Storylines by Carrie Cox

Author:Carrie Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Affirm Press
Published: 2023-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

28

The Zorn palette, apparently, has just four colours – yellow ochre, vermilion, ivory black and white – that in combination can create any colour possible despite not including blue. Its creator, the Swedish portrait painter Anders Zorn, is still considered a humble genius for what he was able to achieve: limitless beauty from the sparsest of foundations.

‘It’s the bluish undertone in the black,’ explains Harmony, holding court on the top step of the veranda as we each gaze up at the sky. ‘That’s the trick card in the pack. That’s what works with the vermilion to create those muted purples you can see coming through the clouds. That’s what works with the yellow to make all the different shades of green you can see on the hilltops now, saying goodbye to the sun.’

‘That’s amazing,’ someone says, I’m not sure who. My neck is craned to the sky, watching the fast-setting sun as though for the first time or the last.

‘It’s like my home brew,’ says Bumpy from behind me. ‘Once you’ve got the basic ingredients, you can make pretty much anything – pale ales, brown ales, amber ales, anything really.’

‘Shiraz?’ Margaret asks in her distinctive deep voice. Everyone laughs generously.

‘What I love about the Zorn palette,’ Harmony continues, the sun now almost gone, ‘is how it makes me feel about the rest of life, that no matter how far I venture from what I know, no matter where I end up or what shape I’m in, I can always come back to this firm foundation, to my core.’

She looks straight at me now and I smile quickly back at her, aware that I’ve been seen in some way I don’t understand.

Gradually we make our way back inside, legs heavy from the morning’s bushwalk, arms tired from an afternoon of kayaking and yoga. ‘I haven’t seen my core for years,’ says Margaret, putting her hat on the rack near the front door. ‘I think I’d need an excavator.’

Bumpy tells us we’ve got an hour until dinner – ‘So hit the showers, you smelly lot!’ I tell him I’ll be back in twenty minutes so that I can help him with prep.

And as I scrub myself from the neck down, I try not to let myself think that this has been the perfect first full day at Navada, that everything feels right. Because you can’t trust a thought to stay whole, and sometimes the mere act of thinking it breaks everything.

~

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.