a screen door which blocks light but not the scent and glories of Spring, my left eye seemed weighted down with all the other broken promises of thwarted life unfulfilled. It seemed to me that my left eye worked independent of the right and had access to a storehouse of memory beyond touch. My mind could not fathom the source of these memories which appeared as a kaleidoscope of shadows moving across a stage at once bright then darkened. Certain shadows would pause and redirect themselves in reverse thus causing greater confusion to all the shadows that followed. Regrouping commenced after stumbling and falling. Shadows merged, darkness quickened and the shadow that had preceded paused in a cooled state of frozen time, cementing the empty spaces created by the disrupted parade.
I could not fathom why one of the portals of my soul would be so screened not the other. Why one eye seemed to shut down in the face of human weight and consternation while the one took over all the practical tasks that life presented. This biforcation permitted me opportunities to withdraw and observe life while simultaneously bending the will of those who surrounded me (with varying degrees of success). There was little affection in my life, certainly less joy in the fuller sense. I never knew what love was even in all of its mysterious forms. I did learn about deceit and manipulation. I have lived my life in a closet of humiliations and stunted ambitions.
Am I now guilty of vanity and self-importance that I need to burden the world with the minutia of my existence? I can only say that many things I am about to tell you should be kept secret – all my failures are embarrassing and I fear my reputation is ill served if I trumpet my unfulfilled longings and the agonizing humiliations of my life and art.
And yet curiously I am writing these pages not for myself but maybe for a larger public where through these pages I can find love from a reading public who never knew me. I can appease my father’s ghost and justify my miserable life. I am writing this diary for you. And yet, did you know that I am a famous artist? No, not like Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo who were my contemporaries. More like someone who watched life, continuously conversing with powerful people: players, if you will. It is no surprise that what I have accomplished is all about taking my world at face value and giving back what was asked and expected. I adapted to conventions and multiplied standardized shapes and compositions. But it was not always this way. I need to tell you my story so that you will understand why I am to this day called a little painter (Pinturicchio), not my real name Bernardino di Betto di Biagio.
Throughout my life I felt the sustained energy of my twin Barbara who had been lodged in the small cavity under my heart since birth. She was intended to be my actual twin sister but whether nature was displeased or she was displeased being separate, she left my mother’s womb and traveled inside me and tenaciously refused to become an independent being. I was an evolving embryo and having this extra baggage in my stomach (she later would move to the space under my heart as I have described) simply seemed part of the growing process.
My mother’s womb was a commodious place; even a palace since it had many rooms filled with the sounds of her many past lives and the birth of children long dead and forgotten. I ventured to explore these memory-filled places, where echoes of human life bordered on despair and spent pleasures. My umbilical cord was long and tough, resilient to sudden turns of corridors, pliable in navigating stairs. I felt assured in my exploration. Her womb seemed spent and tired to my new eyes, eyes that had little to compare with my young mind’s eye. Told I was an old soul (which meant little to me at my present state), I was resolved to follow my own counsel and traveled where I wished without map or guide. So my mother’s womb became in my mind, a high proving ground whose landscape of summer trees and flowers, wintry pleasures in frozen landscape, suggested the power of choice in new opportunity.
I was ready for adventure and discovered that a mother’s womb was a place of violent contrasts since the landscapes within (there were many, some sealed off forbidding entry) reverberated with the thoughts and actions of my mother. Her world was hard to fathom, harder to predict so that at the same moment we encountered both rain and sun, dark clouds, and wind coalesced by white light in stillness. It became a bumpy ride and while the palace was spacious, most of the individual rooms were small and airless. Many were locked, most needed cleaning and repair.
Sometimes I felt I could predict what was occurring in the outside world and could position myself sensing what her reactions would be. Otherwise her responses were usually angry and this caused the dimming of lights (especially in the corridors) and the suspension of electrical current. Her bile, green and purple, washed over me especially in the early evenings and I suspect this was a result of interaction with my father. The plumbing in mother’s womb was fragile and was not made of copper so it made huge sounds, rumbling, disruptive with frequent breaks causing flooding of the shit and garbage of her mind.
There was little I could do in keeping myself clean. I tried in my own chamber which was a kind of waiting room but there was little I could do facing the onslaught of mother’s dark thoughts and excretions, her use of alcohol (which burnt my extremities) and her addiction to a kind of smoking that elevated her mood and made her selfish life more palatable.
