Now the model is on hot sand. The crocheted blanket digs into his knees. He’s caught, for this moment, his weary course across the desert. No water in sight. Nothing worth turning back for. He leans into it, face turned in against the sharp wind that breaks across his skull. All the weight is collecting in his hands. The blood of the whole body held in his hands.

The pose seeks to catch the model somewhere between where she thought she was supposed to be and where she thinks she is supposed to be.

Pinky ring. Signet. His hand drapes over the edge of the chair. Totally languid, except he’s flexing his toes on his left foot. Is that part of the pose or a reaction to the pose? A leak in the pose? The place where his thought has eddied. A reminder for himself, for us, that he’s still there though he may have disappeared into the five-minute seam that has opened up in time. The ring speaks of a history. As does the path the comb made in his hair before the mirror. The powder along the crescent of his [ass]. The way it whitens the skin there. Eclipse. I can see him getting ready this morning, the back edge of his palm sliding smooth talc along the seam. Preparing the body. Chalk line. Buffer. Dusting. Light snowfall.

Ten-minute pose. Some things have been decided for me: the placement of his palm against the belly of his hamstring; the forward movement of his leg; cant of his head; torsion of spine and ribcage; how much time I’ve been given to study this arrangement. Sometimes it takes your own hand to move your leg forward. (The lead line wrapped around Buttercup’s back legs coaxing her across the paddock. How she hopped her hooves ahead with the pressure of the lead.) Where is the model trying to go that he needs a leather lead
line looped around his leg? Or trying not to go? Where is he trying to stay? I told Richard, You were my guide through the underworld. He said, Where are we now?

Seated pose. Stability of squared shoulders, hips, knees and feet. Dreamed this diagram: a line drawing, as in a dictionary, of a woman seated on a straight-backed chair. A double dotted line, indicating a band, started at her pubic mound (and the word mound was somehow stressed) and ended at her mouth. Alongside it was a dotted arrow pointing up with an animated instruction: one firm swift lap of the tongue straight up the dotted line. All One Stroke, it emphasized. Under the drawing was a brass label: PROSE.

Today’s timekeeper is Hal. He keeps consulting the wall clock, and for each pose, the egg timer rings a good minute before he calls time. It rings, winds down, and then stops ticking. Hal doesn’t hear well, Violet explains. Okay. So, the person in charge of time can’t hear the bell. He does sense unerringly when the timer stops ticking, strangely enough. Each time, the bell rings, then about a minute later, he calls, Time. Now, another reclining pose. On her stomach, ankles crossed. Now the bell again. He turns toward it–but only to get his chamois. Another minute passes, and Time! Ten-minute pose. The model’s cell phone is ringing. A lot of discussion about whether to turn it off or not. The most grievous model gaffe is puncturing the timeless agreement of the pose. But now suddenly I feel more interested in the pose. Avalokiteshvara, in the God realm, holding out time as a remedy. The timer rings again. Not a budge from our timekeeper. We’ve all learned this system, dismantling the strong Pavlovian response to a bell. We wait for the timer to run itself down. The absence of the ticking is what we listen for. The bell means nothing.

The model is lying on her back with her legs slung over to the right and her head turned to the left. I can feel the release, opening of the chest, twist of the spine, stretch along the side. Haptic knowledge. How does the drawing record that knowledge? What are the traces of subjective experience? Yesterday, when we did handstands against the wall in yoga, I loved pitching forward onto my hands, the feel of my legs balancing above my hips, the inversion of weight, the new relationship of blood and gravity. All day I kept replaying that action in my mind. All that was left was actually to do the handstand right there on 5th Avenue. Now my hand is on Louie’s head. Dog of miraculous comebacks. In my hand, all the dogs’ heads I’ve held. Sweet tilt of his face. Maybe Selina can tell the neighbors he would have fewer problems if he weren’t so good at living. Now he’s pushing the full weight of his will into me. Right under my hand, what keeps him alive. Petting Louie has become my drawing.