Read The Lake for Free Online Page B

come up with a motif that harmonizes with the colors around the wall, then carefully block out the sketch on their pad and enlarge it. That’s one method.
    But I’m not that type at all. I just lose myself in the joy of painting, getting the picture up there, and if something goes wrong in the creative process I find a way to fix it and finish the project, no matter what. I’m a real believer in working on site, and I’ll be there no matter what’s going on in my life, and I don’t put any stock in whatever it is that happens inside my head. I look, I sense time passing, I move my body, and I try as much as possible to stay outside.
    And usually, when it’s all over, I find that everything has come together surprisingly well. When that happens, I feel like I’ve been dancing, perfectly in time, with the world.
    That sense of having partnered with the environment, the land, of moving, entranced … and then I say goodbye to it all forever, and head for the next location.
    Sure, I knew perfectly well that my way was sloppy. But for me, at that point, painting murals was more like a hobby than anything else; it wasn’t a true profession. So I was content with what I did. At some point I would have to decide whether or not to make this my occupation, and I assumed that as time passed, the problems that arose because I did things this way would sort themselves out in a manner that was right for me. And who knew, maybe in the process I’d become a professional painter. I figured that if I could refine my method as much as possible, and if things went as well as I hoped, I was bound to produce good results. So I just kept pushing quietly ahead. That’s the stage I was at then. I was still at the very beginning.
    Of course, some people criticized me for doing things the way I did. Look at her, they’d say, painting those childish pictures, she has practically no technique, and then she has the nerve to do interviews as if she were some kind of famous artist! Stuff like that. But there was one area, just one, where I had honed my abilities to perfection, and I held to that absolutely.
    Since I was painting my pictures outside, I would think and think, extremely hard, until I was sure that even decades later my work wouldn’t look out of date.
    If I focus very hard, right at the beginning, on the scenery and the spirit that runs through the place, I start to get an image of colors and the motif that are right for it. As long as I don’t misread that, as long as I manage to put myself in complete harmony with my surroundings, and as long as I don’t lose my concentration, the picture I paint will last ten years, twenty years, maybe even a hundred without looking dated. That’s the one ability I have faith in.
    Just as the head carpenter takes pride in the house he’s built, I had made up my own mind, consciously, that I was right about this. That was settled, and I stuck to my guns. I was never wishy-washy about that. I stood up to the world, and I made my little mark. Sort of like a dog, I guess, pissing someplace to show it had been there.
    I don’t know if it’s appropriate to treat these things like they’re part and parcel of being in love, but Nakajima and I never talked about preparations or plans, even dreams. We just kept going on as we were, here and now. The two of us, on location.
    I couldn’t do anything. Because I could tell—I felt it.
    No one else is like Nakajima. No one in the world is as peculiar as he is.
    I’d never seen anyone who looked the way he did standing by the window at night, so thin and detached. He didn’t have the slightest faith in this human society of ours; he stood on the outside looking in. There was something sad in his posture, and something strong, and I wanted to go on watching him forever.
    Looking back now, I can see that the way I sat gazing at his silhouette against the window in those days, I might as well have been a girl in junior high with a crush on some boy. I